People - Sasha Shulgin, Psychedelic Chemist

[Alfa]

Sasha Shulgin, Psychedelic Chemist

By DENNIS ROMERO, Los Angeles Times
September 5, 1995LAFAYETTE, Calif. -- Perhaps it was a sign of things to come when a seven-story Monterrey Pine came crashing down on the property of old Alexander T. Shulgin--Sasha, they call him--missing his musty cobweb-entangled drug lab by inches.

It could have been a good sign because the cantankerous 70-year-old wasn't around the back-yard workshop conducting one of his legendary experiments, which have been known to involve him downing any number of the new psychedelic drugs he invents in the name of science. Imagine losing your mind on some unknown compound with unknown powers (some of this stuff makes LSD look like Vitamin D)--and a tree the length of three buses rocks your world to Richter proportions. The aliens have arrived!

Maybe, though, it was a sign of nefarious things to come. Like the DEA guys who came knocking only days later, sniffing around the lab in search of improprieties. Or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency people who checked out the lab that day last June, taking notes while nosing around the beakers. (They found everything in order, says a representative.) The feds have arrived!

To tell the truth, Sasha Shulgin doesn't much care anymore what the government thinks.

He's tippy-toed around the law and the lawmen for long enough--30 years now. Since the mid-'60s, the tall, lanky, silver-haired chemistry professor has quietly invented drugs under the cover of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration license that allows him to analyze contraband so he can give expert testimony in drug trials. It doesn't exactly allow him to invent the stuff, though, and Uncle Sam appears to be getting cold feet about Shulgin's exploits.

But Shulgin's life's work is practically complete and he's ready to shout it out. "I feel the need of a public voice with some level of academic background . . . " His message: "All drugs should be made legal."

With or without the DEA's approval, the public is now able to see pages and pages documenting all the world's known psychedelic drugs--many of them invented by The Man himself: the compound structures, the lab names, street names and, more importantly, what they do to people or, more precisely, what they've done to him and wife Ann, his 64-year-old partner-in-chem.

Part I, a book they call "Pihkal," was self-published in 1991. Part II, to to be called "Tihkal," is due at the end of the year. The two books provide recipes for almost every mind-bending drug known to humankind. To Shulgin, the books provide scientific knowledge that proves drugs are a tool for the human mind. "The track record," he says, "is that there is great promise."

No one else on the planet has done more drugs, they say, than Sasha and Ann Shulgin. He is known for reviving the almost-century-old designer drug ecstasy, earning him the title "stepfather of MDMA."

"What he almost single-handedly attempted to do," says psychedelic supporter and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Kary Mullis, "was to chart out this whole area of compounds." Says psychedelic godfather Timothy Leary, "I consider Shulgin and his wife to be two of the most important scientists of the 20th Century."

The Shulgins are legends among some academics--LSD inventor Albert Hofmann, now retired in Switzerland, is a friend. But they are little known to the outside world--they were never a part of the counterculture.

Shulgin's work has put him in the odd position of being a source of information for both the Establishment (during his decade working for Dow Chemical and his two decades testifying for both the prosecution and the defense in drug cases) and psychedelic drug advocates (his science has been used to bolster the cause for legal psychedelic drug research on humans, which is now taking place after a 20-year hiatus).

"There's nothing wrong with making information available," he says, legs crossed and drinking iced tea on his patio.

The DEA, which repeatedly declined to comment on the Shulgin case, might disagree. The agency did confirm in a statement that it is attempting to strip Shulgin of his drug-handling license and that a hearing on the matter has been scheduled for Feb. 13. And the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco is keeping a file on Shulgin, although no charges have been brought. No one from that office would comment either.

It's hard to find anyone with ill will toward Shulgin, although there are those opposed to the philosophy of his ilk. Psychedelic drugs are dangerous, opponents say--toxic to animals and dangerous to those who lose their minds and attempt crazy things like trying to fly. "One of the things psychedelic drug activists promote is that drugs are not a problem--that we haven't learned to use them properly," Wayne J. Roques, a retired Miami-based DEA agent and anti-drug activist, said in an interview last year.

"That's one of the nonsensical things that they say," Roques said. "They seem to think it's a human condition to use psychoactive drugs and that's simply not so."

"I first explored mescaline in the late '50s," Shulgin says. "Three-hundred-fifty to 400 milligrams. I learned there was a great deal inside me," he replies.

"That's a considerable experience," Ann says, puffing a cigarette and nodding.

Shulgin's romance with psychedelics started after the war. He served his time in the Navy and finished school at UC Berkeley, earning a Ph.D. in biochemistry. "There was no mention of rebellion at that point," Shulgin says. "I was all smiles, open."

In the '60s he did post-doctorate work in psychiatry and pharmacology at UC San Francisco and became a senior research chemist at Dow Chemical Co. He invented a profit-making insecticide, so Dow gave him a long leash. But while America's anti-drug fervor picked up, Dow found itself in the uncomfortable position of holding several patents on psychedelic drugs.

Shulgin left the company in 1965, built his lab and became, as he puts it, a "scientific consultant." That meant teaching public health at Berkeley and San Francisco General Hospital, among other jobs. It also eventually meant inventing more than 150 drugs in his lab. "To me," he says, "having your own lab is a very extreme pleasure."

Shulgin's spread sits atop a rolling, rural utopia east of Berkeley. The old brick lab lies down the path from his boxy white house, which sits on property that has been in the family for more than 50 years.

To this day his lab looks low-tech--lined with beakers, test-tubes, stills and pumps. It's funky but functional, like Shulgin. He wears handmade huaraches with his tuxedo at special events and drives a '73 bug.

Shulgin met Ann at Berkeley in 1979. Ann, became Shulgin's soul mate, a fellow psychedelic explorer with a penchant for Peyote. ("I've read all of Castaneda," she says.) They were married in Shulgin's back yard in 1981. The man who married them, they say, was a DEA agent.

As Ann put it, "Before 'Pihkal,' we had a real good relationship with the DEA. They have few people they can talk to who are on the other side of the fence who are honest." Says psychedelic drug activist Rick Doblin, "That was his Faustian bargain--in order to do his work, he had to be useful to the DEA."

"It was not a quid pro quo," Shulgin says. "I make my research available to the government as much as anyone else."

Shulgin wrote the book on the law and drugs--"Controlled Substances: Chemical & Legal Guide to Federal Drug Laws" (Ronin Publishing, 1988), a book that sits on the desk of many law enforcement officials to this day. "He's a reputable researcher," says Geraline Lin, a drug researcher at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

By the '80s, though, Shulgin wasn't famous for any books he wrote or any drugs he invented, but rather for a drug he didn't invent. In the '70s, a friend had suggested he check out a pill that was going around called MDMA, or "empathy." He tested it, tried it and wrote a lot about it in academic journals.

