THIS MAN HAS INVENTED MORE THAN 80% OF THE WORLD'S
KNOWN HALLUCINOGENIC DRUGS

This Man Has Invented More Than 80% Of The World's Known
Hallucinogenic Drugs, Has Had More Than 4000 Psychedelic Experiences,
And In 1967 Created The Drug Ecstasy. Meet Dr Alexander Shulgin,
Groundbreaking Scientist And Explorer Of The Human Mind

It seems rather appropriate to meet Doctor Alexander Shulgin, a man
who has spent most of his life creating and consuming hallucinogenic
drugs, high on a mountain.

Shulgin, whom Timothy Leary called "one of the most important
scientists of his generation", lives with his Antipodean wife, Ann, on
a steep Californian hillside a few miles from San Francisco, that
former bastion of free love, acid trips and tie-dye T-shirts.

In his lifetime, Shulgin, now 81, has been canonised by chemists and
chastised by the police, invented a groundbreaking insecticide,
written two groundbreaking books, invented more than 80% of the known
hallucinogenic drugs in the world and, by his own admission, had more
than 4000 psychedelic experiences.

He is also one of the people responsible for the emergence and
popularity of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, the drug more commonly
known as ecstasy. As a result, he often finds himself accused of being
responsible for all the deaths related to the popular rave drug.
During our rambling and, at times, slightly surreal, interview over
lunch at his house, this is the only subject that makes him and his
wife become overtly defensive. When I ask if Shulgin himself still
takes ecstasy, his reply is surprising.

"No," he says firmly. "It's illegal and I don't use illegal
drugs."

The jolly, white-haired and bearded chemist, who resembles a rather
malnourished Santa Claus after several nights on the tiles, claims he
has always been motivated by a higher purpose than just getting high.

"My art is being able to make new compounds that can be used as tools
in new ways," he says picking at a piece of quiche on the long wooden
dining table in his photograph-cluttered dining room. "I'm exploring
these areas to develop tools for study of the mind. The purpose has
always been that, in time - probably not in my lifetime - people would
have access to these materials and actually go into the mental process
to try to work out the mechanism of the human mind. Not the brain, but
the mind."

Shulgin's own mind is still working well. His body may be failing him
- - "I'm virtually blind in my left eye and my teeth are falling apart"
- - but his brain is fully functioning and, throughout our interview, he
only occasionally fails to recall places rather than people or the
complex names of chemicals.

But why the specific interest in the continued creation of psychedelic
drugs rather than in creating drugs which could lead to a cure for
cancer or make you more intelligent?

"I don't buy the smart-drug classification," he says. "I've seen no
evidence in my own exploring. And I'm just totally fascinated by where
psychedelic drugs can take the mind."

Initially, I'm not convinced this isn't just a rather grand way of
justifying a trippy, hedonistic lifestyle made possible by Shulgin's
unquestionable genius when it comes to concocting and altering
chemical compounds (he holds more than a dozen patents for different
drugs and unique methods of synthesis). But it becomes clear during
our interview he is equally, if not more, fascinated with tinkering
with chemicals than in simply taking them.

"Primarily, it is about the conversion of a structure," he tells me.
"It's a fun process and it's tremendously fascinating." He is more
animated when speaking about the details of how he managed to alter a
drug to change its effect than when asked about the effect those
changes had when he tested the new compound on himself. In fact, for a
man who has had so many psychedelic experiences, his stories of his
'trips' are disappointingly dull, while listening to him talk about
experiments and chemical structures and hearing complex chemical names
trip excitedly off his tongue is thoroughly entertaining.

"Chemistry is a music form to me," Shulgin says and, for the past 70
years, he has been composing at a rate Beethoven would have been proud
of. Shulgin, who stands just over six feet tall, was born in Berkeley,
California, in 1925, the only child of his Russian father and American
mother.

"I got interested in chemistry very early," he tells me with his
pleasant yet protective wife hovering nearby and continually adding
food to the table. "They had these little chemistry kits with test
tubes and you add this to that and it goes red. I had one in the
basement and I loved the idea of using things that were not in the
set."

His love and aptitude for the subject deepened and he was accepted
into Harvard University at the age of 16 to study chemistry.

"I hated it," he reveals. "All the kids had wealthy parents and I
didn't. It was a centre of snobbery and they teach chemistry very
rigidly. They never teach it for the fun of it."

Shulgin joined the navy as a way out. At the end of the Second World
War, he returned to California, got his PhD in bio-chemistry from the
University of California, Berkeley, and went to work for Dow Chemical
in the area of synthetic chemistry, where his natural ability allowed
him to shine. He predicted that, with a few alterations, a seemingly
inactive chemical compound Dow were close to abandoning could be made
'active' and transformed into a neurotoxin.

