Link: LSD Pioneer Susi Ramstein Honored by Tram Day Event - Lucid News
by Annie Oak Harrison
June 12, 2025
The anniversary of the day in 1943 that Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann first intentionally took LSD has been celebrated on April 19 since 1985. The Women’s Visionary Council (WVC) is hosting the second annual celebration of a new psychedelic holiday, Tram Day, in honor of Susi Ramstein, the first woman to take LSD on June 12, 1943.
Tram Day also celebrates the often unacknowledged role of women in psychedelic history and research. The WVC, which is the first nonprofit organization founded to support psychedelic women, will host an afternoon Tram Day celebration on Saturday, June 14th at The Alembic in Berkeley, CA from 1-6 pm.
Ramstein was a laboratory assistant for Dr. Hofmann, who first synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on November 16, 1938. Hofmann re-synthesized LSD and unintentionally came into contact with the molecule on April 16, 1943. He describes in his book LSD – My Problem Child that he was, “…affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated[-]like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.”
At 4:20 PM on April 19, 1943, Hofmann intentionally took 250 millionths of a gram of LSD in a glass of water. The chemist believed that the dose was orders of magnitude below the active threshold of other ergot alkaloids he had previously studied. His initial plan was to carry out a series of experiments and gradually increase the dose until some minimal effect could be detected. Within an hour, however, the effect of 250 micrograms of LSD, a significant dose, was clearly perceptible.
Sensing that he might need care after the molecule took effect, Dr. Hofmann asked Ramstein to accompany him home from his laboratory on his now-famous bicycle ride. Inadvertently becoming the first LSD guide, Ramstein called Dr. Hofmann’s family doctor, fulfilled the chemist’s request for a glass of milk as a possible antidote, and remained with him until his wife returned home.
When she first ingested LSD on June 12, 1943, 22-year-old Ramstein became one of several members of Dr. Hofmann’s laboratory team to experiment with the compound. After her bicycle ride with Dr. Hofmann, Ramstein sensibly opted to return home on the tram, hence the celebration of Tram Day. The holiday is the companion to Bicycle Day, which is now celebrated around the world in honor of Dr. Hofmann’s discovery of LSD.
The WVC celebrated the first Tram Day at the Alembic in 2024 and released a short video about the gathering featuring Swiss editor Susanne G. Seiler, who first researched Ramstein’s contributions. WVC co-founder and researcher Mariavittoria Mangini and scholar Erika Dyck later authored an article together about Ramstein entitled “Susi’s Tram Ride,” and Mangini wrote an essay for Lucid News about the significance of the first Tram Day.
“Susi’s role was largely unknown until Swiss scholar and author Susanne Seiler sought out and interviewed the female laboratory assistant who is mentioned in LSD: My Problem Child, said Mangini. “When Susi Ramstein bicycled home with Dr. Hofmann, and remained at his side through the most intense parts of his experience, she joined people and cultures throughout history who have cherished psychedelic experiences, and supported others through them.”
Tickets for the 2025 celebration at the Alembic will include a talk by Mangini about Ramstein and the origins of Tram Day. The event will also feature live music and a lecture entitled “The Daughters of Eleusis” by therapist and author Ayize Jama-Everett, who will examine the suppressed history of the Eleusinian Mysteries led by elder women more than 2,000 years ago. Jama-Everett‘s talk will discuss how psychedelics were central to rites of passage rooted in the rhythms of women’s bodies, seasons, and souls. “This is not a gentle stroll through history,” says Jama-Everett. “It’s a fire-walk through 4,000 years of erasure, reclamation, and radical imagination.”
Other than Ramstein, Hofmann did not inform anyone at the lab of his first self-experimentation with LSD, believing that such a tiny dose would have no effect. He later noted that he asked his laboratory assistant to accompany him on the five-kilometer bicycle ride back to his home in Basel, Switzerland. Hofmann wrote later that he felt that they made very slow progress, but Ramstein told him that she had had to pedal hard to keep up. As Dr. Hofmann was experiencing visual distortions, Ramstein also noted his progress during the ride and coached him.