For better or for worse, Shulgin rescued the drug (known in the lab as methylenedioxy- methamphetamine) from obscurity. Invented around 1912, no one found much use for it until Shulgin came along. He suggested time and again that the stuff was good for therapy. The drug's effects are described as lying somewhere between those of LSD and speed. "I still haven't found anything like it to this day," Shulgin says.

But the drug found an empathetic audience in the nightclub crowd. Dealers renamed the drug "ecstasy" for better marketability. And the U.S. government outlawed MDMA in 1985.

A young group of scientists led by Doblin tried to preserve the drug's legality, arguing that the stuff was valuable for unearthing repressed thoughts and memories. Shulgin assisted the best he could, providing science from the shadows. But the government found that the drug caused brain damage in animals. "The one thing that is clear," says UCLA psychopharmacologist Ronald K. Siegel, "is that there is a lot of damage here with MDMA."

Shulgin says testing drugs on animals isn't worth dog doo. "There are real problems involved in testing a rat for empathy or changes in self-image," he told an English magazine last year.

"In a lot of ways, Sasha was demoralized after MDMA became illegal," says Doblin, president of the Charlotte, N.C.-based Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies. "It was the best candidate for legal therapy out of all the drugs he helped create."

But there was always Shulgin's trusty lab, which provided fodder for intimate trips with Ann and friends. Those times, up at his hilltop home, amid the rosemary bushes and live oak, surrounded by the smells of fennel, rue and bay, were magical, they say. "Inventing new psychoactive drugs," Ann says, "is like composing new music."

Sometimes, the music could be maddening. One time a friend, testing out a new Shulgin creation he called 5-TOM, became temporarily paralyzed and completely zombie-fied. It terrified the Shulgins. "There's no experience of this complexity without instances of difficulty," Shulgin says.

A few drugs Shulgin invented, substances with names such as STP and 2CB, escaped to the streets of San Francisco. Amateur chemists read Shulgin's published research and made batches for sale. Like most of the drugs in his book, they were included on the federal government's outlaw list of drugs, called Schedule I.

"A lot of the materials in Schedule I are my invention," Shulgin says. "I'm not sure if it's a point of pride or a point of shame."

Shulgin's rebound came in 1991 when "Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story" (Transform Press) was published. For fans of psychedelia, it was an instant collector's item. "I think Pihkal," Leary says, "is right up there with Darwin's 'Origins . . . ' "

"The history of psychedelic drugs is still being written," says Siegel, who is respected both by the authorities and legalization activists. "Even though Shulgin's observations may not be entirely scientific, they are an important start since he's the only one who has made some of these observations and taken some of these drugs."

"Pihkal," which has sold more than 15,000 copies, covers about half the psychedelic drugs known to humankind--the "phenethylamines I have known and loved," as the book's title suggests. The phenethylamine group of compounds includes such substances as MDMA and mescaline. The other half--a group that includes everything from toad venom to magic mushrooms--will be included in the forthcoming "Tihkal"--for "tryptamines I have known and loved."

To understand the Shulgins is to understand their unwavering belief that these drugs have untold powers and that we, as a society, are ignorant of these powers--like early man who shied away from fire. Yet Shulgin's words are almost always sober: "I'm very confident that there will come a time when this work will be recognized for its medical value."

In 1992 he testified before NIDA that psychedelic drug research using humans should once again be made fully legal (it was all but outlawed in 1970). Shulgin invoked his own legally questionable research on humans.

At the meeting, says Doblin, who was there, "he describes the work that he's doing with human beings, in a way that its clear that it's illegal." Even so, Shulgin influenced NIDA's position that human studies should restart, which they did. "Shulgin put himself on the line," says Lin, who chaired the meeting.

"It was a scientific meeting, not a political one," says Shulgin, understated as usual. "I was explicit, but not provocative."

Later, Shulgin makes this much clear: "It's my stance that what I do is nothing illegal."

In 1986, the federal government outlawed research on humans using drugs that resemble banned drugs, called analogs. Before then, research using designer drugs that weren't expressly outlawed skirted the rules (using an MDEA compound instead of MDMA, for example).

"Since '86, I've stopped all research in this direction," he says, i.e., he doesn't test drugs on humans. He adds that he still invents drugs and feels it's still legal as long as he has his drug-handling license. "I synthesize materials for publication," he says.

This balancing act is in response to the pressure he's been feeling from the DEA. It's ironic, say Shulgin's supporters: He has provided science to the government (most often in cases involving methamphetamine) and all takers only to be taken to task in the end for that very science. "Shulgin's not a criminal," says Mullis, "he's a chemist."

So imagine Shulgin's consternation recently when he found himself playing a gig (he plays the viola with a local orchestra for kicks) at the nearby Bohemian Grove and club guest Newt Gingrich starts talking about . . . drugs.

Normally, this all-male club (the word exclusive is not exclusive enough to describe its clientele) is not so serious--the site of nude rampaging, mock-Druid fire rituals and all manner of back-to-roots male bonding. Snort-Snort. So when Gingrich started talking about a topic Shulgin has studied for 30 years, he kept his mouth shut and his ears open.

"He was very correct," Shulgin says. "You have two alternatives: We either have to take Draconian means and break the back of the problem, or legalize drugs. I believe in the latter choice."
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Dear Friends of Sasha and Ann:

You may or may not know that the Drug Enforcement Agency along with various other Federal, State and local agency representatives showed up unannounced, with search warrants, at Sasha and Ann's home in Lafayette, California, on October 27, 1994. There were approximately thirty persons in the raiding party along with eight vehicles that included a fire engine and marked police cars. The stunned Shulgins were informed that this was not a criminal action, but rather an "administrative investigation" to determine if Sasha was in regulatory compliance with the many stipulations of his DEA license that allows him to be in possession of, and to work with, Schedule I substances. Administrative and environmental infractions were found; as can be easily imagined in a former basement, now laboratory, that is as well known for its pet spiders as for its cornucopia of important research, and its seemingly unending creation of new molecular structures. And it's also fair to say that housekeeping is not one of Sasha's big priorities.

The DEA has now made its findings and taken the following action:

1) To terminate Sasha's license that allows him to work with Schedule I materials.

