shulgin's topics - tribe.net

Sasha is fine again

Skywalker — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:11:44 GMT

“Sasha” Shulginhad heart surgery on Tuesday, April 8th. The surgery was done in order to replace a defective aortic heart valve. He is recovering well, and we anticipate complete recovery within two to three months.

The CaringBridge Web site is being used to keep us up-to-date on Sasha's progress. CaringBridge is a nonprofit organization that helps friends and families stay connected. Anyone can use the site to check in on Sasha, read the journal entries, and send him messages by signing the guest book. Please send all your “good vibes” and “healing energies” to him!
www.caringbridge.org/visit/sashashulgin

posted in shulgin - 3 replies

green chemistry

little lightening bolt — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:46:16 GMT

what would the likely hood of creating say for example some 2c's sustianably, in an ecologically sensative way. would the precursors be able to be made in an ecologically safe and sound manner?

i am trying to imagine green chemistry being utilized to produce entheogens... whats the possibility of this today?

posted in shulgin - 2 replies

RIP Albert Hofmann at age 102

eggchairsteve — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:26:10 GMT

Thank you Dr Hofmann, blessings.

posted in shulgin - 3 replies

movie?

Dr.Mu — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:39:12 GMT

so any word on the shulgin movie?

posted in shulgin - 14 replies

Modern Alchemy: Interview with Ann and Sasha Shulgin

Dr.Mu — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 22:22:22 GMT

Modern Alchemy: Interview with Ann and Sasha Shulgin

Modern Alchemy with Minds and Matter
An Interview with Ann & Sasha Shulgin

Bruce Eisner,
With Peter Stafford

It was almost mid-day as Peter Stafford and I made our way up the hill to a small house with - on this clear December day - a stunning panoramic view of the east San Francisco Bay complete with bridges. It is a unique home because unlike most, it a laboratory in the back. The laboratory, filled with racks and glass and the smells of sharp-smelling chemicals is the place where the experiments in synthesis that Sasha Shulgin, one of the two subjects of this interview has conducted.

The compounds forged in this modern day alchemist's laboratory are also the starting points for the two books that Shulgin and his wife Ann have been recently published, lectures they have conducted around the world and of this interview.

We were greeted with warm and genial hospitality by the couple, who were just concluding a photography session with Cliff Scorso, our art director and photographer . The photographer departed, Cliff joined us (Peter Stafford, the Shulgins and I) around the kitchen table as we ate sandwiches and talked for awhile. Then the tape machine was turned on

Bruce Eisner: You started out your exploration of psychedelics with mescaline many years ago. Can you describe some of the changes that you have felt in your life - both positive and negative - that have been the consequences of these experiences of 20 or 30 years ago?

Sasha Shulgin: Actually, Ann and I both started with the same chemical - mine was in the form of the sulfate salt - at about the same time. We both had the same guide, but we didn't know one another. It was earlier than the late `60s.

And from my point of view, what it did was change the course of my curiosity and interests -- I was going into industrial chemistry and working for industry - into wanting to do research in my own way toward my own ends. It changed my course and I am very content with this change.

B: Sasha, until the publication of PIHKAL you walked a tightrope in which you both consulted with government officials and proponents of wider psychedelic use. With the publication of that book, it appeared to me, at least, that you veered off in a direction more toward the proponents. Can you say why you decided to do this?

S: I think the main reason and justification was the necessity of coming out of the closet. From being a person who was doing a lot of research but communicating only through the scientific literature - with occasional seminars and literature - into actually communicating with people who had a keen interest without the technical background to weather the storm of chemical structures and reactions. So primarily it was a way I hoped to get a lot of the research work I had done earlier - as right now with what I am currently working on - into the public domain in a way that can't be destroyed.

I think I mentioned in one of the two books the situation with Wilhelm Reich when he got a little weird toward the end - I guess we all get weird toward the end. Bringing down rain by shooting down clouds - that kind of thing. Orgone boxes got him in trouble with the FDA because he was making medical claims for a device and they had not approved the device. And so he ended up in jail because he wouldn't go into court to answer their charges, and he died in jail.

And so the authorities burned all of his notes.

And I think for me a very good catharsis was writing this book. And you have some of the same wishes to get your expressions out.

Ann Shulgin: I think that there were very few, if any, books out which gave factual information about various psychedelics - good and bad information about dosage levels, information that we hoped will be really useful and practical at such a time when somebody in the administration, you know, gets some common sense and changes the drug laws. The anti-drug voices are all around. What we hoped to do was to get information out on the dangers - if you do so and so, and so and so - and the benefits if you use these compounds properly. I think our books speak for the benefit of the proper and educated use of these things.

S: And also, another nice outcome was that Jonathan Ott's magnificent Pharmacotheon was sitting in the wings. He was not certain about publishing at all. And the occurrence of PIHKAL in essence instigated his bringing that book forth, which might have been the start of a number of similar books.

A: I think it was. I think several people got a little courage from the fact that we did that. Of course at that time no publisher was going to touch this kind of thing - not with the recipes. And we would not allow the book to be broken into two.

S: Yeah, there are some people who say the first half was really what should have been published and the second half ignored. An equal number said the second half should have been published and the first half ignored. So by putting them together, everyone's happy.

Peter Stafford: You are one of the few chemists who have their own lab at home -

S: Oh, for fully over 30 years. A lot of chemists have their own labs, but very often they are not out in the open air where they can be seen. But I know chemists around the world who work in the basements of pharmacies or in the quiet of their attic, just because they are curious and capable.

P: I remember looking at your storehouse, which you latched with a large spoon.

S: Oh, I have a lock on it now!

B: In TIHKAL and in public statements you have described the government's obtrusive search of your lab and home, and actions toward lifting your license. In light of the government's past actions toward psychedelic proponents, doesn't the government's behavior seem fairly consistent? In other words, you have been somewhat indignant about it, but it seems to me in a way that it was something you almost might have expected.

S: They had every right to come because I had a license, and they had the right to check compliance, the right to diversion inquiry. The license was on the wall, and the welcome mat is by definition out to regulate that license and make sure that it was not abused. On the other hand, they did not seize the license. I gave it back to them. So it's not a matter of confiscation or revocation, but one of yielding in exchange for -- I yielded the license and a fine in exchange for their assurance that they would not go into civil court on the basis of regulation violation.

That's the way we brought the entire thing to closure. I think they were unhappy because the implication was that my having a license for Schedule I drugs gave me their approval for doing research toward the creation of new psychedelic drugs. It did not. But that was the impression that they felt the book had given.

Of course, I don't need a license for creating new things. And if they turned out to be convulsants or antidepressants, that's fine. Of course it couldn't be psychedelics - that would startle them.

B: So actually most of the things you mentioned in PIHKAL were done prior to the Analogs Act?

S: Oh yes!

A: Also, if you read that chapter "Invasion" carefully, you will note that I think I went out of my way to be as fair to the invaders as I possibly could. They could have really messed up this place and us, and they didn't. The only thing that became terribly obvious was that despite everything that they said, this was not about regulations. This was about a book. But it could not be legally and obviously about a book, because we're protected by the First Amendment. But that's what it was about. And that was not apparent to me for quite some time.

It just became more apparent as time went on because there were some references here and there like, "Where are your phenethylamines?"

Yeah, exactly.
I think that Washington probably discovered the book a bit late and said, "Jeez, we can't be associated with the author of this thing!" and acted accordingly.

But they were extremely polite. They were very, very well mannered. They did not go into any room that had not been already named by Sasha as a room containing drugs. They didn't even step into them. So I think they were being extremely careful - not because they were necessarily of good hat, but because I think there had been some agreement ahead of time that they would go only so far. I think that they had been told to be cautious.

We found out later through our lawyer that they were under orders to be careful.

And I think some of it was because of the now rather high profile. It's like there's a certain Nobel Prize winner who is totally open and frank about his use of psychedelics, and he hasn't been touched. They don't want that kind of trouble. But they also didn't want a court case.

B: What do you believe is the real reason behind the government's War on Drugs? What do you think are the real motives?

S: Oh, I think it is unmistakable. There's money, power and control.

B: Would you elaborate on that a little bit?

S: Sure. If you were benefiting personally from a 500 billion-dollar industry, would you yield your aspects of interaction with that industry because of somebody saying this is not a moral thing to do?

It's a monster industry. Do people think - well, how much money is spent on illegal drugs? It's a trivial detail in what is really a monster industry. Everything from the State Department to the manufacturers of things like instruments to the establishment of international trade - all these people benefit immensely from the War on Drugs. And you ask any one of them, "If you had a choice, would you dissolve the law - repeal the law --that made these materials illegal?"

And they say, "We can't afford to." They immediately start mentioning the words "child" and "children" in the following sentence. But what it is that they have lost their source of income. They have lost their source of control.

P: When Timothy Leary went in to show the warden how the rates of recidivism had dropped [due to psilocybin usage], he was taken over to the wall and the warden showed him this blueprint of this enormous new prison which was about to be constructed!

S: There are many private industries that are coming up. From prison-building industries to - what was the term that was used for policemen who are not policemen but rather private …

A: Private security.

S: There would not be any way of being beholden to any Constitutional restraint. The concept of the military getting more and more involved. There's an immense amount of the money in the military budget --the percentage of the military budget - that is involved in the War on Drugs. Because of present statements that have, in effect, revoked the applicability of the Posse Comitatus contract, which prohibits the military from involving itself in accordance with civil law. The military has no place on borders to intercept drug runners. The military has no place being on the high seas and using nuclear submarines to follow cocaine trawlers. But they do. So there's a very subtle involvement.

B: Well, the way that drugs are scheduled also seems to me to be a violation of original Constitutional principles. The fact that the government agency can actually name the drugs that it is after, and actually describe and issue an edict.

