Licenced to Thrill

8/13/2019 Licenced to Thrill

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Licensed to Thrill

An interview with Alexander Shulgin by Jim McClellan

Dont get fooled by appearances - this grizzled old scientist is the man who first put Ecstasy on the

worlds mind-altering map. Quietly protesting the war on drugs, psychedelic chemist Alexander

Shulgin is pushing ahead with his groundbreaking work, legally tripping in the name of research.

A sunny afternoon in Lafayette, near San Francisco. Ive just been asked by Ann and AlexanderShulgin if I would like to try a special recipe of theirs. Now if you know a little about Alexander

Sasha Shulgin, you may be sniggering at the thought of what I may be about to receive. After all,

the white-haired goateed 69-year-old (who with his playful offbeat charm is like the kind of funkygrandfather everyone probably wishes theyd had) has been labelled by some the stepfather of

Ecstasy (he didnt discover the drug, but he did rescue it from obscurity, writing the first scientificpapers about it). Hes certainly the worlds foremost psychedelic chemist, a man who, in order toinvestigate the potentials of visionary drugs, has designed over 150 of his own, going on to test

them and carefully document their effects.

However, if you know more than a little about Shulgin, you wont be surprised to learn that the

special recipe in question is for Russian hamburgers. I tell you, if I sold this to someone, I couldget rich, Ann comments, in passing. You could of course say the same thing about some of

Sashas recipes. But he isnt interested in personal gain or pleasure. He does design drugs, but for

a higher purpose, as it were. For going on 40 years, like a one-man NASA of the psyche, hes

pursued his own innerspace programme of hard scientific research into what he argues arewonderful tools for self exploration.

The results of his researches are documented in PiHKAL, a 1,000-page tome he co-wrote with his

wife and published in 1991. The title stands for Phenethylamines I have known and loved,

phenethylamines being the particular family of psychedelic drugs whose effects he has beenprimarily exploring, a family whose more famous members include MDMA and mescaline. The

first part of the book is a thinly-disguised dual auto-biography, written by Shulgin and his wife,

which tells the story of their relationship and the role drugs played in it. (Shulgin met Ann, hissecond wife, in 1978 and since then she has been involved in his research. He prefers to be

interviewed with her and her willingness to speculate about drug culture in general nicely

complements his more careful attention to scientific and legal details. )

The second part of Pihkal is a kind of chemical recipe book, a bewildering (to the non-chemist, at

least) alphabet soup of substances with names like 2CB, TMA-6, MDMEOET, PEA and 3-TSB,complete with the details of how he synthesized them and commentaries (often humorous) on their

various effects. For what is, in the main, a chemistry textbook (though one which carries adisclaimer pointing out that, without a license, attempting to cook up the books various recipes is

illegal, its pretty readable - funny, honest, balanced and sane in its attitudes to drugs. You even get

used to the title after a while. Our editor said people would call it Pickle or even Faecal,laughs Shulgin. But everything that everyone said wouldnt work has, including the terrible title.


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The books lightness of tone obscures the fact that publishing it at all was a brave act. Coming out

into the open about his research was a rather fraught business. To get away with what he does,Shulgin pulls off a delicate balancing act, a deft dance through a variety of legal grey areas. His

knowledge about the field is useful to the American authorities and he often works as an expert

witness in drug trials. In return he has been granted a licence to analyse psychedelics. The licence

is not a licence to do what I do, he explains. Its a licence to possess drugs, for analysis. So youcant extrapolate too far from that.

As a result, he has to be careful. Hes aware that he cant push the establishment too far, one reason

he adopts the approach of scientific research and is unwilling to associate himself too closely withpop cultural movements. He isnt a self-publicist, isnt interested in playing the guru game Sixties

types indulged in, doesnt want acolytes and fans. Before agreeing to be interviewed for THE

FACE, Shulgin and his wife tested me out for about an hour or so.

Despite this, he was pushed in to publishing because of his worries about how far Americashallucinophobia might go. He mentions the example of Wilhelm Reich, the maverick

psychoanalytical scholar whose seemingly loopy theories of sexual energy led him to develop

contraptions like orgone boxes and blankets. In later life, Reich fell foul of the America: medicalauthorities, was jailed and, when he died, all his research paper were burnt. Thats just plain nasty.

Its a revenge of the most ugly sort Now working in an area which has its little shades of

controversy, I dont intend anything to be lost. So the best way is to get a book out, make itinexpensive and widely available.

While there are people out there who would be more than happy to burn PiHKAL, there are plenty

of others who welcomed it as a kind of bible. America (and Europe) is undergoing a psychedelic

revival at the moment. It isnt just that more people are taking more psychedelics (not just LSD andmushrooms, but less well known substances as DMT, ibogaine, toad slime and the leaves of the

Mexican plant Salvia Divinorum). Theres now officially-sanctioned research into the therapeutic

effects of LSD and MDMA, the kind of thing that hasnt been done since the late Fifties/early

Sixties. There are also private research organisations like the Multidisciplinary Association forPsychedelic Studies (MAPS) and the Heffter Rcsearch Institute.

