FOR DRUG PIONEERS, THEIR WAY STILL THE HIGH WAY

RESEARCH: Alexander Shulgin, 72, Who Has Synthesized 100 Or So
Hallucinogens, And His Wife Continue To Test Them Personally.

LOS ANGELES It's quite a trip to visit maverick pharmacologist Dr.
Alexander Shulgin and his collaborator and wife, Ann, at their rustic home.
It is a warm, secluded place far from any controversy over drugs.

Sasha Shulgin, as he introduces himself, is the proud godfather of
Ecstasy, the hit drug of so many raves. A respected chemist, his
relationship with the substance started long ago, in the 1970s, when a
colleague sent him the 1912 German patent for what was then a littleknown
drug called methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). He synthesized and
tested the orphan compound Merck, the drug company, had never used it
commercially and has been raving about it ever since. Three years ago,
for example, it was Sasha Shulgin's expert testimony that led Spanish
authorities to categorize it as one of the least harmful drugs.

Sasha Shulgin has invented about a hundred other mindaltering substances,
no mean feat since there may only be around 200 synthetics out there, not
counting nature's own hallucinogens psychedelic mushrooms, peyote
cactuses, toad venom and the red beans of the Arizona and New Mexico
Indians, among others. And for decades Sasha, 72, and Ann, 66, a writer and
researcher originally from New Zealand, have also imbibed psychedelics. In
the name of science, they have taken assiduous notes on their trips,
especially the benefits, ranging from increased selfawareness, compassion
or spirituality to relaxation and great sex.

Indeed, their "farm," as they jokingly call the chaotic place, has been the
site of years of radical group research. After they had worked up a new
mindexpanding compound, they would bring in eight or so fellow believers
from physicians to psychologists, scientists to businessmen to test it
and record their reactions. Until recently, however, the Shulgins were
barely known beyond the world of governmentcontroled psychopharmacology.

For more than 15 years, Sasha Shulgin held a rare government license
allowing him to study and synthesize illegal drugs. He has testified as an
expert on both sides of drug trials and wrote the classic reference book on
U.S. law and drugs, "Controlled Substances: Chemical and Legal Guide to
Federal Drug Laws." Then, six years ago, and to the dismay of the
authorities, the Shulgins declared their love of psychedelics and belief
that all drugs should be legal.

Adamant that their life's work should never disappear, they published a
landmark book, the 1,000page, oddly titled "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love
Story." The acronym stands for Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved, and
refers to a drug family that includes Sasha Shulgin's beloved and already
illegal Ecstasy. It contains recipes for 180 mindbending chemicals and
notes on the "highs," often with artistic references and Ann Shulgin's
Jungian take on the experience. "PIHKAL" gained a cult readership, although
the recipes are gobbledygook for amateurs. In its third print run, it has
sold more than 21,000 copies, which is remarkable for a selfpublished book.

The Shulgins are now in the news again. To the fury of drug officials on
both sides of the Atlantic, they have just published a second book,
"TIHKAL: The Continuation," which covers the tryptamines, from toad venom
and psychedelic mushrooms to LSD. In the first month, they sold 3,500
copies through their Transform Press in Berkeley, a figure boosted by a
rave review in New York's Village Voice. At a certain point, they say they
will simply publish it on the Internet as they did with "PIHKAL." Their aim
is not to make money but to release the psychedelic genie from the bottle
by dissemination their knowhow irreversibly. They give copies out, only
asking you to pass them on to others who might be interested. "It can't be
exterminated now," says Sasha Shulgin.

Perhaps it's not surprising that the late Timothy Leary said the Shulgins
are among the century's most important scientists. And Albert Hofmann, the
inventor of LSD, is a friend with whom Sasha Shulgin cowrote the
introduction to a 1977 book on hallucinogens by Aldous Huxley titled
"Moksha," from the Hindu term for spiritual awakening.

Druginduced states, argue Sasha and Ann Shulgin, are so intrinsic to human
nature that the use of intoxicants such as tobacco, opium, cannabis, coffee
or alcohol can be traced back to the dawn of time. They advocate legalizing
all drugs, addictive or not. It should be a matter for personal choice,
they say, something that is taxed but as available as tobacco and booze.
Drugrelated crime would drop, drugfighting money would be saved and drug
use might even fall without the attraction of illicitness. The only laws
needed, Sasha says, would be to prevent people driving when high, drugging
someone else without their permission, or giving substances to children.
Drug users who get into trouble should be helped, not treated like
criminals, adds Ann Shulgin, as are people addicted to valium or alcohol.

Has this argument become truly prophetic, a muchneeded,
scientificallyinformed salvo in a onesided debate? Perhaps spiritual
awakening, relaxation and chemical freedom should be within everyone's
grasp, especially since life is so harsh. Or is the Shulgins' view
wellintentioned but idiosyncratic advocates? After all, William Burroughs,
trying to kick heroin, tracked down the psychedelic ayahausca in South
America in the hopes of substituting a new addiction. The "yage" ceremonies
were like nightlong raves. But he later asked if dropping acid is like
opening a door: Once you've found it, why keep reopening it over and over?

On a sunny afternoon, the Shulgins serve sandwiches and cake on their
patio. In the middle of the table, next to the potato salad, is a Bolivian
cactus growing in a pot. It's hallucinogenic rather than decorative,
something you learn is true of almost every plant within a stone's throw of
their house.

Sasha Shulgin's pharmaceutical calling came in Liverpool, England. Two
decades before the psychedelia of the 1960s, his epiphany had nothing to do
with the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." He
was in the U.S. Navy and had been whisked to hospital for an emergency
operation. "Goofed up" on Royal Navy rum, morphine and barbiturates, he
says he was given orange juice and was so convinced he was being
redrugged, he fell unconsciousness for too long.

"It was the ultimate placebo effect," he recalls excitedly. "I got
interested in how you can modify the mind, how you can find out what's
going on."

For years, Sasha worked as a scientist at Dow Chemica, although he had
taken a psychedelic, mescaline, back in the 1950s. "I saw colors I had
never seen before," he says.

Ann, who experimented with mescalinelaced peyote at around the same time,
adds: "It opens up doors you wouldn't even know were there otherwise."

What about bad trips? I ask. "Oh, they're real," he replies. "Even in the
research group, we'd have idiosyncratically sensitive people."

The war on drugs, he says, is a waste of money, more to do with political
control, profitmaking and fear of the unknown than medical or social
concerns.

A few days later, we talk on the phone. The Shulgins are excited about
reports from a forum for police on "more pragmatic approaches" to substance
abuse at the conservative Hoover Institution, at Stanford University.
Former Secretary of State George Shultz and Nobel economist Milton Friedman
had told the police that America's war on drugs is a failure that has led
to massive, cruel imprisonment, innercity destruction and widespread drug
gangs that thrive on high profits and violence.

For all their shamanistic talk, the Shulgins have experienced the war on
drugs firsthand. Twice in 1994. U.S. agents searched their home and lab."
The authorities fined them $25,000 and made Sasha Shulgin relinquish his
drughandling license.

Sasha estimates he has ingested 200 or so psychedelics not of his own
invention. And he has invented 100 or so psychedelics, some potent enough
to get street credibility or to be used by maverick psychotherapists
2CB, DOM or STP, the nowillegal DOB and DOI.

Ethical and sincere in his beliefs, Sasha Shulgin tried them first on
himself, as did Hofmann with LSD and Salk with the polio vaccine. With a
subversivesounding chuckle, he makes a final charming quip: "Oh, so many
drugs and so little time."