Alexander Shulgin

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pages: 378 words: 94,468

Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That's Changing How the World Gets High by Mike Power

air freight, Alexander Shulgin, banking crisis, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, cloud computing, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, Donald Davies, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, drug harm reduction, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, fiat currency, Firefox, Fractional reserve banking, frictionless, fulfillment center, Haight Ashbury, independent contractor, John Bercow, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Leonard Kleinrock, means of production, Menlo Park, moral panic, Mother of all demos, Network effects, nuclear paranoia, packet switching, pattern recognition, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, pre–internet, QR code, RAND corporation, Satoshi Nakamoto, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sexual politics, Skype, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, trade route, Whole Earth Catalog, Zimmermann PGP

These laws were made five decades before the creation of an entirely new drug whose effect on users would be different from that of LSD, but equally profound. This drug would leak into the global water table on a scale that would have given even the most extreme LSD evangelist pause for thought. One individual, allied with technology, would be a central figure in this new race between chemists, users, the culture and the law: American Alexander Shulgin, the world’s most prolific and genius-tinged psychedelic chemist, the godfather of Ecstasy. Notes 1. C. F. Gorman, ‘Excavations at Spirit Cave, North Thailand: Some Interim Interpretations’, Asian Perspectives, Vol. 13, 1970, pp. 79–108 2. www.antiquecannabisbook.com/chap2B/China/Pen-Tsao.htm 3. www.shipman-inquiry.org.uk/4r_page.asp?

Its grounds are strewn with cacti and fringed with greenhouses; the front door is rickety, its hinges rusted now. This is the unlikely epicentre of a global drugs culture. The products that have emerged from it, the methodology that produced these new compounds and the career of its owner make it, indisputably, the world’s most storied and influential drug lab. For much of the last century Alexander Shulgin worked in relative obscurity. But in the mid-to-late 1980s, a new drug, MDMA, later known as Ecstasy, started appearing on the streets of the USA and Europe. This substance, a stimulant that prompted emotional openness, would change the world’s drug habits for ever, bringing the psychedelic experience to millions who, before its advent, would perhaps never have considered using drugs.

Freudenmann, Florian Öxler and Sabine Bernschneider-Reif, ‘The Origin of MDMA (Ecstasy) Revisited: The True Story Reconstructed from the Original Documents’, Addiction, Vol. 101, Issue 9, pp. 1241–1245; http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ j.1360-0443.2006.01511.x/abstract 3. www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/ 30ECSTASY. html?_r=1 4. Julian Palacios, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd: Dark Globe (Plexus Publishing Ltd, 2010), p. 298 5. Dennis Romero, ‘Sasha Shulgin, Psychedelic Chemist’, Los Angeles Times, 5 September 1995 6. Alexander Shulgin, PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Transform Press, 1991), p. 860 7. Ibid., p. xvi 8. Ibid., p. xviii 9. www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/ shulgin_rating_scale.shtml 10. Shulgin, PIHKAL, pp. 876–877 11. Ibid., p. 733; see also www.erowid.org/library/books_online/ PIHKAL109.shtml 12. www.maps.org/media/kleiman040204.html 13.


pages: 407 words: 90,238

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler, Jamie Wheal

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, delayed gratification, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Future Shock, Hacker News, high batting average, hive mind, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?, hype cycle, Hyperloop, impulse control, independent contractor, informal economy, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Mason jar, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microdosing, military-industrial complex, mirror neurons, music of the spheres, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, science of happiness, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, TED Talk, time dilation, Tony Hsieh, urban planning, Virgin Galactic

But pharmacology—and specifically, the branch of pharmacology that deals with psychoactive compounds—changes the rules of the game. It gives us access to more substances than ever before, and this provides us with more diverse data to consider. And perhaps no one played a bigger role in rewriting those rules than renegade chemist Alexander Shulgin. The Johnny Appleseed of Psychedelics Alexander Shulgin was called many names over the course of his career. Wired dubbed him “Professor X,”11 while the New York Times preferred “Dr. Ecstasy.”12 As he was a tall man with a shock of white hair and a thick beard, “Gandalf” was not uncommon13 More formally, Shulgin has been described as “a genius biochemist,” a “pioneering psychopharmacologist,” and, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a “dangerous criminal.”

