loading up for the great perhaps

And speaking of drugs:

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died aged 102, the organisation that republished his book on the mind-altering substance said.

Hofmann, who advocated the medicinal properties of the drug he termed his "problem child", died from a heart attack at his home in Basel, Switzerland yesterday, the California-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) said on its website.

102 eh? He had a good innings, despite batting against imaginary wolves with a purple octopus.

The world’s first bad trip is recalled:

"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," he said.

Once home, the LSD continued to warp Hofmann's mind: "My surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways," he wrote. "Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms.

"They were in continuous motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness. The lady next door, whom I scarcely recognized, brought me milk - in the course of the evening I drank more than two litres. She was no longer Mrs. R., but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a coloured mask."

…and he drank the milk from her cold, withered dugs. By and large I think prof Hoffman added to the sum of human happiness, though there are ways of adding to it which don’t involve psychic recapitulation of the Battle of Stalingrad.

I still admire Aldous Huxley on his deathbed, loading up on acid and heading out for the Great Perhaps. That’s the way to do it, if you can.