S: It's a very hazardous thing when law enforcement is in the position of writing the text of laws. The returns go from law enforcement through the Department of Justice, through Congress.

Congress modifies it according to its own needs, and amends it according to its own wonts. It gets passed, goes back to the Department of Justice, and they have a little party in the DEA. "We did it again!"
This has been proved time and time again.

B: And the Analogs Act is about as screwy as you can get.

S: Have you read it carefully?

B: Yeah. I wrote an article about it, if you remember. So I read it very carefully. With its "substantially similars" and all the different possibilities of regulating consciousness by almost anything.

In your book you have one section that I think you call "Three

Portraits" or "Three Photographs." Now you have placed yourself in that last photograph - where you are looking at all the younger people and the people who are in the prime of their lives and so forth. In a way the psychedelic world has come to that as well.
We see people bowing off the scene. The Learys. The Ram Dasses, the Grofs. Even the Shulgins are receding into the past. Who do you think are going to be the new people to replace these types of people?

A: The last thing you would want to do is name them!

S: I don't think it is a matter of replacement. I think it is a matter of a continuum. So it is not that A drops off and B takes A's role. The entire structure is a very, very strong, very dedicated minority of people, and it is a community --, as you know better than most. And that community will persist. Some will age and drop away, and the youngsters will wonder what it is, and knock at the door and stick their head in. But the community is an entity. And I believe that is very, very valuable.

A: And this kind of search has been going on for over 30,000 years. It's not about to stop now.

P: Psychedelics are definitely "winners!"
To shift the topic a bit, how many people would you guess you've taught chemistry to?

S: Many, many hundreds. I go to a meeting - this happens in Europe, in Germany, in Spain, in Austria. Wherever I happen to be.

There I'll be at the meeting and the next thing you know, after the talk is over at the side with a cup of coffee - I think one of the most common phrases I hear is, "Can I ask you a couple of questions?" The next thing you know, they're having trouble with this or with that, and they are looking around to make sure that they are not being overheard.

They might say "The difficulty is that this spontaneously turned to oil rather than solids." There is this and that. And I might say "Well, as a matter of fact, that's a decent idea." But in every country where I go, these interactions are there, and I know personally of several very active researchers who are not openly public.

A: Which is a terribly sad thing, because the information will be lost. It should be published. That's the tragedy of it.

S: Well, publishing that kind of information is seen by many as being a form of confession. That's why a lot of information that I have been told I put anonymously in these books.

B: There's quite a bit of information appearing on the Internet now. For instance, there's one repository that's put out by the Drug
Policy Foundation - they have something like twenty-five books on-line, and tremendous amounts of anecdotal stuff. You know, the Lycaeum and other places. So there is quite a bit of digitizing -

S: Oh yes! Remember, of course, that every word that appears on the Internet is recorded in the archives forever.

B: Yeah, so you have to be very careful what you say.

S: A lot of people have said, "A friend of a friend of mine, or a friend of mine, was over in Hoboken last night, and we all turned on."
That's all public information. The Internet is an open postcard.

B: Right. I understand that completely. Even more than most.

In psychology there's been a debate between the old school - which is interested in studying dysfunctional people, and which focused on the disease/treatment model - and the newer humanistic and transpersonal movements, which focus on exceptional people, highly creative people, the more productive and spiritual individuals. In descriptions of your work with your research group, and in your writings, there seems always to be an assumption of the illness/treatment/therapy model. In other words, it's always couched in terms of therapy.

If you add recreational to the self-actualization, spiritual, creativity-enhancement and therapy, you get most of the major reasons people give for the use of psychedelics. Could you first comment on your use of the therapy model, and also could you talk about the possible need for a new paradigm or model that goes beyond or is different in some way than the models that have been used so far?

A: Let me answer with "the general music of it," as Sasha would
say.
One of the reasons that I have used the psychotherapy model is because - especially in the case of MDMA - I feel that this is one of the most valuable uses of these drugs. Now most psychedelics have a duration which is just simply too long for a therapist and a patient. I mean you don't want to have a ten- to twelve-hour therapy day. But a drug such as 2-CB is only five or six hours, and that could be very valuable.

It could have been very valuable for psychotherapy. I'm not just trying to make psychedelics appear to be in the mainstream of science or medical practice because they never were accepted by the average physician. But I did practice therapy, as a layman - I trained myself for a year, learned a great deal, and then I worked with someone else who was a very skilled hypnotherapist and we worked as a team. For two years.

The first thing I learned was that hypnotherapy is fully as effective a tool as any psychedelic. But you can use both the trance state, with MDMA in particular, to uncover buried memories, traumatic memories, or in some cases the deeper parts of the psyche which I call The Beast, or The Monster, or The Dark Side, or The Shadow. In fact, most of the work I did eventually was work with The Shadow. To me, that was the most exciting journey I have ever been on.

I don't think you would call it so much therapy as spiritual experience. Spiritual birth. The fact that it does become that makes it a very difficult thing for the average scientifically trained physician to accept, with some exceptions.

As far as recreational use is concerned, I think it is tremendously valuable. I think that the young people who go to raves all over the world tend usually to be people who are growing up in very big cities. Their usual way of surviving on the big city streets is to be paranoid, defensive, even over-cautious. They do not meet the stranger's eyes - we all know that one.

Now at a rave, they might take a low level of MDMA, or a very low level of LSD - which is what's happening now. They might take nothing at all. But the trance induced by the particular kind of music that is used at raves is also very effective.

What happens at a rave, it seems to me, is that they are able to drop that caution or paranoia. They are able to connect with strangers, feeling a remarkable degree of trust. And the entire community of people at the rave is experiencing the same thing.

They are experiencing the opening of the heart, if you want to put it that way, and a dropping of the defenses. I think that is tremendously valuable, especially for those people brought up in the big cities, which are collections of dark and dreadful energies right now most of the time. So I think all these uses are valuable, with the understanding that they must know what they are doing, and they must have information on the proper use of these things. They must be educated in one way or another - either by a pamphlet or by going to a course. I think the uneducated, uninformed use of these compounds is very dangerous, or is potentially very dangerous. And I think that if we get to the point where they are legalized or allowed, I believe that there has to be education along with that.

B: In my book I talk about raves a desire for a rite of passage. In other cultures we have this rite of passage when youth turns into adulthood, but in our culture we don't have it. In a way, this is the kind of a search that goes on. It's something like a rite of passage.

S: Possibly telling the older generation that you are your own person.

A: Which is also part of the rite of passage. "I'm no longer a small child. I'm an adult."

B: We've talked a little about 2-CB here, and you've mentioned in your lectures and some of your writings that 2-CB doesn't produce as much of what you call "elaboration" and mental noise as LSD does. That it is shorter acting, and for this reason you tend to find it more useful in therapy.

A: Put this in the past because since 1986 I have done nothing - this was all previous to the Analog Act.

B: Do you see this as based on your own experiences mainly, or is it anecdotal? I mean do you feel that LSD is not really useful for therapy, or that it is useful, but 2-CB tends to be more specifically useful?

A: Well, it's shorter. Again, LSD is not everybody's cup of tea.

Of course, neither is 2-CB. I can't help being influenced to some extent by my own experience of both, and to me LSD has the drawback of being very noisy and piling a lot of stuff onto you which is not that useful in therapy. You want to be able to focus on a problem, and be able to work through it before you go on to the next problem. LSD makes this really quite difficult. It's easier with 2-CB.

S: There are some people who do therapy differently than you. Rather than as an interaction and dropping of defenses and paranoia against others. On go the eyeshades, on go the earphones, and into isolation. You drop the barriers to yourself. And in that case, I know of LSD having been used quite successfully.

A: That's a different model and it's the one that the psychologist whom we refer to as Adam Fisher used. (Note: See the new book, The Secret Chief by Myron Stollorof)But I think most of the time he was not always or not necessarily tackling a problem as much as he was doing a spiritual journey - or allowing the patient to do a spiritual journey. His role was being a baby-sitter. Sitting by the side, and being ready to be supportive when needed. It's a different function.

S: But the preparation was to bring pictures of people you've had interactions with, your parents or your siblings, and then design for yourself what kinds of a question you would like to address. So there was that preparation. It was not strictly traveling and tripping, but also searching.

A: No, what he did was always searching. The trouble with the vocabulary - "tripping" is thought of as a recreational use without any particular point or any particular learning. It's just having fun.

Well, I don't think that you can ever rely on any psychedelic experience to give you just fun. I mean you are opening up your own psyche. You don't know what's going to come through. So you have to be prepared. As Sasha has always said, "There is no casual experiment."

And it is absolutely true. You must be prepared for finding yourself stepping into a place that can be quite overwhelming. Whether you took it in recreational surroundings or not.

I believe that almost all psychedelic technique ends up at least being spiritual searching. That's my own prejudice.

B: In my essay "Why We Get High" I use Peter's term "re-creational." Re-creational becomes to recreate oneself, and play becomes a way that therapy works in a sense. Because one can try new behaviors and new learnings.

Another point I was trying to make on that particular question is that drugs are kind of idiosyncratic for the individual. That everybody has their kind of favorite or, you know, ones that seem to work better for them. Their "allies" is term used by Castenada.
I mean some people would just swear by Ketamine. Other people can't stand it. It's the worst thing of all.

P: Some people like to empty their head. Others like to fill it.

S: Some people like to get into their body, and some people want to get very much out of their body.

P: The reactions of both of you to marijuana is a very good instance of how idiosyncratic it is.

A: Yeah, right. It's really strange that neither of us can tolerate it.

P: It's like Albert Hofmann saying that psilocybin is much heavier than LSD. For a lot of people it goes the other way.

A: Oh, no! I would agree with him.

