Goodbye to Sasha Shulgin, Godfather of Psychedelics | Hacker News Reader

Goodbye to Sasha Shulgin, Godfather of Psychedelics

alumni.berkeley.edu

263 pointssbilstein63 comments

This really bothered me in an article remembering a man who spent most of his life studying and trying to raise awareness of psychoactive chemicals:

> Ecstasy, known as MDMA

It's MDMA (the chemical compound 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) that's usually known as "Ecstasy", but many other chemicals are also sold as "Ecstasy" as well.

Very few people die from MDMA overdose, or even the effects of MDMA, but that doesn't always extend to the other chemicals sold as ecstasy[1] - I was at the Warehouse Project opening night last year where a guy died and several others were put in induced comas because they were supplied with PMA rather than MDMA[2]. Whether or not you agree with using psychoactive chemicals recreationally, any misinformation can be dangerous to the people who will use them. I feel this error should have been caught by the editor.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#Purity_and_dosage_of_.22e... [2]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24314997

Typically ecstasy is MDMA pressed in pill form together with an amphetamine, although as you noted MDMA is often changed out for some other 'research chemical' that is cheaper to source, and sometimes very dangerous.

Yet another obvious reason to legalize all recreational drugs...

'Typically' seems unlikely to me. I am not up to speed (no pun intended) on drug manufacturing/distribution, but years ago I wrote a psychopharmacology meta-study on the topic and most research I remember found that 'mixtures' or 'cuts' with two 'mainstream' active drugs were very uncommon due to increased costs and independent value. Most often, the active ingredient would be wholly substituted or mislabeled.

Perhaps that's changed, but it seems far more likely that cheaper substitutes would be used (ephedrine, 'research chemicals', etc).

PMA ? what the actual fuck, whoever did this deserves a slow and painful death.

For the record, the nickname of the drug PMA is 'Dr. death'. very easy to OD on this shit.

This stuff happens quite a lot. And yes they do deserve a slow and painful death.

From what I understand, PMA/PMMA is what you get if you start with (relatively easy to source) anisole rather than the controlled MDA/MDMA precursor safrole. Then you have a product that you might be able to sell, maybe, and if you tell people anything you tell them it's "extra strong" or some other crap.

And yeah, when batches of these things come to market, kids die.

Of course, the reason safrole is more controlled than anisole in the first place is that it can be used to make MDMA, which is both safe and effective as a recreational drug.

It is rare to be able to pinpoint a experience as a life-altering event in one's life. It is even more unique when one can trace the experience to the work of one individual.

Dr. Shulgin's work directly and positively effected profound change in many lives. He was a uniquely talented chemist and thinker, and his genius will be sorely missed.

"There are no casual experiments."

An extraordinary man, both in personality and genius. If you haven't watched the documentary about his life yet, I highly suggest it: Dirty Pictures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5q1bBVzDpc

This man is an inspiration for a coming generation of scientists whose love of knowledge and truth should not be discredited because of their willingness to experiment with life and reality. He knew the chemistry and made it beautiful.

His work is also discussed at some length in Mike Power's Drugs 2.0, it's an interesting read.

FTA: "He loved puns, palindromes, limericks and wordplays."

When my friend was shooting part of Dirty Pictures, he texted me to say "I just exchanged dirty limericks with Shulgin!"

HN thread from when he passed away (early June 2014; he was known as Sasha & Alexander): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839226

> Sasha […] originated in countries of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe as a diminutive of Aleksander and Aleksandra.

There's a strange hypocrisy or at least contrast in view on his wikipedia page.

In a paragraph it mentions his work with the DEA, his seminars and reference books. Immediately below he's photographed in an erowid t-shirt and talk about his experiments with friends.

Every time I read an article or have a discussion even remotely related to this topic I feel like I have to fight back the urge to go into rants and platitudes. Even the path to effective decriminalization of marijuana (and perhaps later some psychedelics) through medicinal use is enraging.

It's like ending race based slavery on the grounds that the majority of slaves have some white ancestry.

He was doing experiments that you can only do with a special permissions grant from the DEA. A chemist, he was bestowed with the rights to house and manufacture the chemicals that are on Schedule I (no source, sorry) and later, when it was more convenient for the DEA to discredit him, they drummed up some phony test results showing slightly elevated levels of mercury in the ground around his lab, and used this as an excuse to destroy his lab and revoke his certifications.

I never heard of this person before he died, but I did read about him after that, and he was no friend to a tyrant, let me assure you. Spend some time reading other sources about him if you are really interested, I'm sure the Wiki article as they tend to do paints both pictures, but I think you'll find very few (individual) people with a single mind about him that didn't like him a whole lot.