"I predicted it and (the end result) was a new compound," Shulgin says as he
gets up and shuffles slowly out of the room. He returns a few seconds later
and hands me a small box labelled 'Zectran: Snail, Slug and Bug killer'. It
is the first commercial product Shulgin invented; a powerful but
biodegradable insecticide which Dow manufactured and sold around the world.

Ann, seeing the package, says proudly, "Oh. They offered him carte
blanche after that."

"They said, well if you can predict this sort of thing, then why don't
you just work on whatever you want to work on," Shulgin says, sitting
down again. "Well, that was when I had my first mescaline experience
and the answer was what I wanted to work on was producing analogues of
mescaline."

Mescaline is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound. It is found
in certain cacti, but can be synthesised in a laboratory. Although it
has been famously devoured and written about by people including
Hunter S Thompson and Aldous Huxley, the side effects can include
nausea, dizziness and diarrhoea. Yet devotees claim the hallucinations
and the new thought processes make the experience worthwhile.

Shulgin says not only did he enjoy his first mescaline experience -
"it was an eye-opening revelation" - but "it gave me the direction I
wanted to go in my life."

Needless to say, Dow Chemical weren't thrilled at the thought of one
of their employees making derivatives of mescaline and trying them out
on himself and a close group of friends but, as Zectran was a global
success and as Shulgin's credentials were truly impeccable when it
came to chemical innovations, they suggested he carry on working for
them - but from home.

As Shulgin started to research and create psychedelics in earnest, he
discovered there weren't many active compounds out there.

"At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only two
psychedelics that were known - mescaline and marijuana," Shulgin tells
me. "In 1950, there were about 20 - LSD, analogues of LSD, two of
three phenethylamines, amphetamines which were psychoactive, DMT, DET,
and four or five tryptamines. Coming into this century, there were 200
known psychedelics and by 2050 you'll have 2000."

I'm still not sure I know for what genuine purpose or function and
Shulgin only reiterates: "The primary legitimate use will eventually
be research into the function of the mind."

Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, Shulgin devoted most of his time
to creating hallucinogenic compounds but claims he didn't party with
the legendary hippy crowd in San Francisco.

"I knew a lot of them but I didn't hang out with them," he says,
stroking his beard. "My direction was something different. I was
creating new things and having the time of my life doing it. All they
were doing was consuming things which had already been created. I
wanted not to get into the habit of using one thing with any
regularity as that would jeopardise my search for new things."

Shuglin also vowed he would never sell his wares. "Very early, I fell
into a very good philosophy which is that I don't sell drugs," he
says. "There is no such thing as a completely safe drug, so if you
sell drugs and someone gets hurt you are involved. I stay out of that."

What has made Shulgin so unique and notorious, celebrated by some and
reviled by others, is that every time he has modified an existing
psychedelic drug to create a new one, he has published his notes, in
effect the 'recipe' for the new drug as well as details of the effects
it is likely to have and at what dosage levels.

His work has aided both the police and those who make and sell illegal
drugs. While drug pushers have been able to follow Shulgin's recipes
and sell the compounds he has created, the police have been able to
use his work to break down substances they have found and determine
whether or not they are - or should be - illegal. The US Drug
Enforcement Agency's western division nurtured a relationship with
Shulgin and have used him several times as an expert witness in trials
(the head of the division became such good friends with Shulgin that
Shulgin asked him to the best man at his wedding).

Shulgin has never been arrested but his back-garden laboratory has
been raided twice by officials. The first time, after samples of
unrecorded drugs were found in his possession, he was asked to pay a
fine and give up his Schedule 1 licence which allowed him to possess
illegal narcotics for research purposes. The second time nothing
illegal was discovered.

I'm keen to see the laboratory where so many of the world's
hallucinogenics have been distilled into existence. I have visions of
a spotless white room with neatly arranged test tubes and unfathomable
diagrams on smooth walls behind a large, locked steel door. When
Shulgin finishes eating and leads me out to his 'shed', the reality is
so far removed from that image, I think the aging alchemist must have
slipped one of his concoctions into my drink.

Nestled against the hillside and at the end of a narrow path leading
from the back of the Shulgin's expansive bungalow, lies a tatty,
one-room building with broken windows and a scruffy door with rusty
hinges.

"Be careful of the broken glass," Shulgin says as he escorts me
inside. "The squirrels get in and knock over everything." I think
Shulgin must be joking but I immediately see he is telling the truth
as smashed glass vessels and fresh animal droppings are visible all
over the acrid-smelling room.

He doesn't do much work in here these days, spending most of his time
in his office working on a new book - an encyclopaedia of all known
psychedelics. The lab, with its exposed girders, chemical condensers,
crucibles, brown bottles, dirty floor and open drawers filled with
tubes and vials and glass pipettes, has obviously seen better days.
Behind this shed, slightly higher up the hill, is another one-room
building. Shulgin leads me there, unlocks the door and reveals a sight
that would cause any chemist to start salivating.

