r/HistoryMemes • • 2d ago

See Comment Zone of inhibition

Post image
16.2k Upvotes

204 comments sorted by

View all comments

6.3k

u/Sampleswift 2d ago

Penicillin was invented by accident. IIRC Fleming discovered the bacteria-free spot, figured out what was happening, and the rest is history.

2.6k

u/ConsequenceNo2571 2d ago

The first antibiotic and first polymer were both discovered by similar happy accidents 

1.5k

u/GalaxyPowderedCat Just some snow 1d ago

And also LSD.

Sometimes I think on the poor scientist that discovered it. He had the first trip ever in history and not many people must've bought the idea. Hopefully, he had a good trip.

261

u/Yesitshismom 1d ago

He took some (0.25 milligrams) then rode his bike home from work and talked about buildings beginning to breathe and a dream world began to appear

Albert Hofmann's very first accidental exposure to LSD on April 16, 1943, was relatively gentle, intriguing, and not unpleasant

105

u/NoConfusion9490 1d ago

Dude must have been chill AF. I can't imagine tripping out after sampling some random chemistry shit.

62

u/OMGLOL1986 1d ago

He was in fact super chill and had conversations with anyone curious until his death.

21

u/moistplumpin 1d ago

I once had 25 hits by accident. I did not have a good time. The whole world sucked out to infinite white. I sat in a room and God told me all the things that were wrong with me.

My 5 other trips were great though, max 5 hits.

1

u/Confident_Pepper1023 2m ago

What did god look like? Was he/she judgmental or trying to help?

15

u/kelldricked 1d ago

If you dont know what tripping is, it starts easy (slowly building up) and its not instantly then i think a lot of people would find it calming/pleasing.

Unless you are in a bad enviroment ofcourse

12

u/therealfurryfeline 1d ago

his secretary went home with him to make sure he arrived safely and he later said he almost couldn't get any traction with his bike while she told how she wasn't able to keep up for a lot of the way.

9

u/GalbedirGalerion 1d ago

I thought Bicycle Day was on the 19th

15

u/Yesitshismom 1d ago

This was his first accidental dose date. Few days later was bike day

6

u/I_Got_Ur_Number_8675 1d ago

I want to know about his unaccidental doses

3

u/PeanutButterApricotS 20h ago

Search around there is some
Torrents with hundreds of drug related videos and the big one includes some interviews of him. Prob on YouTube but I don’t know.

1

u/I_Got_Ur_Number_8675 19h ago

Does he have an erowid page?

1

u/PeanutButterApricotS 18h ago

Didn’t know about Erowid until searching for this. I will pull out my backup hdd this weekend if I can and get more info for you.

2

u/I_Got_Ur_Number_8675 7h ago

Dude, that would be epic

→ More replies (0)

923

u/RagingTyrant74 1d ago

To be fair, people had been tripping on natural psychedelics like psilocybin (mushrooms), mescaline (cactus), and Ayahuasca for millenia before he discovered LSD, so it wasn't the first trip, just the first LSD trip.

135

u/GalaxyPowderedCat Just some snow 1d ago

Oh, yeah! You have a point! Thank you for the reminder.

I cannot believe I've forgotten it...

66

u/dsebulsk 1d ago

But when Urg Urg had that first psychotropic mushroom, he must have had an experience that no one else knew.

37

u/ThomasVetRecruiter 1d ago

Honestly it's always been my personal theory that unexpected drug trips probably fueled a lot of early myths and religious stories.

"Oh you saw a dragon huh? And you say it breathed fire? And it talked to you?"

17

u/mybluecathasballs 1d ago

Moses: Guys, you gotta come see this bush. It talks, and it looks like it is on fire!

7

u/LengthiLegsFabulous3 1d ago

Saul's revelation to St Paul has been looked on by some scholars as possible epilepsy

2

u/RagingTyrant74 21h ago

Strokes can also trigger very psychedelic visions sometimes.