2) To fine him $25,000.00. The termination of the license seems "justifiable," given the rather long list of record keeping and administrative infractions. What is puzzling, however, is that in over 15 years of being licensed two prior, friendly, that is announced and scheduled, surveys and reviews of the very same lab and records produced no adverse comment. This, of course, was before the publication of PHIKAL.[/list]The fine is attributed to a collection of unsolicited "anonymous drug samples" that people had sent to Sasha with the hope that he might test them sometime. There are those who think that such a testing program is beneficial. The DEA does not, and expressly forbids a licensee from doing so. The allowable fine is $25,000.00 per sample. Sasha and Ann have paid the fine, and have paid out another $15,000 in legal and related expenses. This $40,000 has come out of their retirement funds at very near the time that they are needed. Over Sasha's initial protest, a trust account has been set up, and a mail box rented. You may send your contributions to:

Alexander T. Shulgin Trust
Box 322
343 Soquel Ave.
Santa Cruz, CA 95062

Please make your checks or money orders payable to: Alexander T. Shulgin Trust.

If you would like your contribution to be anonymous please say so and the trustee will honor your request. All other contributors will be acknowledged by return mail and placed on a list to be given to Sasha and Ann. The trust will be maintained for one year, and monthly or periodic contributions are more than welcome.

You are requested to pass on, post, circulate, and distribute this notice.

elc@netcom.com, trustee

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From the Bulletin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Summer 1996, Volume VI, Number 5, page 75.

Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996

Dear Friends of Sasha and Ann:

As of November 15, 1996 we have raised a total of $28,598 or 71% of our goal of $40,000. This is a $3,085 increase over report number *7*. Contributions and loving well-wishes continue to come in from around the Globe. A special thank you to the anonymous donor from the Pacific Northwest who has faithfully tendered a monthly contribution from the start of the Fund.

The Fund has also been receiving multiple amounts (10 or so) of contributions in pre-addressed envelopes which contain the following message on the back of the envelope:

"Sasha Shulgin's passion has enriched our lives. Now is our chance to thank him. Help him pay his recent legal fees: make your check payable to: "Alexander T. Shulgin Trust."

Trustee wishes to thank the so-far-anonymous distributor of these envelopes, report that they are effective, and extend an honorary grade of A+ for creativity.

On the housekeeping side the only expense to the Fund to date resulted from ordering a "For Deposit Only..." stamp from the Trust's bank. When charge of $28.26 showed up for said stamp, trustee suggested to otherwise wonderfully cooperative bank officer that for that price it should have contained an electric motor.)

[Alfa]

Professor X

Alexander Shulgin made millions for Dow Chemical. Then he synthesized MDMA, realized his best test subject was himself, and became the godfather of Generation Ecstasy.

Now he’s back inside his private lab, running a new batch of psychedelic compounds through his chromatograph.

By Ethan Brown


John Midgley

Alexander Shulgin
JUST AFTER sunset on a cool California evening last fall, Alexander Shulgin prepared to test the effects of the cactus Pachycereus pringlei on himself, his wife, and 10 other subjects. The group, which included two chemists and an anthropologist, gathered in the living room of a redwood house deep in the woods to help Shulgin with his research into psychedelic cacti. A few months earlier, the anthropologist had told Shulgin that this particular variety was worth looking into — a cave painting in Mexico suggested it might have psychoactive properties. Through chromatography, Shulgin determined that P. pringlei probably was a mild psychedelic, but "the establishment of its human pharmacology requires that it be consumed by man." So Shulgin dissolved the extract of the cactus into fruit juice, then poured a 4-ounce cup for each person.

But his experiment went awry. "At about the two-hour point, my visual experiences became totally swamped by an overwhelming fear of moving," recalls Shulgin, the 77-year-old chemist who introduced ecstasy to the world. His wife, Ann, had an even more severe reaction. Out on the deck, she remembers, "I could see the full moon shining down on me with what felt like chilling contempt, and I thought, What an awful, stupid way to die." With her pulse racing, she went inside to check on her husband, who was upstairs in one of the bedrooms, lying still in the dark. "He said he was OK as long as he didn't move." Early the next morning, Shulgin assembled his test group, still in pajamas, to assess the effects of the cactus extract. All 12 of them had taken the same compound, but half had become violently ill, while the other six had the kind of pleasant but unremarkable experience Shulgin expected. The results, he decided, were inconclusive. Such unorthodox experiments are common for Shulgin, who might be described as practicing hard science with a blurry edge. With his gray beard, shock of white hair, and wrinkled tribal-patterned shirts, he certainly looks the part of a counterculture icon.

But unlike Timothy Leary or Terence McKenna, Shulgin doesn't proselytize for psychedelic drugs. Instead, he invents new compounds, runs experiments to determine their pharmacological effects, and publishes his recipes. His 1976 synthesis of MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), aka ecstasy, is the best-known result of his work. But he's also created dozens of other psychoactive compounds, including DOM (2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine), more commonly known as the potent '60s psychedelic STP, and 2C-T-7 (2,5-dimethoxy-4-(n)-propylthiophenethylamine), now sold on the street as "tripstasy"and suspected in the overdose death of a Tennessee teenager last year.

Together with Ann, Shulgin has written two books that have become cult classics: PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (short for "Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved") and TIHKAL: The Continuation (about tryptamines). They have long tested his compounds on themselves, in the tradition of scientists a century ago, then written about them in a style that mixes dispassionate technical detail ("A suspension of 9.5 g LAH in 750 ml well stirred and hydrous Et20 was held at reflux under an inert atmosphere") with wide-eyed psychedelic utopianism ("I saw the cloud toward the west. THE CLOUDS!!! No visual experience has ever been like this."). His approach inspired the so-called psychonauts, a small group of scientifically sophisticated young explorers who post chemical syntheses, experimental results, and "Train Wrecks and Trip Disasters" at Erowid.org. "Shulgin has given the scientific approach a role model," says one psychonaut who, under the pseudonym Murple, self-publishes studies on next-generation psychedelics like 2C-T-7.

Shulgin's experiment with P. pringlei is part of his most ambitious project yet — to classify the psychoactive compounds that occur naturally in cacti. Hundreds of plants have such properties, but many have never been tested, and Shulgin's search to identify the effects of each have drawn him to botany guides, anthropology books, and ancient religious texts. He plans to publish his results in 2004, and the anticipation is such that online sites catering to the psychonaut scene have begun to sell the plants he's working with.

“I really appreciated what morphine did. It depersonalized the pain.”

To these psychedelic adventurers, Shulgin is a postmodern Prometheus bearing the gift of chemical enlightenment. Even some scientists who speak out against drugs see value in his work: "There are merits to what Shulgin is doing, as the government does not allow real, unbiased studies with psychedelic drugs," says Jonathan Porteus, a psychologist at Cal State Sacramento who works with clients experiencing memory and mood problems as a result of ecstasy use. But to antidrug crusaders, Shulgin is a Frankenstein who has loosed frightening pharmacological monsters on the youth of the world. When Shulgin was invited to speak at a conference on drug policy in England, the head of an antidrug group said it was like "going to an asylum and asking the inmates about mental health."