Here's a favorite thing from that last year or so of his life: http://teafaerie.org/2013/02/456/

There a wizard you know of needs a retirement plan?

Is he considered the Godfather of Psychedelics because he was a chemist? I've read a lot about Timothy Leary and John Lilly who have also done a lot about psychedelics but I've never seen them referred to as Godfathers. Yes, they were psychologists and not chemists but I think that doesn't diminish the value of the research they've done. Don't want to make this sound as a rant but rather try to understand the criteria behind such... titles.

in writing pihkal and tihkal he earned the title.

Timothy Leary wrote "The Psychedelic Experience" in 1962. Aldous Huxley wrote "The Doors of Perception" in 1954. And I guess there are many other books on psychedelics which I haven't read.

But still it's a chemist, who earned the title by writing a book about psychedelic chemical compounds and their effects, but which is not as... psychologically deep as other books (some of which have been written almost half a century ago) on psychedelics.

Sasha discovered whole families of psychedelics, and increased our knowledge of them exponentially (IMHO). He deserves the title.

That said, my Goddaughter has two Godfathers, so why can't psychedelics? I would honour Albert Hofmann with the title as well.

Completely forgot about Albert Hofmann. Yes, he absolutely deserves the title.

entirely untrue. do your homework.

sasha almost exclusively synthesized compounds that were already in the academic literature. he reproduced others' work and gave minimal attribution.

Please provide references.

even better, how about you name the compounds he "discovered" and demonstrate that they were not the subject of prior work.

maybe i should write a book about a whole bunch of stuff other ppl did, not give proper attribution, then demand that people prove that i did not invent it.

If it's that well known that he just copied other's work, please provide some references. You're clearly the expert here, so why not use that superior brain of yours to share some information with us mere mortals?

One of the first things they teach you in high-school philosophy and reason is that it's exceedingly difficult to prove a negative. (Maybe it was a Jesuit school.)

If you can prove that God does not exist to satisfy a crowd of people, then you are indeed a powerful philosophizer. But for me to show that God does exist, all I have to do is show you all God once. It should be much easier for me, right? So why don't you get off your armchair if you know so much and find the requisite one example to show, since you say that none of his work is original it should be easy.

Pihkal is(/was?) banned in Australia.

I knew some folks there in the late 90's that would order Pihkal and other banned books from the States (via Amazon.com, IIRC) and it would be a point of pride if your books slipped past customs and ended up on your doorstep.

I saw one of them (maybe Tihkal?) on sale in a shop in Melbourne recently, not that that means much.

Super guy. Check out PiHKAL and TiHKAL for some good reads.

I had the opportunity to meet him a few years back. Very nice dude.

Do all the psychedelics you can.

Irresponsible advice.

Learn about them, and experiment with them if you want to, and research what the hell it is you're getting into before you do it.

Psychedelics are not magic, they're drugs.

Do all the research about psychedelics you can first, though. Trips are always easier to handle if you know what's happening!

http://erowid.org

On this, Alan Watts offers some sage advice: "If you get the message, hang up the phone."

But be careful, know what you're taking and do your research. Psychedelics are very powerful drugs. If you use them correctly you'll have a good experience overall but in the same light things can and do go wrong

But first start with something less harmful but which could have similar effects. e.g.

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

Rather, if you think you can handle the psychedelics, do the classical psychedelics.

Are you referring to LyesD?

Or maybe you mean the organics brought into being by what some would call the original Godfather ;-)

Americans taking credit again... lol.

"MDMA was first synthesized in 1912 by Merck chemist Anton Köllisch" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#History

I'm reminded of a line by another American (a statistician): "But when I invented it, it stayed invented."

Synthesized - yes.

But Alexander Shulgin extensively synthesised, tested and documented - both the process and the psychedelic effects of - thousands of psychoactive compounds.

Your point? Merck & Bayer have done exponentially more work than that - and they invented it. Reading this article it sounds like he invented it. People have been drinking the bread juice, or eating the mushrooms for millennia and writing about it. Reading this article, it sounds like he started some sort of drug movement. Discos were around before him. Sure, he did a lot of work in the area, but he gets a lot of credit for things he didn't do.

Next you'll be telling me Americans made the first flying plane, or made the first working digital computer, the transistor, or invented the wheel?

This is a misleading article from an academic institution.

>> he gets a lot of credit for things he didn't do.

He found and published multiple, relatively simple synthesis routes for some pre-existing substances and many, many psychoactive substances that had never been seen before. He pioneered exploration into their effects and he shared the knowledge with the world, despite the censorious wishes of worldwide governments and law enforcement.

That makes him pretty unique and special in my book.

In that case, I'd be interested to read their literature around MDMA and compounds of the 2C-X variety.

