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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Most recreational drugs, including Alcohol and tobacco, are pain-killing medications. The exceptions are; LSD, Cannabis, Peyote and some other mushrooms. All researchers into the effects of these ingestion's are conducted from a biased perception. The 'power' of the LSD experience are because it, to a major extent, promotes and accentuates deeper feelings within us that we have repressed. It is this experience of these feelings that has made the use of it popular, especially with youth.
There is a problem with accentuating repressed feelings. If deep subconscious unpleasant feelings are brought into consciousness, they can indeed trigger excessive defense mechanisms which can include psychosis and what goes for mental breakdowns.
I doubt future researchers will approach it from this perspective. For me, that is a great pity.
Since when is pot not a pain-killing medication? :)
I was thinking the same things.
Since time immoral. Since it enhances feelings it can be a distraction form what normally we are assuming is a feeling. Example: boredom. The fact that it is acknowledged as being beneficial medically in certain cases is an acknowledgment of its feeling-full properties, BUT that's something that will require more research. Why does it have these healing properties????
Spring Break 1980, Ft. Lauderdale.
The one and only time I've ever done LSD, and then I only did half. I remember we were having a cook out on the beach about dusk, and I saw the sand actually moving beneath me. Actually, it WAS moving beneath me! Apparently these little sand crabs come out at dusk every night. They are just not very noticeable. They were VERY noticeable to me. Maybe that's what LSD does. Makes you see more of what's already there.
I had a favorite expression back then related to LSD dosages and degrees of awareness. It was: "Does more of a key unlock more of a door?"
Well observed..
Ah, the memories. You remember your first acid trip like the first time you got laid. It's not for everyone (LSD) but it shouldn't be an illegal substance. It needs much more studying. Dr. Hoffman tried to get Jobs to commit to large contributions to MAPS before he died solely for the purpose of continuing his investigative work. I hope Jobs with contribute. The work needs to be done.
For more fun with LSD, the CIA and George Bush:
http://www
Holy sh*t.
I must be a genius.
And we are supposed to tell our children "just say no to drugs"....
I am tired of hearing how all of these people were on drugs and alcohol and then we have to hear about their recovery..
Oh! The children! What will we tell the children?
Why not tell them the TRUTH?
The truth being that this gentleman experienced LSD and other drugs many times and lived to102 in good health.
LSD is not a mind numbing drug like opiates or stimulants. It is is not addiciting and can say personally and for many others that it changed my life and my perception of what goes on around me. You have bought into the mass hysteria propagated in the 80's 90's that lumped all drugs into the same category. The big story is that unlike opiates and stimulants which are readily available to anyone who chooses to seek them out. LSD has literally disappeared from sight. THIS is the real tragedy. Drugs that might actually help expand the conciousness of society disappear while those that foster addiction crime and distract us dfrom the real problems of the world flourish!
The CIA doesn't want this drug available to ANYONE for reasons you state; helping expand the consciousness, see more of the truth, defend it and open your heart to the people, animals and plant matter of the world.
Kids don't do drugs you'll ruin your life!
Unless you want to be an artist, musician, olympic athelete (thanks Michael Phelps) or the President of the United states!!!! Considering the last 3 admitted to using drugs (though slick Willy denied inhaling)
Get over it. Drugs do not ruin you life...you
So stop Nancy Regan, just say no to the simple stereotype "drugs are bad" because lets face it...they really are not.
"Drugs do not ruin you life." ???
Some drugs do, like heroin? Right? Am I unenlightened?
Alcohol is a drug and it can most definitely ruin lives. So can cocaine/crack and other drugs. This is a complex issue and to just make a blanket statement that drugs are not bad is as bad as Nancy Reagan saying drugs are bad!
I had some good experiences from acid but then drinking would ruin the trip.
If you want to protect children then all drugs must be legalized and regulated and age limits placed on there use.
Or
Keep things like they are now where children can get un-regulated un-controlled bathtub gin like street drugs.
See why Cops say legalize drugs www.leap.c
cool story bro
In regards to Dance Dance Immolation, it's actually the second entry on the sign and it reads:
"Is this safe? Kinda..."
http://www
As Skippy said, DDI is a fire art piece that does not allow participants that are intoxicated. For more info: http://www
Also, a correction to my original comment (which I can't seem to locate) - DDI will be appearing at the Smukfest festival, not Roskilde, this summer.
Timothy Leary was a mature middle ager and promoted psychosis among many young people, many of whom never recovered.
I assure you there are many powerful drugs out there, LSD among the most powerful, that can drive anyone permanently crazy.
If you're crazy to begin with.
