Alexander Shulgin in 2011

Known for:
Rediscovering MDMA
2C Family
DOx Family
PiHKAL
TiHKAL
Shulgin Rating Scale
Various phenethylamines & tryptamines

Alexander "Sasha" Theodore Shulgin[1] (born June 17, 1925) is an American medicinal chemist, biochemist, pharmacologist, psychopharmacologist, and author. Shulgin is credited with introducing MDMA ("ecstasy") to psychologists in the late 1970s for psychopharmaceutical use. He discovered, synthesized, and bioassayed over 230 psychoactive compounds, and evaluated them for their psychedelic and/or entactogenic potential.
In 1991 and 1997, he and his wife Ann Shulgin authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL, extensively describing their work and personal experiences with these psychoactive drugs, subdivided into two classes of organic compounds – phenethylamines and tryptamines. Shulgin performed seminal work into the descriptive synthesis of many of these compounds. Some of Shulgin’s noteworthy discoveries include compounds of the 2C* family (such as 2C-B) and compounds of the DOx family (such as DOM).
Due in part to Shulgin’s extensive work in the field of psychedelic research and the rational drug design of psychedelic drugs, he has since been dubbed the "godfather of psychedelics".[2]

Life and career

Shulgin was born in Berkeley, California to Theodore Stevens Shulgin (1893–1978)[3] and Henrietta D. Shulgin (1888–1960).[4] Theodore was born in Orenburg, Russia, which is just north of Kazakhstan, and immigrated to the United States in 1923, while Henrietta was born in Illinois. Both Theodore and Henrietta were public school teachers in Alameda County.[5]

Shulgin began studying organic chemistry as a Harvard University scholarship student. In 1943, at the age of 19, he dropped out of school, and joined the U.S. Navy, where he eventually became interested in psychopharmacology. In the Navy, Sasha states that through the administering of morphine due to an infection in his thumb, that he “discovered the remarkable world of psychopharmacology and, most important of all, the power of the mind over the body.” After his feel for morphine, this mind-over-matter scheme played out again when he discovered the power of placebo after downing an orange juice mixed with what doctors told him was a “narcotic” to put him out before surgery. Naturally he was knocked out rapidly by said narcotics. After surgery he found out that the white crystals he had mistaken for a narcotic in his orange juice glass was actually simply sugar granules. The brain and human psyche intrigued him to the fullest. He was astounded at how “a fraction of a gram of sugar had rendered [him] unconscious.” [6] After serving in the Navy (a veteran of World War II), he returned to Berkeley, California, and in 1954 earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Through the late 1950s, Shulgin completed post-doctoral work in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacology at University of California, San Francisco. After working at Bio-Rad Laboratories as a research director for a brief period, he began work at Dow Chemical Company as a senior research chemist.[6]
It was at this time that he had a series of psychedelic experiences that helped to shape his further goals and research, beginning with an experience with mescaline.[7]

I first explored mescaline in the late ’50s, Three-hundred-fifty to 400 milligrams. I learned there was a great deal inside me.

He would later write that everything he saw and thought "had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid … I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability."[6]

Shulgin’s professional activities continued to lean in the direction of psychopharmacology, furthered by his personal experiences with psychedelics. But during this period he was unable to do much independent research. His opportunity for further research came with his development of Zectran, the first biodegradable pesticide, a highly profitable product. Showing unusual humility in his famous book PIHKAL, Dr. Shulgin limits his pesticide days at Dow Chemical to one sentence in 978 pages. However, Dow Chemical Company, in return for Zectran’s valuable patent, gave Shulgin great freedom. During this time, he created and patented drugs when Dow asked, and published findings on other drugs in journals such as Nature and the Journal of Organic Chemistry. Eventually, Dow Chemical requested that he no longer use their name on his publications.[6]

In 1965, Shulgin left Dow to pursue his own interests, and became a private consultant, also frequently teaching classes in the local universities and at the San Francisco General Hospital. Through his friend Bob Sager, head of the U.S. DEA’s Western Laboratories, Shulgin formed a relationship with the DEA and began holding pharmacology seminars for the agents, supplying the DEA with samples of various compounds, and occasionally serving as an expert witness in court. He also authored a definitive law enforcement reference book[8] on controlled substances and received several awards from the DEA.[6]

On April 8, 2008, at the age of 82, he underwent surgery to replace a defective aortic valve.[9] On November 16, 2010, Dr. Shulgin suffered a stroke. He is expected to fully recover.[10] In December 2010, he suffered another stroke, followed by skin-grafting surgery to save his left foot from an amputation. Due to Alexander and Ann’s serious financial trouble for some years, the website at CaringBridge has been started to receive donations for paying for medical services to treat the ulcer.[11] Alexander Shulgin suffers from dementia, and his wife is now trying to sell part of their property to raise more money.[12]

Independent research

In order to carry out consulting work with the DEA, Shulgin obtained a DEA Schedule I license for an analytical laboratory, which allowed him to possess and synthesize any otherwise illicit drug. Shulgin set up a chemical synthesis laboratory in a small building behind his house, which gave him a great deal of career autonomy. Shulgin used this freedom to synthesize and test the effects of psychoactive drugs.

In 1976, Shulgin was introduced to MDMA by a graduate student in the medicinal chemistry group he advised at San Francisco State University. MDMA had been synthesized in 1912 by Merck and patented in 1912 as an intermediate of another synthesis in order to block competitors, but was never explored in its own right. Shulgin went on to develop a new synthesis method, and in 1976, introduced the chemical to Leo Zeff, a psychologist from Oakland, California. Zeff used the substance in his practice in small doses as an aid to talk therapy. Zeff introduced the substance to hundreds of psychologists around the nation, including Ann Shulgin, whom Alexander Shulgin met in 1979, and married in 1981.[6]

After judicious self-experiments, Shulgin enlisted a small group of friends with whom he regularly tested his creations, starting in 1960. They developed a systematic way of ranking the effects of the various drugs, known as the Shulgin Rating Scale, with a vocabulary to describe the visual, auditory and physical sensations. He personally tested hundreds of drugs, mainly analogues of various phenethylamines (family containing MDMA, mescaline, and the 2C* family), and tryptamines (family containing DMT, psilocin, and LSD) . There are a seemingly infinite number of slight chemical variations, all of which produce variations in effect—some pleasant and some unpleasant, depending on the person, substance, and situation—all of which are meticulously recorded in Shulgin’s lab notebooks. Shulgin published many of these objective and subjective reports in his books and papers.[6]

In 1994, two years after the publication of PiHKAL, the DEA raided his lab. The agency requested that Shulgin turn over his license for violating the license’s terms, and he was fined $25,000 for possession of anonymous samples sent to him for quality testing. In the 15 years preceding the publication of PiHKAL, two announced and scheduled reviews failed to find any irregularities.[13] Richard Meyer, spokesman for DEA’s San Francisco Field Division, has stated that, "It is our opinion that those books are pretty much cookbooks on how to make illegal drugs. Agents tell me that in clandestine labs that they have raided, they have found copies of those books."[6]

In recent years, Shulgin has worked on a series of N-allylated tryptamines including 5-MeO-DALT and 5-MeO-MALT.[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin