Alexander Shulgin has died | Hacker News Reader

Alexander Shulgin has died

erowid.org

590 pointsinfinity135 comments

I had dinner with him once at a conference; he was amazing. When asked about the safety of self-testing novel substances (he of course starts at insanely low doses, but still), he said that he's learned to identify the signs of grand mal seizures, and if he feels one coming on, he simply sticks himself with a couple hundred miligrams of phenobarbital, straps himself in, and goes for a ride. Then he gets back to work.

That's awesome.

Why?

I'd venture that it's because "he said that he's learned to identify the signs of grand mal seizures, and if he feels one coming on, he simply sticks himself with a couple hundred milligrams of phenobarbital, straps himself in, and goes for a ride. Then he gets back to work."

How is it not awesome that someone can detect and prevent a major infirmity with such nonchalance and grit?

"How is it not awesome that someone can detect and prevent a SELF INFLICTED major infirmity with such nonchalance"

A bit like being impressed by a surgeon's ability to fix up his own femoral artery when he deliberately shoots himself in the groin.

Hmm, it's a fine line...

sure if the surgeon had shot himself as part of an experiment that would teach the world something. the line - and the observation frankly - look pretty thick otherwise.

Where can I read about the fact that he decided to give himself grand mal seizures?

start with pihkal and tihkal; they discuss his methodologies.

I imagine that obtaining those books might get me put onto a certain government list or two based on what I read at Wikipedia (but thanks anyway! ... just kidding - I don't really know :)

> In 1994, two years after PIHKAL was published, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raided Shulgin's lab and requested that he turn over his DEA license. Richard Meyer, spokesman for DEA's San Francisco Field Division, has stated in reference to PIHKAL "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," suggesting that the publication of PIHKAL and the termination of Shulgin's license may have been related.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIHKAL#Impact_.26_popularity

MDMA may have been discovered in a Merck laboratory, but Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin devised an excellent DIY MDMA synthesis that could be attempted outside a laboratory environment. Shulgin has been accused of intentionally designing his MDMA synthesis in ways that may have reduced yields, but which utilized precursors that were simpler to obtain by DIY chemists.

Shulgin's decisions to facilitate DIY may be responsible for the proliferation of MDMA, which will only increase in importance as MDMA is given more attention in mainstream psychological research. As a psychologist myself, I suspect Shulgin's gentle subversion (a spirit that persists through PiHKAL and TiHKAL) will ultimately be viewed as a heroic act that brought attention to an important therapeutic tool.

Amazing, thanks for sharing. I wasn't aware of this fact. Discovering MDMA a few years ago has had nothing but positive effects for just about everyone I know and knowing that he was using his expertise in order to help facilitate that is just so (so) cool.

I'll admit I don't know much about this, but Sam Harris says that while he had good experiences with MDMA in the past, he warns people against it now because the evidence is clear that it's a neurotoxin.

This is still very (very) much in dispute.

You will find serious scientific evidence on both sides arguing for and against, but since three beers floors me the next day and completely destroys my ability to think clearly, where MDMA refreshes and revitalizes pretty much every mental and sensory organ, I'll just go with my own findings on the matter :)

This is the article I always like to post whenever the discussion comes up:

"Pure MDMA can be 'safe' for adults", says BC's top health official http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pure-ecstasy-...

...And this video from 60 Minutes ("Ecstasy Rising") pretty much describing the demonization of MDMA as an elaborate government frame-up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNpFqJcJcps&feature=kp

The article doesn't mention the neurotoxicity issue at all.

The fact that you enjoy taking it doesn't mean that it is not a neurotoxin, just as the fact that I enjoy a martini doesn't mean that alcohol is not carcinogenic.

Again, not my area of expertise, but I think it's notable that a neuroscientist with a rational attitude toward drugs who recounts his own positive experiences with MDMA says that he wouldn't take it now specifically because of what he claims is conclusive evidence that it kills nerve cells.

It's a benefit vs risk scenereo. But the verdict is still out.

MDMA is (as the great man showed) just a small part of a whole family of compounds. It's no doubt a very magical part, but it's just one of many.

IIRC there are others that have been found to have similar action but without the neurotoxicity. MBDB was one I think.

Personally I'd love to try EVE and EDEN too... but that's a pipedream in a world where it's rare you can ever know what you're getting.

It might be rare to know what you're getting, but that doesn't preclude you from utilizing various drug testing services that will test what you have and let you know the results.

Eve (MDEA) was quite an amazing experience, though (as always) lacking in a certain quality that MDA/MDMA have.

The ones that have similar action (though subjectively don't really come that close) are the aminoindane-class analogues. They're interesting in their own right, too.

Which ones?

MDAI is odd and not all that much fun (on its own at any rate), and AFAICT from reading various forums, 2-AI and NM-2-AI don't really seem to do much for people either.