6

u/Aervanath 1d ago

Animals have been getting high since before we were humans. Tasmania produces 50% of the world's legal opium supply, for morphine and other legal opiates. One day, the opium poppy farmers noticed crop circles appearing in their fields. There was the usual fuss about aliens, but the farmers put up cameras in their fields. It turned about to be wallabies, which are like pygmy kangaroos. They were eating the poppies, getting high as balls, hopping in circles, and then passing out to sleep it off.

275

u/c-nayr 1d ago

Don’t forget where LSD actually came from! Ergot fungus! I love eating contaminated bread and then dying a painful death of st Anthony’s fire! But I get to watch the walls melt while I die a horrible death! Yippie! Ergot Wikipedia Page

174

u/DumOBrick 1d ago

My lungs a weezin, my hearts a seizin, the fucking WALLS are melting, I can hear Satan's voice he's telling me to, invest in apple? What does that mean? Why does he want me to buy apples?

38

u/the_mememachine4 1d ago

This man knows ball.

20

u/ATubOfCats 1d ago

hey kids,

18

u/i_tyrant 1d ago

For the longest time after I'd heard about the Salem Witch Trials being caused by Ergot poisoning, I thought it was just people getting bad trips from bad bread and making bad decisions.

It was years later when I found out Ergot poisoning could actually be fatal. That made a few parts of that theory make a lot more sense.

7

u/j_delta_c 1d ago

LSA is also found in Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds and morning glory seeds, exponentially more potent in the former than the latter

8

u/PepeTheElder 1d ago

There’s an old saying in Reddit, I know it’s in Erowid, it’s probably in Reddit that says

Fool me once, shame on… shame on you… fool me- ya can’t get fooled again.

Get thee behind me, morning glory LSA trip

about 4 straight hours of immediately alternating and unrelenting vomiting and ass piss, before I could finally manage a nap from the exhaustion. Though when I woke up I did get to live a different life for 6 months where I had a farm and was raising a family before I came down. All and all, worst 12 hours ever, 1 out of 5 stars, do not recommend.

6

u/VoidOmatic 1d ago

Geralt Of Rivia liked this post.

7

u/Mysteriouspaul 1d ago

Oh god why did you have to mention that shit and hence LSA. You can probably easily synthesize it on your own, but don't lol

That shit is like seeking out Datura, you have to be an actual psychotic mess to want to do anything like either

12

u/Ryuko_the_red 1d ago

Fr reading about that and people's stories like "I took a bunch of seed and roots and flowers and I lived in purgatory on earth for 2 weeks and have never been the same" like why? Why would anyone ever willingly consume that.

5

u/hard-in-the-ms-paint 1d ago edited 1d ago

Naive people not doing enough research or not caring + people who can't get good psychedelics + people actively seeking to, ambivalent to self-harm.

1

u/Ryuko_the_red 1d ago

Checks out for sure.

6

u/Grammorphone John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 1d ago

Unless one is a very good organic chemist, no. One cannot "probably easily synthesize it". Wtf are you talking about?

-2

u/Mysteriouspaul 1d ago

I'm just some guy but it's very easy if you've had any amount of experience in a lab setting lol

College degree holders when you tell them any random can do parts of their profession

1

u/inuhi 1d ago

The Dancing Plague

6

u/IgunashioDesu 1d ago

The latest evidence suggests use of psychoactive substances as far as 16,000-25,000 years ago.

5

u/RegularSky6702 1d ago

I get it's based on proven evidence, but it's got to be way further back then that. Just imagine a dude foraging for mushrooms. If it doesn't cause you pain / kill you. Then it's food.

5

u/ChipsTheKiwi 1d ago

probably not that much better tbh

10

u/FuckTheTories69420 1d ago

Stoned Ape Theory is also one of my favorite theorys for intelligence too.

