HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALBERT HOFMANN

The actual anniversary of his birth is Wednesday, Jan. 11. He will be 100 years old.

Yes, he's still quite alive, living in Switzerland, though his psychedelic trips are behind him. No need for them anymore, says the father of LSD.

From the New York Times, a few grafs on why Hofmann is so cool:

Rounding a century, Mr. Hofmann is physically reduced but mentally clear. He is prone to digressions, ambling with pleasure through memories of his boyhood, but his bright eyes flash with the recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland. The experience left him longing for a similar glimpse of what he calls "a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality."

"I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature," he said, laying a slightly gnarled finger alongside his nose, his longish white hair swept back from his temples and the crown of his head. He said any natural scientist who was not a mystic was not a real natural scientist. "Outside is pure energy and colorless substance," he said. "All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings."

The Times quotes Hofmann about his most-famous creation:

"LSD spoke to me. He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.'"

Hoffman also talks about dropping acid with Ernst Junger, the novelist -- a trip complete with roses, classical music and burning incense. It was 1951.

Albert Hofmann says he may use LSD one more time -- "maybe when I die," he told the Times; when he does "back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all."