Nothing there to fear but your own mind. Know thyself
If you really learn about Leary...he was not mature. He was a bratty little jerk who loved the guru/religious leder lifestyle and specifically loved inticing young girls to have sex with him. He was irresponsible in his promotion of the drug without promoting the guidelines under which it should be safely used.
I know a ton of people who have taken LSD, psilocybin, peyote, mescalin, and none of them have gone perminantly crazy...bu
thank you for taking the words right out of my marklar.
I assure you you are severely misinformed, and apparently willing to pass the damage along.
I qualify as "anyone" and it had no negative impact on me at all.
LSD definitey opened minds. But it destroyed more. It took me 20 years to recover and a friend of mine just revealed he had a nervous breakdown from it.
Lightweight.
Failed to pass the acid test.
Here's a key concept that acid will make you forget: life is a practice, not a test.
Part of the transcendental experience of psychotomimetic drugs such as LSD often makes users transcend basic respect for other people. I remember that it was typical to discount the experience of people who were not liked by that drug, often expressing contempt for the sufferer, as we see in many of these postings.
As R. Crumb points out, our parents had WWII, and our generation had acid.
Although LSD in its purest form may be of some benefit when taken with guides, the stuff that is sold on the street undoubtedly is polluted with any number of harmful substances.
Sadly that is the only experience I had with it, and I CAN NEVER recommend that anyone ever try it. I have been coping with the results of my "experiment" for 28 years and will never know for sure if my life path was altered beyond repair due to my "trip".
I do know that for me, the results of my experiment caused me to lose the family and freinds that I had and also caused me to lose my bearings in life. Even today, I struggle with the paranoia and schizophrenia that resulted from my "trip"
In my opinion, drugs that are used for recreational purposes are more harmful then beneficial.
Sounds like you are someone who dwells on stuff and looks for something or someone to blame for your own choices.
If the drug was legal then it could be regulated. Warnings and such that some people will have an adverse reaction and it should only be taken under safe circumstances.
Here are the guidelines I suggest:
Do not take LSD, Magic Mushrooms (mmmmmm), peyote or mescalin alone
Everyone present must be on the same drug
Make sure the area you are planning to do this in is safe. Same way you baby safe a room.
Have a separate area of soft comforting decor and pleasant soothing music in case you go into a dark part of your mind.
Have someone there who has done the drug before and will be recognized as an authority figure or trip guide for the session. While under the influence of these drugs you are very suseptable to suggestion. If someone is having a bad trip, the authority figure can usually just say, "look at me, it is just a drug, breathe deep and smile." That is all I have ever done when someone I am with is having a rough time and it cures them right away.
There are more good rules to follow, but these are the best.
How can you be so judgemental? Have you walked in his shoes? Where is your open miind? It only goes in the direction you want it to, I suppose.
Marklar, that's excellent advice.
By the way, I used to suffer from depression, anxiety, a bit of the bipolar disorder..
Was it the LSD or the countless MD-prescribed pharmaceuticals that you've taken over the years that have caused you problems? That stuff is truly dangerous, and while people using controlled substances often seek them, the pharmaceutical companies are PUSHING their drugs.
Have you considered that use of LSD revealed some psychological trauma or feature of your neurochemistry that you refuse to accept IS YOU? Accept yourself and move on; that's one thing the psychedelic experience teaches.
Drugs are not for everyone. But it should be our choice. You obviously don't speak as an expert on drugs, as you can only quote others' claims that street drugs are "undoubtedly" "polluted" with. With LSD, there is no incentive to dilute it with anything other than water or alcohol.
People who need substance abuse help need to be brought from out of the underground. The profit needs to be taken out of drug trafficking so that the real criminals (violent, gangs, cartels) can be separated from the people who use them. That will only happen when ALL drugs, the "good" ones and the "bad" ones are regulated in a way that doesn't promote an expansive and pervasive underground.
"Have you considered that use of LSD revealed some psychological trauma or feature of your neurochemistry that you refuse to accept IS YOU? Accept yourself and move on; that's one thing the psychedelic experience teaches."
Or, you can recognize that such is part of you and then act to change so that you behave differently in the real world.
I'm really sorry to hear what happened to you! Only worse thing is that you didn't drop another after some time, to sort things up. You need to do that in controlled environment (that's what this article IS about). Consider this the friendliest advice, travel to Holland and do it again with good psychiatrist . It's never too late!
Thanks to Ryan Grim and Rick Doblin for sharing this fascinating and important fragment of history. Hofmann was an unsung genius whose gift to humanity will be recognized in the future as massive -- on the same level as Gautama and Socrates -- a cognitive revolution that is in the process of transforming society.
Agreed! What's wonderful is that Hoffmann seems to have been aware of what his "lucky" discovery meant to the world--a gift that, indeed, keeps on giving.
