Taking a good trip on Bicycle Day

4/19/2006

"The use of sacramental vegetables has gone back in history. It's an ancient human ritual that has usually been practiced in the context of religion. I didn't pioneer anything.” — Timothy Leary

Give normal people a reason to celebrate, and they probably will. Give party people a reason to celebrate, and they will come up with Bicycle Day.

Today, April 19, is still celebrated by some die hard stoners as Bicycle Day; the day Albert Hofmann took the first intentional trip on LSD.

The Swiss chemist was synthesizing a fungus called ergot in the spring of 1943, when he became ill preparing the sample. He went home to rest, and had bizarre (but not unpleasant) visions for two hours. Three days later he intentionally ingested a minute amount of the substance and, feeling odd again, rode home on his bicycle—watching the world fantastically reconstruct itself along the way.

Hofmann went on to synthesize psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, in 1958.

Hofmann called LSD his problem child, originally thinking it would hold great promise for psychiatry, or as the next wonder drug, alongside aspirin. In the 1950s, the C.I.A. “researched” LSD by operating whorehouses in the San Francisco area, and dosing customers with “acid” without their knowledge.

Most research into LSD was banned in 1962, and the drug was soon illegal in 1967, when it became popular in U.S. counterculture. Dr. Timothy Leary rose to fame in the late 1960s as a psychologist and campaigner for psychedelic drug research and use, and the spiritual and therapeutic benefits of LSD.

Leary argued that the drug, used in the right dosage and setting, could alter behaviour in new and beneficial ways. His experiments produced no murders or suicides and, apparently, no “bad trips”.

The acid guru was arrested twice for possession of marijuana and, in 1974, “the most dangerous man in America” was being held on $5 million bail, which today would equate to around $21 million.

Love him or hate him, Timothy Leary had to have been one incredibly charming individual to get away with ingesting, offering and promoting LSD in a world so hostile to psychedelic drugs.

In 1969, he somehow got into bed in Montreal with John Lennon and Yoko Ono to participate in the peace protest. Naked to the waist and waving a two-fingered peace sign, he smiled his way through “Give Peace a Chance” at the hairy foot of the bed.

For my money, it would have been fun to see what a character like that could have accomplished away from the glare and grip of the authorities. He might have been on to something valuable, and probably would’ve got along well with Hofmann.

One can only imagine what their bicycle rides together would have been like. Far out, man.