Alexander Shulgin - The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact

Legendary chemist, nuanced psychonaut of molecular structure-activity relations, deep thinker on issues of societal policy, engaging storyteller, inspirational teacher, and all-around good human beingSasha Shulgin takes us on an alchemical educational journey as if we were sitting there as students in the class from which this text arose. What a gift!

David E. Presti, Professor of Neurobiology, University of California, Berkeley Author of Foundational Concepts in Neuroscience: A Brain-Mind Odyssey and Mind Beyond Brain

If youre curious about any drug, from caffeine to LSD, this is the book for you. What an absolute treat to learn from the best, to have Professor Shulgin as your personal instructor, with all of his charming, self-effacing asides and his witty encyclopedic knowledge on display.

Julie Holland, MD

Author of Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection from Soul to Psychedelics

Editor of Ecstasy the Complete Guide and The Pot Book

These course lessons are pure Sasha: enthusiastic, surprising, tangential, goofy, and shockingly knowledgeable. But they also give us something that remains terribly rare, even at this late date: a kaleidoscopic approach to the problems and possibilities of drugs that is at once pragmatic, visionary, and genuinely inter-disciplinary. Once again, Shulgin proves himself a magnificent spirit as well as a magnificent mind. I learned a lot, and enjoyed myself tremendously.

Erik Davis

Author of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the 70s

The late, great Sasha Shulgin, a.k.a. Dr. Ecstasy, was a pioneering psychonaut who designed a dizzying array of psychoactive substances in his mad scientist laboratory hidden in the hills east of San Francisco. These meandering musings are the surviving record of a course he taught in the 1980s, the decade of Just Say No. They reveal the light-hearted human side of a chemist whowhen it comes to drugsadvises us to Just Say Know.

Don Lattin

Author of the psychedelic trilogy: The Harvard Psychedelic Club, Distilled Spirits, and Changing Our Minds

This book originated from a transcription of lectures given by Sasha Shulgin at San Francisco State University in 1987. In that respect, some of the content is dated. But for those who never had the opportunity to meet Sasha or hear him lecture, the transcriptions reflect Sashas vibrant lecturing style. Indeed, if you did know Sasha, you can almost hear him speaking in the words of this book. It is replete with the kinds of anecdotes and analogies that were characteristic of Sashas speaking style. He talks about what drugs are and their sources, different routes through which they enter the body, what they do in the body, how they leave the body, in addition to presenting information about various drug classes. Sasha sprinkles his lectures with questions about ethical and legal issues around drugs, and in general asks the reader to think deeply about some of the moral issues confronting us about drugs today.

David E. Nichols, PhD

Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Purdue University

These transcriptions of lectures by Alexander Shulgin sparkle with the brilliance and wit of a pioneering researcher of the chemistry and effects of psychoactive drugs. Those fortunate to have known Sasha Shulgin will recognize his voice in these pages and take pleasure in listening to him share his wealth of knowledge and personal experience with magical molecules. A great read!

Andy Weil

Author of From Chocolate to Morphine and The Natural Mind

Director of Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona

Sasha was a beloved friend, a brilliant chemist, and an inspiration to everyone he met. This series of lectures captures the energy, warmth and irreverence that so typified his character. His underlying philosophy and approach to research remained forever youthfula passion for knowledge; the need to constantly question established dogma, authority, and ones own previous assumptions; the vital nature of individual freedom of choice; and the pursuit of knowledge for the sheer, child-like thrill of it. Though Sasha is with us no more, we are lucky to have the ever-radiant Ann, the Shulgin Farm, and this beautiful book, The Nature of Drugs, embodying his memory.

Amanda Feilding

Executive Director of the Beckley Foundation

Dr. Alexander Sasha Shulgin was a pioneer, giving us a pharmacopoeia of hundreds of compoundsmany of which have not been thoroughly evaluated to this day. Yet, Sasha was far more than a chemist; Sasha was a philosopher, a mystic, and a gifted teacher. He was able to present the boring subject matter of medicinal chemistry in a way that was compelling and fascinating. And he didnt just teach chemistry; he placed the chemistry that he was teaching into the context of society, law, and history. Although Sasha taught widely and in many venues, nowhere is his teaching better represented than in the course he taught at San Francisco State University in 1987. Anyone with interests in science, chemistry, psychedelics, history, or philosophy, upon reading The Nature of Drugs will be rewarded with an incredibly fascinating and enriching experience.

Dennis McKenna

Editor of Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs: 50 Years of Research

Founder of The McKenna Academy of Natural PhilosophyA 21st Century Mystery School

Alexander Shulgin was many things, but first and foremost he was a teacher: he taught students, law enforcement, physicians, and eventually the world through the publication of his books PiHKAL and TiHKAL. This is Alexander Shulgin at his sharpest and most passionate. Emboldened by the emergency scheduling of MDMA and the passage of the Federal Analogue Act only three months previously, he offers a series of discursive lectures on medicine, pharmacology, human physiology, philosophy of science, astrology, alchemy, law, and linguistics. This text is a precious opportunity to attend a class taught by one of the great scientific thinkers of the 20th century and an indispensable primer for understanding the immensely complicated subject we call drugs.

Hamilton Morris

Documentarian and Chemist

Creator and Director of Hamiltons Pharmacopeia

History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact

VOLUME ONE

ALEXANDER SHULGIN

FOREWORD BY Mariavittoria Mangini

Copyright Alexander Sasha Shulgin 2021

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.

Co-published by:

Transform Press | P.O. Box 1152, Berkeley, CA 94712

Synergetic Press |1 Bluebird Court, Santa Fe, NM 87508

& 24 Old Gloucester St. London, WC1N 3AL England

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 9780999547212 (hardcover)