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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.

Today I talked about my inspiration for blogging on the Spin Awards Inspiration Days. I wanted to give the audience something to think about, instead of just give them an insight in my blogging mind. So I made a comparison between LSD and the Internet.

I came up with that comparison when I visited the exhibition Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era in The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. It showed what the hippies were all about: their ideas about sexual revolution, equal rights and anti-war attitude were revolutionary back then. Yet because they fought so hard for it, we consider them normal now.

The hippies were partly inspired by LSD: the greatest musicians used it for their songs, gonzo journalists like Hunter S. Thompson wrote about the trips he had and Timothy Leary researched the effects. The last one called upon everybody to turn on, tune in and drop out: explore several states of consciousness, join the movement and say goodbye to the materialistic society.

Leary, who had received a master’s degree at Washington State University in 1946, and a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1950, started a LSD promotion tour. He inspired many men and women to take a different view on modern-day society. Unfortunately he lost his job as lecturer in psychology at Harvard and eventually ended up in jail for a while. For many people though, he’s a still an enlightened hero.

For some reason I experience a weird nostalgic feeling about this summer of love. It doesn’t make sense though, since it all took place 19 years before I was born. I think I just love the idea of fighting for new values and opinions. Yet I won’t put my hands on LSD and the summer of love is only experienced by toothless hobo’s. So how can I experience the feeling of this time? Read the rest of this entry »