THE SHULGINS live in the hills of Lafayette, California, on a 20-acre ranch at the end of a winding dirt driveway that's been called Shulgin Road since the chemist's parents purchased the land in the '30s. It's a sunny summer day, and Ann sets out a plate of hummus and fruit on the patio. Then she thrusts out a story about Shulgin from Britain's Daily Mail headlined "HAS THIS MAN KILLED 100 BRITISH TEENAGERS?" "We're not sure if we want this interview to happen," she says coolly, gesturing at the article like it's a piece of evidence. "What kind of knowledge of psychedelics do you have?" She means personal experience. Finally, she allows, I can start asking questions, "but I'll put up a red a flag if you're inappropriate."

In the Shulgins' kitchen, a homey room decorated with a lifetime's worth of counterculture souvenirs — art by a peyote-worshiping tribe, a photo of Shulgin with New Age nutrition guru Andrew Weil — I ask the obvious question: How does he feel now that ecstasy has become an international phenomenon — and, to some, an international scourge? "It's pretty heavy-duty," Shulgin says solemnly. "I don't think it's being used the way it should." He disapproves of the potentially dangerous doses clubbers often take, and he worries that recreational use of his drugs will overshadow their higher purpose. Psychedelics are a means for adults to gain insight into themselves, Shulgin says. "The best words I can use are research tools."

Ethan Brown is a staff writer at New York magazine.

[Alfa]

"Speak for yourself, Sasha," Ann interjects, using her husband's nickname. "I like to turn on and observe the universe. Scientists try to explain that these drugs aren't for fun as if there's something wrong with fun." The divide between the Shulgins reflects the schism between those who see psychedelics as a way to expand the senses and those who see them as a method to unlock the mind. While ravers gobble pills with abandon, psychonauts carefully measure out their desired dose.

Shulgin says ecstasy is particularly good for breaking down personal barriers, which is why some therapists used it before it was made illegal. "You don't have that sense of psychic territory to keep a psychiatrist out of," he says.

John Midgley

Shulgin examins a specimen of the Northwestern Artentiniam cactus Trichocereus tersheckii.
To Shulgin, a self-proclaimed libertarian, publishing synthesis instructions is "totally responsible": "If you're going to make a drug and use a drug, you want accurate information." A regular reader of the Federal Register, Shulgin even has a legal argument. "If you look at the Constitution, the 10th Amendment says anything that isn't handled in the Constitution or mentioned in the previous nine amendments should be reverted to the people or the states." In any case, he says, the government has no business making laws about personal behavior.

What about driving under the influence, Ann asks. Bad driving itself should be illegal, Shulgin replies — whatever its cause.

In the study that adjoins the kitchen, Ann's 36-year-old daughter, Wendy, is helping Shulgin research adrenochrome, an oxidized version of adrenaline briefly in vogue in the early '70s thanks to a mention in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Medical studies have linked an excess of adrenochrome to brain dysfunction, and Shulgin believes the chemical could help scientists understand schizophrenia. "I've found a book on Amazon, but it's $75," Wendy shouts. "I need your credit card." Shulgin rises from his chair. "Take two," he says to her, pulling out his wallet, "$50 on one and $25 on the other."

The Shulgins can come across like a psychedelic version of the Osbournes — an ambling, eccentric paterfamilias, a kid who's caught up in the family business, and a savvier, more aggressive wife who protects them from the outside world. "Sasha made a decision a long time ago that he would never sell any drug," Ann says forcefully. Indeed, Shulgin has never played a role in getting any of the chemicals he's created onto the street. "As far as I know," he says at Ann's prompting, "I'm not doing anything illegal."

In fact, Shulgin has some establishment leanings. He belongs to the elite, all-male Bohemian Club (Dick Cheney and George Shultz are members), and in 1988 he published Controlled Substances: A Chemical and Legal Guide to the Federal Drug Laws. In one of the more ironic moments of the war on drugs, he and Ann were married on their ranch on July 4, 1981, by the administrator of a DEA lab he was friendly with. Exactly one year later, the man held his wedding in the same spot. Shulgin never had a problem with the law until 1994, when the drug agency raided the lab behind his house. He wasn't charged with anything, but he surrendered the DEA-approved analytical license that allowed him to study certain scheduled drugs. (A spokesperson for the agency's San Francisco office would not comment on the raid.) "The issue is closed, and I have the freedom of doing whatever lab work I choose," Shulgin says. Nevertheless, "the separation between me and my friends at the DEA is now quite severe."

BORN IN BERKELEY to two public-school teachers, Shulgin was raised in an intellectual atmosphere, and he was just 7 when he first wandered into the local chemical supply store. "It was a 15-minute bicycle ride from my house," he remembers, "and I'd go there and say, 'I'd like to get some sodium bicarbonate or some magnesium sulfate.' They'd take a glassine bag and put some chemicals in it and there was no charge. Today there would be regulations against that."

An apt student who mastered two foreign languages (Russian and French) and three instruments (violin, viola, and piano), Shulgin entered Harvard on a full scholarship in 1942. "It was a total, total disaster," he recalls. "The people around me were sons and daughters of important people, with money and property, position and stature. I was not, and there was no social blending at all." In the middle of his sophomore year, he dropped out to join the Navy.

Shulgin was stationed on a destroyer escort in the North Atlantic during World War II, and he remembers being shocked by all the death he saw around him. He was never hurt badly, but the treatment he received for a painful infection introduced him to a lifelong fascination. "I really appreciated what morphine did," he recalls. "It doesn't quiet the pain — it makes you indifferent to it. It depersonalizes the pain."

Shulgin got an honorable discharge in 1946 and enrolled at UC Berkeley to study chemistry. He received his PhD in biochemistry in 1954, and the spirit of intellectual openness was an important influence. He wrote a letter to the head of the chemistry department at the University of Pennsylvania suggesting a more efficient way to synthesize morphine. "I got an answer," he remembers. "He said, 'Neat idea — it's never been tried.' Even if he didn't say much, he acknowledged the letter. To me, that was a great treasure."

Ever since, Shulgin has endeavored to answer all his mail, and he runs an Internet forum called "Ask Dr. Shulgin," in which he fields questions on such esoteric topics as the interaction of peyote with antidepressants. Murple recalls sending Shulgin an entire unsolicited manuscript of a book he was working on and receiving a detailed response.

After graduating from Berkeley, Shulgin took a job with a clinical diagnostics company, but he quickly jumped to Dow Chemical, where he invented Zectran, the first biodegradable insecticide. Still fascinated by mind-altering substances, he tried mescaline in 1960 and was moved to begin researching psychoactive drugs. "It was given to me by a psychiatrist friend, and it was the turning point that dictated the direction of my research for the rest of my life," he says. "I was confronted with the reality that the drug wasn't doing anything — it was just the catalyst. How much else was in there that I had no access to?"