>> ...pioneered the use of psychedelics for self discovery and synthesized MDMA (commonly known as Ecstasy) in the 1970s and some 200 variations in his lifetime

>> He is credited with introducing MDMA to psychologists in the late 1970s.

Who's taking credit for the initial synthesis?

You realize that the main article is essentially an obituary, right? Show some respect.

i know i'm going to get downvoted, but illumen is completely correct.

there is nothing so american as downvoting the truth.

As an American, I'm not going to downvote you.

I'm just going to make a mocking post that notes that "wrapping yourself in the truth" doesn't insulate your lies from the light of morning, whether you're American or not.

For the record, I'm not downvoting you for your opinion. I'm downvoting you for being a smug nationalist.

And there is nothing so arrogant as filling a thread with aspersions about the man without providing any sort of reference other than your own repeated assertions. You come across as a contrarian troll.

it's not slander, it's the truth. someone else discovered and tested MDMA many decades before sasha, but he is credited with "discovering" the compound.

1. I didn't say it was slander, I said you come in casting aspersions without references, which you have

2. The article doesn't say he discovered it, I didn't say that either, only that he introduced it to psychiatrists.

So what exactly are both of you talking about with taking credit?

(for reference I'm not american either)

A great popularizer of psychedelics - a real-life Walter White. To his credit, he doesn't shy away from the fact that some people never return from their trip. That happened to my cousin.

Walter White was a greedy asshole in a fictional story.

Sasha Shulgin was a true hacker with a great heart in real life.

You realize that Walter White is an anti-hero; a tragic figure not to be emulated... right?

But to your second point, yes, HPPD[1] is a serious condition.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percept...

No... he is the furthest thing from Walter White.

it is sad to hear that sasha passed, he was a great man. he did a lot of really positive work for expanding the public's knowledge of hallucinogenic compounds, mainly 5HT-2A agonists of various varieties.

that said, he is typically over-attributed as being the 'godfather' of this field in an academic context when nearly every single compound he synthesized was originally synthesized and researched by someone else. there are thousands of researchers from the pharma industry and academia who spent huge parts of their adult lives just synthesizing a few of these compounds who often receive zero attribution for their life's work. knowing this, i find it rather offensive that an academic institution would provide such a trumped-up tribute to sasha shulgin.

oh, and for the record, a lot of the syntheses in tikhal and pikhal have _intentional_ omissions and errors, which makes those texts mostly useless from a synthetic standpoint.

>> there are thousands of researchers from the pharma industry and academia who spent huge parts of their adult lives just synthesizing a few of these compounds who often receive zero attribution for their life's work

Similarly to Nursie, I'm interested in knowing where you learned this piece of information.

I have been researching Sasha's work for months now, reading PiHKAL, interviewing his wife, attending his memorial, talking to his supporters etc... And not once have I heard mention of this. Yes, Shulgin is the GODFATHER of Psychedelics because MDMA was originally synthesized in 1912. But Timothy Leary himself called Sasha one of the century's most important scientists. Dozens of respected scientists and academics attended his memorial in support of his work. I don't believe that his role in introducing psychedelics to the wider world is "overly attributed" at all.

Check NYTimes Mag profile on the guy http://nyti.ms/WG8wFS

"Shulgin has been credited with jump-starting today's therapeutic research, but he prefers to play down his role. While heartened by the MDMA studies and happy to play psychedelic elder statesman, he insists that he is not a healer or a shaman but a researcher. Asked why he does what he does, he replies, ''I'm curious!'' He is most animated when describing the feeling that accompanies the discovery of a new compound, no matter what its properties. Sometimes he compares the moment to that of artistic creation (''The pleasure of composing a new painting or piece of music''), and sometimes it sounds more like a close encounter of the third kind (''You're meeting something you don't know, and it's meeting something it doesn't know. And so you have this exchange of properties and ideas'')."

>> oh, and for the record, a lot of the syntheses in tikhal and pikhal have _intentional_ omissions and errors, which makes those texts mostly useless from a synthetic standpoint.

I've never heard this said before. Can you be more specific or point to a reference I could read on this?

just like most people who are sasha fanboys, you obviously have zero domain knowledge on this subject.

try them out yourself, see what happens.

No, it doesn't work that way. When you make a claim, and someone politely asks for a source, you don't get to go "LOL ur dumb" and think that constitutes a reply. "Try it yourself" doesn't work either, since I'm sure you didn't do that. Only crackpots get angry when asked reasonably to show their work.

In what world is that a reasonable response to GP asking you for a reference for further reading?

I don't have access to equipment or precursors.

I'm still waiting for a reference. I'm genuinely interested.

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