I don't have a citation to hand, only my recent discussions about this, from someone that should equally know what they are talking about:

The neurotoxicity has been demonstrated in rats, but at a dose that would be fatal in humans. Rats have better tolerance of the effect that mdma has on thermo-regulation and this allows the neurotoxic effect to manifest.

If you gave a dose to a human that was sufficient to kill nerve cells, you would kill the human.

Like I said, no citation to hand (someone else maybe??), but this is food for thought I think.

This can happen that some particular difference between species makes inferring risk of a molecule inaccurate. The real LD50 of nicotine is probably a good bit higher than thought now, but we can't just go poisoning people to really find out so we rely on animal models.

I suspect that MDMA and related are somewhat physically harmful but is it more neurotoxic and has a greater addictive potential than legal drugs like alcohol? I don't think so.

yup.

As you say, when it comes to the brain, there is only a modest relationship between how things feel and what damage is being done to neurons. Neurons themselves do not feel pain, so it is quite possible that you could take drugs that severely damage your brain without feeling their effects. Conversely, headaches and hangovers reflect irritation of the tissue surrounding your brain or of the nerves leading to it. While in some cases a headache can reflect a serious problem that affects or could affect the brain itself (e.g. meningitis), in most cases headaches don't imply damage to the central nervous system.

I am a neuroscientist (in training, at least, in a subdiscipline that's only somewhat related but does occasionally involve drugging monkeys). There is good evidence that frequent use and probably even rare use of MDMA is bad for brains. Neurons don't necessarily die, but axons disappear. It is not clear that rare use of MDMA can cause lasting cognitive impairment in humans.

While DrugMonkey is sometimes a bit of an asshole, I don't find much fault with his assessment of the current state of MDMA research in this post: http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey/2012/07/25/single-ora.... Note the caveat in the comments: although MDMA is probably neurotoxic, it is still not clear that the neurotoxicity translates to behaviorally meaningful deficits. There exist studies that have shown such deficits, but there also exist studies that have not. Most studies are correlational; I have yet to see a longitudinal study that provides convincing evidence that MDMA itself is a causative factor.

Here is what Shulgin himself said about MDMA in relation to "brain damage":

    "The "permanent brain damage" is based totally on studies done with
    experimental animals, with the findings extrapolated to encompass the
    human subject. In a simple statement, there have been no studies in man
    that have indicated brain damage.

    The "holes in the brain" is an even more outrageous deception. These
    popular holes are areas in brain scans that appear less active in
    attracting radiolabelled agents that are agonists for certain receptor
    site areas. The pictures that are shown for comparison are not of the
    same person with or without MDMA in them, but of different people, one
    of whom has used a lot of ecstasy and the other one without any such
    history. The quintessence of this line of mythology is an article that
    appeared recently in the Willamette Week.  It not only assured the
    reader that there were holes generated by serotonin loss, but that they
    became flooded with dopamine (the default neurotransmitter) and, being
    attacked by hydrogen peroxide, produced rust.

    Sorry, drug warriors. No damage, no holes, no rust."[1]

Granted, that was from an interview in 2001. For more recent research see erowid[2], and simonster's post later in this thread.[3]

I would personally be far less concerned about the neurological/mental effect of ecstasy itself than the purity and identify of whatever passes for ecstasy.

This is a very unfortunate effect of the drug war: it makes everyone less safe.

If drugs were legalized, they could be regulated and their purity and dosage could be reliably labeled, just as currently legal drugs are in your neighborhood pharmacy, and people dying because of counterfeit drugs would mostly be a thing of the past.

[1] - http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/adsarchive/brainhole...

[2] - https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/mdma_neurotoxicity.sht...

[3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7842632

"(with 100 mg) I had weighed correctly. I had simply picked up the wrong vial. And my death was to be a consequence of a totally stupid mistake. I wanted to walk outside, but there was a swimming pool there and I didn't dare fall into it. A person may believe that he has prepared himself for his own death, but when the moment comes, he is completely alone, and totally unprepared. Why now? Why me? Two hours later, I knew that I would live after all, and the experience became really marvelous. But the moment of facing death is a unique experience. In my case, I will some day meet it again, and I fear that I will be no more comfortable with it then than I was just now. This was from the comments of a psychologist who will, without doubt, use psychedelics again in the future, as a probe into the unknown."

http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal020....

Please note that these extended comments in Pihkal are not based on personal experience by Shulgin, but from letters he received from other persons. His approach to testing new substances has been a very careful (scientific) one - you will barely find any reports like this in Pihkal/Tihkal among his own comments

Ah, I had no idea - thanks for the correction.

Either way, it's a lovely passage.

While some of the commentary is not from himself or Anne, some of it was.

I believe the quoted experience was not Alex Shulgin's though.

Some of the most amazing moments I've had in life were on MDMA. I'm sure this is true for hundreds of millions of other people who've taken it. This substance has revolutionised our word in many ways - music, fashion, art, architecture, etc.

