(Read: ~7 minutes)
Back in the late 1930s, a Swiss chemist named Hoffman synthesized a drug called lysergic acid diethylamide-25 from a fungus naturally found on damp grains. Based on the trends of the previous twenty-four versions of his experiment, he hoped the compound might finally form the basis for an effective asthma or migraine treatment. The lab mice given the chemical exhibited strange, erratic behaviors instead of the expected and desired physiological reactions. In response, Sandoz, the pharmaceutical company employing Hoffman, deemed the drug a failure and halted further research.
Despite the setback, a nagging voice in the creator’s head never allowed him to forget the strange behavior of the mice. Five years later, the scientist picked up the research again to satisfy the lingering hunch about the mind-altering potential of LSD-25. While working in his laboratory, he finally realized what he had on his hands after inadvertently dosing himself when he accidentally touched a small amount of chemical with his fingertips. Once he realized what happened, he described his initial experience with LSD as a pleasing, intoxicated-like feeling in his body and mind, accompanied by colorful hallucinations when he closed his eyes. He noted at the time the initial experience only lasted several hours but had a profound effect on the rest of his life. Years later, the scientist told friends he never chose to work with LSD; the drug found him and kept calling out don’t forget, until he finally answered.
Very few drugs developed inside laboratories at pharmaceutical companies ever become commercially viable. Most wind up rejected and forgotten for a wide variety of reasons, uncontrollable diarrhea or babies with third arms. Still, the story of LSD-25, popularized with the nickname acid, exemplifies how success or failure can be a matter of perspective. The compound failed as an asthma treatment yet remains a great choice if you want to trip your ass off. Within a few years of Hoffman’s initial psychedelic experience, Sandoz began marketing the drug across Europe, under the brand name Delysid, to treat a range of mental disorders. The manufacturers also touted the drug’s usefulness in assisting the exploration of a patient’s subconscious. Sample boxes of salt tablets containing LSD were sent out to physicians across Europe. The outside of the box came stamped with a label warning the contents were poison. Inside, a detailed description of the drug’s properties written in German and translated into the language of wherever the drug was headed elaborated on what effects doctors might expect the drug to have on their patients. The English translation reads: “… in very small doses, Delysid produces transient affective disturbances, hallucinations, depersonalization phenomena, awareness of repressed experiences and mild neurovegetative symptoms. The effect occurs after 30–90 minutes. This state generally lasts 5–12 hours, but occasionally some after-effects in the form of phasic affective disturbances may persist for several days …”
The best explanations why acid causes hallucinations amount only to theories. In practice, unpredictable effects limit the drug’s use in medical treatments. Different subjects taking the same doses can experience vastly different sensations depending on a variety of factors, including mood and more complicated mental health factors. The positive stories about people tripping on acid include seeing God, discovering the true nature of the universe, and figuring out the meaning of life. In the terrifying stories, people completely lose their minds down an abyss and wind up drooling down their chin, catatonic forever.
The obvious mind-altering effects of LSD caught the attention of the U.S. government, which is rumored to have cornered the entire world’s supply at one point in the 1950s in order to provide acid to all their various projects and studies. Most notably, the Central Intelligence Agency dosed hundreds of unsuspecting individuals with different chemicals, including acid, in their attempt to create truth serums and various forms of mind control. But government-funded research into the drug extended far into academia and hospitals around the country. From there, the drug leaked into society, driven by a potent mix of college pranksters and gangs of outlaw bikers.
Subsequent negative publicity about acid freaks gone crazy, trumpeted by anti-drug moralists, led to the outright prohibition of LSD by the late 1970s. Acid became classified by the federal government as a drug with no medical value, including for any scientific research. Since then, most of the component chemicals used to make acid remain closely monitored with the help of drug narcs scattered throughout industry and academia. All of this makes building a reliable supply chain and effective manufacturing capability for LSD-25 extremely difficult, though doable.