Hofmann later wrote that after returning home, his neighbor who brought the milk, Mrs. Ruch, appeared to be a malevolent witch with a colorful mask. He also recorded feeling dizzy, faint, and anxious, and worried that he had possibly permanently damaged himself with his self-experimentation. Hofmann wrote that his furniture spun and took on threatening shapes. Ramstein remained at his side throughout the experience, calling for a substitute doctor when his family physician could not be immediately located.
While the physician summoned by Ramstein found that Dr. Hofmann was anxious, had dilated pupils, and was not able to form complete sentences, the chemist’s vital signs appeared to be normal. After being reassured that he was likely not dying or undergoing permanent mental illness, Hofmann reported in LSD – My Problem Child that he began to relax. He wrote later that he enjoyed the visual images and that the experience left him in a positive and enjoyable frame of mind.
According to Seiler, when she talked with Ramstein, the former laboratory assistant was then living a quiet life in a Basel suburb. Ramstein readily discussed her LSD experiences, but was reluctant to speak at length about her own history due to family privacy concerns. Ramstein told Seiler that she enjoyed her LSD experience and that the effects were pleasant. During her tram ride home, Ramstein said she was amused by the comical appearance of the passengers, especially a long-nosed conductor.
Following his first intentional self-experiment with LSD, Hofmann reported the experience to his boss, Arthur Stoll, and to Ernest Rothlin, the director of the pharmacology department at Sandoz. The company was interested in learning about the potential uses of LSD, so they allowed Dr. Hofmann to cautiously continue his experiments at much lower doses.
The lab assistants on Dr. Hofmann’s Sandoz laboratory team also took part in these experiments. According to Seiler’s research, Ramstein participated in three self-experiments and, eighty-two years ago, became the first woman to take LSD. She was also, at the time, the youngest person to have tried LSD. Ramstein took 100 micrograms, a larger dose than Hofmann’s male colleagues.
Ramstein also ingested other LSD variants that Hofmann synthesized, including dihydro-LSD and d-iso-LSD, which appeared to be less psychoactive. After her personal experiments with LSD, Ramstein shared her thoughts about the experiences with her Sandoz colleagues. The insights she developed helped determine dosage levels for the potential medical use of LSD. About a year after her last LSD experience, Ramstein left Sandoz to marry. During her time at the Sandoz lab, she made contributions to the history of psychedelics and psychedelic research. Susi Ramstein Weber died in the fall of 2011, several years after the death of Dr. Hofmann.
“If LSD, as Dr. Hofmann claims, ‘is a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be,’ now, more than ever, is an important time to recognize and support Susi’s pioneering spirit and historic contribution,” said Mangini. “Please join us today in celebrating her.”
Annie Oak Harrison is a co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Council.
LSD Pioneer Susi Ramstein Honored by Tram Day Event
by Annie Oak Harrison
June 12, 2025
The anniversary of the day in 1943 that Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann first intentionally took LSD has been celebrated on April 19 since 1985. The Women’s Visionary Council (WVC) is hosting the second annual celebration of a new psychedelic holiday, Tram Day, in honor of Susi Ramstein, the first woman to take LSD on June 12, 1943.
Tram Day also celebrates the often unacknowledged role of women in psychedelic history and research. The WVC, which is the first nonprofit organization founded to support psychedelic women, will host an afternoon Tram Day celebration on Saturday, June 14th at The Alembic in Berkeley, CA from 1-6 pm.
Ramstein was a laboratory assistant for Dr. Hofmann, who first synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on November 16, 1938. Hofmann re-synthesized LSD and unintentionally came into contact with the molecule on April 16, 1943. He describes in his book LSD – My Problem Child that he was, “…affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated[-]like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.”
