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Goodbye to Sasha Shulgin, Godfather of Psychedelics
- matthewwiese 12y agoAn extraordinary man, both in personality and genius. If you haven't watched the documentary about his life yet, I highly suggest it: Dirty Pictures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5q1bBVzDpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5q1bBVzDpc This man is an inspiration for a coming generation of scientists whose love of knowledge and truth should not be discredited because of their willingness to experiment with life and reality. He knew the chemistry and made it beautiful.
- mr_sturd 12y agoHis work is also discussed at some length in Mike Power's Drugs 2.0, it's an interesting read.
- derwiki 12y agoFTA: "He loved puns, palindromes, limericks and wordplays." When my friend was shooting part of Dirty Pictures, he texted me to say "I just exchanged dirty limericks with Shulgin!"
- lawnchair 12y agoSuper guy. Check out PiHKAL and TiHKAL for some good reads.
- lowglow 12y agoDo all the psychedelics you can.
- sehr 12y agoDo all the research about psychedelics you can first, though. Trips are always easier to handle if you know what's happening!
- cloudwalking 12y agohttp://erowid.org http://erowid.org
- cnp 12y agoRather, if you think you can handle the psychedelics, do the classical psychedelics.
- virtualwhys 12y agoAre you referring to LyesD? Or maybe you mean the organics brought into being by what some would call the original Godfather ;-)
- andyhmltn 12y agoBut be careful, know what you're taking and do your research. Psychedelics are very powerful drugs. If you use them correctly you'll have a good experience overall but in the same light things can and do go wrong
- Nursie 12y agoIrresponsible advice. Learn about them, and experiment with them if you want to, and research what the hell it is you're getting into before you do it. Psychedelics are not magic, they're drugs.
- smanuel 12y agoBut first start with something less harmful but which could have similar effects. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holotropic_Breathwork http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holotropic_Breathwork
- kylebrown 12y agoOn this, Alan Watts offers some sage advice: "If you get the message, hang up the phone."
- rpearl 12y agoIt is rare to be able to pinpoint a experience as a life-altering event in one's life. It is even more unique when one can trace the experience to the work of one individual. Dr. Shulgin's work directly and positively effected profound change in many lives. He was a uniquely talented chemist and thinker, and his genius will be sorely missed. "There are no casual experiments."
- GuiA 12y agoHN thread from when he passed away (early June 2014; he was known as Sasha & Alexander): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839226
- pantalaimon 12y ago> Sasha […] originated in countries of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe as a diminutive of Aleksander and Aleksandra.
- RangerScience 12y agoHere's a favorite thing from that last year or so of his life: http://teafaerie.org/2013/02/456/ http://teafaerie.org/2013/02/456/ There a wizard you know of needs a retirement plan?
- smanuel 12y agoIs he considered the Godfather of Psychedelics because he was a chemist? I've read a lot about Timothy Leary and John Lilly who have also done a lot about psychedelics but I've never seen them referred to as Godfathers. Yes, they were psychologists and not chemists but I think that doesn't diminish the value of the research they've done. Don't want to make this sound as a rant but rather try to understand the criteria behind such... titles.
- anewcolor 12y agoin writing pihkal and tihkal he earned the title.
- smanuel 12y agoTimothy Leary wrote "The Psychedelic Experience" in 1962. Aldous Huxley wrote "The Doors of Perception" in 1954. And I guess there are many other books on psychedelics which I haven't read. But still it's a chemist, who earned the title by writing a book about psychedelic chemical compounds and their effects, but which is not as... psychologically deep as other books (some of which have been written almost half a century ago) on psychedelics.
- Nursie 12y agoSasha discovered whole families of psychedelics, and increased our knowledge of them exponentially (IMHO). He deserves the title. That said, my Goddaughter has two Godfathers, so why can't psychedelics? I would honour Albert Hofmann with the title as well.
- illumen 12y agoAmericans taking credit again... lol. "MDMA was first synthesized in 1912 by Merck chemist Anton Köllisch" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#History
- mr_sturd 12y agoSynthesized - yes. But Alexander Shulgin extensively synthesised, tested and documented - both the process and the psychedelic effects of - thousands of psychoactive compounds.
- illumen 12y agoYour point? Merck & Bayer have done exponentially more work than that - and they invented it. Reading this article it sounds like he invented it. People have been drinking the bread juice, or eating the mushrooms for millennia and writing about it. Reading this article, it sounds like he started some sort of drug movement. Discos were around before him. Sure, he did a lot of work in the area, but he gets a lot of credit for things he didn't do. Next you'll be telling me Americans made the first flying plane, or made the first working digital computer, the transistor, or invented the wheel? This is a misleading article from an academic institution.
- mr_sturd 12y agoIn that case, I'd be interested to read their literature around MDMA and compounds of the 2C-X variety.
- Nursie 12y ago>> he gets a lot of credit for things he didn't do. He found and published multiple, relatively simple synthesis routes for some pre-existing substances and many, many psychoactive substances that had never been seen before. He pioneered exploration into their effects and he shared the knowledge with the world, despite the censorious wishes of worldwide governments and law enforcement. That makes him pretty unique and special in my book.
