'Godfather of Ecstasy,' Chemist Sasha Shulgin Dies Aged 88 164
EwanPalmer (2536690) writes "Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin, the chemist, pharmacologist and author known for popularizing the drug MDMA as well as creating and synthesizing hundreds of psychoactive drugs, has died aged 88. Shulgin was known for discovering, creating and personally testing hundreds of psychoactive chemicals and documenting the results, along with his wife, in his books and papers. He is also known for introducing the positive aspects of MDMA to psychologists, which in term helped it become a popular recreational drug in the 1980s." With less irritation from auto-playing video sound, try the BBC.
And thousands of candy ravers ... (Score:1)
And thousands of candy ravers bit down on their soothers and took another one.
Re:And thousands of candy ravers ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Better? Say, where is that magical land where the drugs are BETTER today?
If anything, you get more junk, more crap, more additives and less of the good stuff.
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Better? Say, where is that magical land where the drugs are BETTER today?
If anything, you get more junk, more crap, more additives and less of the good stuff.
Weed is better today then it has been in the past.
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It is true that higher quality weed is more commonly available today but it existed all along. When the DEA was measuring that brick there was already plenty of commonly available Skunk (~12%) as the mainstay in the US. Haze (remember Jimi Hendrix) wh
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Better? Say, where is that magical land where the drugs are BETTER today?
If anything, you get more junk, more crap, more additives and less of the good stuff.
Actually, it's gone in a circle. Things were all mixed up and still are if you are getting "X", but if you are buying "Molly", then you should be getting the pure MDMA. There is a market for it so somebody is fulfilling it, but it says something when things have gotten such as a new name has to be come up with to describe the pure form of what you always thought you were buying to begin with.
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I've never so much as tried marijuana or any other illegal drugs, any painkillers, nicotine, etc. The only drug I have experience with is alcohol.
Now, in my later years, my thoughts regarding intoxicants have changed. It's very interesting to m to read conversations like this--the experiences are so very far from my own. Even coming across these situations (e.g., talking about different kind of MDMA you see on a regular basis!) is far outside my ken. I had thought the Silk Road might be interesting to try--
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I've never so much as tried marijuana or any other illegal drugs, any painkillers, nicotine, etc. The only drug I have experience with is alcohol.
Now, in my later years, my thoughts regarding intoxicants have changed. It's very interesting to m to read conversations like this--the experiences are so very far from my own. Even coming across these situations (e.g., talking about different kind of MDMA you see on a regular basis!) is far outside my ken. I had thought the Silk Road might be interesting to try--good thing I missed out, given what went down there.
I wonder if LSD will ever been legal within my lifetime. I kind of doubt it.
there is a fair bit of legitimacy coming back to LSD. I always considered it a potential ground breaking area of therapeutics. The whole street drug thing, Tim Leary and all the rest of that nonsense got a knee jerk reaction which led to it being dropped for therapeutic evaluation and Sandoz wouldn't touch it anymore with all the publicity and so on. It's more complex than this but still I feel we threw out a VERY promising class of therapeutic agents/method AND assistance in deep insights into cognition an
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This just in: Legalizing a drug improves its quality due to competition.
Can I get a "duh"?
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Wait, Silk Road 1.0, or one of the 2.0's?
Yes.
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This is no longer 1999. Raves still exist, but pacifiers are far, far less common and the drugs are far better quality.
I think if the drugs were better the soothers would have increased since MDMA has a tendency of making you grind your teeth in a brutal way
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I think if the drugs were better the soothers would have increased since MDMA has a tendency of making you grind your teeth in a brutal way
When I grew up, it was common practice for a Raver/recreation drug user to look up everything about a drug before using it. There were many sources on the internet even back then (e.g. erowid), and BBS' before that. It was very common knowledge back then, that if you were grinding your teeth, it meant a large amount of the pseudoephedrine was stuck in the ephedrine stage (or it was cut), tl;dr not pure MDMA; pure MDMA has nognawing side-effect. Again, back in the day everyone knew this. Nowadays people are
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But LSD must be better (Score:3)
Because it's inventor died 14 years older at 102 [wikipedia.org]. :-)
And seriously, the one time I tried ecstasy, I didn't like that it seemed to interfere with my emotions.
LSD modifies percepetions and paths of thought, which can be a fantastic experience (or just great fun) if you are in the right mood for it, but I don't remember it ever modifying my emotions.
Ecstasy gave me the impression of creating out of proportion artificial emotions in me. After the fact, I really didn't like that aspect. No wonder it was all the
Re:But LSD must be better (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But LSD must be better (Score:5, Interesting)
PIHKAL & TIHKAL
LSD is like a filthy hammer bashing your brain out sure you see stars but the next day is rough. Shulgin went to the point of creating psychoactives tailored to visual or auditory only. LSD was discovered by mistake, and opened up a new world of pharmacology. Shulgin understood the systems and created purposefully, there is a HUGE difference.
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I hope that someone is continuing to work on Volume 2...