P: Once I gave a talk in Berkeley, after going across the street to get some niacin and niacinamide. I told the audience that I wanted to warm them up internally, rather than starting with jokes, though I would probably do that too.

I got more than half the people there to take niacin, and asked them to raise their right hand when the prickling and reddening sensations reached the top of their heads, and their left hand when that got to their stomachs.

Some people started about two or three minutes later, and an hour and half later people were still doing it. I thought that was a very instructive example of variations.

A: Also, of the response of the psyche to a blank sheet of paper!

B: Sasha, you have talked about the possibility of the creation of a new vocabulary of awareness in your essay "Why I do what I do." Do you see a future in which we will be taking chemicals a lot more of the time, as a way of controlling our nervous system, or perhaps we might take them less of the time but learn more?

S: Well, the first thing that came to mind was the fact that with our pharmaceutical industry producing, and with our medical community choosing drugs over other kinds of more personal therapy, I see no question but what there will be more and more drugs controlling and modifying mental processes. You may call them anti-depressants, you may call them uptake-inhibitors, you may call them pro-this and anti-that. It's almost as if there is not the time - and money is probably equated to this - in the medical community to address problems. Directly by interaction.

You have 14 minutes to handle this patient - or is it 9 minutes?
And, of course, if you say, "Well, are you depressed?" . . . "Well, yes, actually, I am depressed."

"Well, I have these samples of a rather good anti-depressant. Let's give it a try and see how they work with you. And come back in a while. If they don't seem to be doing the job, we'll look for something else."

I think this is not a healing. It seems to me a move to placate, and perhaps put a Band-Aid on problems that are definitely of a psychological nature. I think there is a lot of medical practice that follows that line. And as such, yes, there will be more and more drugs that will be strictly for the purpose of affecting and changing the mental state.
So this is possibly not the direction you wanted the answer to go, but
I think that in answer to your question, yes, there is a move toward using the commercialization of materials that affect mood and attitude.

B: Talk a little bit more about this new vocabulary of awareness.
Maybe you could address that a little bit more.

I mean you were talking about how we are learning more and more about how particular compounds and substances could affect each mental state. How do you see down the future? Will it be pure research? Is it going to be a new modality of work with ourselves?

S: Well, research is certainly not going to be a blatantly obvious thing that deals with changing states of consciousness. The practice of medicine in our culture is almost totally going after the unwell and making them well, or going after the diseased and curing disease. But there are very few medicines that are allowed to go after the well and to make them better or to make them different. The only things that are legally used to change the state of consciousness from a normal state to an abnormal one are anesthetics that allow you to perform surgery.

There are no moves that go in the opposite direction that are medically acceptable. We have spent fifty years - seventy years - trying to find modifications of the structure of morphine or opium or any of the narcotics that would maintain the pain-relief but not give the pleasure. Finally, after seventy years, people have begun to realize these may be hand in hand, and to eliminate one eliminates the other. But the mood is, "Here is something that will control your illness, but will not in any way violate the principles of your favor."

B: To follow up on that, can you talk about the relative safety of psychedelic compounds as opposed, say, to other recreational drugs, prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs?

Also, I was talking to a friend this morning and he was noting that a something very toxic like Amanita phalloides is not even scheduled, whereas other non-toxic fungi like Psilocybe Cubensis - psilocybin mushrooms, not even a drug but a plant - are treated like a
Schedule I substance.

S: No, in fact the plant itself is not scheduled.

Well, what is "relative safety?" The relative safety of alcohol?
The so-called "Therapeutic Index" has been misused - in fact, Lester Grinspoon got called on it.

The Therapeutic Index is how much drug does it take to have an effect, and how much drug does it take to do damage? How large is that ratio? In alcohol, it ranges around ten. For instance, this amount of alcohol - a blood-level of 0.06 or 0.08 - and you know you are intoxicated and kind of disinhibited and seeing things in perhaps a more relaxed way. Ten times that - a blood-alcohol of perhaps 0.6 or 0.8 - and you are in a coma or dead. So there you have a very tight ratio.

The goal of every pharmaceutical house is to try something where you at least get a factor of a thousand, and settle for a hundred. But with some of the more common drugs, the number is much smaller. Yet in this respect some of the psychedelic drugs have proven they have a remarkably good track record.

Because the ER admissions when they come in, they are usually in conjunction with some other sort of problem. The MDMA hysteria in
England - a lot of it is tied in with hypothermia and lack of fluids, or responding to hypothermia and drinking too many fluids. So is this a hazard of the drug?

A person gets into some drug and manages to drive on the sidewalk and kill five people. Are these five deaths due to that drug? Or is it due to that person's behavior? In one sense you have to determine not only the individual risk, but also the collective social and family and related risks. All have to be related to the hazard of a major drug.

And yet in many of the books, there is no question but that overuse is damaging. Overuse may be just modest if the use is normal. A lot of mileage has been made out of the fact that there are no recorded deaths on marijuana. But the truth is that marijuana may be a very forgiving drug.

If that were true, then that would be a safe drug in the definition of the Therapeutic Index.

I imagine a few doses of heroin taken simultaneously could very well arrest breathing and be lethal. The margin may be very small there.
All drugs are risky. All drugs have hazards. All drugs are, as far as I am concerned, lethal. And yet, all drugs are only used because they make some change in your body. That change may be to the good from someone's point of view. It may be bad from another person's point of view.

Is smoking opium and going to sleep a good or a bad result of smoking enough opium? It's a quiet, dreamy sleep-state.

B: There is certainly a difference between what's toxic to the body and what's good for the mind in terms of one's growth or self-actualization. There is a big difference in relative safety in terms of physical safety rather than what's good for a person mentally.

S: There are people who hold to the philosophy that any moving of the mind in any direction away from what is the prosaic faith of the Catholic Church, so to speak, is a negative response. So it's hard sometimes to separate that particular aspect of effect from a toxic response.

B: Peter, you got one?

S: He's just smiling -

P: Tell us something about your current project.

S: Oh, as I said at the meeting on Sunday, this is my decade of cactus. I'm just having a tremendous amount of curiosity digging into it - I have discovered, I guess it is well known to many but I was not fully appreciative of the intimate relationship between cactus alkaloids and opium alkaloids.

They're extremely similar in their general nature. And yet, they never quite exchange colors.

You will have this group in this position on a cactus alkaloid, but never in that position. You have that same group in that position in an opium alkaloid or in a related carydalis-type world of alkaloids, but never in this position. So I have this fantasy of taking the basic alkaloid structures that are common to opium or are common to cacti and `marry' them - putting the groups of one on the positions of the other. Coming up with compounds that are virtually unknown. And you may very well come up with a compound that has the virtues of both. That would be a very interesting type of action.

B: How about you, Ann? What are your current interests and projects?

A: First of all, my biggest interest is surviving the holiday season, and after that I'm already starting to tape - what I want to do on my own is to have maybe a four- or five-chapter book in which each chapter is devoted to one very extraordinary and interesting person. In particular, people who have all their lives experienced changes of consciousness or recollections of past lives, and how they have made it in the world, how they have succeeded and not drowned.

These are survivors. But people who are highly intelligent, very creative and whose psyches are already quite open. Some of them will have discovered their interior creativity and that kind of thing through use of psychedelics. Some of them were born with the ability to have those doors open. I would like to write in a great deal of detail about four or five such people.

That's my solo project, and then Sasha and I will do the cactus book together, I hope.

B: Maybe you could tell our readers a little bit about TIHKAL.
The first book was about phenethylamines, and now we've gone into tryptamines - and that includes LSD-like compounds.

S: Well, the first book covered my research and other people's research into the phenethylamines -- which are basically a not-so-widely-distributed group for psychoactivity in nature, but have been around much longer and explored much more, and have led to a lot of synthetic ventures into structural variations. So there are many, many psychoactive phenethylamines known. To a large measure, they are synthetic. They are man-made.

The tryptamines, as I have said, is the other half of the psychedelic coin. There are many more of these in nature than there are phenethylamines - psychoactive ones. The amount of research that has gone into exploring variations has been more limited. But still, there are quite a few synthetic variations that are unexpectedly potent, and some that are unexpectedly toxic. They lie in a continuum where you do not expect this deviation of behavior.

So in essence, they are a little bit more adventurous to explore.
Nature is not the goal. Nature is the source of ideas, and that is, of course, the beauty of having a garden on the one hand, and a lab on the other. Find a plant, know it's active, and explore that component that you isolate and identify. And then using that as a basis for "Well, what if?" -- and suddenly you have little indications as to what may be worthwhile to explore.

So, to me, continuing that exploration of what is known and what can come from what is known is exciting.

B: I know that both Owsley and Albert Hofmann tended to enjoy the plants. But you seem to have gone beyond what the plants yield -

S: If you stuck strictly in the plant world, you would never have had LSD.
I have periodically gotten into the argument between what is in the plant and what is in the laboratory. It is of some bemusement - the fact that people who adhere to the naturals being safer and more compatible with the spirit and psyche, and to be preferred -- and use DMT as an example, where you can get it from the Ayahuasca in South
America and in many other plants.

The fact is that Manske synthesized it in l935 or thereabouts. It was a pure synthetic chemical, unknown in nature for years. And then 20 years after it was first synthesized, it was found in plants. A 20-year window in there in which it was not a "natural" compound.

And tomorrow, LSD may be found in some morning glory.

B: There's a compound - you call it "huasca" I guess - that's grown in popularity within the psychedelic community. In your book, you
say some good things about it. Do you feel it is particularly useful?

S: I have a couple of comments on its usefulness. Firstly, every weird, interesting plant or combination of plants is of great value to some, and it's totally disliked by someone else. So the usefulness or the virtue of it is in the people who have found that as being a creative outlet or other helpful vehicle.