[Alfa]

Professor X (continued)
Shulgin spent the next few years tinkering with the molecular structure of mescaline, inventing DOM and a few other compounds that, through the actions of others, ended up in the Haight-Ashbury and, soon after, in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Dow wasn't happy with this research, but since Zectran had proven profitable, he was granted time to work on his pet projects — from home. "Dow said, 'Do as you wish,'" Shulgin recalls. "I did as I wished. I did psychedelics."

ECSTASY was first synthesized in 1912 by the pharmaceutical company Merck, which used it as a chemical intermediary. It wasn't administered as a psychoactive substance until 1953, when the US government tested it on animals as a possible chemical warfare agent. Shulgin created a new synthesis for MDMA on September 12, 1976, according to his journal, and he told Wired he was tipped off to its possible effects by an undergrad in a medicinal chemistry group he advised at San Francisco State University. At the time, MDA (3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine), dubbed "Mellow Drug of America," was popular on the psychedelic scene, and the student mentioned having heard something about its methylated version.

From left: Shulgin's Lafayette, California, lab; with Ann; testing the recently synthesized isoquinoline 6,7-MDMH-4.

Shulgin first tried 16 milligrams of MDMA to no noticeable effect (the average dose in a pill is 75 to 150 milligrams), then upped the amount incrementally every week. At 81 milligrams, he had his eureka moment. "First awareness at 35 minutes smooth, and it was very nice," Shulgin wrote in his journal. "Forty-five minutes still developing, but I can easily assimilate it as it comes under excellent control. Fifty minutes getting quite deep, but I am keeping a pace."

"MDMA didn't have the tremendous effect on him that it did on other people," Ann says. For her, the compound is "an extraordinary opener. There's no other drug that gives you such consistent insight." Ann began administering MDMA to people as a sort of lay-therapist. Shulgin introduced the drug to Leo Zeff, an Oakland psychologist who guided dozens of his patients through sessions on various drugs. (Zeff himself viewed psychedelics as a path to enlightenment and wrote about dancing with a Torah while tripping on LSD.) Zeff was so enthusiastic about the compound that he postponed his retirement to travel across the country introducing MDMA to hundreds of his fellow therapists. Along the way, he gave the drug its first street name, Adam, because he believed it stripped away neuroses and put users in a primordial state.

Thanks to Zeff's advocacy, MDMA was widely known as an experimental therapy by the mid-'80s; Phil Donahue devoted an entire show to its medical potential in February 1985. But in Dallas, a very different use of the compound was emerging. Renamed "ecstasy" by a former drug dealer who sensed its commercial potential, MDMA was sold at nightclubs like the Starck right alongside Jack Daniel's and Bud. Months after Donahue's program aired, the DEA estimated that Dallas residents were consuming nearly 30,000 hits of ecstasy per month. Though it's sometimes difficult to pinpoint the specific cause of an overdose death in someone who has ingested multiple substances, the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office estimated that in the early and mid-'80s, misuse of the drug had killed five people.

Among those in the psychiatric community who believed in the potential of ecstasy, some argued that therapists should administer it quietly. Others, including Shulgin, urged them to publish their results. In April 1985, MDMA was classified as an emergency Schedule 1, a drug with "high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." (Permanent Schedule 1 status followed a year later.) Not a single therapist had published on the drug's therapeutic benefits — mostly, Shulgin says, out of fear they'd be seen as endorsing what was called the "yuppie psychedelic."

Even with his creation outlawed, Shulgin continued to make a case for its use. At a 1992 National Institute on Drug Abuse technical review on hallucinogens, Shulgin admitted testing psychoactive compounds on himself. "Sasha found a way, with DEA people in attendance, to present the results of human studies on psychedelics," says Rick Doblin, founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. "It was one of the more heroic, in-the-lion's den moments I've ever seen." Two years later, the national body issued a report stating, among other things, "there is an urgent need for human testing." This fall, Doblin will begin testing MDMA as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, the first FDA-approved psychotherapy research into the drug since it was criminalized.

AFTER A LUNCH of homemade pepperoni pizza, Shulgin leads me down to his lab on a hay-strewn path flanked by Salvia divinorum, an herb used by shamanic healers in Oaxaca, Mexico. On the door, a heavy, printed sign reads THIS IS A KNOWN AND APPROVED RESEARCH FACILITY; a smaller placard displays the international symbol for radioactive material, and a third lists a local contact number for the DEA. A harsh chemical odor wafts out when he opens the door. On one wall, there's a torn, browning copy of the periodic table; against another, shelves hold beakers containing bits of dissected cacti.

HE POINTS TO THE GRAPH: “BINGO! WE’VE GOT ACTIVITY.”

"How does one know if a certain cactus is active?" Shulgin asks. There's often anthropological evidence that a plant is psychoactive, but many species have several names, while even experts have a hard time distinguishing between various types of cacti. Several that contain psychoactive material, including Trichocereus pachanoi, more commonly known as San Pedro, are sold at garden centers.

When questions of taxonomy arise, Shulgin isolates and identifies specific compounds through chromatography. "Here I'm totally caught up in the Western tools of science," he says, as classical music blares from a transistor radio hanging from a ceiling beam. "Get a bit of plant into the test tube, shove the wet residue into the chromatographic monster, and you discover 20 new things in the plant." He shows me a small notebook with pages displaying the peaks and valleys of printed-out chromatography. "Bingo!" he says, pointing to an upward shift. "We've got activity."

[Alfa]

Professor X (continued)

That's where the standard scientific method ends. Shulgin will sample an extremely low dose with Ann, then bring the substance to the group with whom he tried P. pringlei. Sometimes his psychedelic adventures scare him, Shulgin says, "but how else are you going to learn?" In case the worst does happen, "I always keep an anti-convulsant on hand."

These days, though, the group doesn't meet as much anymore. "We're getting too old," he says.

SHULGIN RARELY travels, but he's come to MIT for an American Chemical Society symposium on "The Chemistry and Pharmacology of Hallucinogens." During a wine and cheese reception before dinner, he's mobbed by chemistry students, who thrust out dog-eared copies of PIHKAL for him to sign. One tells Shulgin that he took a bus all the way from Indiana just to meet him. A Goth couple persuades him to pose with them for a few Polaroids.

In a crisp white shirt and blue-striped tie, Shulgin looks like an overwhelmed teenager forced to dress for some family function. During the presentations, several lecturers mention his work, and a researcher from the National Institute on Drug Abuse refers to a few psychedelics as "Shulgin analogs."

"Where are my dirty pictures?" Shulgin asks Ann in a panic. He means the transparencies he's made of the chemical structures of his compounds. Moments later he finds them in the knapsack he left by the bar and enlists me to keep track of his materials.

