Read the Never-Before-Published Letter From LSD-Inventor Albert Hofmann to Apple CEO Steve Jobs

[drokhole]

source: Huffington Post

Read the Never-Before-Published Letter From LSD-Inventor Albert Hofmann to Apple CEO Steve Jobs

"Steve Jobs has never been shy about his use of psychedelics, famously calling his LSD experience "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." So, toward the end of his life, LSD inventor Albert Hofmann decided to write to the iPhone creator to see if he'd be interested in putting some money where the tip of his tongue had been.

Hofmann penned a never-before-disclosed letter in 2007 to Jobs at the behest of his friend Rick Doblin, who runs an organization dedicated to studying the medical and psychiatric benefits of psychedelic drugs. Hofmann, a Swiss chemist, died in April 2008 at the age of 102.
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Thinking differently--or learning to Think Different, as a Jobs slogan has it--is a hallmark of the acid experience. "When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," Kevin Herbert told Wired magazine at a symposium commemorating Hofmann's one hundredth birthday. Herbert, an early employee of Cisco Systems who successfully banned drug testing of technologists at the company, reportedly "solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead."
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And perhaps in other scientific areas, too. According to Gilmore, the maverick surfer/chemist Kary Mullis, a well-known LSD enthusiast, told him that acid helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction, a crucial breakthrough for biochemistry. The advance won him the Nobel Prize in 1993. And according to reporter Alun Reese, Francis Crick, who discovered DNA along with James Watson, told friends that he first saw the double-helix structure while tripping on LSD..."

more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/read-the-never-before-pub_b_227887.html


Our nation's policy towards "psychedelics" (a word which has garnered unfortunate disapproval through conditioned reflex) remains both archaic and counter-intuitive, and - given their countless reported benefits - is in desperate need of changing (at the very least, with more sanctioned/funded studies). I had a post in another thread that expands on those thoughts (with links provided) a bit:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=2025468&mesg_id=2026935 (from a thread how 'Magic Mushrooms' have been shown to improve personality)



I'll close with this interesting and relevant passage/exchange from Aldous Huxley's Island:


Murugan calls it dope and feels about it all the disapproval that, by conditioned reflex, the dirty word evokes. We, on the contrary, give the stuff good names—the moksha-medicine, the reality revealer, the truth-and-beauty pill. And we know, by direct experience, that the good names are deserved. Whereas our young friend here has no firsthand knowledge of the stuff and can't be persuaded even to give it a try. For him, it's dope and dope is something that, by definition, no decent person ever indulges in."

"What does His Highness say to that?" Will asked.

Murugan shook his head. "All it gives you is a lot of illusions," he muttered."All I mean is that I don't want any of your false samadhi."

"How do you know it's false?" Dr. Robert inquired.

"Because the real thing only comes to people after years and years of meditation and tapas and . . ."

"Murugan," Vijaya explained to Will, "is one of the Puritans. He's outraged by the fact that, with four hundred milligrams of moksha-medicine in their bloodstreams, even beginners can catch a glimpse of the world as it looks to someone who has been liberated from his bondage to the ego."

"But it isn't real," Murugan insisted.

"Not real!" Dr. Robert repeated. "You might as well say that the experience of feeling well isn't real."

"You're begging the question," Will objected. "An experience can be real in relation to something going on inside your skull but completely irrelevant to anything outside."

"Of course," Dr. Robert agreed.

"Do you know what goes on inside your skull, when you've taken a dose of the mushroom?"

"We know a little."

"Their response is the full-blown mystical experience. You know—One in all and All in one. The basic experience with its corollaries—boundless compassion, fathomless mystery and meaning."

"Not to mention joy," said Dr. Robert, "inexpressible joy."

"And the whole caboodle is inside your skull," said Will. "Strictly private. No reference to any external fact except a toadstool."

"Not real," Murugan chimed in. "That's exactly what I was trying to say."

"Do you like music?" Dr. Robert asked.

"More than most things."

"And what, may I ask, does Mozart's G-Minor Quintet refer to? Does it refer to Allah? Or Tao? Or the second person of the Trinity? Or the Atman-Brahman?"

Will laughed. "Let's hope not."

"But that doesn't make the experience of the G-Minor Quintet any less rewarding. Well, it's the same with the kind of experience that you get with the moksha-medicine, or through prayer and fasting and spiritual exercises. Even if it doesn't refer to anything outside itself, it's still the most important thing that ever happened to you. Like music, only incomparably more so. And if you give the experience a chance, if you're prepared to go along with it, the results are incomparably more therapeutic and transforming. So maybe the whole thing does happen inside one's skull. Maybe it is private and there's no unitive knowledge of anything but one's own physiology. Who cares? The fact remains that the experience can open one's eyes and make one blessed and transform one's whole life."

[Warren DeMontague]

1. Well, obviously that stuff turns people into drooling, incoherent morons.

Oh, wait, that's FOX News.

[Old and In the Way]

2. "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life."

I have to agree with Steve's insight on LSD. My last trip was 30 years ago, but it fundamentally changed my perspective on the nature of reality. The 1st trip was incredible, every other time I did it, the experience was marred by my consciousness trying to maintain control. I think it might be a form of temporary insanity where the sensory inputs are basically unfiltered by the brain - you get the full dose of reality, not the managed, day-to-day sensory management that keeps reality predictable and consistent which is how I define the concept of sanity.

[drokhole]

3. Thanks for sharing!

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." - William Blake

I like the way how Aldous Huxley described it, as "Mind at Large." It's kind of incredible how your sentiments are shared by a lot of people who have taken psychedelics. In the thread that I linked to, there's a TED talk from Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., the professor from Johns Hopkins who conducted the psilocybin study, where he reveals that a large majority of the individuals in the study described their experience with the substance as "one of the five most significant experiences of their lives" - right up there with marriages, and the birth of children:

TEDxMidAtlantic - Roland Griffiths - 11/5/09

[GliderGuider]

4. Yep. Same here.

I had a broad variety of experiences, including some bummers, with LSD, psilocybin and mescaline during the '70s. They opened the doors for me too, though it took me another 35 years to fully walk through. When I did take the final step with psychedelics, what I found waiting across the threshold was the manifestation of all the lessons the magic molecules had taught me all those years ago.

Now I'm heading into my second adolescence and the old curiosity has returned. I wonder what would happen today?

:hippie:

[drokhole]

5. And a thank you to you, too!

"Now I'm heading into my second adolescence and the old curiosity has returned. I wonder what would happen today?"

I love the way you expressed that! :)

[drokhole]

6. Sorry, guess I could have added the letter to the OP...

Dear Mr. Steve Jobs,

Hello from Albert Hofmann. I understand from media accounts that you feel LSD helped you creatively in your development of Apple computers and your personal spiritual quest. I'm interested in learning more about how LSD was useful to you.

I'm writing now, shortly after my 101st birthday, to request that you support Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Peter Gasser's proposed study of LSD-assisted psychotherapy in subjects with anxiety associated with life-threatening illness. This will become the first LSD-assisted psychotherapy study in over 35 years.

I hope you will help in the transformation of my problem child into a wonder child.

Sincerely,

A. Hofmann