I think its primary use is that it may lay the groundwork for the eventual bringing of these drugs into use in this country with some form of a religious, sacrament background.

Every brew is different. There is no consistency. On the other hand, every culture that uses it has its own familiarity as a brew that's a part of their culture or their religion.

It's coming into this country from the Southwest, and it's being talked about and used, and it may or may not contain DMT. It may or may not contain an enzyme inhibitor, but the concept of mixing things together, and then either celebrating, or mixing things together and going into maybe a sacramental state is becoming quite popular in this country.
And if it is handled I think with care, and without conspicuous drug connotations, it could very well serve as a possible stepping stone for the use of plant extracts as a religious thing.

B: I have a young friend who went over to Amsterdam, and he had a huasca trip there. He came back and said, "That was the furthest-out experience I ever had! It was so great!" It was guided and ritualized, kind of in the way that you describe in your book.

I think it was because it was the first time he had had a ritualized experience. It could have been acid or almost anything else.

A: This is a very interesting point. The psyche - the unconscious
-- when given a safe structure in which to open up, will open-throttle.
The therapeutic environment can do that, and also the ritual environment. It gives permission for the psyche to be opened.

S: You have the analogue in the confessional booth in the
Catholic Church. You are in a position of safety, and you will not be chastised for what you are saying -

P: Ann, would you say something about preparations for therapy?
You talked about that at the Mind States conference.

A: Are you talking about the therapeutic stuff, or the legality and illegality?

P: Both.

A: Well, what I was describing at the Mind States conference was the way that such work has to be done now, when it is done. I can talk about this kind of a thing now because I haven't done the work for well over ten years. And most of the people still doing this sort of therapy are doing it underground.

The psychiatrists and psychologists who first discovered the use of MDMA in therapy have continued -- to the best of my knowledge. A great many of them have continued, as best they could, doing this kind of therapy because MDMA was felt to be, you know, "penicillin for the soul."

In the books I describe as well as I could the kinds of precautions that one has to take - anyone doing that kind of work would have to take. It would take rather a long time to go through.

P: Yes. But it is all written down.

A: It is all written there. Yes, absolutely.
This is where I feel angry and sorrowful at the fact that all the information that is being gathered by these therapists about the deeper parts of the human psyche is not being published, cannot be published.
It is simply being lost because of the laws as they stand now.
Let me give you my favorite four-second sound bite. The more I think about it, the more strongly I feel about it.

I really believe that in a country that calls itself a country of freedom, or a "free country," the government has no right to tell any adult citizen what he may eat, what he may drink, what he may smoke, or what he may ingest. What a free adult citizen chooses to do with his own body is his business, and it is not the Government's. I feel very, very strongly that we are moving - I hate to use the term "police state" because it is so overused. But we seem to be moving in a direction where the government is being given the right to interfere in everything that is vital. I believe this is wrong and very dangerous.

Sasha points out very well in TIHKAL in his "Cui Bono" chapter that controlling drug use is now a multi-billion dollar industry. I have another explanation of why the war against certain drugs has so much force in it. I think that the kind of people who are thrown into government - also into certain kinds of business, but into government very much so - tend to come from homes where there is a prejudice against understanding too much about one's own mind. Where dreams are not talked about. Where fantasy is discouraged. Where there is never any discussion of the deeper parts of oneself - the spiritual, emotional parts. This is considered, especially for men, to be very unmanly – to "psychologize," as these people put it.

Coming from such backgrounds, they are unconsciously very much afraid of the human unconscious. They are afraid of their own. They suspect, unconsciously again, that the essence of themselves very deep down is probably a really monstrous thing.

This fear of their own nature - essential nature - is projected out onto the population in general, so when they say that psychedelic drugs are evil and bad, that this is being said out of a very deeply buried fear. I think that this is what fuels the passing of laws against consciousness-changing drugs. It is this fear of the essence of the human soul.

B: In your book when you described the DEA searching your house and the way that they greeted the peyote, it was almost like it was going to contaminate them.

A: Yes, they instinctively jumped backwards. It was amazing. They were really scared of it.

P: It is quite astonishing that they didn't recognize it!

A: I know! I thought that was rather interesting too.
You would have thought they would have recognized it. Of course, they had been here before, and the pots were right out in the open. Sasha had a right to have peyote, with his license. Nobody recognized it. `Course they weren't expecting to find such things.

There was a chapter I did not put into TIHKAL which was called "A
Message to a Narc." I'm sort of sorry I didn't put it in, but it would have to be worded better. It was basically a message to the people who are in law enforcement who may find themselves in an LSD lab and are being taught that if the powder gets on their skin and contaminates them, that they will probably go psychotic and have to be put in hospital.

These agents really believe this. It was a short chapter saying - it was really rather impractical because they have hard and fast rules about such things. But it was an effort to say, "Look, don't go to a hospital if you have any choice in the matter. Don't go home. Go to the nearest church or synagogue."

If an agent really finds himself turning on, the message was,
"Don't be afraid of it. It's not going to hurt you. You will definitely not go psychotic. And if you become fascinated with what opens up under such circumstances, you can pursue that part of yourself by finding a good hypnotherapist and learning hypnotic trance. You don't have to take drugs to do this."

The message was, "Don't believe what your superiors have told you about it. They are telling you what they themselves believe, but it is not true. This drug will not do you harm, and neither will the experience if you happen to have it."

I didn't put that in.

B: Peter and I were talking in the car on the way up here, just kind of as a point of history - Sasha, do you think you were the first human to take MDMA?

S: No, I'm not the first man -

B: But you were early on, were you?

S: Yes. There were reports - at least one report - of it having been found on the street before I got involved with it. I discovered just recently that Merck was not the first inventor of it, but that it was synthesized in Germany at the end of last century.

They still didn't do it for any pharmaceutical reason. I had just never bothered going to the library and looking up the first synthesis.
1912 was the patent.

P: Salvia divinorum as I recall was investigated in the early
`60s, and thought either to be too weak or completely inactive.

S: I was one of the persons who did some of that early work. So was Albert Hofmann. We both came to the same conclusion. We both raised it in greenhouses, and ate as much as we could keep down, and got nothing.

And then the mythology comes around - "Oh, you don't eat it. You stick it behind the gums, or you dry it and smoke it, or you this, that and the other."

I had never heard of any of the Indians drying it and smoking it,

so I had no knowledge that this was the idea. So the discovery of its activity via those routes is really an uncelebrated contribution. It's humorous that at almost the same time we both raised it and looked at it, and could find nothing of interest in it, and abandoned it.

B: You have developed some new compounds that you mentioned both in PIHKAL and TIHKAL - of course prior to the Analogs Act - which you felt were interesting. You don't have to answer anything but "Yes" or
"No", but do you think there were any of them that you couldn't really talk about because of the current climate that exists right now?

S: Well, yes and no.

B: There's a drug called Euphoria - I can't remember the chemical name.

S: Yeah, 4-methyl-aminorex.

B: Could you talk a little about that?

S: I have never taken the material, but I have talked to people who are very enthusiastic about it. I have also talked to people who are promoting it and are therefore even more enthusiastic if not sincere about it. It has hit several of the Rainbow Gathering phenomena, and the lower part of the West Coast.

A very close relative of it - aminorex itself -- was used as a stimulant prescription drug. I think it was used in conjunction with bicycle racing, if I recall correctly. For its endurance contribution.

P: Have you had any experience with Herbal Ecstasy?

S: No, I have not. I understand it's largely ephedrine.

B: We'll delete that one from the interview. I don't want to promote that stuff, Peter.

P: Well, I thought we could maybe put it down!

S: I do know that Nicholas Saunders had quite an interaction with one of the big promoters of Herbal Ecstasy, in that he took a blind study of both it and similar-looking vitamin capsules in exchange for getting written reports of how it went, and distributed them at a rave in England. To see whether Herbal Ecstasy or the vitamin capsule as a placebo was or was not better, or effective at all. And he found that about half the people swore by it, and half the people thought it was no good at all. He told this to the guy promoting this down in L.A. - and he took the first half of that quote and said that people swore by it, and dropped the second half of the quote entirely!

B: Oh, they've done terrible things with me. I could tell you stories -Speaking of the Ecstasy scene in England, they have what they call "disco biscuits" that go around. There's an awful lot of misrepresentation of substances over there, isn't there?

S: Actually, it's hard to tell. Unlike Holland, where you have an official, government-accepted liaison between the street and the government - who will take the tab and say, "Yup," or "Whoops, these are too heavy. Go back. There is something wrong with the weighing."

What it is, and how much is there. This is considered promotional in this country of illegal behavior.

One of the things I always instructed my students, in when I was teaching toxicology is, "don't accept the question of 'What is it'?" Accept the question "Is it so and so?" Then you have a straightforward answer: yes or no. But "What is it?" may be a lifetime project.

P: Also, the intentionality is very important. I think when they first examined MDA it was in terms of weight reduction. And a lot of people found that it was too distracting!

A: Imagine taking that stuff for weight reduction!

B: You have talked about the joys of creative chemistry, finding these new synthesis routes, and so on.. What do you think about the possibilities and implications for nanotechnology?

S: Well, you already see it. If you go wandering into a research lab - go into Lawrence Berkeley Lab to see what is going on there. You used to start with 50 grams of material, work up, say, 32 grams of product, run a melting point, a microanalysis, this, that and the other thing. Now you start with 200 milligrams of something and you depend not on microanalysis - you would destroy your whole sample.

So you do things in which it can be recovered by microscopic analysis, or things that would take a miniscule amount of material.

Like TCMS [USE FULL NAME]. I can get a perfectly fine TMS on a few micrograms of material. So that sort of microscale chemistry is already part of the entire system.