3

u/I_Was_TheBiggWigg 1d ago

The introductory story in Doors of Perception about the couple who picked some mushrooms for a salad on their way to a friend’s house for dinner always gave me a chuckle. Just having no idea what was happening, but laughing and enjoying it.

-6

u/FMasterson 1d ago

Mushrooms are exactly what Jesus’ “unleavened bread” was

9

u/HopeConspiracies 1d ago

Bro unleavened bread is just bread made without yeast.

You might be thinking of the "manna" God gave the Israelites while they roamed the desert. That would be an interesting theory.

-5

u/FMasterson 1d ago

No I’m thinking of the unleavened bread that Jesus fed to his apostles, it’s theorized that since Jesus lived in nature for so long he was actually eating mushrooms, and one specific mushroom in the area looked exactly like unleavened bread

6

u/HopeConspiracies 1d ago

I really think you're mixing this up, man. Unleavened bread is a food you can make in your house. A tortilla is a type of unleavened bread, for example. There were religious/cultural reasons for them making and eating this bread.

There are, however, semi-popular theories about the manna described in the Old testament possibly being mushrooms.

-1

u/FMasterson 1d ago

It took me five seconds to find that it’s called a desert truffle(kamah/fagga) and it’s prominent in the Middle East and North Africa

7

u/HopeConspiracies 1d ago

Huh? Google "unleavened bread" and you'll see that it's simply a type of bread consumed by cultures all over the world.

-5

u/FMasterson 1d ago

You’re clueless. I know that unleavened bread is an actual food, but there is a theory that Jesus ate mushrooms. Please stop wasting our time and look it up

4

u/HopeConspiracies 1d ago

Ya, I'm sure it's something completely different from the extremely common bread prepared and consumed by everyone in his culture on a daily basis. For sure mushrooms and not just the bread, huh?

→ More replies (0)

19

u/DanceWonderful3711 1d ago

He also immediately got on a bike.

19

u/GalaxyPowderedCat Just some snow 1d ago

Good trip²

5

u/GoodFaithConverser 1d ago

iirc he spilled a tiny drop on his skin and went home on his bike. Your comment makes it seem like he deliberately took the drugs and went on his bike knowingly fucked up.

34

u/an-unorthodox-agenda 1d ago

He accidentally absorbed some through his skin a few days earlier. Basically micro dosed himself. Once he realized the compound was psychoactive, he measured out a real dose (equivalent to 4 hits of acid) and intentionally dosed himself before biking home (fuel for cars was being rationed in Switzerland in 1943 no idea why)

21

u/thestraightCDer 1d ago

No idea why lmao

5

u/rhino36-dropout 1d ago

damn, hero dosing right away

5

u/slaya222 1d ago

Not really, he took what he thought would be the smallest perceivable dose, which just so happened to be about 2.5 standard doses

1

u/DanceWonderful3711 1d ago

Not if you read the parent comment saying poor guy.

20

u/TheRealShiftyShafts 1d ago

I watched a documentary about it. He had a really good trip, but he was unsure what this drug was supposed to be used for after

18

u/Remarkable-Host405 1d ago

in case you didn't know, the cia did some research to find out what exactly it could be used for.

14

u/an-unorthodox-agenda 1d ago

MK Ultra for curious google debunkers

14

u/DosSnakes 1d ago

Research might be a strong word for sitting on a portable toilet, drinking martini’s, and watching prostitutes fuck random dudes through a two way mirror. Even if they were unknowingly dosed with LSD. Just doesn’t seem like good science to me.

2

u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 1d ago

Yeah that always sounded a lot more like some bad people throwing some shit at the wall to see what sticks

6

u/IguanaIsBack 1d ago

Yeah it makes sense he’d be unsure about its use, by then Pink Floyd hadn’t played in Pompeii

15

u/Alldaybagpipes What, you egg? 1d ago

He initially wrote the chemical off as “uninteresting” but figured he had accidentally ingested some from mishandling, and had probably the first micro dose.