Information is also being circulated via magazines like Psychedelic Illuminations and the Internet,

where you can download files on specific drugs or catch the latest tripster tales on Usenet

conferences like alt.drugs (where the current hot topic of discussion is a drug called Robo, an over-the-counter cough medicine whose brand name is Robitussin, which, if youll take it in high

enough amounts, can bring on a ten-hour trip - the active ingredient is something called

dextromethorphan hydrobromide).

The Nineties psychedelic revival is very different to what went on in the Sixties. People arentinterested in the in-your-face, blow-your-mind confrontational approach any more. The pop cult

activism of Timothy Leary has given way to a more subdued approach. People still believe in thelife-changing effects of psychedelics. But now they write books rather than trying to start arevolution. Those investigating and working with psychedelics include scientists like Shulgin and

Dennis (brother of Terence) McKenna, anthropologists interested in shamanism, maverick religious

scholars and ethno-botanists out to document the growing number of plants discovered to havemind-altering properties. Describing all this in terms of tendrils quietly and gradually spreading

throughout society, Ann says she thinks things are a lot healthier and more hopeful than in the


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Sixties. I much prefer living now to then. Whats happening now is very subtle and slow. Its

happening on many different fronts, and people are streetwise now.

It all started for Shulgin in 1961, when, whilst working as a professional pharmacologist, he had his

first experience of mescaline. To say he had a good trip is something of an understatement. In

Pihkal, he talks about being overwhelmed by detail, colour, interpretive insight and a sense of

childlike amazement. Afterwards, I realized that much of what was going on - the colour, thedramatic insight, the thought patterns, the communication with part of me that had been

inaccessible - which I had originally blamed on the drug, was actually something that I was doing

he says now. The drug was a catalyst. So then I thought, what other catalysts can there be thatmight work in a different way and bring different types of personal access and understanding?

From then on, he set out to experiment with psychedelics, in particular the mescaline molecule, to

use his chemistry training to, in his words, tailor materials that would serve in this catalytic role

without bringing in uglies such as hypertension or convulsion. For a while, he pursued hisresearches while still working for Dow Chemicals, a big pharmaceutical firm. Then in the late

Sixties, he set up on his own and built a lab at his home. (Later, he shows me round. Based in a

kind of garden shed, its the exact opposite of the cool clean spaces of corporate-funded researchand looks like the typical mad scientists lab, all curly glass pipes, funnels and glass flasks).

While working at Dow, Shulgin did do official research into psychedelics. In passing, Pihkal

recounts how at one point he was asked hy NASA to come up with a substance which would help it

test out astronauts capacity to withstand long periods of sensory deprivation. However, though itwould have been happy to use his expertise, the medical establishment would have frowned on

Shulgins research methods. He argues that the best way to test psychedelics - in fact, the only way

- was to test them on yourself Theres no other way I can conceive of , he smiles. There are realproblems involved in testing a rat for empathy or changes in self-image.

When Shulgin develops a new substance, he first takes it in miniscule doses, gradually increasing

the amount day by day, until a discernible effect becomes apparent. When he has some idea of how

the substance works, he and his wife take it with a group of friends (many of whom theyve knownand worked with for years). They compare notes on their experiences, write up reports, then move

on to the next substance.

All very orderly. However, along the way, Shulgin has had what he calls a few hairy experiences,

the worst being with a substance he calls 5-TOM. Developed in the early Eighties, the drugappeared, according to Shulgin, to be benign and destressing, enabling fantasy and visual

interpretation. While testing it, one of the male group members suffered what seemed to be a form

of neurological shock and slipped into a catatonic state. Though he didnt seem to be in distress

(and seemed, Shulgin says, to have drifted into a very childlike state), he couldnt hear what wasbeing said, couldnt move, couldnt speak.

Though some of the group were worried, the mans wife apparently felt no sense of panic and wascertain he would he alright. And he was, comments Shulgin. When he eventually came down,

he actually said he wouldnt mind taking it again, in a smaller dose, because where hed been wassuch a fantastically novel place (apparently some kind of beautiful beach). But there was amnesia

which kicked in right away. He couldnt remember anything at all.

Consequently Shulgin decided to abandon. It leans towards the ketamine experience, in which you

remember the quality of the experience but not the details. I shy away from materials which tend to


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show amnesia. If you dont remember, in essence its like a dream, so it doesnt have any lasting

value to you. The aim is exploring. These substances are tools to begin looking into something.

Were pretty focussed on learning something when we have an experience, comments Ann.

