Any unexpected or undesired effects since last session?
Any particular concerns or fears about today?
I actually feel ready.
Nineteen forty-three...
That was the year the atomic bomb was discovered.
And you discovered the bomb for the head, for consciousness.
Can you talk about that?
Yes.
I don't know if that was a coincidence
or probably no coincidence exists in this world.
In any case, it is strange.
It is true that...
the ordinary bomb is to the atomic bomb
what an ordinary intoxicant is to LSD.
During the testing of LSD-25,
it was remarked that the experimental animals became restless.
But the new substance aroused no special interest
in our pharmacologists and physicians.
Five years after the first synthesis,
a peculiar presentiment induced me to produce LSD-25.
In the final step I was interrupted by unusual sensations.
Possibly a bit of the LSD solution had contacted my fingertips
and absorbed through the skin.
I had this wondrous experience.
But I didn't know how it had happened.
All my thoughts turned into pictures.
Beautiful! I lay down at home in the afternoon,
and then it slowly faded away.
Watching these strange pictures and feeling exhilarated.
Only with the greatest difficulty could I still speak intelligibly.
I asked my laboratory assistant to escort me home by bicycle.
Everything in my field of vision
wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror.
I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot.
Riding home, my condition began to assume threatening forms.
That was a terrible, torturous experience.
The feeling that I'm in a different world.
This is probably the end.
I've passed on to the other side.
The climax of my despairing condition passed.
Now I gradually began to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shape.
Kaleidoscope-ish like, fantastic images surged in on me.
It was particularly remarkable how every acoustic perception,
became transformed into optical perceptions.
And the following day,
I woke up feeling that I was starting a new life.
That I was born again.
When it tipped over in America
the miracle drug suddenly became a Satan drug.
And this whole beautiful, wonderful development,
was interrupted with one fell swoop, because of the American story.
My lab is trying to understand
the effect of psychedelics on a system level.
Not at the receptor level alone, but they interact in with brain receptors.
We started to look at regions in the brain
where the sense organs come in, act as a filter.
And the LSD was very helpful because
psychedelics have a profound effect
opening the filter, for at least the external information.
Sometimes so strong, such an opening
that everything becomes a whole cosmic dance.
The receptors have been discovered in being involved in the self
which is the most complex experience we have.
What's the foundation of having a self?
We all think, "It's me, I'm the owner of my thoughts."
But we don't really know how this is going to be constructed in the brain.
And because psychedelics reduce defense and ego boundaries and rigidity,
they allow us to study the foundation of conscious mechanism
that you can hardly study in "normal" states.
We learned, indirectly, a lot from psychedelics.
Like how they can be used in psychotherapy.
Psychedelics also reduce, somehow, anxiety and pain.
From an early age, I always had a lot of strange headaches.
It's called chronic cluster.
It's an almost unbearable pain.
As if a smoldering ice pick were stuck into the back of your eyes.
Over the last year, I've not had any pain-free days...
Sometimes eight attacks a day...
and that led to me losing my hair.
In Switzerland we have an institution called Exit,
where you can choose suicide.
And that always remains a realistic thought to me.
To what extent is a life worth living?
After it got really bad last year,
I started to do some research and found out about
a study here in Basel with LSD and cluster.
Since I've taken part in this study I've had five pain-free days
and those days are extremely beautiful.
I'm definitely convinced that with LSD
there's a path to improvement for my cluster attacks.
This opportunity gives me a lot of hope for the future.