P: Do you know of many chemists who have, say, looked at PIHKAL and carried out fairly extensive examinations themselves?

S: I periodically get very nice letters saying, "It started me in a new way of thinking." And, "This really served as encouragement to go back to school."

A: But the book has also been found in clandestine labs.

B: Okay. Island Foundation, whose magazine this will appear in, is attempting to develop a whole-systems approach to psychedelics and culture. Can you tell our readers whether you are familiar with our work at all, and what you think about Island Foundation's goals?

S: Oh, I have been more or less watching it with some pleasure from the very origins of it. As a matter of fact, I wrote you a first letter some 20 years ago - in which I challenged one of your statements I disagreed with -- and we've had a dialogue since. You had said, "It is the traces of LSD that cause the bad responses" - "traces of impurity" I should say. And you said in the next sentence that LSD is the most potent drug that is known. Traces cause this, and obviously they are more potent than the LSD.

From that humorous episode, we have developed a friendship and I have watched Island grow.

posted in shulgin - 4 replies

2007 shulgin talks

sue — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:24:21 GMT

a heard a rumour that the shulgins may be at an event in northern california in early 2007. does anyone have any information about that?

posted in shulgin - 2 replies

the 2c

-/Buddah\- — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:27:41 GMT

I new some of the 2c family is availible online as research chemicals. My brother own a small research company called "Mindful Insight Labs" He's really interested in doing research with plants and some of the 2c family. Does ne one know of any legite RC sites to buy these from. Its hella legal.....except they might think its 2c-b which is hella illegal and could get you caught in a situation for awhile.. Again he owns a research company so this will be totally doable. Ne help.....?

Namaste

posted in shulgin - 7 replies

Laura Huxley R.I.P.

Skywalker — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:03:43 GMT

(from LAObserved, Dec. 14, 2007)

The author and widow of Aldous Huxley has died in Los Angeles, according to family friends. She was 96. She was born in Italy and became a top violinist at a young age. Her friends pick up the story in an obituary they prepared:

In 1948 Laura met Aldous Huxley and then wife, Maria and a wonderful friendship blossomed. In 1956, a year after Maria’s death, Aldous and Laura were married. During that time Aldous wrote Island and Laura wrote You Are Not The Target, which became national bestsellers and huge successes. The “recipes for living and loving” contained in Laura’s fabulous self-help book ask you to imagine attending your own funeral, visualize your favourite flower, jump in another person’s position, dance naked with music In later years she also wrote Let’s Die Healthy, available online for free.

The Huxleys became prominent representatives of the Psychedelic Movement, always advocating the use of psychedelics in a controlled environment and for personal enrichment and always warning against the dangers of the mindless and indiscriminate use of drugs.

Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963. Laura wrote about their life together, and Aldous’s death, in the her touching book This Timeless Moment. A favourite quote of Aldous’ words is: “One never loves enough.”
In 1978 she started OUI (Our Ultimate Investment), later to become COUI – Children: Our Ultimate Investment. This Foundation is dedicated to the best development of the “possible human” from before conception to the first years of life, with particular attention given to unwanted teenage pregnancy.

posted in shulgin - 1 reply

isoquinolines any one?

little lightening bolt — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 04:39:14 GMT

so has any one read his new book on isoquinolines?
i am really fascinated by this new classification of compounds...especialy this new cacti species which i just ordered.
i do remember him saying that it had no mescaline in it at all. very exciting!
i also remember him saying at whistler that T. bridgessi had isoquinolines in it that acted as MAOIs making mescaline more potent. which is amazing especialy if your aquinted with achuma cactus, it is the most potent mescaline containing cactus i have ever known, and yet (not so mysteriously any more) has the least amount of mescaline in it compaired to any other active mescaline contaning Trichocerus cacti.

has any one read isoquinolines? if so could you describe it a bit? does he get into bridgessi and the baja cacti as well as any bioassys of just isoquinolines? curious kitties want to know!

posted in shulgin - 14 replies

Happy birthday Sasha

Skywalker — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:09:36 GMT

I know, I'm a little late, Sasha's 82nd birthday was two day ago (June 17)...Anyway I want to say 'Happy Birthday' to this great man and scientist....
(I read that there was a nice birthday party for him during the Mindstates conference in Costa Rica...)

posted in shulgin - 0 replies

This way to the rabbit hole!

Sun, 06 May 2007 20:01:17 GMT

http://thecompletefloweroflife.blogspot.com/

posted in shulgin - 0 replies

Guardian article on Sasha

beb — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 18:01:21 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1508347,00.html

The ecstasy man
------------------------

He is the creator of MDMA as well as 200 other psychedelic compounds - and now that research is showing the health benefits of the 'rave drug', his reputation is being restored. Dan Glaister pays a visit to Alexander Shulgin's laboratory

Friday June 17, 2005
The Guardian

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Wednesday June 22 2005

We made it appear in the interview with Alexander Shulgin below, that we believed he had in effect discovered, rather than rediscovered, MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, going so far, in a heading, as to describe him as "the creator of MDMA". In fact, MDMA was first synthesised by Merck Pharmaceuticals in Germany in 1912.

'Let's take the yellow brick road to Oz." Alexander Shulgin shuffles ahead along the garden path leading out of his back door. At the end, some 30 yards away, a large squirrel is making its getaway from a ramshackle garden shed.

"The damn squirrel's got in," Sasha - as he is known - exclaims. "A new hole, I'll have to patch it up. They just eat their way through wood."

Shulgin built the shed himself, working up from the brick foundations of what was once the cellar of his parents' house on Shulgin Road half an hour outside San Francisco. Now the shed contains his laboratory. It looks almost wilfully disorganised, as if an enthusiastic child - or perhaps a squirrel - had been left alone to construct a Heath Robinson vision of a back-garden lab. Classical music gently plays from a radio, a stained wineglass sits atop a mound of papers, evidence of the previous night's endeavour.

It all seems thoroughly mundane. An amiably eccentric elderly gentleman - Shulgin is 79 - pursuing his hobby in his garden shed. What could be more innocuous?

A neat laminated note stuck on the wooden door of the shed gives the lie to this presumption. It reads: "This is a research facility that is known to and authorised by the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, all San Francisco DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] Personnel and the State and Federal EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] Authorities."

Shulgin has good reason to post the note. His lab has been raided twice, once with intent and a second time almost by accident.

He is a psychopharmacologist, the creator of some 200 psychedelic compounds. Stimulants, depressants, aphrodisiacs, hallucinogens: you name it, Shulgin has made it and, personally, tested it. He thinks he has probably had more than 4,000 psychedelic episodes in the course of his work. Assuming each episode takes up at least a day, that constitutes almost 12 years of his life. Not surprising, then, that Timothy Leary should have described him as one of the 20th century's most important scientists.

Perhaps to his chagrin, Shulgin seems destined to be remembered for one small episode in 1965 when, tipped off by a student about an interesting but forgotten compound, he synthesised MDMA. With that step, ecstasy was eventually born and Shulgin marginalised. Only now, as the investigation of its potential is re-examined, is his reputation being restored. For his appearance at a London conference on the future of drugs this afternoon, he is being billed as a "living legend".

"I do nothing illegal," he points out readily, "nothing illegal. There is nothing illegal about synthesising new compounds. I don't know if they're going to be psychedelic or not until I taste them. And there's nothing illegal about my tasting them."

If a compound shows promise, Shulgin tests it on his wife, Ann. If she confirms his impression that it may be "active", they take it to their own research group of eight friends. "They are personal friends," Shulgin explains. "We all take off in one of their houses and we all take the compound."

An encounter with mescalin set Shulgin on his chemical path, turning the chemist on to the potential of the psyche. "In 1950 I had the opportunity to experiment with my first psychedelic and it caught my attention. I think the best phrasing now would be: it brought out so many lines of thought and so many memories from the past and so many visual distortions and awarenesses of colours I was totally unaware of. It was impressed upon me that a few hundred milligrams of a white crystal cannot have all these colours and all these memories. They don't do what happens, they catalyse and allow you to do what happens."

The Shulgins' adventures and misadventures with psychedelic compounds are recounted in two self-published books, PiHKAL (short for Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved,) and its sequel TiHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved). The books have provoked controversy because they include what could best be described as psychopharmacological recipes. The Shulgins' justification for this is that people are going to experiment, and they are passing as much information as possible in order to avoid harming themselves and others.

Which is where ecstasy comes in. Shulgin expresses frustration and disgust at the way ecstasy has been used and abused, both by dealers and the scientific community.

"Analysis has shown that in some cases less than half the materials sold as ecstasy are MDMA. 'You want to buy some ecstasy?' 'Yes.' 'Here's some ground-up plaster.' If a person takes a dose at a party and falls downstairs and breaks their back, this is a death associated with MDMA. Once you say 'associated with', it gets transformed into 'due to'. It's a shame that it got so far into the rave scene and the underground scene that people began making their income in the scientific area by getting federal grants and funds for finding out how it's bad."

But recent research has seen a resurgence of interest in the therapeutic effects of MDMA. Successful results have been reported from trials in the use of MDMA on people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and in the relief of anxiety in patients with terminal cancer. It is a return to the spirit of the original use of MDMA: after its synthesis by Shulgin in the late 1960s, its first use was in psychotherapy.

Is he pleased that MDMA is returning to a medical use? Does he even have an idea of practical use when developing a compound or is he propelled by the pure pleasure of discovery?

"I do have an idea of the use," he says, "It's toward the developing of tools for use in the functioning of the mind, the mechanism of the mind. A lot of these materials are themselves, or are related to, materials that could be used in humans for determining the mysteries of how the mind works. They're research tools. That is the ultimate value that I hope to see realised."