But, also referred to it as "his Problem Child" and recognized the potential danger of it's overuse or abuse. Be smart, be safe and have a nice trip.
It all makes sense to me. There is just one caveat. Never attempt to do any maintenance on your computer when you are stoned. You will regret it.
Cheers, Jack
This is a great mystery. There are testimonies here and elsewhere that point towards a remarkable value for this and other substances. Our policies in this area are based on fear, but it is time to pull our collective heads out of the sand investigate these substances in a scientific and rational manner. We never know what we may find.
Exactly!
We may find that “reality” is infinitely more amazing than we expected, that it is not a fixed thing. Our current conventional agreed-upon reality is dependent upon, among other things, our ongoing consumption of water, fruit, veggies, meat, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, etc., as well as our consumption of whatever we read, listen to, or watch on television, etc. Our “reality” depends on these ongoing inputs. Is it any surprise then that the introduction into our system of a substance like LSD would open up astonishing new horizons and reveal a world of limitless possibilities? The responsible use of psychedelics is not an escape. It’s a revelation. Thank you Albert!
Well said sir!
I was amongst the few who began to experiment with LSD in Ann Arbor in 1966-67.
It was really meant to be a religious or spiritual consciousness expansion of the mind.
It was done in a spiritual context, and awakening our inner universal consciousness.
We made great progress, and it was quite successfull, if done correctly.
It has since become perverted to be used as a way to get "high" and party, rather than use it for it's full potential and intent.
For those that used it correctly, our consciousness was greatly expanded, and we are able to be more aware than most others, which leads to more creativity as well.
It would do the new generations good, to approach LSD as a spiritual experience. Our world needs the help.
Don't kid yourself, you were just getting high too regardless of the context you made yourself believe you were in.
Don't kid yourself, you don't know what you are talking about.
The gulf between these statements is real - but tragic. Our present moment in history encapsulat
Even if people use it for recreation. If it is real LSD; they will experience some mind expanding perceptions. It is hard to control real LSD; it is not like other substances. I think the world would be better off if more people experienced LSD and re-examined their belief systems. I broadened my universe with LSD experimentation while in college and during the 1980's. However, I am to scared to go "tripping" all the way out there anymore. For the young and daring, I wish they were broadening their construct of reality with LSD because it changes one's perspective by opening one's perception to a much larger and simpler reality - a basic sense connection in which divinity is shared by all forms of life.
"a basic sense connection in which divinity is shared by all forms of life."
I've always felt that way and never took LSD or any other mind expanding/altering drugs.
I agree. Many in our generation dropped acid for spirituality. A lot of us were searching for answers to the mysteries of life. We used to go camping in the quiet of the woods with just the sound of nature to guide us through the experience.
When the seventies came in, it became a party drug and was heavily abused.
Some people that used it for partying never recovered, due to the environment that they were in at the time of the trip.
Interesting to note that Brian Wilson, though very creative, suffered from the effects of the drug and that Groucho Marx, at an advanced age, enjoyed his experience.
Agreed. My first time in '68 was out in the woods. Nature. Spiritual, yet fun.
And later back in a friend's sleeping parent's house, listening over & over to the Dr. John "Gris Gris" album. Voodoo spooky, yet cool. "The Night Tripper".
Ah, the memories..
And each of the dtug users developed an advanced form of consciousness so that each are able to say, We are better able than a Caucasian Male to come to reasoned conclusions, a la Sotomayor.
Drugs don't have intents.
With all due respect to Mr. Hoffman, at Burning Man 2007, he was camped at SHIFT camp, which was next door to Dance Dance Immolation (DDI - the game he cites above where players don a prox suit, play DDR, and get shot with fire when they fail. Or even when they succeed. We are sneaky that way). I camped at DDI for two years, and was their camp organizer, so I should know.
DDI It is a project of fire art division, Interpretive Arson, of Ardent Heavy Industries, an art group based in Oakland, CA. http://www
Furthermore, we did not allow people to play the game if we suspected that they were high on LSD (or anything else, including alcohol) and for him to say that this his camp gave lectures on psychedelics and then played with fire casts the entire project in a false and misleading light.
Ardent / Interpretive Arson is entirely community supported, so if you are interested in the project, please check out the website, sign up for announcements, and click the link "support" to donate directly. (Donations to Mr. Hoffman or to SHIFT camp do not go to DDI for the reasons discussed above).
Wait are you saying you play DDR and shoot fire at people if they fail?
I'm far more concerned about what you're on than I am about acid...
Technically (since we're fact correcting here) we were in talks, but DDI didn't make it to Roskilde this year. However, DDI is currently on it's way to the Smukfest festival in Denmark for August. :)
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