In Prohibition America: Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire (New York: Random House, 2001), p. 9. 11. Wired dubbed him “Professor X”: Ethan Brown, “Professor X,” Wired, September 1, 2002. 12. the New York Times preferred “Dr. Ecstasy”: Drake Bennett, “Dr. Ecstasy,” New York Times, January 30, 2005. 13. “Gandalf” was not uncommon: Brian Vastag, “Chemist Alexander Shulgin, Popularizer of the Drug Ecstasy, Dies at 88,” Washington Post, June 3, 2014. 14. Sasha Shulgin was born in Berkeley: For a great introduction to Shulgin’s life, see the recent documentary Dirty Pictures, by Etienne Sauret, 2010. 15. “I learned there were worlds inside of me”: James Oroc, “The Second Psychedelic Revolution Part Two: Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin, The Psychedelic Godfather,” Reality Sandwich, 2014, http://realitysandwich.com/217250/second-psychedelic-revolution-part-two/. 16.

“I learned there were worlds inside of me”: James Oroc, “The Second Psychedelic Revolution Part Two: Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin, The Psychedelic Godfather,” Reality Sandwich, 2014, http://realitysandwich.com/217250/second-psychedelic-revolution-part-two/. 16. Sasha’s interest,” explains Johns Hopkins: Ibid. 17. The Shulgin Rating Scale: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shulgin_Rating_Scale. 18. At 22 milligrams: Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Berkeley, CA: Transform Press, 1991), p. 560. 19. Richard Meyers, a spokesperson for the DEA: Bennett, ”Dr. Ecstasy.” 20. Everybody knows who the Shulgins: Teafaire, “No Retirement Plan for Wizards,” teafaire.org, February 28, 2013, http://teafaerie.org/2013/02/456/. 21.


pages: 334 words: 93,162

This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America by Ryan Grim

airport security, Alexander Shulgin, anti-communist, back-to-the-land, Burning Man, crack epidemic, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, failed state, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, global supply chain, Haight Ashbury, illegal immigration, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kickstarter, longitudinal study, mandatory minimum, new economy, New Urbanism, Parents Music Resource Center, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Steve Jobs, Tipper Gore, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, women in the workforce

Pickard has always been a controversial figure in the acid underground, but widely respected by his peers and adversaries alike as a talented chemist. “He’s one of the few we know of who has ever synthesized mescaline,” Nichols told me, referring to a process that’s far too difficult and expensive to be profitable. One of the few others known to have accomplished the feat is Alexander Shulgin. “Pickard is a charlatan,” blotter artist, blotter-art collector, and unofficial Family spokesperson Mark McCloud told me. He and many others warned me not to take anything that Pickard said at face value. Within the several Families, Pickard is known as someone who can’t be trusted, and for good reason: facing decades in prison following a 1988 conviction for running an LSD lab, he cooperated and had his sentence drastically reduced, according to news reports from the time.

“I haven’t been a teenager for a number of years,” said Kent, by way of explaining that Erowid is most useful when somebody comes into the ER under the influence of a drug she hasn’t heard of. The Erowids were even invited to speak at a national toxicology conference in 2006. According to Kent, they “were very well received.” Schedule I—drugs that the DEA considers to be the most dangerous and have the least medical value—is something of a tribute to Alexander Shulgin. A former Dow Chemical Company chemist, Shulgin, now in his eighties, is a legend in the psychedelic world, having synthesized MDMA in the fifties after stumbling across a discarded recipe. He went on to invent the overwhelming majority of Schedule I drugs, making him the godfather of all research chemicals.