There is an air of romance about the Shulgins: they bumble around in their hillside home, the shock-haired maverick scientist and his muse, making discoveries, testing them, and then very probably settling down to a nice cup of cocoa before bed. Is this a romantic pursuit, I ask?

"Good heavens it is," says Ann Shulgin.

Her husband professes ignorance.

"Romantic? Pursuit? It's such a lovely term. I don't understand your question. It's unbelievably exciting. You're opening doors that have never been opened before, doors where they didn't even know there was a door. It can be frightening."

· Drugs, The Shape of Things to Come is at RIBA, London today. http://www.dtl.co.uk/conference/programme.php

posted in shulgin - 3 replies

Pharmacratic Inquisition & Psychedelic Torrent

trancedan — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:25:54 GMT

The definition of Pharmacratic Inquisition:
Pharmaco-, a combining form meaning drug, medicine, or poison used in the formation of compound words: pharmacology, pharmacy, etc.
-crat, a combining form meaning ruler, member of a ruling body, or advocate of a particular form of rule, used in the formation of compound words: autocrat; technocrat. Cf. -cracy.
Inquisition, n. 1. an official investigation, esp. one of a political or religious nature, characterized by lack of regard for individual rights, prejudice on the part of the examiners, and recklessly cruel punishments. 2. any harsh, difficult, or prolonged questioning. 3. the act of inquiring; inquiry; research. 4. an investigation, or process of inquiry. 5. a judicial or official inquiry. 6. the finding of such an inquiry. 7. the document embodying the result of such inquiry. 8. (cap.) Roman Catholic Church A. a former special tribunal, engaged chiefly in combating and punishing heresy. Cf. Holy Office. B. see Spanish Inquisition.
Pharmacratic Inquisition nov. verb.
- The Christian persecution of archaic religions based on sacramental ingestion of entheogenic plants and the consequent personal access to ecstatic states; whose first great victory was the destruction of the Eleusinian Mysteries at the end of the fourth century; which then reached a gruesome climax in the persecution of witches in the Middle Ages; and which continues in today's Pharmacratic State in the guise of a public health 'War on Drugs.'
1994 Ott Ayahuasca Analogues, 12. May the Entheogenic Reformation prevail over the Pharmacratic Inquisition, leading to the spiritual rebirth of humankind at Our Lady Gæa's breasts, from which may ever copiously flow the amrita, the ambrosia, the ayahuasca of eternal life!
Source: The Age of Entheogens & The Angel's Dictionary by Jonathan Ott

The Pharmacratic Inquisition:
http://www.pharmacratic-inquisition.com/main/ &
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-4555365073003895154

&

A large (8.7GB) collection of psychedelic and visionaryplant related video and other material available in torrent at
http://www.mininova.org/tor/260110
This includes loads of psychedelic audio, video, PDF, including the entire UK Channel 4's1998 Sacred Weeds series, interviews with Terence McKenna, Rick Strassman, Jon Ott, and others, as well as several selections from visionary flicks like Waking Life, Matrix, & 2001.
More information about this can be found at
http://www.salvia-divinorum-scotland.co.uk/mediastories/video and at http://www.salvia-divinorum-scotland.co.uk/mediastories/video/download
I’m about half way through in this download and I've found some Amazing stuff!

posted in shulgin - 0 replies

LSD Documentary on Youtube

trancedan — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:14:45 GMT

This four part documentary by Aron Ranen (who teaches at http://DVworkshops.com) is currently available at Realitysurfer on youtube. Part 1 includes Groucho Marx on LSD & the LSD-fueled brothel run by the CIA.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdz0G4lG6k

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47vt5Z5wxoI

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNODtfw0K3o

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoSBuY54TIE

posted in shulgin - 0 replies

A warning to all of you beautiful souls

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:46:34 GMT

TRIBE AND THE DEA ARE MONITORING ALL OF THE DRUG RELATED POST, A FRIEND OF MINE JUST GOT HIS HOUSE RAIDED BECAUSE A TRIBE MEMBER POSTED HIS NAME AND ADDRESS WHICH TRIBE GAVE THE INFO TO THE DEA AND THEY RAIDED HIS HOUSE.
THANK GOD HE WASNT DOING WHAT THE GIRL HAD SAID BUT JUST GOES TO SHOW THAT THEY ARE EYEING EVERYTHING
AND WILL NOT HESITATE TO SEND THE AUTHORITIES YOUR WAY PLEASE BE ADVISED.....IM LOOKING OUT FOR YOU.... IF YOU WANT I HAVE OBTAINED A COPY OF THE PDF OF THE POST..AND THE COOL PEOPLE WHO TAGED HIM BECAUSE THE DIDNT LIKE HIM FOR NOT AGREEING ON SOMETHING, HATERS LOOKING TO HURT, THEY ARE.. THEY DEFAMED HIM YET TRIBE KICKED HIM OFF AND NOT THEM, JUST TOOK DOWN THE POST.. SO IF ANY ONE WANTS THE PDF TRUTH JUST WRITE TO

me at quetzalbird@hotmail.com and I will have someone e-mail you the pdf copy with the truth. if tribe tosses me please spread the message around so everyone can take action against the truth of the 2 who still remain here and are trouble. thank you. please be advised this is not a joke.....

posted in shulgin - 1 reply

Anyone have comments on combining 2CB with ketamine?

Greatest GOD — Fri, 26 May 2006 16:22:20 GMT

I've heard good reports on this combo, anyone else care to add?

posted in shulgin - 4 replies

"Ask the Shulgins" - podcast of Burning Man talk

Lorenzo — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 23:53:42 GMT

I just posted a podcast (MP3 file) of the talk that Ann and Sasha Shulgin gave at Burning Man this year. You will find the direct link to this podcast at http://www.matrixmasters.com/podcasts/index.html#053. Also, you will find two other talks by Sasha (#s 22 & 25) and Ann (#21) on the same page.

posted in shulgin - 2 replies

catalogying the effects of Shulgins Chems

kylelf — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:29:47 GMT

http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/archives/cat_neuropharma.html

The Chemical Architecture of the Human Mind: Probing Receptor Space with Psychedelics
by Tom Ray

Nineteen psychedelics (2C-B, 2C-B-fly, DOB, DOI, DOM, 2C-E, 2C-T-2, ALEPH-2, Mescaline, MEM, MDA, MDMA, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, 5-MeO-MIPT, DIPT, 5-MeO-DIPT, DPT, Psilocin) and three controls (lisuride 6-fluoro-DMT, 4C-T-2) have each been screened against the full panel of over one hundred receptors, transporters and ion channels by the National Institute of Mental Health Psychoactive Drug Screening Program (NIMH-PDSP), providing the first comprehensive view of how these compounds interact with the human receptome.

Each individual psychedelic causes a unique spectrum of subjective effects. DIPT causes auditory distortion. 5-MeO-DIPT enhances orgasm in males but not females. MDMA provokes empathy. TMA provokes anger. Mescaline provokes an appreciation of beauty. 2C-B causes tactile, gustatory and sexual enhancement. 2C-E provokes rich fantasy and introspection. Taken collectively, these compounds provide a rich set of tools for probing and revealing the chemical organization of the human brain and the mind that emerges from it.

The project aims to understand the mechanisms underlying the qualitative diversity of actions of psychedelics, by locating each drug in an abstract " receptor space", a coordinate system with one axis for each receptor. Drugs shift the balance of activity of the brain away from the origin, by a vector representing the profile of binding affinities at different receptors. Drugs perturb the system through increasing or decreasing transmission or transmitter levels, or up or down regulating receptor populations.

In a brain-centered reference frame, the origin is based on absolute levels of activity at each receptor population. The state of the brain is constantly on the move, regardless of medication. We can think of it as a complex dynamical system, in which the trajectory follows high-dimensional orbits, and switches among many "attractors", where the attractors represent the major emotional states and moods, and whatever mental phenomena the chemical systems are mediating.

In this dynamic reference frame, drugs will create a perturbation along the binding vector, thereby pushing the system into a new attractor. We want to understand how patterns of activity at receptor populations associate with mental phenomena. We want to get to know the pharmacology of the attractors. By correlating the subjective effects of a diverse selection of psychedelic drugs with the position of the drugs in "receptor space", we can begin to map the chemical organization of the human mind.

The current project is charting the distribution of psychedelics in "receptor space". In future work, new human data will be needed, using subjective questionnaires and brain imaging, as in the work of Vollenweider. For human work, compounds will be carefully chosen to represent distinct regions of "receptor space", or distinct subjective effects.

The goal of mapping "receptor space" is to chart the relationships between complex alterations in chemical signaling, and resulting changes in neural activity and mental states. This empirical knowledge can form a foundation for the development of a theory of the chemistry of mind, and provide a more rational basis for the development of chemical treatments for mental disorders. The understanding of the chemistry of consciousness is the ultimate goal of this research.

posted in shulgin - 4 replies

a newbie question

blackegg — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:46:02 GMT

How DID Shulgin jibe his exploration of these altered states and the discovery and promotion of the empathogen, MDMA etc. with his working at these heinous, but well paying companies?
were the companies not so heinous?
did he start off materialistic then change?
Sorry to ask such a stupid sounding question,
just curious.

posted in shulgin - 18 replies

The Web of Dreams deserves your assistance and your involvement now!!!!!

CLAYTON — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 07:36:43 GMT

Sacred geometry, universal energy, IBVA experiments linked with real time video, the opportunity to study yourself and others in a lucid REM state with state of the art equipment, recorded experiences, thousands of lights, music and more create “The Web Of Dreams”! An Interactive art piece symbolizing the connection of all things and how what you choose affects everything. It is designed to generate life-changing breakthroughs!

