Melbourne Bicycle Day 2019 - Dr Prash Puspanathan

Bicycle Day - April 19th 2019
SPEAKER: Prash Puspanathan

Bicycle Day is the anniversary of the first intentional acid trip, taken by Dr. Albert Hofmann on April 19th 1943 (76 years ago) and including a fateful and notorious bicycle journey to his home. In the United States, it began to be celebrated in 1985 when Prof. Thomas Roberts (who was in Melbourne for EGA’s 2017 Psychedelic Symposium) coined the term.

The Australian Psychedelic Society have fun celebrations of Bicycle Day since our inception in 2017 and before that, Nick Wallis (APS President) helped to get an article in The Age about Bicycle Day in 2015 (A journalist attended a Contact High psytrance event) and Fiona Patten MP spoke in parliament on Bicycle Day in 2015 about the need to relax prohibition around psychedelics.

We’ve also seen local psychedelic activist Greg Kasarik regularly take action on Bicycle Day, including being arrested for planning to take LSD on the steps of parliament in 2016, in order to make a legal argument that Greg believes he has a right under Victoria’s Religious and Spiritual freedoms in the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.

Timeline of Melbourne Bicycle Day activities
2013 - Tripping on steps of parliament with Greg
2014 - Tripping on steps of parliament with Greg and gathering in Fitzroy
2015 - Contact High in The Age and Fiona Patten MP talks about LSD in parliament
2016 - (April 8th) Melbourne Psychedelic Research Seminar and Dinner #PsychedelicsBecause & Greg Kasarik’s arrest
2017 - Screening of The Sunshine Makers at Hope Street Warehouse (APS)
2018 - Psychedelics, futurism and technology at the Hope Street Warehouse (APS)
2019 -

The 2019 event will see a collective of Melbourne’s psychedelic community come together to talk about the current state of psychedelic prohibition, research and culture among a backdrop of an ever more technological society.