At 4:20 PM on April 19, 1943, Hofmann intentionally took 250 millionths of a gram of LSD in a glass of water. The chemist believed that the dose was orders of magnitude below the active threshold of other ergot alkaloids he had previously studied. His initial plan was to carry out a series of experiments and gradually increase the dose until some minimal effect could be detected. Within an hour, however, the effect of 250 micrograms of LSD, a significant dose, was clearly perceptible.
Sensing that he might need care after the molecule took effect, Dr. Hofmann asked Ramstein to accompany him home from his laboratory on his now-famous bicycle ride. Inadvertently becoming the first LSD guide, Ramstein called Dr. Hofmann’s family doctor, fulfilled the chemist’s request for a glass of milk as a possible antidote, and remained with him until his wife returned home.
When she first ingested LSD on June 12, 1943, 22-year-old Ramstein became one of several members of Dr. Hofmann’s laboratory team to experiment with the compound. After her bicycle ride with Dr. Hofmann, Ramstein sensibly opted to return home on the tram, hence the celebration of Tram Day. The holiday is the companion to Bicycle Day, which is now celebrated around the world in honor of Dr. Hofmann’s discovery of LSD.
The WVC celebrated the first Tram Day at the Alembic in 2024 and released a short video about the gathering featuring Swiss editor Susanne G. Seiler, who first researched Ramstein’s contributions. WVC co-founder and researcher Mariavittoria Mangini and scholar Erika Dyck later authored an article together about Ramstein entitled “Susi’s Tram Ride,” and Mangini wrote an essay for Lucid News about the significance of the first Tram Day.
“Susi’s role was largely unknown until Swiss scholar and author Susanne Seiler sought out and interviewed the female laboratory assistant who is mentioned in LSD: My Problem Child, said Mangini. “When Susi Ramstein bicycled home with Dr. Hofmann, and remained at his side through the most intense parts of his experience, she joined people and cultures throughout history who have cherished psychedelic experiences, and supported others through them.”
Tickets for the 2025 celebration at the Alembic will include a talk by Mangini about Ramstein and the origins of Tram Day. The event will also feature live music and a lecture entitled “The Daughters of Eleusis” by therapist and author Ayize Jama-Everett, who will examine the suppressed history of the Eleusinian Mysteries led by elder women more than 2,000 years ago. Jama-Everett‘s talk will discuss how psychedelics were central to rites of passage rooted in the rhythms of women’s bodies, seasons, and souls. “This is not a gentle stroll through history,” says Jama-Everett. “It’s a fire-walk through 4,000 years of erasure, reclamation, and radical imagination.”
The Chemist Experiments On Himself
Information about Ramstein is sparse as Hofmann did not identify her in LSD, My Problem Child. “Miss Ramstein” is named as Hofmann’s assistant in his official laboratory report of his first LSD self-experiment. Before Ramstein joined his laboratory team, Hofmann had been investigating derivatives of the Claviceps purpurea fungus for several years, which contained ergot alkaloids. As a chemist in the Sandoz Laboratories pharmaceutical and chemical department, Hofmann created many ergot-related compounds, including LSD, which he synthesized in 1938 for its possible use as a respiratory or circulatory stimulant. The compound appeared to produce only mild restlessness in laboratory animals and was shelved. Hofmann had an intuition, however, that the compound might have additional useful effects that may have been missed.Other than Ramstein, Hofmann did not inform anyone at the lab of his first self-experimentation with LSD, believing that such a tiny dose would have no effect. He later noted that he asked his laboratory assistant to accompany him on the five-kilometer bicycle ride back to his home in Basel, Switzerland. Hofmann wrote later that he felt that they made very slow progress, but Ramstein told him that she had had to pedal hard to keep up. As Dr. Hofmann was experiencing visual distortions, Ramstein also noted his progress during the ride and coached him.