Allow yourself while in the Web to work through your fear and be inspired to make new empowering choices that create more hope for your future! Those who choose to be wrapped and suspended in the Web may discover that resistance creates the persistence of fear but acceptance allows for the disappearance of fear. Shed your fixed beliefs and ways of being while inside the Web and step into a new world of increased hope and possibility!

The web will offer up personal truths, it will offer up hope and dreams, it will offer a true reflection of how what you choose (hope or fear) affects the outcome of your future in a clear representation in the present moment.

“The Web of Dreams” will be placed 1300 ft from the man at 1:30. We will be doing IBVA EXPEREMENTS ALL WEEK. This will give us a chance to look at what is going on in the brain as someone is experiencing what ever they might be experiencing, Think of the possabilities. If this intrest you at all I encourage you to look at our web site and find out more about what we are creating on the playa this year. please if you are interested RESPOND TO THIS POST. LET ME KNOW YOU ARE INTERESTED.

We got a late start on this idea but we know, with some help from the community, we can still pull it off (no fear only hope). We have most everything we need but if the opportunity to assist others in breaking through their fear and gaining more hope and possibility inspires you we invite you to become a part of the “Web Team” and help in anyway you can. We are looking for people to fill volunteer shifts, donate money (we still need over $1,000) or any supplies we still need please contact me on Tribe or directly:

CLAYTON AND TERRY ALLRED

801-523-7094

For more info on the “Web Of Dreams” or to donate few dollars today(every little bit will help)by Pay Pal check out the web site at: webofdreams.home.comcast.net/

I truly look forward to the most amazing experience on the Playa with you and may all of your fears serve you in the end to achieve all your hopes!

Love,

Clayton
posted by:

posted in shulgin - 2 replies

Transpersonal Psychology Conference

trancedan — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:31:16 GMT

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND
THE 2006 ATP-ITP
TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE
September 7-9, 2006, Palo Alto, California

<www.atpweb.org/> & <www.atpweb.org/Conference...ration.asp>

The Association for Transpersonal Psychology
is teaming up with The Institute for Transpersonal Psychology
to put on an annual Transpersonal Psychology Conference on
"100 Years of Transpersonal Psychology"
to be held in Palo Alto, CA
on September 7 through September 9, 2006

One-hundred years ago, William James used the word "transpersonal" for the first time, in reference to that which is shared amongst people. A century later, the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology invite you to our annual professional conference, to teach, learn, and share the innovations and discoveries that have shaped the field since that auspicious day, and to chart the future for the next 100 years.

* Keynote Speakers: Stanislav Grof, Jeanne Achterberg, Marilyn Schlitz, James Fadiman.

* Special Thursday evening opening event: Honoring Women in Transpersonal Psychology with Louisa Teisch, Christina Grof, Leslie Gray, Olga Louchakova, Rosemarie Anderson, Judy Schavrien, Kate Wolf-Pizor and others.

* Special Friday evening media Premiere of two documentary films, including Kevin Page’s, "The Science of Soul," a documentary of transpersonal psychology,

* Other outstanding presenters include Stanley Krippner, Estelle Frankel, Daniel Benor, Ronald Jue, Frances Vaughan, Brian Wittine, Ruth Cox, Charles Tart, Neil Fiore, Kirk Schneider, David and Cristel Lukoff, Stuart Sovatsky and Sylvia Nakkach.

Topics: transpersonal psychotherapy, therapy, transpersonal approaches to trauma, healing, transpersonal education, entheogens, Kaballah, dreams, expressive arts, women in transpersonal psychology, the contributions of William James, Otto Rank, C. G. Jung, & Baruch Spinoza, experiential workshops at no extra cost, and poster sessions.

Please visit the Association for Transpersonal Psychology website at www.atpweb.org for Conference information, the program of the presenters and topics, and lodging information. You can register at the website online, and by fax and mail. Rates increase after August 24th.

<www.atpweb.org/> & <www.atpweb.org/Conference...ration.asp>
Phone: (650) 424-8764.

Continuing Education units are available. Special rates for students, members of ATP and AHP, and presenters.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to colleagues and others who may be interested. Since this is our main way of announcing the conference, we appreciate your assistance.

Sponsored by the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. Conference sessions will be held at ITP and the Unity Church of Palo Alto.

<www.atpweb.org/> & <www.atpweb.org/Conference...ration.asp>
<mailto: Dan@atpweb.org>

posted in shulgin - 1 reply

Books!

blackegg — Tue, 09 May 2006 17:32:59 GMT

Well, I said I would so here it goes...
what are some of the books that you'd recommend to a person interested in psychedelics
and the 'psychedelic mindset'?

Me?
well, since you ask....
1)Tripping:An Anthology
2) Breaking open the Head (???)
3) ???
Huxley's Island is a pretty good Eutopian model, until the end of the book that is.

posted in shulgin - 5 replies

random thought

XpsychonautX — Wed, 10 May 2006 02:20:51 GMT

I think Dr. Shulgin needs to be nominated for both Sainthood and the Nobel prize. Does anyone else feel that way?

posted in shulgin - 4 replies

?

XpsychonautX — Mon, 01 May 2006 20:58:28 GMT

Since I now have DSL and can I can finally download these things in minutes rather than hours, can someone shoot me a bunch of Shulgin MP3s and anything else you would consider significant? My collection is rather small and I would very much like to own the whole audio/video library.

posted in shulgin - 2 replies

Leading Medical Journal Calls for More LSD in Research Labs

XpsychonautX — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:03:41 GMT

Psychedelics: Leading Medical Journal Calls for More LSD in Research Labs 4/21/06

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/432/lancet.shtml (follow the link for further links)

A leading British medical journal, the Lancet, has called on researchers studying the brain and conditions like depression to experiment with psychedelics. In an editorial appearing in the April 15 edition, the journal argued that "the demonization of psychedelic drugs as a social evil" has stifled research that could expand the knowledge of the brain and lead to better treatment for such conditions.

"Once considered wonder drugs for their effects on anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and other mental illnesses, [psychedelics like LSD and Ecstasy] have been effectively banished from medical practice after legal rulings banned their sale and use," the editorial noted. "Although such bans were largely put in place to quash concerns about rampant recreational drug use fueling the counter cultures of the 1960s and 1980s (LSD and MDMA, respectively), criminalization of these agents has also led to an excessively cautious approach to further research into their therapeutic benefits."

In an interview with the British newspaper the Guardian, Lancet editor Dr. Richard Horton said early researchers who used the drugs on themselves made important advances, but that progress had been stopped by the post-1960s anti-drug backlash. "Our very earliest understanding of the neurochemistry of the brain came from studying LSD-like compounds. Those same researchers were also taking those drugs, not recreationally, but as experiments on themselves. This was immensely important work."

Bans on psychedelic research based on fears of mass consumption are blocking good science, said Horton. "The whole taboo around recreational drug use can make the study of these drugs very difficult," he said. "We need to get a balance between these social taboos and what's best for patients."

The Guardian also spoke with Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a group pushing for more research on psychedelics and sponsoring two experimental studies with Ecstasy as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The notion that research should be barred for fearing of encouraging recreational use of psychedelics is wrong, he said. "The idea that by contradicting the exaggerated propaganda you are somehow sending the wrong message is false," he said. "Kids know when they are being told something that is way exaggerated, but then they don't know what is the truth."

-- END --

posted in shulgin - 11 replies

entheogenic shamanism tribe

little lightening bolt — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 08:29:37 GMT

http://tribes.tribe.net/entheoshamans?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5Bd9432468-a087-4678-a09a-74ee2893cf9f%5D

30 south african shamans agree 2cb work just as good as traditional plants...

come and join us!

posted in shulgin - 1 reply

You'll want to read THIS one, folks. :-)

Jon — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 09:27:24 GMT

Dear Lord,

(or anyone who might have a chance to read this message before it vanishes...)

I previously posted a notice to several tribes that I belong to, describing an article that I recently wrote for the current issue of The Entheogen Review. I was surprised to discover that my notice (as well as other folks posts responding to my notice) was scrubbed clean from most spots where I posted it, including the Mind States tribe that I moderate. Tribe has also twice removed a photograph of an individual mentioned in the article (an image that I snapped myself), which appeared on my blog page. (I've just reposted it for a third time, but I suppose that if it disappears again, I will post a picture of something reasonably equivalent instead.)

Tribe's "terms of use" and "code of conduct" make it clear that they "have the right to delete any content for any reason or no reason," and they don't need to provide notice that they removed the content. It is also worth pointing out that Tribe employees or administrators "may monitor your communications and may disclose content and information about you, including contents of communications..."

Be careful what you say, since Tribe feels free to eavesdrop at any time. And of course, if they don't like what you say, they'll just make it disappear as though it never existed in the first place. How Big Brother of them.

I wonder why Tribe would have felt the need to censor my posts? It seems unlikely that anyone at Tribe really cares THAT much about suppressing the story I wanted to share with the psychonautical community. Rather, it seems more logical to suspect that Tribe was PRESSURED into removing my posts by someone who preferred that my article is not widely read.

And so, I'll try again--without naming any specific names, without using any potentially offensive slang terms (although, if the shoe fits...), without any commercial plugs--and hopefully THIS post will stay within the boundaries of "acceptable" posting. But since Tribe can remove my posts "for any reason or no reason," it is hard to know whether or not I am just writing postcards to God...

In any case, I encourage folks to read my article, which is posted here:

http://www.entheogenreview.com/halperngate.html

It MUST be good, if someone has had it censored, right? :-)

Frankly, censorship rankles me. My response to those who incite and execute such tactics is a renewed and invigorated vigilance in spreading the information. Toward that end, I encourage anyone who agrees that this is an important article to post a description of the story and link to it at their web page. Or repost THIS message to tribes you feel might benefit from reading the story. (Although changing the subject line might hide it from the Tribe censors for a bit longer, I dunno.) Or e-mail it to friends…

I send a big "thank you" to the many people who have e-mailed me, expressing their appreciation that I wrote the article.