- 12y ago
- jeffbr13 12y agoThis really bothered me in an article remembering a man who spent most of his life studying and trying to raise awareness of psychoactive chemicals: > Ecstasy, known as MDMA It's MDMA (the chemical compound 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) that's usually known as "Ecstasy", but many other chemicals are also sold as "Ecstasy" as well. Very few people die from MDMA overdose, or even the effects of MDMA, but that doesn't always extend to the other chemicals sold as ecstasy[1] - I was at the Warehouse Project opening night last year where a guy died and several others were put in induced comas because they were supplied with PMA rather than MDMA[2]. Whether or not you agree with using psychoactive chemicals recreationally, any misinformation can be dangerous to the people who will use them. I feel this error should have been caught by the editor. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#Purity_and_dosage_of_.22ecstasy.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#Purity_and_dosage_of_.22e... [2]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24314997 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24314997
- malka 12y agoPMA ? what the actual fuck, whoever did this deserves a slow and painful death. For the record, the nickname of the drug PMA is 'Dr. death'. very easy to OD on this shit.
- Nursie 12y agoThis stuff happens quite a lot. And yes they do deserve a slow and painful death. From what I understand, PMA/PMMA is what you get if you start with (relatively easy to source) anisole rather than the controlled MDA/MDMA precursor safrole. Then you have a product that you might be able to sell, maybe, and if you tell people anything you tell them it's "extra strong" or some other crap. And yeah, when batches of these things come to market, kids die.
- makomk 12y agoOf course, the reason safrole is more controlled than anisole in the first place is that it can be used to make MDMA, which is both safe and effective as a recreational drug.
- conformal 12y agoit is sad to hear that sasha passed, he was a great man. he did a lot of really positive work for expanding the public's knowledge of hallucinogenic compounds, mainly 5HT-2A agonists of various varieties. that said, he is typically over-attributed as being the 'godfather' of this field in an academic context when nearly every single compound he synthesized was originally synthesized and researched by someone else. there are thousands of researchers from the pharma industry and academia who spent huge parts of their adult lives just synthesizing a few of these compounds who often receive zero attribution for their life's work. knowing this, i find it rather offensive that an academic institution would provide such a trumped-up tribute to sasha shulgin. oh, and for the record, a lot of the syntheses in tikhal and pikhal have _intentional_ omissions and errors, which makes those texts mostly useless from a synthetic standpoint.
- Nursie 12y ago>> oh, and for the record, a lot of the syntheses in tikhal and pikhal have _intentional_ omissions and errors, which makes those texts mostly useless from a synthetic standpoint. I've never heard this said before. Can you be more specific or point to a reference I could read on this?
- conformal 12y agojust like most people who are sasha fanboys, you obviously have zero domain knowledge on this subject. try them out yourself, see what happens.
- Nursie 12y agoI don't have access to equipment or precursors. I'm still waiting for a reference. I'm genuinely interested.
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoNo, it doesn't work that way. When you make a claim, and someone politely asks for a source, you don't get to go "LOL ur dumb" and think that constitutes a reply. "Try it yourself" doesn't work either, since I'm sure you didn't do that. Only crackpots get angry when asked reasonably to show their work.
- netcan 12y agoThere's a strange hypocrisy or at least contrast in view on his wikipedia page. In a paragraph it mentions his work with the DEA, his seminars and reference books. Immediately below he's photographed in an erowid t-shirt and talk about his experiments with friends. Every time I read an article or have a discussion even remotely related to this topic I feel like I have to fight back the urge to go into rants and platitudes. Even the path to effective decriminalization of marijuana (and perhaps later some psychedelics) through medicinal use is enraging. It's like ending race based slavery on the grounds that the majority of slaves have some white ancestry.
- yebyen 12y agoHe was doing experiments that you can only do with a special permissions grant from the DEA. A chemist, he was bestowed with the rights to house and manufacture the chemicals that are on Schedule I (no source, sorry) and later, when it was more convenient for the DEA to discredit him, they drummed up some phony test results showing slightly elevated levels of mercury in the ground around his lab, and used this as an excuse to destroy his lab and revoke his certifications. I never heard of this person before he died, but I did read about him after that, and he was no friend to a tyrant, let me assure you. Spend some time reading other sources about him if you are really interested, I'm sure the Wiki article as they tend to do paints both pictures, but I think you'll find very few (individual) people with a single mind about him that didn't like him a whole lot.
- lilbola 12y agoI had the opportunity to meet him a few years back. Very nice dude.
- andyl 12y agoA great popularizer of psychedelics - a real-life Walter White. To his credit, he doesn't shy away from the fact that some people never return from their trip. That happened to my cousin.
- wavefunction 12y agoWalter White was a greedy asshole in a fictional story. Sasha Shulgin was a true hacker with a great heart in real life.
- justbaker 12y agoNo... he is the furthest thing from Walter White.
- revdinosaur 12y agoYou realize that Walter White is an anti-hero; a tragic figure not to be emulated... right? But to your second point, yes, HPPD[1] is a serious condition. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percept...