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Read the Never-Before-Published Letter From LSD-Inventor Albert Hofmann to Apple CEO Steve Jobs
The following post is adapted from the new book "This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America." The letter is published with the permission of the estate of LSD-inventor Albert Hofmann. For more on events related to the book, see the Facebook page or follow Ryan Grim on Twitter.
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.
See the letter here.
Written just after his 101st birthday, the letter's penmanship is impressive for a man of his years. I showed it to my grandmother, Ruth Grim, who was 8 years Hofmann's junior and did amateur handwriting analysis as long as Hofmann had been tripping. Without knowing who he was, she said in an e-mail that "something happened early in his life that made him twisted about things. Maybe he felt threatened. Also--creative with his hands, hard on himself, thinks a lot, stubborn, careful with the way he expresses himself, not influenced by other's thinking."
Doblin says Hofmann often said he had a happy childhood and wouldn't characterize him as twisted. Hofmann, for his own part, often referred to LSD as his own "problem child" and in his letter he asks Jobs to "help in the transformation of my problem child into a wonderchild."
He specifically asks Jobs to fund research being proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser and directs Jobs to Doblin's Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
Doblin and Hofmann were close; Doblin gave the doctor his first tab of ecstasy in the '80s when it was still legal, he says, and Hofmann loved it, saying that finally he'd found a drug he could enjoy with his wife, no fan of LSD.
Doblin provided a copy of the letter to me; Hofmann's son, Andreas Hofmann, executor of his father's estate, authorized its publication.
The letter led to a roughly 30-minute conversation between Doblin and Jobs, says Doblin, but no contribution to the cause. "He was still thinking, 'Let's put it in the water supply and turn everybody on,'" recalls a disappointed Doblin, who says he still hasn't given up hope that Jobs will come around and contribute.
That Jobs used LSD and values the contribution it made to his thinking is far from unusual in the world of computer technology. Psychedelic drugs have influenced some of America's foremost computer scientists. The history of this connection is well documented in a number of books, the best probably being What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer, by New York Times technology reporter John Markoff.
Psychedelic drugs, Markoff argues, pushed the computer and Internet revolutions forward by showing folks that reality can be profoundly altered through unconventional, highly intuitive thinking. Douglas Engelbart is one example of a psychonaut who did just that: he helped invent the mouse. Apple's Jobs has said that Microsoft's Bill Gates, would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." In a 1994 interview with Playboy, however, Gates coyly didn't deny having dosed as a young man.
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."
"It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain," said Herbert. "Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used."
Burning Man, founded in 1986 by San Francisco techies, has always been an attempt to make a large number of people use different parts of their brains toward some nonspecific but ostensibly enlightening and communally beneficial end. The event was quickly moved to the desert of Nevada as it became too big for the city. Today, it's more likely to be attended by a software engineer than a dropped-out hippie. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, are longtime Burners, and the influence of San Francisco and Seattle tech culture is everywhere in the camps and exhibits built for the eight-day festival. Its Web site suggests, in fluent acidese, that "[t]rying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind."
At the 2007 event, I set up my tent at Camp Shift--as in "Shift your consciousness"--next to four RVs rented by Alexander and Ann Shulgin and their septu- and octagenarian friends from northern California. The honored elders, the spiritual mothers and fathers of Burning Man, they spent the nights sitting on plastic chairs and giggling until sunrise. Near us, a guy I knew from the Eastern Shore--an elected county official, actually--had set up a nine-and-half-hole miniature golf course. Why nine and a half? "Because it's Burning Man," he explained. Our camp featured lectures on psychedelics and a "ride" called "Dance, Dance, Immolation." Players would don a flame-retardant suit and try to dance to the flashing lights. Make a mistake, and you would be engulfed in flames. The first entry on the FAQ sign read, "Is this safe? A: Probably not."
John Gilmore was the fifth employee at Sun Microsystems and registered the domain name Toad.com in 1987. A Burner and well-known psychonaut, he's certainly one of the mind-blown rich. Today a civil-liberties activist, he's perhaps best known for Gilmore's Law, his observation that "[t]he Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." He told me that most of his colleagues in the sixties and seventies used psychedelic drugs. "What psychedelics taught me is that life is not rational. IBM was a very rational company," he said, explaining why the corporate behemoth was overtaken by upstarts such as Apple. Mark Pesce, the coinventor of virtual reality's coding language, VRML, and a dedicated Burner, agreed that there's some relationship between chemical mind expansion and advances in computer technology: "To a man and a woman, the people behind [virtual reality] were acidheads," he said.