Despite the illegality, LSD continues to call out to bright people attracted to the cause of exploration. Which brings us to Dr. Gaston Billingsgate, PhD, Neurochemistry. He took the job at DOPS to answer the call of LSD. Of course, back then, none of his professors or peers suspected he accepted the position because of an interest in making acid. His peers and professors scoffed at wasting an Ivy League degree to study paranormal phenomena. Gaston took the criticism in stride. He needed the resources of a large research university and the cover provided by an obscure department to get his hands on the pharma-grade chemicals necessary to make acid in a portable laboratory. The obscurity of DOPS offered the first job compatible with his plan, credible need for access and the least chance of being discovered.
Gaston’s keen interest in how the human mind works drove his interest in acid; LSD is a ticket with no destination, no state of mind to attain or presence to encounter while tripping. Acid provided the catalyst to explore and catalog the brain’s functioning. Tripping helped Gaston unleash an unrelenting process of inquiry against his software and hardware, including the strange existence between mind and body. He counted the number of steps he needed to deconstruct and rebuild himself without errors, similar to a computer processing code. This real-time, corrective feedback loop enabled him to fix inadequate parts of himself.
He first stumbled across this method while an undergrad at college, where he usually partied all weekend and still aced his tests the next week. During those binges, he displayed both juvenile tendencies and impressive athleticism, once climbing up and over a three-story building because he claimed it was in his way. Not surprisingly, this was a period of time when Gaston admitted he had no direction or motivation. He succeeded simply because the answers came easy. Then one of his roommates brought home a copy of a book entitled Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer, known around the apartment as the acid book.
The author, Dr. John C. Lilly, MD, most notably spent the 1960s administering LSD to captive dolphins in groundbreaking, arguably cruel, attempts to communicate with animals, most notably dolphins. In one such experiment, a human female researcher spent months living alongside a male dolphin inside a flooded tank. The dolphin soon became enthralled with his perky blonde roommate and began to make sexual advances toward her. According to press accounts, the researcher used her hand to oblige the horny sea mammal in order to get him back to work. Later, when the project ended, a broken heart drove the lonely dolphin to commit suicide rather than live away from his love.
For a semester, the book sat on the coffee table alongside a marijuana grower’s guide and a stack of nudie magazines until Gaston picked it up on a whim. Flipping through the chapter sections, the conceptualization of the human body as a living, breathing biocomputer fascinated him. He read the book in one night, then marveled for weeks at its descriptions of the brain and the rest of the physical body in terms of software and hardware, operating inside the mind in the form of thoughts and impulses, actualized through our physical being. Plus, since the author conducted most of his research while taking acid, reading the book felt illicit and aroused Gaston’s rebellious nature.
He managed to get his hands on just enough acid to begin implementing the theories he found in Dr. Lilly’s research, then decided to learn how to make LSD for himself. Every decision he’s made since then has been part of his plan to improve the performance of the human biocomputer. Gaston saw life as filled with errors and poor decisions. The blunders become part of us, and we pass on flaws where they mutate in fresh hosts. For the lucky people, mistakes become benefits, but usually buggy programs bring the blue screen of death for their biocomputers. We all face the day our systems crash and never reboot.
In response, Gaston started experimenting on himself with LSD while metaprogramming his biocomputer, exploring the basic premise that people need a viable way to get rid of errors and reboot what life has become. Testing theories on himself, he learned how to identify and strip away the layers of experience, conditioning, and inherited traits forming his identity. Then he put parts back in the mix, or left pieces out. Gaston tested how to write, modify, and delete buggy personality issues and responses. The results gave him newfound advantages and hard-learned lessons all within the confines of his mind and body, enabled with moonshine LSD and guided by the concept of programming the human biocomputer.
Once at DOPS, Gaston excelled in his research role. From his perspective, only the scientific method could explain what’s going on in our own minds while interfacing with the rest of the world, seen or unseen. There’s no doubt Gaston idolized the biocomputer research of Dr. Lilly. Given Lilly’s best ideas about the human mind came while either tripping on acid himself or communicating with hallucinating dolphins, there are valid concerns about his methods or their influence. It’s fair to say the dolphins never had a choice.
Arlo Gust 