Shulgin is more at ease when the conference breaks for dinner, riffing on palindromes (his favorite is Soros), his views on drug laws (to prove a point, he pulls out a wallet-sized copy of the Constitution), and the asparagus ("Everyone check their urine later and let me know if it smells").

After dinner, as the sun sets over the Charles River, Shulgin steps behind the podium and explains some of his syntheses at such dizzying speeds that he has to stop a few times to catch his breath. As his creations are projected behind him, he talks about the hand-drawn diagrams of MDMA, MMDA, and 2C-T-7 the way anyone else might talk about photos of their vacation or wedding.

"It's the excitement of discovering something totally unknown," he tells me later.

"I feel an incredible tingle when I look at a white solid I've just synthesized that I know has never existed anywhere in the universe before this moment." He stops himself. "Oh, maybe someone on a planet around some sun way out there may have looked at it, but this is its first existence on Earth. And I'll be the first to know what it does."

[Thegreatone]

good article, playboy ran one on him a few months ago

[Alfa]

[fiets]

Great to read stuff like this, Shulgin is a very interesting man.


"It has nothing to do with split atoms and molecules and mathematics and kinetics and all that nonsense. It's an art form. It's like writing a piece of music. It is pure imagination."

[Alfa]

[enquirewithin]

Alexander "Sasha" Schulgin is an inspiration to us all, dedicated to his field and ifinitely generous with knowledge, not pursuing fame or profit, and promoting andrational and responsible use of psychedelics.

[Hyperreal]

MAPS are having an online auction of 'psychedelic curiosites' to raise money for their psychedelic research. It's on eBay. It started yesterday and runs until the 21st of March. They have books, glassware, lab equipment, blotter art, paintings etc. associated with Alan Watts, John Lilly, Alexander Shulgin, Timothy Leary and Albert Hofmann, among others. Looks pretty cool.


http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...UserPage&useri d=themapsauction

[cyalume]

very nice, there is definetly some cool stuff on there.

[enquirewithin]

"Dr. Ecstasy" laments the rave drug's notoriety
Fri Dec 2, 2005 05:15 PM ET

By Jason Szep REUTERS

http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jh...rss/healthNews


CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - The scientist who introduced Ecstasy to the world in the 1970s fears the drug's notoriety and popularity at nightclubs is destroying any chance that it might be used to treat the mentally ill.

"It's very excellent potential for being used as medicine has been badly jeopardized," Alexander Shulgin, told Reuters after defending the merits of mind-altering drugs at a symposium on the human brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week.

"It's gone out of control," lamented Shulgin, a tall Californian with a mane of white hair and a Santa Claus-like beard, who is widely known as "Dr. Ecstasy."

A psychopharmacological researcher who once had a license from the U.S. government to develop any illegal drug, Shulgin believes so strongly in the power of psychedelic drugs in unlocking the human mind that he plans to publish a 1,500-page encyclopedia next year of all his creations.

The 80-year-old former lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, who self-tested many of his experiments and admits to more than 4,000 psychedelic experiences, finds little comfort in Ecstasy's image as the drug of choice at all-night nightclub dance parties or raves.

"These rave scenes have added kindling to the fire of governmental disapproval," he said.

Use of the drug, known for inducing euphoria and energy while reducing inhibitions, surged 70 percent from 1995 to 2000, according to United Nations data.

Ecstasy-related deaths, while relatively rare, make enough headlines to force authorities to regularly issue health warnings. Australia's National Drug and Alcohol Research Center in April said users risked harmful psychological effects.

Tracing that rise of the drug leads straight to Shulgin. A gifted biochemist and former National Institutes of Health consultant, he unearthed a formula for MDMA -- a synthetic drug with psychedelic and stimulant effects -- in a 1912 chemistry text and synthesized it into Ecstasy in 1976.

After testing it on himself, he became convinced of its power to treat mental illness. He gave the drug to psychotherapist and close friend, Leo Zeff, who sampled it, agreed, and passed it to hundreds of other therapists.

Shulgin, who had already quit a senior job at Dell Chemical after sampling mescaline in 1960 in a life-changing introduction to psychedelic drugs, enjoyed a period of celebrity as a cutting-edge chemist.

He described his first experiment with psychedelic drugs as a "very delightful experience" in which he could "see clearly what he could not appreciate before."

Ecstasy was used in its early days as a treatment for depression and other illnesses, but that ended abruptly in 1986 when it was banned by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

Recently, however, Ecstasy has had a modest comeback in clinical therapy. U.S authorities gave researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina permission last year to use MDMA in a small study of patients suffering post-traumatic stress.

In August, researchers at Duke University in North Carolina found that amphetamines, including Ecstasy, reversed the effects of Parkinson's disease in mice, raising the possibility of exploring related treatments for humans.

Meanwhile, Shulgin, whose involvement in psychedelic drug research spans 40 years, is at work compiling his encyclopedia on 1,000 psychedelic compounds. It is modeled on the Merck Index of chemical properties.

"It will be everything that is known to be, has been tried but not found yet to be, or should be tried because they are apt to be psychedelic," he said of the work, which he expects to self-publish by the middle of next year.

[enquirewithin]

This article is all around the world. It typically focuses on "Ecstasy," rather than on the body of Shulgin's work. In my local paper it has been retitled, "Dr Ecstasy raving mad over the recreational use of the drug."

[mopsie]

THIS MAN HAS INVENTED MORE THAN 80% OF THE WORLD'S KNOWN HALLUCINOGENIC DRUGS
This Man Has Invented More Than 80% Of The World's Known Hallucinogenic Drugs, Has Had More Than 4000 Psychedelic Experiences, And In 1967 Created The Drug Ecstasy. Meet Dr Alexander Shulgin, Groundbreaking Scientist And Explorer Of The Human Mind

It seems rather appropriate to meet Doctor Alexander Shulgin, a man who has spent most of his life creating and consuming hallucinogenic drugs, high on a mountain.

Shulgin, whom Timothy Leary called "one of the most important scientists of his generation", lives with his Antipodean wife, Ann, on a steep Californian hillside a few miles from San Francisco, that former bastion of free love, acid trips and tie-dye T-shirts.

In his lifetime, Shulgin, now 81, has been canonised by chemists and chastised by the police, invented a groundbreaking insecticide, written two groundbreaking books, invented more than 80% of the known hallucinogenic drugs in the world and, by his own admission, had more than 4000 psychedelic experiences.

He is also one of the people responsible for the emergence and popularity of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, the drug more commonly known as ecstasy. As a result, he often finds himself accused of being responsible for all the deaths related to the popular rave drug. During our rambling and, at times, slightly surreal, interview over lunch at his house, this is the only subject that makes him and his wife become overtly defensive. When I ask if Shulgin himself still takes ecstasy, his reply is surprising.