Gilmore doubts, however, that a strict cause-and-effect relationship between drugs and the Internet can be proved. The type of person who's inspired by the possibility of creating new ways of storing and sharing knowledge, he said, is often the same kind interested in consciousness exploration. At a basic level, both endeavors are a search for something outside of everyday reality--but so are many creative and spiritual undertakings, many of them strictly drug-free. But it's true, Gilmore noted, that people do come to conclusions and experience revelations while tripping. Perhaps some of those revelations have turned up in programming code.
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.
It's no secret that Crick took acid; he also publicly advocated the legalization of marijuana. Reese, who reported the story for a British wire service after Crick's death, said that when he spoke with Crick about what he'd heard from the scientist's friends, he "listened with rapt, amused attention" and "gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said, 'Print a word of it and I'll sue.'"
The letter from Hofmann to Jobs, transcribed below if you have difficulty viewing:
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
Dear Rick,
Thank you for all you do for my problem child. I am pleased to add whatever I can do from my part.
I learned much from your great letter, to do things after waiting for the right moment, how clever and careful you organize and do your work.
I do hope that my letter to Steve Jobs corresponds to your expectation, especially what regards the choice of the writing paper. [Doblin had asked Hofmann to use his personal letterhead. It's not what you're thinking.] I believe that I followed your prescription.
Hopefully Dr. Gasser will be successful with his request.
Cordially -
Albert
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I was naturally high before drugs, I was naturally high during drugs, I am naturally high after drugs.
I am drugs. I have them in me right now, always have, naturally.
My body makes chemicals all the time, in varying doses, for various occasions, at different times, in multiply ways.
Like Bob Dylan said, "I thought we were suppose to know this stuff."
Swallowing 250+ micrograms of LSD, sit, breathe, in a safe place, in the natural world. If you are looking for the "godhead" you just might find that everything, yourself included, at the center of stillness is the "god" you were seeking. Then begin to "live the realization of yourself as the living truth with courage/love, respect and humility".
You may come to understand viscerally that the Human Being is a process by which the universe can become self aware.
Peace.
LSD, Mushrooms, and MDMA have played a critical role in my life. It has been close to a decade since I have touched any of them, but they all were integral in my development in many ways.
I was a depressed youth which was only worsened by my father passing. I had been fairly withdrawn for a long time, and had trouble feeling a part of anything. I ended up finding the Rave culture in the early 90's, when it was still about community and music first. During this time of the blossoming late night dance scene I found LSD, which admittedly I took initially as a way to enhance the music, and to get high. What I found though, was that the community sharing similar vibes, everyone dancing in step with each other, feelings of love & respect all began to help me work through my issues. I began to feel like there was something worth belonging to, I began to feel that people/animals/plants are intertwined more then society ever admits, and I began to self reflect & let go of some of the sadness. All of the swirling colors, laughter, conversation with friends, adventures in nature, and of course crawling ceilings have become some of my most treasured experiences due to the growth & happiness that they enabled both at that time & continuing to the current.
I pray that society will let go of the stigma & let work begin again on the study of LSD, and
People of color went to PRISON.
Caucasians got funded.
Loved the 1960s/70s!
Most drug users, don't ever have a problem with their use, it's their families, and co workers and people around them that "have the problem".
Yes there are some people that seem to be able to use these, drugs and be OK afterward, but many cannot, the outcome is unpredictable, and that's why it can be problematical.
There is also a great risk of permanent alteration of the brains gating mechanisms, allowing a permanent, 24 hour a day leaking of the subconscious into the conscious mind. That's one of the reasons why, some users migrate to other drugs, to sooth themselves and increase the brains, ability to supress subconscious material.
Im my experience, intellectuals like hallucinogens because it allows them to finally feel something, to realize that ideas are not actually feelings, other drugs users think their crazy, and see no value in hallucinogen use, they would much rather deal with the feelings directly than "jerk them off'" symbolically.