Apart from MDMA, Shulgin has synthesised, experimented with and wrote about countless substances and plants which affect the mind or spirit.

A great explorer, and from what I've read, a great human being as well.

Rest in peace & Keep exploring ;)

http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal020....

Can you provide some context for this link?

there are more suited places to talk about things like this, but since the OP was talking about MDMA and mentions "countless substances" - this is quite a nice one

https://www.google.de/#q=shulgins+favourite+drug

although you could argue that synthesising and experimenting with unknown substances might have been his real favourite thing

“There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”

RIP Shulgin, a singular being.

It's a great shame.

I recommend the "Dirty Pictures" - a documentary about his life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5q1bBVzDpc

thanks for sharing the link

Today I work in IT security- in my former life, he was a great inspiration.

I had almost forgotten him..... I was in a closed circle of psychonauts, we where about 60 people.

We would get our hands on the most exotic substances and share amongst us, and compare trip reports.

It was my entire life, 2cb,2ci,2c-t7,2ce,DIPT,5-meo dipt, lsd etc. So I have tried many of hes creations, and i idolised him. Then in 6 months 4 of the group died, 1 suicide, 3 ODs(not on any of shulgins creations of course). Then I quitted, dropped all my friends, started taking life seriously....

But I have one thing to remind of that time in my life...a book I inherited from one of my now dead friends:

http://i.imgur.com/S2pCuux.jpg

He actually wrote with Shulgin himself, doing experiments using cactusses injected with ummm...some variety of DMT I think- to make the cactus metabolise it into something else. Shulgin adviced him, and my friend did the experiments.

RIP DEX! RIP SHULGIN!

Unrelated, but your book collection is old school.

They all represent periods of my life :)

>Enterprise Java with UML

Man, if I were you i'd have gotten back into the drugs at that point. (I kid)

well...then c,c++, then learning to code secure-then reverse engineering and exploit writing- it kinda makes sence, dosnt it?

It does actually. That looks like a great bookshelf to me.

Don't have my copy handy, but iirc TIHKAL mentions growing mushrooms with DMT in them?

I think you're confusing N,N-DMT (commonly referred to as DMT) with either 4-PO-DMT (psilocybin) or 4-HO-DMT (psilocin). _Very_ different substances.

Sasha did write a blog article stating that psilocybin mushrooms would selectively 4-hydroxylate tryptamines. It's one of those reactions that plants can do very selectively quite easily, but if you try to do in a lab, it's difficult to prevent hydroxylation at other sites.

E.g. (well, not a real example, but the idea of the reaction). You could put DPT in the growing media of mushrooms, and get 4-OH-DPT in the mushroom.

Keep in mind that you could put DMT in the media and get 4-OH-DMT, but that would be pointless, that's what the mushrooms make anyway!

Aha, that's what I was thinking of. I believe it's mentioned in passing in TIHKAL.

It's a pity about your friends, so I get your decision and am sorry for your losses. I don't see why taking occasional trips means you can't take life seriously though. I still live a normal life and like to occasionally try out stuff.

On that note, I finally got to do some 2cb, 2ci, and 2ce about 2 years ago. Amazing stuff.

It isnt really the drugs...it is everything else that comes with it, the people, the illegal trades, the raves....

And I am getting old, I need my 9 hours of sleep to performance max! :)

But I havent said "I will never take X drug again"

I just havent felt like it :)

ohhh, and the Bromo Dragonfly episodes.....

That also played a part....none of my close friends died of it, but people at raves i went to did....

That is kinda none releated- I havent thought about that part of my life in years...and I can look at it more...umm..neutral now.

I remember I was at a rave, deep in a forest, an none announced secret rave- and this was playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BgMxgwkfu8

I was tripping balls on 2cb, everything was moving, there was string art, people was dancing and where happy.

Then at the beach i see an ~ 8 year old girl crying, I go to her and ask: Why are you crying little girl? "I cannot find my mom" WTF! I was not in any condition to act responsily, but that was wrong, and not good! So I lift the little girl up, and go to the "dance stage" and yell out "WHO KNOWS THIS LITTLE GIRL?!?!?!" And I do not know how long I did that, it was a weird night and i was tripping balls. But finally an ~30 year old women with pink hair and glowing clothes says "Hey, that is my girl what the hell are you doing with her" I should have said: "What the hell are YOU doing with her? This is not a place for such small girls, and you fucking left her at the beach to go dancing- what the hell is there matter with you????" But all I said was "Take her......", and I went to the beach pretty shocked and confused...that wasnt really a good night.

Anyway, my pointe is "I am too old for that shit!"

Jeez, yeah, I could see how having a few of those experiences might make you want to take a break. Some people can't be trusted to be responsible. I've been pretty fortunate with the groups I've been with.