-- Jon Hanna

posted in shulgin - 1 reply

low tech ecologicaly sensative entheochemistry

little lightening bolt — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 04:37:38 GMT

so one of the big complaints i get from people who only work with plant entheogens is that chemicals are not ecologicaly sensative in their production, the precursors production is polluting as are the solvents ect...
many people in the entheogen community are really ecologicaly focused....
one of the things i have heard chemistry students brag about is that they could make anything out of any thing over time ( though i think they might be just talking out their ass, but then again i am not a chemist, though i study).

so my question is how possible is it to create some of the simpler PIHKALs or TIHKALs in a way that is ecologicaly safe and sensative...(i am thinking aancient alchemy here). is it possible, has any one else thought about this?
can the chemicals needed to produce say 2cb for example by produced easily. can dmt be extracted from plants useing low tech methods, i think quality could suffer but, but then agqain i am not a chemist i am just makeing assumptions.
any insights or ideas would be welcome.
i really beleive in the power of chemicals as well as plants, i think if these chemicals could be created in a sustainable way it would be wonderfull!

posted in shulgin - 2 replies

Croatan Conference: Dennis McKenna - Michael Crowley

Mydriasis — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 18:56:22 GMT

April 21-23rd, 2006

Lectures by:

Dennis McKenna
(author; Ayahuasca: Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature,
The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching)

Dr. Dennis McKenna will be hosting a lecture
about his research into Ayahuasca. Dennis
McKenna is the brother of Terence McKenna - the
two traveled together to the Amazon to learn about
the healing properties of Ayahuasca. Dr. Dennis
McKenna is heavily involved in the research that
has helped to support both Terence’s work and his own.

Michael Crowley
(author; Secret Drugs of Buddhism, When the Gods
Drank Urine: the Riddle of Soma)

Michael Crowley will be speaking on the ancient
Hindu scripture called the Rig Veda and its frequent
mention of the drug plant "soma" though the precise
identity of this plant has remained a mystery for
millennia. Michael Crowley also uncovers sacramental
use of several other drug plants in Vajrayana Buddhism.
These drugs include Psilocybe cubensis, Argyreia
nervosa, Cannabis indica, Datura stramonium, and an
ayahuasca-like concoction based on Acacia catechu, a
rich source of DMT.

Music by

CX-1 Bluegrass Boys
(Members of Acoustic Syndicate and Snake Oil Medicine Show)

Caroline Pond
(Vassar Clemens, Snake Oil Medicine Show, Mad Tea P

Androcell
(Live* Celestial Dragon Recordings, Arizona)

Lectures:
Dennis McKenna
Michael Crowley
Sun Frog
Esiris Kayab Lyons
Adam Sanderson
Shad Marquitz
Emmit Carney
*NORML Attorney at Law for Asheville, NC.

Music:
Shapestatic - *live* www.geomagnetic.tv
Dylalien – The Fractal Cowboys, SF
Alien Blue - Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, NYC
Quetzatl - *live* Radical Turf Records
Glossolalia - *live* Intuitive Arts Multimedia
Logos - *live* Intuitive Arts Multimedia
Nod & BrainLizzard - TOUCH samadhi/AUM
Blue Spectral Monkey - Interchill
Kri - TOUCH samadhi
Medisin - TOUCH samadhi
Shad - TOUCH samadhi
Iduna - TOUCH samadhi
KT - Independent
Joshu - Evoke Community
Jeremie - Evoke Community

Art:
Eli Morgan, NYC www.psythos.com
Marisa Scirocco, NYC www.alienblue.com
Intuitive Arts Multimedia www.ICreateIam.com visionary art tent
Devotee Touch Samadhi
and more Asheville and East TN artists

Opening Ceremony: by Sakkred Circle
No Alcohol or Pets
(no exceptions - period)
Leave No Trace event – Be Aware of the Earth
Please carpool, recycle and bring tins for your cig butts
Rides available from airport
Directions will be mailed with tickets
Video taping
*with mailed permission only
Food on site - provided by
Bearly Edible

Tickets are $50 ($3.00 S/H)
Due to the size of the land and impact, only 250 tickets will be sold.
info & tickets @ www.harmonywerx.org

links:
www.touchsamadhi.com
www.geomagnetic.tv
www.cosm.org
www.interchill.com
www.androcell.com
www.icreateiam.com
www.psythos.com
www.alienblue.com
www.erowid.org
www.radicalturf.com
www.quetzatl.com
www.fifthestate.org

posted in shulgin - 0 replies

Technology Review magazine nominated for Award (has Shulgin article)

Bob — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 19:23:45 GMT

Technology Review Nominated for National Magazine Award
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 17, 2006--The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) has honored Technology Review as a finalist in its 40th anniversary National Magazine Awards competition.

MIT's magazine of innovation was nominated in the General Excellence category for magazines with circulations between 250,000 and 500,000. The category recognizes the effectiveness with which writing, reporting, editing, and design all come together to command readers' attention and fulfill a given magazine's unique editorial mission.

<snip>

n the August cover story "Social Machines," Technology Review Senior Editor Wade Roush explained that the current explosion of computing tools and applications is enabling new kinds of interaction among people. The feature itself was an experiment in social computing: Roush posted a draft of the article on a blog in May, and several visitors' comments made their way into the margins of the printed issue. The issue was rounded out by a piece on nutritional genomics by renowned Atlantic food writer Corby Kummer--and an essay on psychedelic drugs by Dr. Alexander Shulgin, known as "the grandfather of ecstasy."

The winners of this year's ASME Awards (which are known as "Ellies") will be announced at an evening ceremony on Tuesday, May 9, at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Frederick P. Rose Hall, New York City.

posted in shulgin - 1 reply

Louisana outlaws Harmala, Salvia, M Hostilis etc

kylelf — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 22:32:36 GMT

I thought there wasn't any issue using Harmala or Salvia. This
sets a precident. Alot of the DMT containing plants I figured were
suspect if you ingested them so that seems less surprising but as
far as DMT plant go they are still missing quite a few - DMT plants would be a tough one to nail down, which is funny in sort of a bitter sweet way.

http://www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/streamdocument.asp?did=288583

CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES: Prohibits the production, manufacture,
and distributionof hallucinogenic plant products

Production" includes the manufacture, planting, cultivation, growing,
or harvesting of a hallucinogenic plant

Hallucinogenic plant" means any part or portion of any of the following
(a) Brugmansia arborea.
(b) Amanita muscaria.
(c) Conocybe spp.
(d) Panaeolus spp.
(e) Psilocybe spp.
(f) Stropharia spp.
(g) Vinca rosea.
(h) Ipomoea violacea.
(i) Datura spp.
(j) Pancreatium trianthum.
(k) Kaempferia galanga.
(l) Olmedioperebea sclerophylla.
(m) Mesembryanthemum spp.
(n) Virola spp.
(o) Anadenanthera peregrina.
(p) Anadenanthera colubrina.
(q) Erythina spp.
(r) Genista canariensis.
(s) Mimosa hostilis.
(t) Rhynchosia spp.
(u) Sophora secundiflora.
(v) Peganum harmala.
(w) Banisteriopsis spp.
(x) Tetrapteris methystica.
(y) Heimia salicfolia.
(z) Tabernanthe iboga.
(aa) Prestonia amazonica.
(bb) Ipomoea violacea.
(cc) Rivea corymbosa.
(dd) Salvia divinorum.
(ee) Atropa belladonna.
(ff) Hyoscyamus niger.
(gg) Mandragora officinarum.
(hh) Brunfelsia spp.
(ii) Methysticodendron amesianum.
jj) Latua pubiflora.
(kk) Calea Zacatechichi.
(ll) Physalis subglabrata.
(mm) Solanum carolinense.
(nn) Lagoehilus inebrians

The provisions of this Section shall not apply to the possession,
planting,6cultivation, growing, or harvesting of a hallucinogenic
plant strictly for aesthetic,7landscaping, or decorative purposes

posted in shulgin - 4 replies

Shulgin the Film

Bob — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 15:16:19 GMT

Coming to a theater near you! (I wish!)

http://shulginthefilm.com/index.htm

posted in shulgin - 6 replies

Lecture by Dr. Shulgin at 2002 Mindstates

Bob — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 22:52:01 GMT

Dr. Shulgin's lecture on Synthetic vs Natural chemicals at Mindstates 2002 in Jamaica
http://www.matrixmasters.com/podcasts/index.html#023

Direct link to his speech:
http://www.matrixmasters.com/podcasts/SashaShulgin/SashaShulgin-NaturalvsSynthetic.mp3

posted in shulgin - 3 replies

3CH?

XpsychonautX — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:14:39 GMT

Anyone have any experience with, or comments about: 3,5-dimethoxy-4-hydroxyphenethylamine? It's not in Dr. Shulgin's book and it just seems like it should be. My gut tells me it's a useful compound but I just don't know.

posted in shulgin - 0 replies

Dr. Shulgin in Mail and Guardian; South Africa

Bob — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 18:58:54 GMT

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=259958&area=/insight/insight__international/

posted in shulgin - 1 reply

Dr. Shulgin Answers a New Question on CCLE

Bob — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:21:24 GMT

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/blg/

4-Hydroxy-5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, Psilocybe mushrooms, Psilocin

posted in shulgin - 2 replies

Shulgin MAPS Fundraiser

Bob — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 16:23:58 GMT

http://www.maps.org/pioneers/shulgins.html

posted in shulgin - 1 reply

Dr. Shulgin in the news

Bob — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 16:19:21 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051203/ts_nm/life_ecstasy_dc_4

posted in shulgin - 0 replies