RIP Ann Shulgin, pioneering psychonaut
World-renowned American writer, activist and psychonaut Ann Shulgin, widow of Alexander Shulgin, died at the age of 91 this past Saturday, July 9th 2022. She was most famous for co-authoring, along with her late husband, two of the most important and influential books on psychedelic substances: PiHKAL and TiHKAL, which had an immense impact on the worlds of psychedelia and science.
Laura Ann Gotlieb was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1931, and as a result of her father's job as US Consul, she grew up in Italy, Cuba, Canada and the USA, where she studied commercial art in San Francisco before marrying, becoming a mother and working as a medical transcriber in hospitals. In 1978 she met Alexander Shulgin (Berkeley USA, 1925), a Californian professor, chemist and psychopharmacologist who went on to become her fourth husband when they married in 1981 in a backyard ceremony. She already had some experience with psychedelic substances, most notably DMT and Peyote, but together their shared passion for the psychedelic took them on a fascinating and unique journey together.
Alexander Shulgin, or Sasha as he was known by many, had for years worked for Dow Pharmaceutical, developing and synthesising chemicals for various industrial or pharmaceutical uses, for example, the pesticide Zectran. His success in this field allowed him the luxury of being able to experiment with other molecules that interested him, such as mescaline, leading him to develop many different psychedelic compounds. These substances were very popular among the San Francisco counter-culture and when, in 1965, a particularly potent hallucinogen was traced back to Shulgin, he was released from his contract with Dow and set out on his own personal research project.
Sasha and Ann would spend their time synthesising new compounds in the laboratory and testing them out with a small, trusted circle of friends, taking careful, qualitative notes about the entire experience. The couple even devised a systematic way to classify the effect of the various substances, known as the Shulgin Rating Scale. The results of these experiments on the synthesis, bioassay and dosage of hundreds of new and exciting psychedelic compounds were so interesting that Sasha and Ann formed their own publishing company, Transform Press, to self-publish the work that was being carried out and documented by the couple, as a way to disseminate the information to the public but also to safeguard their valuable research from potentially being destroyed by the authorities and lost to the world.
Their first book, PiHKAL - A Chemical Love Story, was published in 1991 and detailed their continued psychopharmacological research, including developing the psychotherapeutic potential of drugs like MDMA, which led Sasha to be known as the "Godfather of Ecstasy". The title, PiHKAL is an acronym of "Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved" and the book is divided into two parts, the first being a fictionalised recounting of the couple's life together while the second part deals with their experiences of 179 different phenethylamines or psychedelic compounds, including detailed instructions for their synthesis and dosage. Many of these compounds are illegal in much of the world, so this book obviously found plenty of fans among home-chemistry enthusiasts seeking mind-expanding adventures!
This hugely successful book was followed in 1997 by TiHKAL - The Continuation, and this time the title stood for "Tryptamines I Have Known And Loved", with psilocybin and DMT being the most famous tryptamine compounds, alongside the dimethyltryptamine often used in Ayahuasca brews. This second book in the series followed the same format as PiHKAL, with the first section being a fictionalised autobiographical accent of the couple's experiments and essays dealing with various aspects of psychedelics, law, politics, etc. The book's second part consists of detailed synthesis instructions, dosage advice, and bioassay results for 55 psychedelic compounds. TiHKAL was just as successful as PiHKAL and the two books are considered classics in their field, while their authors were revered as figureheads for the psychedelic movement.
The success of these seminal books also brought the couple attention of the wrong kind and not too long after the publication of PiHKAL, the Shulgin's house and laboratory were raided by the DEA and other Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies. As a result, the DEA terminated Sasha's Schedule 1 research license, which had enabled him to work with these potentially dangerous chemicals. The books themselves also came in for some heavy criticism from law enforcement officials, with the spokesman for the San Francisco DEA office stating "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". It is true that Sasha's easier, improved method of synthesis for MDMA went on to become the standard used by illegal pharmacologists the world over.
After health problems, Sasha died in 2004, leaving Ann to keep spreading the word about the therapeutic potential of psychedelic compounds. Alongside two long-time research colleagues of Sasha, Drs. Paul F. Daley and Nicholas V. Cozzi, Ann has carried on the work of the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute (ASRI), aiding and facilitating clinical research with psychedelic substances at some of the USA's finest universities, including Yale University. Her work in the field of scientific research and education continued onto old age, speaking at countless conferences and seminars, recounting her experiences and providing inspiration to an entire generation of artists, scientists and psychonauts everywhere. At this sad time, we would like to extend our condolences and sympathy to the extended Shulgin family.