Memories are starting to come back...

Alot of shit happened that do not mix with my new life...

Two of my close friends where busted for having secret illegal chemlabs- and a huge investigation followed. Alot of my friends where talked to by the police.

Today the police is a client of mine....

And alot of my friends never progressed in their development- i needed to move on. It isnt the drugs, it is the subculture that is the problem...it is wonderfull, lots of great people- but...you know :)

Anyway, my point is, it isnt the fact that I dont do drugs that means I am taking life seriously. It is that i cutted off that part of my life, the people, the mindsets, the illegal aspects of many things involved in that life.

That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

The BBC obituary on Shulgin[1] calls him the "Godfather of Ecstasy"[2], but he was far more than that.

He synthesized and carefully chronicled the effects of hundreds of psychoactive compounds on himself and a small, dedicated core group of explorers of human consciousness.

His efforts were published in two massive, definitive tomes called PiHKAL[3][4] and TiKHAL[5][6], the titles of which stand for "Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved" and "Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved", respectively.

These volumes contained detailed chemical synthesis instructions for the compounds he created, along with "trip reports" and ratings[7] of the compounds' psychoactivity, ranging from:

PLUS / MINUS (+/-) "The level of effectiveness of a drug that indicates a threshold action. If a higher dosage produces a greater response, then the plus/minus (+/-) was valid. If a higher dosage produces nothing, then this was a false positive."

PLUS FOUR (++++) "A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a 'peak experience', a 'religious experience,' 'divine transformation,' a 'state of Samadhi' and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug's intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end of, the human experiment."

His chemistry lab was DEA-licensed to handle "illegal" (scheduled) compounds, though he often synthesized entirely novel compounds which were not scheduled because neither the compounds nor the laws scheduling them existed yet.

Shulgin tirelessly educated the public and the law-enforcement community on the effects and value of psychedelic and psychoactive compounds, and wrote a highly informative Q&A column.[7]

Shulgin's pioneering work inspired generations of chemists, self-experimenters, and explorers. He was well known, loved, and respected as one of the most highly accomplished psychedelic chemists in history. His presence and guidance will be deeply missed.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin

[2] - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27676669

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIHKAL

[4] - http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal.sht...

[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIHKAL

[6] - http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal.sht...

[7] - http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/blg/index.html

I'm glad i'm getting the news through a mutual friend like Erowid, and not the media. The BBC is responsible for labeling his empathogenic 2c-b as one of the most dangerous drugs there is. [1]

While 2C-B has actually been one of the most loveliest, caring and care-free drugs I've ever used in a responsible dose and many of Shulgins trials will undoubtedly confirm.

Shulgin has thaught us that we should have freedom inside our body and mind, and that there are responsible ways of exploring the depths.

BBC has taught me to never pay attention to U.K. news when it comes to the things they are obviously clueless about and don't care of getting their facts straight, just some tabloudish headlines..

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/11/six-in-hospit...

I don't know if you're aware, but the site you linked to (The Guardian newspaper) has nothing to do with the BBC.

It always annoys me how drugs are blamed by the news outlets whenever ignorant people use them irresponsibly. (Is it a news item when someone drives their car recklessly and injures themselves? Almost never, unless they're of some notoriety.)

I grew up in the UK, the media loved sensationalizing a drug death. 1 pretty white girl dies from water toxicity while on ecstacy (AKA not a drug overdose, a death due to lack of information on safe usage), whilst organizations like MADD are fighting like crazy to reduce the daily manslaughter caused by people knowingly and irresponsibly using alcohol.

When one of the big scandals was going on I remember there was an advert on TV warning against binge drinking. The advert was this girl saying how her and her friend were out at a club, her friend was staggering about so they went back to her apartment because she was closest. They laid on the bed and went to sleep, she woke up the next morning and her friend was ice cold. Dead, choked on her vomit in her sleep. The UK has almost 9000 deaths a year related to alcohol.

The UK in 2011 had 6 deaths where ecstacy was a possible contributing factor. Drugscope is an interesting if skewed view.

http://www.drugscope.org.uk/resources/faqs/faqpages/how-many...

I also read before that the majority of "ecstasy deaths" are actually a cocktail of substances.

There is a huge problem currently with xtc-pills containing PMMA[1] in Europe. Also a lot of the deaths are during festival peak season. Overheating and as often a response drinking too much can cause critical health issues. This just shows how providing free tests at party's, more honest and thorough education etc can safe lives.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-Methoxy-N-methylamphetamin...

An amazing man. Truly the Copernicus of his time: persecuted for his pursuit of science. In 100 years, this man will be considered one of the most important neural science researchers ever.

Persecuted by whom? He had a DEA schedule 1 license, meaning he could pursue whatever research he wanted, and he was seemingly universally loved by everyone who knew who he was.

The DEA eventually got upset with him and took away that license, raided his house, and ruined his lab. In the end, they closed him down based on a single reading of slightly elevated mercury levels in his yard. Read his books.

Wow, I did not know that. That's nuts.

Although it sounds like he just violated the terms of the license: http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/shulgin_alexander/s...

Yeah, well, they'd never bothered him until he wrote 2 books that contained the recipes for making lots of psychedelic drugs. Shortly after publishing these books (TIHKAL and PIHKAL) the DEA came down on him. In his book he writes that it was very, very clear someone had basically flipped the switch at the DEA and said "shut him down any way you can." The fact that it was the mercury readings in his soil points to the fact they were grasping at straws, especially because they took dozens of soil samples and only one was mildly above normal limits. The DEA was pissed at him for disseminating knowledge, and after they took his license, he basically stopped doing chemistry full time.

"The Shulgin Rating Scale is a simple scale for reporting the subjective effect of psychoactive substances at a given dosage, and at a given time. The system was developed for research purposes by the American biochemist Alexander Shulgin and detailed in his book PiHKAL"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shulgin_Rating_Scale

PLUS FOUR (++++) [...] If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end, of the human experiment.

How many people can say they've altered the course of human conciousness? What a hero. RIP.

MDMA is growing more and more popular as we speak, quickly replacing cocaine's position as the most popular party drug in my experience.

His biggest contributions are probably yet to be seen tbh, an entire generation is growing up alongside them

MDMA is a party drug that longs to live a straight life.. see the video I posted elsewhere in this thread.

Aye. Everything I've read seems to suggest that the various mental malfunctions I have would be greatly improved by occasional, monitored uses of MDMA, but I'm rather apprehensive about even approaching such a thing due to the fact that it is schedule one. It's a complete and utter shame that the DEA is clinging to now-discredited research as to why even research on the chemical shouldn't be performed.

Occasional, unmonitored use changed my life for the better no question about it, and I still feel that way even though I haven't touched it in years. I can't think of another drug that I could say that about.

If you're waiting around for the DEA to decide to write you a permission slip then you may end up waiting for the rest of your life. The government probably views this drug as the most dangerous one in existence and I'll try to explain why:

MDMA seems to have the power to help people heal psychological wounds and come together despite their differences, but that's a nightmare for a government who rather have populations remain afraid of one another, fighting with one another, and relying on the government to solve their problems. The government sees it's role as manifesting order out of chaos, and if people are not psychologically conflicted and fighting with one another then a day might come when they begin to feel that they can work together to solve problems on their own without the need for nearly as much government supervision.

My apprehension is more about finding a good quality source than about the actual legality. Given that so much MDMA is cut with meth, and that I have pretty hardcore social anxiety problems, I don't want to have to look around for a good source. I want the benefits of quality control that a legitimate market would bring.

Also, the monitored usage thing is more about finding someone capable of guiding me to talking about various traumas and stuff that trigger me in my day-to-day life. I've had bad experiences in the past of being the person to guide someone when trying to deal with their own demons, and have triggered my own in the process. I want someone I can trust, but is a relative neutral third party, who I can trust to guide me and help start to heal some deep-seated wounds. This is hard given the current framework, and something I do deeply want to help with my own healing process.

Well finding pure MDMA can be problematic but it's certainly not an insurmountable problem if you take your time and research it well. While it's true that there is a fair amount of "cut" product and even fake product on the market the DEA's own statistics do show that a large and growing percentage of seized "ecstasy" is testing pure, so statistically speaking you're more likely to find pure MDMA on the black market today than at any time in the past. With that said you do have to be careful. There are ways to rule out the presence of certain contaminants such as methamphetamine, you might try purchasing a kit which provides certain chemicals that test for the presence of methamphetamine and other contaminants:

http://www.raveready.com/MDMA-Ecstasy-Testing-Kit-p/dansacc....

(I'm not vouching for the above kit in particular, do your own research in this area)

If you feel like you need a third party to be there with you then maybe you do, each person is different. I will say that MDMA isn't like a psychedelic where you definitely want to have a "trip sitter" present, it's a much more controllable experience.

In my opinion MDMA may feel mystical, magical or sublime; but it doesn't feel weird. MDMA "provides a centering experience, rather than an ego diffusing experience" (Dr. Philip Wolfson).

If you decide to go ahead without one then let me advise you to try it outdoors in private setting, perhaps near a lake, or a mountain top, somewhere with a view where you can roam about enjoy yourself. If you have a significant other then I highly recommend taking it together. This drug is perfect for couples therapy.

In sum, it must makes you feel more of what is good and most pronounced from within. For deep psychotherapy you may need a guide, but to simply explore it you don't. That said, you do want some friends (and a record player) around because, well, that's what its for :)

Even reading a book for too long can feel "weird." And when you can't stop reading until the 6-8 hours is up, that could be a problem if you're in the woods on your own or something.

