Numerous accounts of the discovery of LSD have been published in English;
none, unfortunately, have been completely accurate. Here, at last, the father
of LSD details the history of his "problem child" and his long and fruitful
career as a research chemist. In a real sense, this book is the inside story
of the birth of the Psychedelic Age, and it cannot be denied that we have here
a highly candid and personal insight into one of the most important scientific
discoveries of our time, the signiflcance of which has yet to dawn on mankind.
Surpassing its historical value is the immense philosophical import of this
work. Never before has a chemist, an expert in the most materialistic of the
sciences, advanced a Weltanschauung of such a mystical and transcendental
nature. LSD, psilocybin, and the other hallucinogens do indeed, as Albert
Hofmann asserts, constitute "cracks" in the edifice of materialistic
rationality, cracks we would do well to explore and perhaps widen.
As a writer, it gives me great satisfaction to know that by this book the
American reader interested in hallucinogens will be introduced to the work of
Rudolf Gelpke, Ernst Junger, and Walter Vogt, writers who are all but unknown
here. With the notable exceptions of Huxley and Wasson, English and American
writers on the hallucinogenic experience have been far less distinguished and
eloquent than they.
This translation has been carefully overseen by Albert Hofmann, which made my
task both simpler and more enjoyable. I am beholden to R. Gordon Wasson for
checking the chapters on LSD's "Mexican relatives" and on "Ska Maria Pastora"
for accuracy and style.
Two chapters of this book—"How LSD Originated" and "LSD Experience and
Reality"—were presented by Albert Hofmann as a paper before the international
conference "Hallucinogens, Shamanism and Modern Life" in San Francisco on the
afternoon of Saturday, September 30, 1978. As a part of the conference
proceedings, the first chapter has been published in the Journal of
Psychedelic Drugs, Vol. 11 (1-2), 1979.