I've seen dozen's of cases of hallucinogen induced psychosis, much like schzophrenic's who become addicted to the un medicated release they get from their symptoms, hallucinogen users often get incredible secondary gains from their own fantasy worlds, no mater how bizarre, and can be extremely naricisstically self reinforcing.
"intellectuals like hallucinogens because it allows them to finally feel something, to realize that ideas are not actually feelings" ... I agree.
A therapist I know made the comment that hallucinogens attract people who have "too much Self", who need to knock all that intellectualizing out of the way in order to feel or even to KNOW rather than THINK.
I, too, have observed what you mentioned about addicts - the last thing real addicts want is the unpredictable and uncontrollable flow that comes with hallucinogens. They are using drugs (be it alcohol or heroin) in the first place to maintain themselves in an even narrower range than the normal human spectrum non-drug users experience.
Coming at this from the other end, I recall that towards the end of his life, Timothy Leary was convinced that computers had become the new avenue for expanding people's awareness and opening their minds.
I am very happy that I was born in the 1930's and experimental minded in the '60's. LSD, magic mushrooms, cannabus, peyote, MMDA, MDA and other psychodelics, turned out to be my best holistic and spiritual educational experiences during this period. Several of us teamed up to study and get first hand experience from these chemicals so that we could counsel others who had negative experiences and to advance our curiosity.
I can summarize this experience as allowing me to experience the unity or oneness of all that is. Noted authors, like Frietjof Capra, Oscar Ichazo, Claudio Naranjo, Ram Das, John Lilly, and Tarthang Tulku are some of my favorite sources of learning about mindfulness, total interaction and relationships, during this historical period. I am grateful for these scientists who broke out of a conventional society that lost its way, purpose and its reason for being, living and doing. Thanks for introducing this article and for Dr. Hoffman for his courage and fearlessness to examine, study and to go "beyond the beyond."
This post is small acknowledgment for Rick Doblin and the work of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which has been in the forefront of an historic struggle against bigotry and ignorance to pursue respectful investigations into the undeniable benefits of psychedelics, as underutilized tools in psychotherapy, intellectual and spiritual development.
If one reads the reams of scientific research, the psychedelic tool has never been discredited by data, merely by the prejudices and ignorance of the media and politicians. There are copious accounts of the negative consequences of irresponsible and disrespectful use of these powerful tools but those accounts have never been fairly balanced by proportionate reporting of the available accounts of positive and productive experiments. That is not surprising since we are dealing with life. In life there is nothing so pure that it can not be misused. All one need do to confirm that is to study the history of the horrors committed in the name of God.
I live in Silicon Valley. The examples of the positive impact of psychedelics in the advancement of science and technology are too numerous to name; there are also myriad examples in the arts and literature around the world. It's time to renew open-minded appreciation for the potential benefits of honest inquiry into psychedelics.
Fanned & fav'ed
I wasn't old enough to trip until the 70's. When it was more of a party drug.
If you dropped acid in the 60's you were expected to have a near religious experience.
If you dropped acid in the 70's, you were just loaded.
JD,
You couldn't be more wrong. Set & setting...too bad for you that yours were not better.
I would say that you bring your own expectations to the experience no matter what decade. If you want to abuse a drug simply because its another way to blot out the world and get as loaded as you can no one can stop you. But IMO you short change yourself by not using the drug for its maximum benefit.
I have the same opinion on marijuana. It is such an opportunity to tap into the spiritual side but it has become just another party drug, like alcohol.
Many people use marijuana in many different ways, in my experience. It's also notable that better pot tends to produce a different high--one that's more aware, spiritual, introspective, and emotional, while low-quality herb is a lot more like alcohol--numbing, relaxing, blocking things out. Of course, attitude is often an equally important factor.
I dropped acid several times in 2007, and the experience varied primarily based on who I was tripping with. I also found daytime trips to be more contemplative and intense than night trips, if only because my mind was more energized on its own, and because of increased outside stimuli.
While I have dropped in party settings, I've always found myself at some point wandering into a side room with quiet music and a couple friends, having a more meaningful experience than the others. It's really all in how you see it, which is I suppose what makes the paradigm shift between the '60s and '70s so interesting.
And, if you were African American and/or Latino...you went to PRISON.
Tell that to the (mostly) white, middle-class people arrested on Grateful Dead tour in the early '90s. White is not a get out of jail free card on this one.
Saying Englebart "helped to create the mouse" is damning by the faintest praise.