If you think you might need someone with you, you should probably have someone with you. These things can become self-fulfilling. Taking powerful drugs when in a state of (acute) apprehension or anxiety is not a good idea.

Obviously it might well be fine, by all accounts the stuff does tend to make you feel good, but doing any unusual activity for the first time on your own is very different to doing it with someone who's done it before.

This is MDMA we're talking about... not psychedelics. I've known people (SWIM and all that) who have taken it purely to abort a bad LSD trip. Pure MDMA is not going to produce anxiety. You can even be fairly functional on it, depending on the dose.

There are plenty of "I really wish this was over" drugs, and MDMA simply isn't one of them.

Nothing is that straight forward. It does happen: http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.cgi?S=3&C=6&OldSort=RA...

Even anxiolytics can cause anxiety/panic attacks if they have a paradoxical reaction.

It should also be noted that there are services that you can mail a sample to, and they will lab test it and publish the results for a reasonable fee.

There is good cause to believe that MDMA will be legalized for therapy of ptsd. Veterans from iraq and afghanistan have ptsd in huge numbers, and it's expensive for the government. There are studies indicating it's highly effective in treating ptsd.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/29/5664700/ecstatic-states-md...

I respectfully disagree on the reasoning for keeping these drugs illegal. The most likely motivation is as a tool for population control -- look at who was targeted in making cannabis illegal and then how Nixon used the War on Drugs as a weapon against those hippie anti-war activists.

With significant brainwashing, many people today fear these drugs as directly dangerous, not as a mind opening tool.

Try asking people if they think LSD should be legal -- I bet a majority will say no.

I myself think that all drugs should be legal.

I don't like the idea of lumping all "drugs" together. I don't like it when the government does it and I don't like it when well meaning individuals do it. While I generally don't approve of the practice of men with guns threatening violence to those who would ingest certain plants I do think that of all the drugs known to man LSD makes the strongest case for some form of restriction.

I think that perhaps it alone should be restricted in the same way that access to plutonium is restricted, with the aside that individuals who would like enough for their own personal use should of course be granted (free) access.

You see the problem with that particular problem child is that enough LSD to dose every man woman and child on earth could be produced in a single lab and held within a coffee cup which makes it uniquely dangerous as a weapon of mass oppression if it were to fall into the wrong hands. Also the fact that you can't easily test a substance for LSD increases the liklihood of individuals being exposed who did not wish to be exposed.

Therefor the risks that it will be used as a kind of weapon against unsuspecting populations is too great relative to other drugs. I'd also like to point out that LSD doesn't seem to universally help people in the way that responsible amounts of MDMA (and arguably cannabis) does.

I don't think there is a justification for the restriction of other psychedelics that don't have these risks of weaponization such as various mushrooms, cactai, certain vines, etc.

LSD is not unique in being of that sort of potency. There are several other related ergoloids that are of similar potency (though usually a bit less).

Some of the psychedelic amphetamines fall into this category too. Many have doses in the sub-1mg range. Some exotics (Bromo-dragonfly) are not only effective in the same dose range as LSD, but last several times as long and are far more toxic. The LD50 of LSD is quite forgiving as I understand it, with BDF it is not and people have died.

There are other substances that border on poison - carfentanil is an opiate used to stun elephants and is active in humans at the 1ug range.

I also dislike the catch-all term 'drugs', but LSD is not entirely unique in its potency.

wonders never cease, thank you for the information.

There are even opiates that are in that realm of potency: some of which are an order of magnitude stronger!

> You see the problem with that particular problem child is that enough LSD to dose every man woman and child on earth could be produced in a single lab and held within a coffee cup which makes it uniquely dangerous as a weapon of mass oppression if it were to fall into the wrong hands. Also the fact that you can't easily test a substance for LSD increases the liklihood of individuals being exposed who did not wish to be exposed.

How the hell would you use LSD in that way "for oppression" or "as a weapon"? The main effect seems to be to cause uncontrollable giddiness and happiness.

The British Military actually tried to use LSD as a weapon. This was the result when they tested it against soldiers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX7m4fqTLKU

Needless to say, the "weapon" potential was quickly dismissed.

Edit: Here's a US equivalent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUQNqIIGN88

In short, LSD causes people to disregard authority, act chaotically and unpredictably, lose their ability to follow orders.

It's also highly volatile so likely to backfire on the people administering it, causing them to get high too.

From more direct experience, I can also say that LSD causes you to re-examine fundamental beliefs in quite an intense way. Not at all what you want to use on a population you want to control. In fact, if you were a dictator trying to retain control of an oppressed population, you should probably do everything in your power to avoid mass use of LSD in that population.

The details of how such a substance could be weaponized and how such munitions may have been deployed in the past is a sensitive subject not well suited for this forum. A wealth of information has been made available in the past decade or two via the freedom of information act but not much of it has found it's way into the 'for public consumption' version of history. My intention was merely to reference this unique "problem" associated with extremely potent psychedellics in broad terms without dredging up references to particular incidents or organizations. You can do your own research in this area.