Hofmann later wrote that after returning home, his neighbor who brought the milk, Mrs. Ruch, appeared to be a malevolent witch with a colorful mask. He also recorded feeling dizzy, faint, and anxious, and worried that he had possibly permanently damaged himself with his self-experimentation. Hofmann wrote that his furniture spun and took on threatening shapes. Ramstein remained at his side throughout the experience, calling for a substitute doctor when his family physician could not be immediately located.
While the physician summoned by Ramstein found that Dr. Hofmann was anxious, had dilated pupils, and was not able to form complete sentences, the chemist’s vital signs appeared to be normal. After being reassured that he was likely not dying or undergoing permanent mental illness, Hofmann reported in LSD – My Problem Child that he began to relax. He wrote later that he enjoyed the visual images and that the experience left him in a positive and enjoyable frame of mind.
Reclaiming Ramstein
In the fall of 2006, Seiler interviewed Ramstein and recounted that conversation during the 2024 Tram Day event. Seiler works with the Gaia Media Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 1993. The foundation hosted an international symposium “LSD – Problem Child and Wonder Drug,” held in Basel in 2006 to honor Hofmann’s 100th birthday. In 2012, former WVC board member and researcher Diana Reed Slattery posted Seiler’s account of talking with Ramstein on Facebook in an effort to make the story known. “I want to tell you that the assistant everyone talks about in the book [LSD – My Problem Child] is not a man, everyone always thought that it was a man,” said Seiler during the 2024 WVC event.According to Seiler, when she talked with Ramstein, the former laboratory assistant was then living a quiet life in a Basel suburb. Ramstein readily discussed her LSD experiences, but was reluctant to speak at length about her own history due to family privacy concerns. Ramstein told Seiler that she enjoyed her LSD experience and that the effects were pleasant. During her tram ride home, Ramstein said she was amused by the comical appearance of the passengers, especially a long-nosed conductor.
Attention is A Martial Art
The daughter of an optometrist, Ramstein was born in Switzerland in 1922 and grew up in Basel. As Manigini wrote in her essay, Seiler notes that Ramstein attended finishing school in the French-speaking region of Switzerland, where she studied “languages, deportment, etiquette, and housekeeping skills.” Although young women were not then expected to attend university, Ramstein enrolled in a training program with the Pharmaceutical Chemical Research department of the Sandoz Laboratories. At the age of 20, she became the only female apprentice and junior laboratory assistant for Dr. Hofmann. Ramstein prepared chemical mixtures, analyzed samples, and checked tests in Hofmann’s lab.Following his first intentional self-experiment with LSD, Hofmann reported the experience to his boss, Arthur Stoll, and to Ernest Rothlin, the director of the pharmacology department at Sandoz. The company was interested in learning about the potential uses of LSD, so they allowed Dr. Hofmann to cautiously continue his experiments at much lower doses.
The lab assistants on Dr. Hofmann’s Sandoz laboratory team also took part in these experiments. According to Seiler’s research, Ramstein participated in three self-experiments and, eighty-two years ago, became the first woman to take LSD. She was also, at the time, the youngest person to have tried LSD. Ramstein took 100 micrograms, a larger dose than Hofmann’s male colleagues.
Ramstein also ingested other LSD variants that Hofmann synthesized, including dihydro-LSD and d-iso-LSD, which appeared to be less psychoactive. After her personal experiments with LSD, Ramstein shared her thoughts about the experiences with her Sandoz colleagues. The insights she developed helped determine dosage levels for the potential medical use of LSD. About a year after her last LSD experience, Ramstein left Sandoz to marry. During her time at the Sandoz lab, she made contributions to the history of psychedelics and psychedelic research. Susi Ramstein Weber died in the fall of 2011, several years after the death of Dr. Hofmann.
“If LSD, as Dr. Hofmann claims, ‘is a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be,’ now, more than ever, is an important time to recognize and support Susi’s pioneering spirit and historic contribution,” said Mangini. “Please join us today in celebrating her.”
Annie Oak Harrison is a co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Council.