Nadelman, Ethan NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) NarcoNews.com Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act Nation National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse National Drug Threat Assessment (DOJ) National Geographic National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) National Institutes of Health National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) National Survey on Drug Use and Health Nature’s Medicinal Nebraska neurotransmitters Neville, Richard Newcomb, Michael New Yorker New York Times on Alexander Shulgin on codependency movement on heroin trade on Luciano on medical marijuana on Miami cocaine trade on opium on Prohibition on speed Webb and New York Times-CBS News Nicaragua. See Contras Nichols, Carl Nixon, Richard M. Norodin North Dakota Northwestern University No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth (Owen) novocaine Oakland, California.


pages: 294 words: 80,084

Tomorrowland: Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact by Steven Kotler

adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, Alexander Shulgin, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Biosphere 2, Burning Man, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, Dean Kamen, Dennis Tito, epigenetics, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, haute couture, Helicobacter pylori, interchangeable parts, Kevin Kelly, life extension, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, North Sea oil, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, private spaceflight, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, theory of mind, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

And this is why that second meeting between Allan and Marilyn was more difficult than the first — because that was the meeting they discussed risk. The drug Allan’s considering for the first session is MDMA, known on the street as Ecstasy, and a latecomer to the psychedelic tool kit. First discovered by Merck in 1912, MDMA didn’t hit the therapeutic world until the middle 1970s when pharmacologist Alexander Shulgin, then teaching at the University of California, San Francisco, heard from his students that it helped one of them get over a stutter. Shulgin dosed himself, reporting “altered states of consciousness with emotional and sexual overtones.” He also noticed the drug “opened people up, both to other people and to inner thoughts,” and decided its primary benefit was mental.


pages: 354 words: 93,882

How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson

Albert Einstein, Alexander Shulgin, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, call centre, David Attenborough, David Brooks, deskilling, Easter island, financial independence, full employment, Gordon Gekko, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, moral panic, New Urbanism, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, spinning jenny, three-martini lunch, Torches of Freedom, trade route, wage slave, work culture

This steadiness allows long periods of dancing and the experience of going into a trance; repetitive behaviour is encouraged, we are in the moment, there is no planning and no memory, just a simple joy of being. This is, or was, the attraction of ecstasy, and to someone like me, who had considered that at 22 it was time to ' get real ' , knuckle down, have a career, the exhilaration brought by ecstasy, music and dancing all night was deeply liberating. This is how the radical chemist Alexander Shulgin describes the feeling: I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria. I have never felt so great, or believed this to be possible. The cleanliness, clarity, and marvelous feeling of solid inner strength continued throughout the rest of the day, and evening, and through the next day.


pages: 292 words: 97,911

Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies by Nick Frost

Alexander Shulgin, call centre, David Attenborough, hive mind, impulse control, job-hopping, Norman Mailer, Rubik’s Cube, tech billionaire

Ravers I love you. Jimi Hendrix. Hunter S Thompson. Jim Jarmusch. Woody Allen. Mulder and Scully. Steven Spielberg. John Williams. The Simpsons. George Lucas. Roy Neary. Indiana Jones. The Young Ones. Bill Nighy. Martin Amis. The Smiths. The Bluetones. Shit pubs. Sunny Side Up! Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. Alexander Shulgin. Timothy Leary. Milan Kundera. West Ham Utd. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Falafel. McDonalds. Meat Fruit. Good curries. Global knives. Non-stick pans and decent ovens. Onions. TV. AHL forever! Table of Contents About the Author Title Page Imprint Page Dedication Contents Introduction Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four You have been watching . . .


pages: 305 words: 101,743

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alexander Shulgin, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, financial independence, game design, Jeff Bezos, Jon Ronson, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, late capitalism, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, Norman Mailer, obamacare, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, QR code, rent control, Saturday Night Live, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, TikTok, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, wage slave, white picket fence

In the fifties, the Army Chemical Corps tested it on animals. In the sixties, a related substance called MDA gained popularity as “the love drug.” During the seventies, a number of scientists—including Leo Zeff, the one who named the drug Adam—tried the drug, and a network of practitioners of underground MDMA psychotherapy began to grow. In 1978, Alexander Shulgin and David Nichols published the first human study on ecstasy, noting the substance’s possible therapeutic effects. The attainment of chemical ecstasy—empathogenesis—occurs in stages. The drug first places the attention on the self, stripping away the user’s inhibitions. Second, it prompts the user to recognize and value the emotional states of others.


Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland

agricultural Revolution, Alexander Shulgin, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Burning Man, classic study, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, Day of the Dead, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Drosophila, experimental economics, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, hive mind, invention of agriculture, John Markoff, knowledge worker, land reform, lateral thinking, lockdown, lone genius, meta-analysis, microdosing, Picturephone, placebo effect, post-work, Ralph Waldo Emerson, search costs, Silicon Valley, Skype, social intelligence, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Zenefits

It is too often the case that listening to accounts of other people’s trips is as tedious and unhelpful as hearing about what they dreamt last night (or reading a twenty-page treatise on how Truth Is the Color Blue). But there are some first-person accounts that manage to convey, as much as the pale medium of words can manage, something of the magic of a psychedelic experience. Alexander Shulgin, a pioneer in the research of synthetic psychoactive drugs, gives this account of his experience on 120 mg of pure MDMA: I felt that I wanted to go back, but I knew there was no turning back. Then the fear started to leave me, and I could try taking little baby steps, like taking first steps after being reborn.


pages: 669 words: 210,153

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferriss

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Madoff, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Beryl Markham, billion-dollar mistake, Black Swan, Blue Bottle Coffee, Blue Ocean Strategy, blue-collar work, book value, Boris Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, business process, Cal Newport, call centre, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, Columbine, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, David Brooks, David Graeber, deal flow, digital rights, diversification, diversified portfolio, do what you love, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fault tolerance, fear of failure, Firefox, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of work, Future Shock, Girl Boss, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, Howard Zinn, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, life extension, lifelogging, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, Menlo Park, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PageRank, Paradox of Choice, passive income, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, phenotype, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, post scarcity, post-work, power law, premature optimization, private spaceflight, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, selection bias, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, software as a service, software is eating the world, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, vertical integration, Wall-E, Washington Consensus, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Heinlein), The Singularity Is Near (Ray Kurzweil), Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), Stone Soup story DiNunzio, Tracy: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t (Jim Collins), The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Brad Stone) Dubner, Stephen: For adults: Levels of the Game (John McPhee); for kids: The Empty Pot (Demi) Eisen, Jonathan: National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America (Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer) Engle, Dan: Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (Esther Perel), The Cosmic Serpent (Jeremy Narby), Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda) Fadiman, James: Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story; Tihkal: The Continuation (Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin) Favreau, Jon: The Writer’s Journey (Christopher Vogler and Michele Montez), It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here (Charles Grodin), The 4-Hour Body (Tim Ferriss), The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien), Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain) Foxx, Jamie: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (James Allen) Fussell, Chris: Gates of Fire (Steven Pressfield), Steve Jobs; The Innovators (Walter Isaacson) Fussman, Cal: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez), Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates), Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History’s Greatest Speakers (James C.


pages: 788 words: 223,004

Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts by Jill Abramson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alexander Shulgin, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Charles Lindbergh, Charlie Hebdo massacre, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, commoditize, content marketing, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, death of newspapers, digital twin, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, East Village, Edward Snowden, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, glass ceiling, Google Glasses, haute couture, hive mind, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Khyber Pass, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, Paris climate accords, performance metric, Peter Thiel, phenotype, pre–internet, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Snapchat, social contagion, social intelligence, social web, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, telemarketer, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, vertical integration, WeWork, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

The two built little clapboard rooms, Jack & Jill style, in their shared loft, and as the Times noted in a profile that ran in the Sunday Styles section, they displayed the spoils from their globe-trotting exploits with Vice; Morris had cacti he’d been given by the widow of his personal idol, Dr. Alexander Shulgin, the earliest promoter of the drug Ecstasy in the science world. Photographs of psilocybin mushrooms hung on the walls. On the nightstand in Morton’s bedroom he kept the skull of an Amazonian crocodile adorned with toucan feathers, the skull of a vole, and a rubber fetus. Morton was fighting the leptospirosis he’d picked up in Venezuela, but he happily regaled the Times reporter with stories about minding the Gross Jar.