Also your personal experiences only apply to normal doses of LSD you have no idea what it can do to someone at extreme doses, nor are you referencing experiments where such doses were tested.

again, I'm not aruging in favor of restricting individuals from access to personal doses, I think that would be a good thing. I just don't want to live in a world where any psychopath can get his hands of billions of doses. This is not something you have to worry about with most other drugs because with most other drugs you can't produce that many doses all at once and transport it easily. I just wanted to point out that this unusual property exists with respect to LSD and it complicates matters.

Why not suited for this forum? I am interested in this information and how, if at all, it has been used by government actors.

Out of respect for Mr Shulgin I don't want to stray too far from his work towards a disturbing subject matter. In order to make my point about legalization I had to make it known that such dark areas of inquery exist, but that doesn't mean I want to expose people to such information who have not self-selected to learn more. It's not my area of expertise anyways.

I'll link you to a Time magazine article in which the author has begun to stick his toe in the water but you'll have to guide your own research from there: http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/23/the-legacy-of-the-cias...

I highly doubt the events in the article you linked are news to swombat, or any one else for that matter. The use of hallucinogens or drugs on the unsuspecting, like the military trials linked above, are well documented, but have little to do with the specific substance and more to do with the absence of morality of those involved. That is a political problem, not a pharmacological one. Were I an unwitting participant in such an experiment, I would much rather be given LSD than some toxic chemical or biological weapon. That too has been done, do you realise?

In certain parts of South America, a chemical derived from Datura is regularly used to zombify people, when they come to their senses 48 hours later, they've a hole in their memories and no possessions left. Again, nefarious people will always find a way to use the tools nature gave us for nefarious purposes.

Anyways I highly disagree with your assertion that discussing any of this, to any level of depth, would be considered disrespectful in any way by or to Shulgin. A man who dedicated his entire life to the exploration of pharmacology in all forms, such discussion is precisely the sort of thing I believe he aimed to encourage.

On the other hand, the synthesis of LSD is usually considered difficult and the molecule itself is quite unstable. So, there are already practical low-level constraints against some psychopath producing any doses (much less a billion) at once and transporting it easily.

What, if anything, has already prevented any nation-state from conducting this synthesis?

Isn't the cat out of the bag already?

Sorry, but I don't want anybody telling me what chemicals I can ingest. That should be my choice, thank you very much.

Enforcement of purity, taxation on sale, restrictions on advertising and access to children sounds ok.

> MDMA is growing more and more popular as we speak, quickly replacing cocaine's position as the most popular party drug in my experience.

It's also worth mentioning that MDMA is manufactured from Sassafras oil which comes from an endangered species of trees. There's a risk of the Sassafras trees becoming extinct because of MDMA manufacture in clandestine chemical plants in the jungles of south east Asia.

Thanks for the info. Very interresting.

I recently donned my foil hat and became convinced that safrole (the major component of sassafras oil) was banned as a food additive for being a carcinogen because of MDMA.

The study determining carcinogenicity, which would ban the substance automatically due to a 1960 FDA rule, occurred in 1977. The substance itself was not found to be carcinogenic, but two metabolites--found in rodents but not humans--were.

Shulgin began research on MDMA in 1976.

Foil hat is the best psychoactive drug.

    1976 --> 1 + 9 + 7 + 6 = 23

O__O

"MDMA" = char[5] {77,68,77,65,0}

5 characters.

77+68+77+65+0 = 287 = 7*41. 7 and 41 are the 4th and 13th primes. 13-4 = 9. The 9th prime? 23.

I'm trying to find a reference (it's out there, I promise) I learned recently that sassafras is no longer the primary precursor, and MDMA produced using it is actually somewhat rare these days.

The sassafras oil is also used to make a pile of perfume, cologne and aromatherapy products, as well as pesticides like piperonyl butoxide.

Although some sassafras oil for clandestine production of chemicals may come from such unsustainable farming, most probably comes from diversion.

Anyways, if sustainability of the source tree is the biggest issue, I'm sure most consumers would have no issues with a $1/dose sassafras tree sustainability fund contribution.

In other words, legalizing MDMA and regulating the production process could help to save an endangered species.

(What, we can't turn the propaganda around?)

Shulgin on Sassafrass and Safrole:

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/adsarchive/safrole.h...

And thank God for that. Cocaine is the most evil drug I can think of and MDMA is one of the most holy. You don't pump cartel hitmen full of MDMA and tell them to kill men, women and children, but cocaine on the other hand is just the tool. If you extend that by small degrees down to the party scene, all you get is bad news. Its the worst, most worthless, and most dangerous drug out there.

