-----------------------[ (c) 1995 Swedish Infomania ]---------------------

                             Licensed to Thrill
            An interview with Alexander Shulgin by Jim McClellan
                         Published in The Face 1995
          Transcribed to the electronic media by Swedish Infomania

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Don't get fooled by appearances - this grizzled old scientist is the man
who first put Ecstasy on the world's 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. I've just been
asked by Ann and Alexander Shulgin 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 funky grandfather everyone probably wishes they'd
had) has been labelled by some "the stepfather of Ecstasy" (he didn't
discover the drug, but he did rescue it from obscurity, writing the first
scientific papers about it). He's certainly the world's foremost
psychedelic chemist, a man who, in order to investigate 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 won't be
surprised to learn that the special recipe in question is for Russian
hamburgers. "I tell you, if I sold this to someone, I could get rich," Ann
comments, in passing. You could of course say the same thing about some of
Sasha's "recipes". But he isn't 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, he's pursued his own innerspace
programme of hard scientific research into what he argues are wonderful
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 been
primarily 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, his
second 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 a disclaimer pointing out that, without a license, attempting to
cook up the book's various recipes is illegal, it's 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 wouldn't work has, including the terrible title."
        The book's 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. "It's a licence to possess drugs, for analysis.
So you can't extrapolate too far from that."
        As a result, he has to be careful. He's aware that he can't push
the establishment too far, one reason he adopts the approach of scientific
research and is unwilling to associate himself too closely with pop
cultural movements. He isn't a self-publicist, isn't interested in playing
the guru game Sixties types indulged in, doesn't 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 America's hallucinophobia 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:
medical authorities, was jailed and, when he died, all his research paper
were burnt. "That's just plain nasty. It's a revenge of the most ugly sort
Now working in an area which has its little shades of controversy, I don't
intend anything to be lost. So the best way is to get a book out, make it
inexpensive 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
isn't just that more people are taking more psychedelics (not just LSD and
mushrooms, but less well known substances as DMT, ibogaine, toad slime and
the leaves of the Mexican plant Salvia Divinorum). There's now officially-
sanctioned research into the therapeutic effects of LSD and MDMA, the kind
of thing that hasn't been done since the late Fifties/early Sixties. There
are also private research organisations like the Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic 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 you'll 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 aren't interested 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 the
life-changing effects of psychedelics. But now they write books rather than
trying to start a revolution. 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 have mind-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
Sixties. "I much prefer living now to then. What's happening now is very
subtle and slow. It's 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, the dramatic 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 that
might 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 his researches 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, it's the exact opposite of the cool clean spaces of
corporate-funded research and looks like the typical mad scientist's 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
it would have been happy to use his expertise, the medical establishment
would have frowned on Shulgin's research methods. He argues that the best
way to test psychedelics - in fact, the only way - was to test them on
yourself "There's no other way I can conceive of ," he smiles. "There are
real problems 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 they've known and 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 drug appeared, 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 didn't seem to be in distress (and seemed, Shulgin says,
to have drifted into a very childlike state), he couldn't hear what was
being said, couldn't move, couldn't speak.
        Though some of the group were worried, the man's wife apparently
felt no sense of panic and was certain he would he alright. "And he was,"
comments Shulgin. "When he eventually came down, he actually said he
wouldn't mind taking it again, in a smaller dose, because where he'd been
was such a fantastically novel place (apparently some kind of beautiful
beach). But there was amnesia which kicked in right away. He couldn't
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 show amnesia.
If you don't remember, in essence it's like a dream, so it doesn't have
any lasting value to you. The aim is exploring. These substances are tools
to begin looking into something".
        "We're 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 don't 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, hook up 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 you've 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 a tremendous 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 the unknown
and more into the realm of self-indulgence and escapism."
