“Decades later, however, spectacular revelations cast Olson’s death in a completely new light. First, the CIA admitted that, shortly before he died, Olson’s colleagues had lured him to a retreat and fed him LSD without his knowledge. Then it turned out that Olson had talked about leaving the CIA – and told his wife that he had made “a terrible mistake”. Slowly, a counter-narrative emerged: Olson was disturbed about his work and wanted
to quit, leading his comrades to consider him a security risk. All of this led him to room 1018A.”—By Stephen Kinzer, “From mind control to murder? How a deadly fall revealed the CIA’s darkest secrets.” The Guardian. September 6, 2019.
Tag: LSD
Book: Bicycle Day by Brian Blomerth
“Illustrator, musician and self-described ‘comic stripper’ Brian Blomerth has spent years combining classic underground art styles with his bitingly irreverent visual wit in zines, comics, and album covers. With Brian Blomerth’s Bicycle Day, the artist has produced his most ambitious work to date: a historical account of the events of April 19, 1943, when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann ingested an experimental dose of a new compound known as lysergic acid diethylamide and embarked on the world’s first acid trip. Combining an extraordinary true story told in journalistic detail with the artist’s gritty, timelessly Technicolor comix style, Brian Blomerth’s Bicycle Day is a testament to mind expansion and a stunningly original visual history.”
—Description by the publisher, Anthology
Happy Bicycle Day
“Exactly [76] years ago, April 19, 1943, Albert Hofmann, a chemist for Sandoz, in Basel, Switzerland, ingested a minute amount—just 250 micrograms–of a compound derived from the ergot fungus. He soon felt so disoriented that he rode his bicycle home, where he experienced all the heavenly and hellish effects of lysergic acid diethylamide.”
John Horgan, “Tripping in LSD’s Birthplace: A Story for ‘Bicycle Day’“. Scientific American. April 19, 2014
The phrase psychedelic is based on the Greek words for “mind-revealing.” I’ll note the occasion by reading SWIM stories because while curious about psychedelics, I never got to the point where taking them seemed like a good idea. One particularly memorable SWIM story I’ve seen previously:
“On his deathbed, unable to speak owing to advanced laryngeal cancer, [Aldous] Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for “LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular.” According to her account of his death[56] in This Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 11:20 a.m. and a second dose an hour later; Huxley died aged 69, at 5:20 p.m. (Los Angeles time), on 22 November 1963.”
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Aldous Huxley,” (accessed April 19, 2019), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley#Death
cafebedouin.org 