FROM THE “LSD” TO THE “GEOMETRIC”
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2010
SOURCE TEXT: Delysid (LSD-25) product literature.
CONTENTS:
• The songs LSD by Irini Karayannopoulou is linked to the word “LSD”
• The photo Transcendence by Panayiotis Lamprou is linked to the word “transcendence”
• The photo diptych Oh Jim! by Antonis Katsouris is linked to the word “geometric”
• The photo Euphorica by Dimitra Ioannou is linked to the word “blurred”
• The image Fractal Geometry by Dimitris Gilis is linked to the word “geometric”
LSD was discovered by a chemist working for Sandoz Laboratories, Dr. Albert Hofmann, in 1938. Hofmann was the first who had a psychedelic experience on April 19, 1943 on his way home by bicycle. This white, odorless powder which alters perception and mood was commercialized in 1947 under the trade name “Delysid” as a cure for schizophrenia, criminal behavior, sexual perversions and alcoholism.
Volume magazine, a joint project by ARCHIS magazine for Architecture, City and Visual Culture, AMO a research studio affiliated with ΟΜΑ (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), and C-Lab (Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting), dedicated Issue 24 to Counterculture/To Beyond or Not to Be (2010).
The following is an excerpt from the article “Neuropolitcs’ signed by C-Lab:
“Unlike more overtly political forms of self-expression in the 1960’s, declaring an interest in LSD could imply one’s personal politics without necessarily specifying an alignment with existing doctrines. To take LSD was to assert a right over one’s subjectivity and body as undetermined by social conventions and their corresponding mental states, even the norms of protest and political resistance. It was a declaration of autonomy – a desire, as Timothy Leary said, to operate one’s own brain. The political dimension of LSD use lies in this productive refusal to submit to command, to experimentally pursue a mental life that was incompatible with the regulations of the workplace, the nuclear family, educational institutions or the military. LSD was a means of ‘reprogramming’, as Leary would say, a process of creating a radically different relation between the mind and the social order.
Leary called this relation ‘Neuropolitics’ (…).”
(LSD 25)
D-lysergic acid diethylamide
Sugar-coated tablets containing 0.025 mg. (25 µg.).
Ampoules of 1 ml. containing 0.1 mg. (100 µg.) for oral administration.
The solution may also be injected s.c. or i.v. The effect is identical with that of oral administration but sets in more rapidly.
PROPERTIES
The administration of very small doses of Delysid (½-2 µg./kg. body weight) results in transitory disturbances of affect, hallucinations, depersonalization, reliving of repressed memories, and mild neuro-vegetative symptoms. The effect sets in after 30 to 90 minutes and generally lasts 5 to 12 hours. However, intermittent disturbances of affect may occasionally persist for several days.
METHOD OF ADMINISTRATION
For oral administration the contents of 1 ampoule of Delysid are diluted with distilled water, a 1% solution of tartaric acid or halogen-free tap water.
The absorption of the solution is somewhat more rapid and more constant that that of the tablets.
Ampoules which have not been opened, which have been protected against light and stored in a cool place are stable for an unlimited period. Ampoules which have been opened or diluted solutions retain their effectiveness for 1 to 2 days, if stored in a refrigerator.
INDICATIONS AND DOSAGE
a) Analytical psychotherapy, to elicit release of repressed material and provide mental relaxation, particularly in anxiety states and obsessional neuroses. The initial dose is 25 µg. (¼ of an ampoule or 1 tablet). This dose is increased at each treatment by 25 µg. until the optimum dose (usually between 50 and 200 µg.) is found. The individual treatments are best given at intervals of one week.
b) Experimental studies on the nature of psychoses: By taking Delysid himself, the psychiatrist is able to gain an insight in the world of ideas and sensations of mental patients. Delysid can also be used to induced model psychoses of short duration in normal subjects, this facilitating studies on the pathogenesis of mental disease.
In normal subjects, doses of 25 to 75 µg. are generally sufficient to produce a hallucinatory psychosis (on an average 1 µg./kg. body weight). In certain forms of psychosis and in chronic alcoholism, higher doses are necessary (2 to 4 µg./kg. body weight).
PRECAUTIONS
Pathological mental conditions may be intensified by Delysid. Particular caution is necessary in subjects with a suicidal tendency and in those cases where a psychotic development appears imminent. The psycho-affective liability and the tendency to commit impulsive acts may occasionally last for some days.
Delysid should only be administered under strict medical supervision. The supervision should not be discontinued until the effects of the drug have completely worn off.
ANTIDOTE
The mental effects of Delysid can be rapidly reversed by the i.m. administration of 50 mg. chlorpromazine.
Literature available on request.
WARNING
Do not drive motor vehicles or operate heavy machinery while taking Delysid. Do not take if you are currently pregnant or have a history of heart disease. Do not take if you are currently on antidepressants. Ask your doctor or health expert about Delysid today.
SANDOZ LTD., BASLE, SWITZERLAND
Printed in Switzerland.
(Excerpted from Sandoz’s Delysid product literature)
SIDE EFFECTS
The following side effects have been reported: pupil dilation, reduced appetite, wakefulness, numbness, weakness, nausea, hypothermia, hyperthermia, elevated blood sugar, goose bumps, increase in heart rate, clenching of the jaw, perspiration,increased saliva and mucus production, hyperreflexia, ataxia, tremors, uterine contractions, and a strong lingering metallic taste. Some users experience visual effects including: the movement of static surfaces, after-image like trails of moving objects, the appearance of moving colored geometric patterns, an intensification of colors and brightness, new object textures, blurred vision, shape suggestibility, an ‘atomization’ of objects, morphing objects, as well as effects such as echo-like distortions of sounds, and synaesthesia. Users may experience significant changes in their personality and life prospective, additional spatial and temporal dimensions, a sense of infinity, a sense that one’s thoughts are spiraling into themselves, a loss of an identity or the ego, spiritual revelation, transcendence, and many users experience a unification between themselves and the ‘outside world’. Users may also experience paranoia, extreme discomfort, chronic psychosis, and panic attacks. Recurring effects or ‘flashbacks’ have been reported.
(Excerpted from Volume magazine No 24, Counterculture, To Beyond or Not to Be.)
aglimpseof.net 
On September 3, 1968, William F. Buckley invited poet Allen Ginsberg onto his TV program, “Firing Line.” It was an odd encounter. “We’re here to talk about the avant-garde,” Buckley says grandiloquently. “I should like to begin by asking Mr. Ginsberg whether he considers that the hippies are an intimation of the new order.”
“Ah,” says Ginsberg, “why don’t I read a poem?”
Buckley smiles uncomfortably as Ginsberg reaches into his bag and pulls out a poem called “Wales Visitation,” written under the influence of LSD during a visit the previous year to the ancient ruins of Tintern Abbey, on the River Wye in Southeast Wales. It was the same place that inspired William Wordsworth to write his “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” in 1798 and Alfred, Lord Tennyson to write “Tears, Idle Tears” in 1847. Buckley settles back in his chair as Ginsberg reads three of nine stanzas from “Wales Visitation”.
Found at http://www.openculture.com/2012/07/allen_ginsberg_reads_a_poem_he_wrote_on_lsd_to_william_f_buckley.html
Wales Visitation by Allen Ginsberg
White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—
Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—
Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!
All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills
a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
on the mountainside
whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave
A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
tonned with cloud-hang,
—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—
No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,
tree-lined canals network live farmland,
blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—
Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped
doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,
Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds,
Visible is visible,
rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
through forests of gristle,
my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
All Albion one.
What did I notice? Particulars! The
vision of the great One is myriad—
smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.
Found at: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wales-visitation/
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