LSD Creator Asked Steve Jobs to Help Promote the Substance

Albert Hofmann, the man who created LSD in a Swiss lab in the 1930′s and who is now dead, once sent a letter to Apple’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, urging him to help promote the chemical for therapeutical purposes.

Obtained by Yahoo News and quoted on various blogs and web sites dealing with Apple matters, Albert Hofmann’s letter is reproduced below:


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, and will be sponsored by MAPS.

I hope you will help in the transformation of my problem child into a wonder child.

Sincerely
Albert Hofmann


In his youth, Jobs took to India to seek spiritual guidance and returned to the US with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing.

During this time, Jobs is known to have experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug well known for its psychological effects that can include an altered sense of time and spiritual experiences.

Jobs, who passed away early last month, often expressed a certain degree of discontent towards the people around him who did not embrace the substance, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

In his interviews with Walter Isaacson, the biographer, Steve Jobs specifically said of Bill Gates that he was unimaginative and that things could have been different had he dropped some ‘acid’ from time to time.