Passage: The Bicycle Ride

“I had the impression of being unable to move from the spot, although my assistant told me later that we had cycled at a good pace.”

The passage: 'On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. 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, although my assistant told me later that we had cycled at a good pace.'

Why this passage: It is the founding document of modern psychedelic pharmacology, and its most important feature is the contrast between subjective and objective experience that Hofmann captures in a single sentence.

Hofmann had the impression of standing still. His assistant confirmed they had been moving at a good pace. The subjective experience of temporal distortion, which was overwhelming and convincing from the inside, was simply false as a report about the external world. He was moving; he felt motionless.

This contrast became one of the most clinically important observations in the history of LSD research. It established that the subjective experience of LSD is not merely a distortion of external reality but a reorganization of the brain's processing of temporal and spatial information. The brain, under LSD, is doing something different, not reporting external reality incorrectly by accident, but processing the same external reality through a different filter.

The 2017 crystal structure of LSD bound to the 5-HT2A receptor (Wacker et al., Cell) explains why the experience lasted so long and was so disorienting: LSD's molecular shape fits the receptor so precisely that a protein lid traps it inside for hours. The 'good pace' that Hofmann could not perceive was being generated by the same body whose sensory experience had been completely reorganized.

Sources

• Hofmann, LSD: My Problem Child (1979)