Englebart, in 1968 had invented what is essentially the norm in computing these days. The major thing lacking was bit-mapped (graphical) displays.
Watch this video and be amazed. And realize that many at that time viewed it with contempt and ridiculed him. Truly, a man decades before his time.
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html
Please, please, please watch it.
And please comment on it.
Please,
EPN
Respect, not Fear should be the way we approach drugs. When utilized properly drugs like LSD and others can be allies in helping us heal and evolve as people. Throughout the history of the very existence of humanity, people have sought to alter their consciousness. This desire is a part of who we are as a species. A desire not to be feared or suppressed, but respected, understood, and fulfilled with care, and maturity of attitude. The "psychedelic" generation of the sixties put real fear into the hearts of the authorities who saw a possible end to their ability to control and shape the world view of people. But then, it should also be noted that drugs are not the only way to alter one's consciousness positively. Meditation can continue where drugs left off.
There was some child tv star who who had drug problems started something to educate people how to do drugs safely. I don't think he's in business anymore .
But I think education and legalization will do a huge amount of good.
As someone (I wish I remembered who) said, "When was the last time you saw a drive by shooting in the liquor industry?" Or the tobacco. Or the caffeine.
Keeping it illegal keeps it more deadly in so many ways: growers are nearly slaves, cartels are at war, distributors are at war, consumers are jailed, sold drugs that are cut with dangerous chemicals to stretch supplies for more $ale$, etc, etc.
All in all a shining example of unrestrained capitalism.
See also: the oil , the pharmaceutical, tobacco, health insurance, investment and banking industries.
The psychotic lust for money and power despite the collateral damage to humans takes many, but essentially similar, forms.
E Pleb Neesta - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b56e0u0EgQ
GODISNOWHERE
Blessed are the cheese makers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paJUj8HJ4D8
GODISNOWHERE?
GOD IS NOW HERE?
Did any of you know that many people with schizophrenia and autism metabolise serotonin into bufotenine, the chemical excreted by the Bufo toad people link to trip? I learned of this in a neuropsychopharmacology class while earning my BS degree; I have a 20 year-old with autism.
Love
Bette
Fascinating.
One of the most useful things in medical research is the ability to recreate an illness, syndrome or whatever at will.
Perhaps by studying people who lick frogs new insights can be made. I think the ability to talk to a "normal" (whatever that is) who can communicate hir (his+her ) experience while in the altered state, and when it's over, could be tremendously useful.
I imagine things like this are some of the reasons for wanting to pursue this kind of research.
E Pleb Neesta
GODISNOWHERE
Blessed are the cheesemakers.
Try to think of a major problem in the US not caused by special interests funding politicians.
Campaign finance reform NOW!
eplebneesta
Altered consciousness has been scientifically explored and had data recorded at The Monroe Institute for several decades without using drugs. Tom Campbell was one of the first consciousness explorers there, and wrote his big picture theory of everything calling it, My Big TOE. You should check him out, you could learn to do it too and make your own scientific study if desired. Personal experience is the best teacher. It doesn't take drugs to experience an altered state, just meditation.
Thank you for the comments, thoughts.
Love
Bette
Kirkian photography...cool photo.
Timothy Leary wrote,
"Ingesting psylocibin mushrooms is like being let out of a cage.
LSD is like being shot out of a cannon ....."
Given the quality, quantity and freshness of the LSD that Leary had access to, that's probably pretty accurate... although I hate to hear people trashing good shrooms.
Nothing like good boomers. Problem is there aren't many well manicured boomers going around. Usually it's picked and dried haphazardly. You get all sorts of "bi-products" with them like mold, dirt and other tasty, useless morsels. But, I've had the best quality so I know the difference. Homegrown kits where the caps get as big as meatballs and the stems thicker than your fingers. Look spray painted gold caps. It's much more mellow and thought processes are much less intense. Which is all good. Laughter comes REAL easy. Jokes too.
...Did he ever write a letter to Bill Gates?
"Dear Mr. Gates,
Please lick this letterhead after reading...."
Let's get rid of the whole DEA fiasco. We can save a lot of money if and when we eliminate the DEA. But somebody has to make a profit in this capitalist American system....
A very cogent comment. Acid is the miracle surrounded with the perversity and horrer of the law.
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