        "Escapism we're not into," adds Ann. "We're lucky enough to have
baseline lives which we like coming back to."
        Given that, Shulgin says he's fond of mescaline. "For me, it's a
first love, so I hold it very dear. I'm also very much at peace with LSD. "
        "And I'm not particularly," Ann interrupts. "With every
psychedelic, the first one to two hours I spend going through my darkside
stuff I'd rather get that over at the beginning and then go on to
integration and learning something, new ways to see yourself and the
universe. With LSD, it's great coming on but it tends to get dark at the
end. So I'm 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 person who tested it and "The Teacher" by its
developers, it's 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 I've
had. I learned a great deal from it and I don't 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."
        "You're surfing, you're surfing."
        "But you don't really have to deal with anything," Ann continues.
"With 2CE, it'll present you with one problem and it'll sit there until
you've resolved it and then it'll hit you with the next one."
        Pihkal features a chapter recounting Shulgin's particularly
intense, revelatory first experience with the drug. Grieving after the
death of his first wife (in September 1977), he took the drug while 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 his father's lap, aged two, being instructed in
the russian alphabet. "But it wasn't 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 Shulgin's substances (and another of his
favorites) is 2CB, a short-acting psychedelic which seems to produce
positive experiences, ranging from benignly colorful to full-on ecstatic,
in most people who've tried it. Shulgin says that it's particularly useful
in therapy and has at times been used in combination with Ecstasy (the 2CB
is taken at the end of an MDMA experience - "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 three samples (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 it's 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, doesn't it mean that more
people are getting a chance to experience what the drug can do? "I'm 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, it's perhaps only to be expected. In a way, the Shulgins
inhabit a kind of innocent charmed circle in which everyone is responsibly
exploring their inner depths. But elsewhere people trip for very different
reasons. They're 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
there's a middle-class tradition of "psychedelic self-realization"; on the
other, there's 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 Antarctic on 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 Country Code of
inner space, closing all the gates behind them.
        Certainly, Shulgin may be the "stepfather of Ecstasy" but he's 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 that ravers were doing ketamine when they couldn't 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 was well established long before the street discovered the
drug and the American authorities moved to outlaw it.
        Again, Shulgin looks saddened by its loss but doesn't 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 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 literature saying, '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 pair's
attitudes are mixed. Last year, they visited London and gave a speech at a
woozy work shop organized by Fraser Clarke's Evolution posse. Shulgin
confesses to being rather amused by London's zippie shock troops. "I've
never smelled so much pot in one place in my life," he laughs. "But I guess
we don't usually associate ourselves with that area of the psychedelic
world because, our desire is to get acceptance by the establishment 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. It's a different emphasis. "
        So do they see no value in hedonism at all? "Sasha and I have a
general rule which is, if you can't make love on a new material, it doesn't
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 to express enthusiasm about rave culture. "Dancing
is one of the better ways of protesting the establishment. We've been doing
it ever since we were made. It's 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 out to 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. It's beginning to be
clear to anyone who wants to look straight that it's a remarkably safe
drug. It is possible that people will say, 'To hell with it, it's 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 their
War 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 don't seem likely to declare a
ceasefire in the War On Drugs.
        "It's 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 - you're not going to
eliminate them." The only option, the Shulgins suggest, is to consider
legalisation (backed up by proper education about drugs). "It's not that
legalisation would immediately solve lots of problems. What it would stop
is the horror of putting thousands of people in jail or messing their lives
up for something that is basically a victimless crime. It would put drugs
into the medical area instead of legal, so that if a person does develop an
addiction, it's 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 their bit. Sasha says
he's going to continue to circulate information on the subject. He's
currently working on a follow-up to Pihkal, whose title may be Tihkal (as
in "Tryptamines I have known and 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 known psychedelics." 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 or anything
that has the potential of controversy, and with that degree of knowing, of
good information, are able to choose what they want to do." "It's simple
really", concludes Ann. "You can't have the freedom to take drugs unless
you have the information about those drugs". Or as Timothy Leary once said,
Just Say Know.

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