The current psychedelic revival may be a quieter affair than the Sixties mass-market head trip, but

people dont shy away from making big claims for psychedelics. They can put you directly in touch

with the spiritua realm within, can help you contact plant deities, connect to the Gaian mind, hookup with the machine elves of hyperspace at the end of time, even retune your mind to counter the

info-overload of the digital age. While you sense that the Shulgins are interested in these ideas,

publicly their position recalls pre-Sixties theories that psychedelics were useful for therapeutic self-

exploration and self-realization, for getting in touch with your self, working through your past etc.

If this sounds a bit Californian, Ann stresses that the process is difficult and challenging. If youve

done any exploring in your own unconscious with these tools or any others, you become aware that,

yeah, the demons are down there, but so are the angels. Everything is down there and if you keep

putting a lid on it and refusing to get anywhere near those components of yourself they gain atremendous amount of power, unconsciously. Our feeling is that the more that you know the better

off you are.So, over the years, have they developed any favorite tools for self exploration? Shulgin looks a

little wary. I try not to develop favorites because that takes you out of the realm of exploring theunknown and more into the realm of self-indulgence and escapism.

Escapism were not into, adds Ann. Were lucky enough to have baseline lives which we like

coming back to.

Given that, Shulgin says hes fond of mescaline. For me, its a first love, so I hold it very dear. Imalso very much at peace with LSD.

And Im not particularly, Ann interrupts. With every psychedelic, the first one to two hours I

spend going through my darkside stuff Id rather get that over at the beginning and then go on tointegration and learning something, new ways to see yourself and the universe. With LSD, its greatcoming on but it tends to get dark at the end. So Im left with this feeling of, Oh my God. I get

uneasy and instead of being left with a peaceful feeling of satisfaction, the experience unravels

itself.

Both have found a substance called 2CE particularly useful. Nicknamed Eternity by one personwho tested it and The Teacher by its developers, its a powerful psychedelic, active in small

doses (10-25 milligrams) which leads to experiences which Shulgin calls difficult but rewarding.

People say to me, that was about as rough an experience as Ive had. I learned a great deal from it

and I dont know about it but someday I may want to try it again.

Someone compared it very well with LSD, says Ann. They said LSD will present you with so

many things all going by so very fast.

Youre surfing, youre surfing.

But you dont really have to deal with anything, Ann continues.With 2CE, itll present you with one problem and itll sit there until youve resolved it and then

itll hit you with the next one.

Pihkal features a chapter recounting Shulgins particularly intense, revelatory first experience with

the drug. Grieving after the death of his first wife (in September 1977), he took the drug while


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staying in Memphis with friends over the next few hours, he swung between nihilism and

exhilaration and drifted back and forth through time, at one point finding himself sitting on hisfathers lap, aged two, being instructed in the russian alphabet. But it wasnt a matter of

remembering I was there. I was there. I was back in that body, in that weird frame of mind of a

two-year-old.

One of the best-known of Shulgins substances (and another of his favorites) is 2CB, a short-actingpsychedelic which seems to produce positive experiences, ranging from benignly colorful to full-on

ecstatic, in most people whove tried it. Shulgin says that its particularly useful in therapy and has

at times been used in combination with Ecstasy (the 2CB is taken at the end of an MDMAexperience - It is as if the mental and emotional discoveries can be mobilized and something done

about them, Shulgin comments in Pihkal).

Of course, the reason 2CB is so well known is that it is one of the few Shulgin products to have

reached the street in large amounts. A while back, Shulgin was asked by the authorities to test threesamples (picked up in South Africa, Los Angeles and Miami, of a drug called Nexus. It was 2CB.

Pretty soon use of it got so blatant that the authorities clamped down on it and its now a Schedule

One drug.

So how do they feel when that kind of thing happens? We get pretty mad, mutters Ann.

But, if 2CB does reach the streets, doesnt it mean that more people are getting a chance toexperience what the drug can do? Im still saddened in some ways, Shulgin replies, because if a

substance does get out of the realm of being a research tool and into the popular scene, it will

always eventually be abused, capitalized. Greed will always play its role.

Still, its perhaps only to be expected. In a way, the Shulgins inhabit a kind of innocent charmedcircle in which everyone is responsibly exploring their inner depths. But elsewhere people trip for

very different reasons. Theyre not interested in going on a vision quest but in getting away from it

all, in getting out of their heads as opposed to going deeper. Over here you could perhaps split

things up along class lines. On one side theres a middle-class tradition of psychedelic self-realization; on the other, theres the more working-class tradition of weekender hedonism.

Now there is undoubtedly something heroic about the Shulgins explorations. You could argue that

their travels are more daring, more relevant than the gimmicky endeavors (crossing the Antarcticon foot, etc) undertaken by the people celebrated by official culture as modern day explorers

(usually upper-class fools with a desire for self-publicity and too much time on their hands). But

they can also look a little like the genteel ramblers of the psyche, carefully following the CountryCode of inner space, closing all the gates behind them.