"No," he says firmly. "It's illegal and I don't use illegal drugs."

The jolly, white-haired and bearded chemist, who resembles a rather malnourished Santa Claus after several nights on the tiles, claims he has always been motivated by a higher purpose than just getting high.

"My art is being able to make new compounds that can be used as tools in new ways," he says picking at a piece of quiche on the long wooden dining table in his photograph-cluttered dining room. "I'm exploring these areas to develop tools for study of the mind. The purpose has always been that, in time - probably not in my lifetime - people would have access to these materials and actually go into the mental process to try to work out the mechanism of the human mind. Not the brain, but the mind."

Shulgin's own mind is still working well. His body may be failing him - - "I'm virtually blind in my left eye and my teeth are falling apart" - - but his brain is fully functioning and, throughout our interview, he only occasionally fails to recall places rather than people or the complex names of chemicals.

But why the specific interest in the continued creation of psychedelic drugs rather than in creating drugs which could lead to a cure for cancer or make you more intelligent?

"I don't buy the smart-drug classification," he says. "I've seen no evidence in my own exploring. And I'm just totally fascinated by where psychedelic drugs can take the mind."

Initially, I'm not convinced this isn't just a rather grand way of justifying a trippy, hedonistic lifestyle made possible by Shulgin's unquestionable genius when it comes to concocting and altering chemical compounds ( he holds more than a dozen patents for different drugs and unique methods of synthesis ). But it becomes clear during our interview he is equally, if not more, fascinated with tinkering with chemicals than in simply taking them.

"Primarily, it is about the conversion of a structure," he tells me. "It's a fun process and it's tremendously fascinating." He is more animated when speaking about the details of how he managed to alter a drug to change its effect than when asked about the effect those changes had when he tested the new compound on himself. In fact, for a man who has had so many psychedelic experiences, his stories of his 'trips' are disappointingly dull, while listening to him talk about experiments and chemical structures and hearing complex chemical names trip excitedly off his tongue is thoroughly entertaining.

"Chemistry is a music form to me," Shulgin says and, for the past 70 years, he has been composing at a rate Beethoven would have been proud of. Shulgin, who stands just over six feet tall, was born in Berkeley, California, in 1925, the only child of his Russian father and American mother.

"I got interested in chemistry very early," he tells me with his pleasant yet protective wife hovering nearby and continually adding food to the table. "They had these little chemistry kits with test tubes and you add this to that and it goes red. I had one in the basement and I loved the idea of using things that were not in the set."

His love and aptitude for the subject deepened and he was accepted into Harvard University at the age of 16 to study chemistry.

"I hated it," he reveals. "All the kids had wealthy parents and I didn't. It was a centre of snobbery and they teach chemistry very rigidly. They never teach it for the fun of it."

Shulgin joined the navy as a way out. At the end of the Second World War, he returned to California, got his PhD in bio-chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and went to work for Dow Chemical in the area of synthetic chemistry, where his natural ability allowed him to shine. He predicted that, with a few alterations, a seemingly inactive chemical compound Dow were close to abandoning could be made 'active' and transformed into a neurotoxin.

"I predicted it and ( the end result ) was a new compound," Shulgin says as he gets up and shuffles slowly out of the room. He returns a few seconds later and hands me a small box labelled 'Zectran: Snail, Slug and Bug killer'. It is the first commercial product Shulgin invented; a powerful but biodegradable insecticide which Dow manufactured and sold around the world.

Ann, seeing the package, says proudly, "Oh. They offered him carte blanche after that."

"They said, well if you can predict this sort of thing, then why don't you just work on whatever you want to work on," Shulgin says, sitting down again. "Well, that was when I had my first mescaline experience and the answer was what I wanted to work on was producing analogues of mescaline."

Mescaline is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound. It is found in certain cacti, but can be synthesised in a laboratory. Although it has been famously devoured and written about by people including Hunter S Thompson and Aldous Huxley, the side effects can include nausea, dizziness and diarrhoea. Yet devotees claim the hallucinations and the new thought processes make the experience worthwhile.

Shulgin says not only did he enjoy his first mescaline experience - "it was an eye-opening revelation" - but "it gave me the direction I wanted to go in my life."

Needless to say, Dow Chemical weren't thrilled at the thought of one of their employees making derivatives of mescaline and trying them out on himself and a close group of friends but, as Zectran was a global success and as Shulgin's credentials were truly impeccable when it came to chemical innovations, they suggested he carry on working for them - but from home.

As Shulgin started to research and create psychedelics in earnest, he discovered there weren't many active compounds out there.

"At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only two psychedelics that were known - mescaline and marijuana," Shulgin tells me. "In 1950, there were about 20 - LSD, analogues of LSD, two of three phenethylamines, amphetamines which were psychoactive, DMT, DET, and four or five tryptamines. Coming into this century, there were 200 known psychedelics and by 2050 you'll have 2000."

I'm still not sure I know for what genuine purpose or function and Shulgin only reiterates: "The primary legitimate use will eventually be research into the function of the mind."

Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, Shulgin devoted most of his time to creating hallucinogenic compounds but claims he didn't party with the legendary hippy crowd in San Francisco.

"I knew a lot of them but I didn't hang out with them," he says, stroking his beard. "My direction was something different. I was creating new things and having the time of my life doing it. All they were doing was consuming things which had already been created. I wanted not to get into the habit of using one thing with any regularity as that would jeopardise my search for new things."

Shuglin also vowed he would never sell his wares. "Very early, I fell into a very good philosophy which is that I don't sell drugs," he says. "There is no such thing as a completely safe drug, so if you sell drugs and someone gets hurt you are involved. I stay out of that."

What has made Shulgin so unique and notorious, celebrated by some and reviled by others, is that every time he has modified an existing psychedelic drug to create a new one, he has published his notes, in effect the 'recipe' for the new drug as well as details of the effects it is likely to have and at what dosage levels.

His work has aided both the police and those who make and sell illegal drugs. While drug pushers have been able to follow Shulgin's recipes and sell the compounds he has created, the police have been able to use his work to break down substances they have found and determine whether or not they are - or should be - illegal. The US Drug Enforcement Agency's western division nurtured a relationship with Shulgin and have used him several times as an expert witness in trials ( the head of the division became such good friends with Shulgin that Shulgin asked him to the best man at his wedding ).

Shulgin has never been arrested but his back-garden laboratory has been raided twice by officials. The first time, after samples of unrecorded drugs were found in his possession, he was asked to pay a fine and give up his Schedule 1 licence which allowed him to possess illegal narcotics for research purposes. The second time nothing illegal was discovered.