As someone that lost their mom to a (legal) opiate OD, I contest that cocaine is the most evil drug. Most all of ODs in general are opiates and the negative life effects and addiction is much higher with heroin and opiates than cocaine.

Just to clarify, by "evil" I mean, literally, that it makes you do evil things. I'm not talking about overall cost to society.

Thankfully, at least someone on the planet tried to rank the relative harms of drugs. He was, of course, not a politician, and the nearest politicians fired him from his scientific-governmental posting.

David Nutt published his rankings here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus...

Alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine topped the list, in that order.

Ecstasy was near the bottom of the list.

Quite pleased to see mushrooms down there at the very, very bottom.

Pretty sure narco-violence isn't caused by drug crazed gangsters, but by a combination of prohibition and weak/corrupt law enforcement. It's a huge industry and only criminals are allowed to participate.

I hope this is the case. MDMA brings out the best characteristics in people. Cocaine not so in my experience.

RIP to one of the true heros of our generation.

thank you Alexander Shulgin!

gone by not forgotten

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-4L5vRZ_g8

what a legend. One of the few people who actually bases their opinions of psychoactives on controlled experiences with them.

I had the incredible fortune to have met Sasha and Ann several times, and always enjoyed their company enormously. Good work, man!

Story time?

One of my heroes has died today.

RIP to a great chemist and experimenter.

The original brain hacker is no longer with us. RIP Dr. Shulgin.

That's sad to hear - Pikhal and Tikhal are fascinating works, and reading them I got the sense that he was a very kind, patient and curious person.

My favorite quotation from the man:

"How long will this last, this delicious feeling of being alive, of having penetrated the veil which hides beauty and the wonders of celestial vistas? It doesn't matter, as there can be nothing but gratitude for even a glimpse of what exists for those who can become open to it."

I believe the 'veil' he references is from this poem by Shelley (which he quotes in PiHKAL):

  "Lift not the painted veil which those who live
  Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
  And it but mimic all we would believe
  With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear
  And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
  Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear."

Whether or not you approve, this man had changed the face of human kind forever. An amazing man, will be missed

Cross posting this for Erowid:

---

We are trying to collect a record of all tweets and retweets of hashtag:

#ThanksSasha

and

#Shulgin

We want to continue to track these. So we don't want just an output, but a way to grab all existing tweets and collect them going forward.

We would also like to grab google plus matching posts as well, but twitter is the first target.

If someone has PHP and twitter experience, it seems like a pretty easy application to write a scraper that saves the data to sql, xml, or text.

We want a downloadable data file that can be updated over time.

I spent a while looking for existing tools and didn't find anything that could provide a downloadable, reliable format that we could use to try to track this.

Thanks for any help or suggestions of services that would provide that data as a lump, without having to have one of us manually slog through many, many clicks and parsing extremely obscure HTML/js.

earth

earth@erowid.org

As much as I love Erowid, I've had an impossible time trying to contact them for using their experience vault for research. I have the time and the skillset to make the application they're looking for, but I highly doubt Earth would get back to me.

It would be interedting to have 'Ask HN' about drug use, especially correlated with age.

Jobs has taken many different drugs, but I can't stop wondering how long did he continue to do so. I really doubt he did any after age of 30 or so.

Can we start a crowdfunding campaign for a museum of ecstasy with legal public samples? Anyone know German law? How would this go down in Darmstadt, where it was first discovered by Merck? I for one will donate significantly.

I haven't seen any drug samples behind bullet-proof glass yet at the Mathildenhöhe exhibition (the expressionism display only had old Merck Cocaine adverts), but I imagine it should be possible to get an exemption permit.

Not to be mixed up with Alexei Shulgin, the popular internet artist from Moscow: http://www.easylife.org/ He is well and alive.

A one of a kind, once in a generation human being.

Would somebody be kind enough to tell me whether I've been hell-banned? Thank you.

Evidently not.

Why did you think you were?

I just have been having trouble with Paul's software, and thought I was being moderated unintentionally. I forgot there's dang now. He seems kind of new to an "old timer" like me :)

Please email hn@ycombinator.com with such questions. We always answer, though not always immediately, and I hope we're always nice.

Your last comment was killed because it was a duplicate of your previous comment. We've unkilled it.

With all the praise of self-experiments (or experiments on a dedicated core group), there is this fact: we know that even a single use of a psychedelic drug may be "a life-changing experience". We also know that some substances may cause irreversible changes in the brain (e.g. glue-sniffing). So IMHO it doesn't sound like a rigorous science, who knows what changes those countless tests had caused and how those changes affected subsequent tests.

Evidently the "100% of users experience instant terribly painful hyper-death" mantra many would like to believe just isn't true.

His book is mainly case reports, but that doesn't mean that higher level evidence doesn't exist.

A true pioneer.

I believe he was a hero.

it can be amazing what a non-institutional researcher can do

WIP, there is no death

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