Certainly, Shulgin may be the stepfather of Ecstasy but hes a long way from bored teenagers

necking six tabs a night. Despite his belief that MDMA is a remarkably safe drug, he s worried by

the levels of over-consumption that take place at raves (he also looks horrified when I tell him thatravers were doing ketamine when they couldnt get good Es). Shulgin sees the drug as primarily a

psychotherapeutic tool (one of the very best, he argues) and was instrumental in introducing it to

therapist friends as with LSD in the Sixties, using MDMA as part of a course of psychotherapy waswell established long before the street discovered the drug and the American authorities moved to

outlaw it.

Again, Shulgin looks saddened by its loss but doesnt blame the early-Eighties clubbers who first

used E as a recreational drug. It had been an underground thing in the medical world, so in a sense


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the die was already partly cast. People did not talk about it or put it into the flow of medical

literature. So when it came up that it was being sold in bars, there was no voice from the literaturesaying, Hey wait, this does have a medical value! And without medical utility, it went right into a

restricted category.

As for late Eighties/early Nineties rave culture, the pairs attitudes are mixed. Last year, they

visited London and gave a speech at a woozy work shop organized by Fraser Clarkes Evolutionposse. Shulgin confesses to being rather amused by Londons zippie shock troops. Ive never

smelled so much pot in one place in my life, he laughs. But I guess we dont usually associate

ourselves with that area of the psychedelic world because, our desire is to get acceptance by theestablishment of the value of these things, not as just turn-ons and things to help you dance the

night away not so much as recreational things, but as real psychological and spiritual tools. Its a

different emphasis.

So do they see no value in hedonism at all? Sasha and I have a general rule which is, if you cantmake love on a new material, it doesnt go anywhere, Ann replies. We have our fun too, alright.

This is based on his feeling that a good psychedelic should connect you with all paths of yourself,

not divorce you from certain paths. Unsurprisingly, Ann is more willing than her husband toexpress enthusiasm about rave culture. Dancing is one of the better ways of protesting the

establishment. Weve been doing it ever since we were made. Its just that we are old fogies and we

choose not to ally ourselves with the cyberpunk crazy thing, which is very unfocused very often.

She does go on to suggest, that along with the new hemp consciousness, rave culture may turn outto be a turning point. There is so much use of MDMA and so little damage, so few deaths when

you consider the numbers, and most of those are due to hypothermia. Its beginning to be clear to

anyone who wants to look straight that its a remarkably safe drug. It is possible that people willsay, To hell with it, its being used so much all round the place.

Even so, even as some countries (Germany, Colombia, Spain) opt to take a new, more realistic

approach to the problems of drugs, others, in particular the US and the UK, opt to reinforce the

tactics of prohibition. Shulgin says he was outraged by the way the Reagan/Bush years, with theirWar On Drugs and body McCarthyism (workplace urine testing to ensure drug-free purity), edged

America closer to being a police state. And things could get worse. Though people are talking

about peace in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, Clinton and Major dont seem likely to

declare a ceasefire in the War On Drugs.

Its such a sad use of the term war, mutters Shulgin. One of the operating principles of the

military is never engage in a war you cannot win. This is a war that cannot be won. As long as there

are people, the drive for altering consciousness, for intoxication, for flaunting authority is in there

and drugs will be here forever - youre not going to eliminate them. The only option, the Shulginssuggest, is to consider legalisation (backed up by proper education about drugs). Its not that

legalisation would immediately solve lots of problems. What it would stop is the horror of puttingthousands of people in jail or messing their lives up for something that is basically a victimlesscrime. It would put drugs into the medical area instead of legal, so that if a person does develop an

addiction, its the doctor that takes care of it instead of a policeman.

Others may shout louder and adopt a higher profile, but when it comes to the war on the War On

Drugs, when it comes to injecting a little calming sanity into the area, the Shulgins have done theirbit. Sasha says hes going to continue to circulate information on the subject. Hes currently

working on a follow-up to Pihkal, whose title may be Tihkal (as in Tryptamines I have known and


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loved): The other half of the psychedelic world is the tryptamines [which include substances like

DMT] so by covering them, the two books together would present around 95 per cent of the knownpsychedelics. After that he wants to put together a proper academic reference book on mescaline

and peyote, collecting together the various research papers done over the years.

The overall aim, he says, is simple - just to give people the chance to act for themselves. I hope

that people can become educated and have the factual info at their disposal. in the area of drugs oranything that has the potential of controversy, and with that degree of knowing, of good

information, are able to choose what they want to do. Its simple really, concludes Ann. You

cant have the freedom to take drugs unless you have the information about those drugs. Or asTimothy Leary once said, Just Say Know.

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Licenced to Thrill