Free-standing shelf units are filled from ceiling to floor with myriad
different sized and shaped, clear and brown, black-capped bottles
containing liquids, powders, and solutions - a dazzling Aladdin's cave
for chemists.

"This is my chemical store room," Shulgin explains. "I must have
between 10-15,000 chemicals in here."

None of the bottles contain anything illicit, it is only when various
contents are mixed and prepared in the right way that illegal
substances can be created. In 1967, using a mix of the ingredients in
the store room and preparing the product in his then pristine lab,
Shulgin re-synthesised MDMA, the drug now known as ecstasy. "I was
curious," Shulgin tells me. "It was a virtually unknown chemical and
no-one had pursued it."

MDMA had been patented by the drug company Merck in 1912 but only as a
step in a process, not as a compound in and of itself. In the 1960's,
Shulgin became aware of some tests that were being conducted using
MDMA.

"I was told it was being looked at as a stimulant," Shulgin reveals.
"But the answer I was given was that it was not a stimulant, it's
something different. I re-synthesised it in the lab."

Shulgin had been told that, rather than act as stimulant, MDMA made
people very relaxed and lose their inhibitions.

"I tasted it and I was quite amazed something could be that capable of
making you drop your barriers and your borders," he says. He thought
it would be a good drug for people in psychotherapy.

"It is such a beautiful thing for psychotherapy because you open up
that awareness not just between you and your therapist, but between
you and yourself. You begin acknowledging your own thoughts," he says.
Shulgin doesn 't mention whether or not he started dancing.

He gave some samples to some psychologists who tried it and took it
with their patients. Its supposed benefits became apparent very
quickly and it was used legally in America, including for the
treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, until it was declared
illegal in 1985.

I ask if Shulgin ever imagined it would become a popular, if
occasionally fatal, street drug and spawn a whole culture of music and
dance.

"No, not at all," Shulgin says as we walk slowly back to the house. He
says that once he had passed samples on to friends who were
psychiatrists and they started using it with their patients, his
involvement with MDMA was over.

"I just watched as a casual observer," he tells me.

"Sasha's not responsible for it or for what happens," Ann says
defensively, using her husband's nickname. Shulgin folds his arms.
Over the past decade, numerous journalists have either asked Shulgin
if he feels responsible for anyone who has died from taking the drug,
or unilaterally convicted him in newsprint for being the architect of
the ecstasy explosion. The questions and accusations obviously rile
the libertarian couple.

"I've not done anything illegal," Shulgin insists. "I invent the drugs
and it's up to the law writers to make them illegal. My desire is just
to find new things."

But does Shulgin believe people should be free to take
drugs?

"I think there is no reason to have general drug laws except to
protect children, to prevent people giving other people drugs without
their knowledge and to prevent driving while under the influence of
drugs. These are the drug laws that it is valid to maintain."

With those exceptions, Shulgin believes people should be free to
consume whatever drugs they wish, whenever they wish.

"I believe all these materials should be yours to explore, to try, to
know," he says. "The illegality of drugs is one of the incentives for
many people to use them."

Like so many pro-drug advocates, Shulgin believes crime would drop and
quality would improve if narcotics were legalised. I suggest one set
of problems would just be replaced with another and vulnerable people
would be more at risk because of ease of access.

"Let me ask you an adverse (sic) question," says Ann. "Probably the
one human experience that is responsible for more deaths, suicides and
murders is falling in love and having the love affair break up. How do
you protect vulnerable people from falling in love?"

Our serious discussion is turning somewhat frivolous and Shulgin seems
for the first time slightly fatigued, so after a short pause I ask him
if he can remember his best drug-induced experience.

"I got into a bliss state once," he recalls, a little livelier now we
have changed tack. "It was a power trip. There was a package of cement
that was upside down and I looked at it and said, 'Other side up', and
it turned over. Maybe there was some visual hallucination along with
this, you know - but that's what I could do. I had total control over
all aspects of everything."

I'm not sure that after more than 50 years of experiments, simply
believing you have managed to flip over a bag of cement without
touching it is a great pay-off but, as Shulgin continues to talk
passionately about his work, I don 't doubt he genuinely believes he
is doing something for the benefit of generations to come rather than
just for Generation X.

I ask, of all the drugs he has invented, which one is he most proud
of.

"The next one is probably the best one because it's never been made
before," he says. "And, by definition, it can't be illegal." He
laughs, an impish grin seems to take over his face and there is a
wickedly knowing and mischievous twinkle in his eye. Then again, maybe
I'm just seeing things.