In 1968 the strategy behind the newly hatched War on Drugs was to make drugs harder to get and produce. The DEA put LSD’s source material, ergotamine, on its watch list and tracked it with military precision. But even that close level of scrutiny didn’t stop underground chemists from pumping out a steady supply, the quality dependent on their skills. Some renegade chemists sought to turn a profit; but the most productive of them viewed spreading the benefits of psychedelics as a social calling. All of these chemists did their work clandestinely and on the run. All but one: Dr. Alexander Shulgin.
During the darkest half century of psychedelic repression, Sasha as he was known to his friends, operated as a one-man psychopharmacological research facility in full sight of the law. Hamilton Morris called Shulgin “the most important psychedelic chemist who has ever lived.” The sheer output of his work – 300 scientific papers, patents and books on the chemistry and pharmacology of the compounds he invented – affirms that appraisal.
Shulgin began his career in the 1950s at Dow Chemicals. After developing a money minting biodegradable insecticide, he was given the customary one dollar bill for the patent but granted free rein to research whatever he liked. In 1960, he took 400mg of mescaline, which “unquestionably confirmed the entire direction of [his] life.” He and Dow parted ways in 1966 but in the ensuing years, the 6’5” white-haired wizard who was famous for his good cheer and sense of humor, synthesized over 234 psychedelic compounds in the DEA-licensed lab he built in a cottage behind his property in Lafayette, California.