It was obvious that a substance with such fantastic effects on mental perception and on the experience of the outer and inner world would also arouse… - Albert Hofmann

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It was obvious that a substance with such fantastic effects on mental perception and on the experience of the outer and inner world would also arouse interest outside medical science, but I had not expected that LSD, with its unfathomably uncanny, profound effects, so unlike the character of a recreational drug, would ever find worldwide use as an inebriant. I had expected curiosity and interest on the part of artists outside of medicine — performers, painters, and writers — but not among people in general. After the scientific publications around the turn of the century on mescaline — which, as already mentioned, evokes psychic effects quite like those of LSD — the use of this compound remained confined to medicine and to experiments within artistic and literary circles. I had expected the same fate for LSD. And indeed, the first non-medicinal self-experiments with LSD were carried out by writers, painters, musicians, and other intellectuals.