I'm keen to see the laboratory where so many of the world's hallucinogenics have been distilled into existence. I have visions of a spotless white room with neatly arranged test tubes and unfathomable diagrams on smooth walls behind a large, locked steel door. When Shulgin finishes eating and leads me out to his 'shed', the reality is so far removed from that image, I think the aging alchemist must have slipped one of his concoctions into my drink.

Nestled against the hillside and at the end of a narrow path leading from the back of the Shulgin's expansive bungalow, lies a tatty, one-room building with broken windows and a scruffy door with rusty hinges.

"Be careful of the broken glass," Shulgin says as he escorts me inside. "The squirrels get in and knock over everything." I think Shulgin must be joking but I immediately see he is telling the truth as smashed glass vessels and fresh animal droppings are visible all over the acrid-smelling room.

He doesn't do much work in here these days, spending most of his time in his office working on a new book - an encyclopaedia of all known psychedelics. The lab, with its exposed girders, chemical condensers, crucibles, brown bottles, dirty floor and open drawers filled with tubes and vials and glass pipettes, has obviously seen better days. Behind this shed, slightly higher up the hill, is another one-room building. Shulgin leads me there, unlocks the door and reveals a sight that would cause any chemist to start salivating.

Free-standing shelf units are filled from ceiling to floor with myriad different sized and shaped, clear and brown, black-capped bottles containing liquids, powders, and solutions - a dazzling Aladdin's cave for chemists.

"This is my chemical store room," Shulgin explains. "I must have between 10-15,000 chemicals in here."

None of the bottles contain anything illicit, it is only when various contents are mixed and prepared in the right way that illegal substances can be created. In 1967, using a mix of the ingredients in the store room and preparing the product in his then pristine lab, Shulgin re-synthesised MDMA, the drug now known as ecstasy. "I was curious," Shulgin tells me. "It was a virtually unknown chemical and no-one had pursued it."

MDMA had been patented by the drug company Merck in 1912 but only as a step in a process, not as a compound in and of itself. In the 1960's, Shulgin became aware of some tests that were being conducted using MDMA.

"I was told it was being looked at as a stimulant," Shulgin reveals. "But the answer I was given was that it was not a stimulant, it's something different. I re-synthesised it in the lab."

Shulgin had been told that, rather than act as stimulant, MDMA made people very relaxed and lose their inhibitions.

"I tasted it and I was quite amazed something could be that capable of making you drop your barriers and your borders," he says. He thought it would be a good drug for people in psychotherapy.

"It is such a beautiful thing for psychotherapy because you open up that awareness not just between you and your therapist, but between you and yourself. You begin acknowledging your own thoughts," he says. Shulgin doesn 't mention whether or not he started dancing.

He gave some samples to some psychologists who tried it and took it with their patients. Its supposed benefits became apparent very quickly and it was used legally in America, including for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, until it was declared illegal in 1985.

I ask if Shulgin ever imagined it would become a popular, if occasionally fatal, street drug and spawn a whole culture of music and dance.

"No, not at all," Shulgin says as we walk slowly back to the house. He says that once he had passed samples on to friends who were psychiatrists and they started using it with their patients, his involvement with MDMA was over.

"I just watched as a casual observer," he tells me.

"Sasha's not responsible for it or for what happens," Ann says defensively, using her husband's nickname. Shulgin folds his arms. Over the past decade, numerous journalists have either asked Shulgin if he feels responsible for anyone who has died from taking the drug, or unilaterally convicted him in newsprint for being the architect of the ecstasy explosion. The questions and accusations obviously rile the libertarian couple.

"I've not done anything illegal," Shulgin insists. "I invent the drugs and it's up to the law writers to make them illegal. My desire is just to find new things."

But does Shulgin believe people should be free to take drugs?

"I think there is no reason to have general drug laws except to protect children, to prevent people giving other people drugs without their knowledge and to prevent driving while under the influence of drugs. These are the drug laws that it is valid to maintain."

With those exceptions, Shulgin believes people should be free to consume whatever drugs they wish, whenever they wish.

"I believe all these materials should be yours to explore, to try, to know," he says. "The illegality of drugs is one of the incentives for many people to use them."

Like so many pro-drug advocates, Shulgin believes crime would drop and quality would improve if narcotics were legalised. I suggest one set of problems would just be replaced with another and vulnerable people would be more at risk because of ease of access.

"Let me ask you an adverse ( sic ) question," says Ann. "Probably the one human experience that is responsible for more deaths, suicides and murders is falling in love and having the love affair break up. How do you protect vulnerable people from falling in love?"

Our serious discussion is turning somewhat frivolous and Shulgin seems for the first time slightly fatigued, so after a short pause I ask him if he can remember his best drug-induced experience.

"I got into a bliss state once," he recalls, a little livelier now we have changed tack. "It was a power trip. There was a package of cement that was upside down and I looked at it and said, 'Other side up', and it turned over. Maybe there was some visual hallucination along with this, you know - but that's what I could do. I had total control over all aspects of everything."

I'm not sure that after more than 50 years of experiments, simply believing you have managed to flip over a bag of cement without touching it is a great pay-off but, as Shulgin continues to talk passionately about his work, I don 't doubt he genuinely believes he is doing something for the benefit of generations to come rather than just for Generation X.

I ask, of all the drugs he has invented, which one is he most proud of.

"The next one is probably the best one because it's never been made before," he says. "And, by definition, it can't be illegal." He laughs, an impish grin seems to take over his face and there is a wickedly knowing and mischievous twinkle in his eye. Then again, maybe I'm just seeing things.

source mapt

Reputation Comments on this post:

	great posting of an article about shulgin
	great article
	wonderful article

[enquirewithin]

A good find. Can you post the URL/link? Thanks

Reputation Comments on this post:

yes i gone do it

[Lunar Loops]

Here's a link to the story enquirewithin, not sure if it's the one mopsie used, but it is the same story:

http://www.sundayherald.com/55774

Reputation Comments on this post:

no it was a other source of my

[psychedelaholic]

I recently purchased Pihkal, can't wait to start reading it. Anyone looking forward to the shulgin film?

click here

Reputation Comments on this post:

good but i post it a time ago in the dutch file argief

[Jonah]

There are two different companies working on shulgin documentaries iirc. I'm not too excited for either of them, because i'm pretty sure it will be just a huge elaborate recap of what everyone already knows about the good doctor. Not to say that i wont buy them when they come out or anything like that, it's just that i expect more of the same.

[enquirewithin]

Thanks for the link. I only know of one forthcoming documentary about the Shulgins, but I'll watch anything about them!

[Voices]

^yea, me too.

Great article btw. This guy (Shulgin) is up there with Carl Sagan in my Mythos.

[turkeyphant]

Does anyone have the publication date for this article? I need to reference it.

[Alfa]

Threads merged.