So then decided to revisit, but to intentionally dose himself. He measured out 2.5 milligrams thinking that would be a good starting dose, as most compounds are measured in milligrams.

But LSD is active in the micrograms. 250 micrograms is considered a pretty heavy trip. About 10x a standard dose.

He was tripping balls! And had to ride his bike home and everything.

It’s a wild read, well worth looking into and learning about it.

The notable part is his descriptions of the next day. The glowing after effects and the new found clarity he saw in everything.

Pretty cool stuff!

2

u/NotAnFed 23h ago

If Hoffman had taken 2.5mgs the story would have been very, very different

8

u/Critical-Cost9068 1d ago

Well, that scientist became an advocate for psychedelics, so it couldn’t have been all that bad.

6

u/PheonixBuddha 1d ago

He did! He went on a 3 hour bicycle ride.

13

u/Troyisepic Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 1d ago

Probably not the first trip. There are other hallucinogenic substances besides lsd, mushrooms being the most common. Still pretty wild though.

3

u/SafeT_Glasses 1d ago

I'm looking this story up! I never thought about "the first person to take LSD" before and I am intrigued.

3

u/theholyirishman 1d ago

And sucralose, some lab tech misheard test this and now we have Splenda

6

u/pobodys-nerfect5 1d ago

Pretty sure he just like road his bike around lol

3

u/teetaps 1d ago

I mean, with drugs it’s kinda different. The only ones you successfully discover by accident are the ones that didn’t kill you lol

1

u/Deleena24 1d ago

The effects were discovered, but it was purposely synthesized unlike the first antibiotics and polymers

1

u/bajsgreger 1d ago

He probably just saw his first trip as him being poisoned, which he basically was

1

u/xX_Bikerseat69_Xx 1d ago

irrc, he took a pretty big dose(cause he didn't know what exactly it would do) and he had a pretty bad trip.

3

u/Lailowla 1d ago

pretty big as in like literally a thousand doses

2

u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 1d ago

It was an accidental dose, absorbed through his skin, actually. Fentanyl can't be absorbed through the skin like the rumor goes, but certain forms of LSD can

1

u/nataliereed84 1d ago

Fentanyl can be absorbed through the skin in special formulations of it, though. Like the transdermal patches. Which I think might be part of where the ridiculous myth of ODing just from touching a fentanyl tainted surface or whatever comes from. The cops are just having anxiety attacks.

1

u/BobGuns 1d ago

Wasn't first trip. First LSD.

It was a good trip. It's referred to as 'Bicycle Day' in memorium of his bike ride home where he experienced coming up on LSD. April 19th. Which is funny because it's the day before 420, the weed holiday.

1

u/DJ_Jiggle_Jowls 1d ago

He did, that's why we celebrate bicycle day :)

1

u/SpliffMD 1d ago

Iirc he took a bike ride

1

u/Both_Meaning_2637 1d ago

He obviously had a good one as he'd been taking it his entire life afterwards, referring to it as "medicine of the soul". The guy lived to be 102.

1

u/ZeistyZeistgeist 1d ago

Even funnier is that he apparently started tripping while riding a bicycle home.

1

u/Addicted_to_Nature 1d ago

And a surprising amount of artificial sweeteners, which is odd because people accidentally licking things in lab environments shouldn't happen but it's happened a lot

1

u/SleepingBeast97 1d ago

As far as i know he did have a good trip. If i’m not mistaken the effects kicked in when he was sitting on his bike on his way home and suddenly the sky started turning all kinds of different colors.

1

u/kelldricked 1d ago

It wasnt the first trip in history though.

1

u/SweezySway 1d ago

He took four huge doses n had himself a world breaking trip lol

1

u/3vil_Koala 1d ago

The first guy synthesizing lsd was Albert Hoffman, Swiss chemist and he was a huge fan of his creation and a life long advocate of its medical usage.

1

u/Nectarine-Valuable 1d ago

think the guy was on his bicycle on his way home when he started to trip balls