Father of LSD Albert Hoffman on his final trip

The LSD discoverer, Swiss professor Albert Hoffman, has died at the honorable age of 102. From 1938 he had been developing lysergic acid diethylamide – also known as lsd-25, acid, blotter acid, window pane, dots, tickets and mellow yellow – in his lab. During the fifties, outlaws like Timothy Leary picked it up and promoted it to a hugely popular drug in the infamous Sixties.

So why do I report about this? Because I witnessed the victims of this drug myself last week in San Francisco? Because I love to romanticize stuff, including drugs? Not really. I write this post because I think Internet is the new LSD. It’s a theory I came up with when I visited the exhibition Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era in The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York last June. Read “My inspiration: Internet is the new LSD” for an explanation, which you probably eager to hear by this point ;-).

Hoffman’s death inspires hundreds of writers to cover the history of LSD again. I think especially John Walsh from the Independent has done a great job with his artice “Trip of a lifetime: How LSD rocked the world – Features, Music – The Independent”.

Now before you think I’m some tripping-on-acid blogger, let me conclude with a quote from Hunter S Thompson’s book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create…a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody-or at least some force-is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel.

Some other posts you might be interested in:

• The Next Web Open Office Road Trip
• Internet is the new LSD
• Reinventing Gonzo Journalism in a digital age Part 1