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Ahh the voice of ignorance. I once hosted an Earth Dance where the promoter gave every one who came a hit or two of CP liquid LSD. I know what the differnce between good and bad is. The basis of a good trip classically requires set and setting, purity aside. All things that I am competent at controlling. What I am saying is that LSD was a mistake with a side effect, Shulgin created hundreds of substances tested them evaluated them and recommended them. Why use a stone hammer to do prostrate surgery when you
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Stiffy flipping Viagra and MDMA.
It's just sad... (Score:3, Interesting)
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That's too black and white especially when there are people like me that have extremely addictive personalities. You probably don't know much about that, and if you don't be glad because it's not easy. I'm the type if 100 will kill me I'll take 99 and there is no calming the beast, all reason goes out the window until I get that 99. I cannot even answer why I'm like that because I don't even understand it myself.
I am the gray.
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At least in the case of LSD, you would be hard pressed to OD. Neither is considered an addiction risk.
There is still no good reason a psychiatrist shouldn't be able to prescribe them for use in a controlled therapy session.
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Alcohol's legal, and that has a far higher rate of physical addiction. Alcohol addiction is nasty in fact, as forcing an addict to go cold turkey would kill them. People also get psychologically addicted to adrenaline (which we create quite efficiently ourselves).
Banning something because some people might misuse it is silly, however if you wish to go down that route, you'd also have to ban alcohol, tobacco...guns?
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There's no logic in laws concerning sex, drugs and copyright. Don't even try to come up with sane, logical arguments. They don't work in a world that's ruled by corporate interest and thinkofthechildren.
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Adult use isn't the reason why MDMA is illegal. It's because of kids getting their hands on it and using it. The shit destroys their lives, and I would know.
I had a friend in high school who first tried MDMA at around 15. He was out with friends, they went to buy pot, and wound up buying MDMA instead. He was addicted to it for something like two years, and ran away from home within a year of his first experience with it. The only reason he stopped was that he was hit by a car one night while high, and wound
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If you want to take it to the extreme lets at least keep it to something one does to oneself. "We should also legalize suicide because despite it being illegal, there are still suicides occurring. Makes a lot of sense."
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Some people find the drug that fucks them up real good, and its THAT drug thats bad. Except for some other dude its perfectly fine.
I know a guy who closed himself up after a bad trip on LSD became a shallow husk of himself, another women who after a month or two on Pot went crazy (literally).
And me. i had severe paranoia attacks on Meth and consequently E (which are mostly Meth and MDMA an sometimes a little LSD for good measure).
I can onyl speak for myself here... I was a loner and a nerd, found a group of
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"The shit destroys their lives, and I would know." "Fortunately, a few years later when I met him, he went back to school and now as far as I know he's doing okay."
Perhaps his life wasn't quite so destroyed then? Maybe we should have finished him off by putting him in prison, to protect him from himself (but not from the rapists) ?
We have a guy who died at 88 after trying 1000s of drugs all his life and performing at a technical career with a high degree of competence.
We have a kid who learned the hard
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Everybody is different. Shit I did coke a couple of times and didn't even like it that much. I mean, I could see why people liked it, I could very much see how people get into trouble with it. In fact, I think that old drug war propaganda "I do coke so I can work longer hours, so I can make more money, so I can buy more coke" was one of the better descriptions of the trap that exists there.
Pot, I love pot....I know people who don't; and I don't mean the "I never used drugs so I am an expert" folks, shit, I
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One of the main points of legalization is harm reduction.
Ruining people's lives by charging them with crimes, subjecting them to the most dangerous environment in the world (prison), potentially causing them to get blacklisted from employment forever, forcing everyone to pay ever more tax dollars for ever more government police state powers and abuses while the "meth epidemic" and the "violence in Mexico" continues to worsen, etc. are far more harmful to individuals and society as a whole than just lettin
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How sad it is that psychoactive chemicals like this and LSD, which have been well demonstrated to have profoundly positive psychological effects (under responsible use) still cannot be used by responsible, grown adults? They can be the key to truly overcoming the psychological demons seem to be the human condition, and unlocked our true potential as self-aware, well-adjusted human beings.
The propensity to get in a 4000 lb. weapon, and go on a killing spree (aka driving) is too large. And, yes, I realize alcohol is the same way, but at least we have a roadside test with relatively accurate results for that. Beyond that, I personally have no problem with legalizing all the things. I just don't want to be on the road with people blasted 20 different ways.
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Then drastically de-regulate insurance so that ins. cos. need only comply with rules regarding actuarial solvency, and let them charge people rates that actually have some correlation with the risk generated by a person's behavior.
Yeah, yeah, I know, "I would never trust some corporation more than I trust the good and noble government."
Only idiots hopelessly indoctrinated in government schools with dumbed down/censored summaries of the Constitution could possibly prefer the dangers of living in a society
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Sure, they, can, but how do you put self-aware, well-adjusted human beings into a hierarchy beneath you? That's why these things are hard to get.
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What in the FUCK are you talking about no chemical supply trail???
look at these links, you know a bunch of people just have all that shit laying around, plus all the glass you need?
http://www.erowid.org/archive/... [erowid.org]
http://www.erowid.org/archive/... [erowid.org]
and last in honor of shulgan, his synth:
http://www.erowid.org/library/... [erowid.org]
SYNTHESIS: (from MDA) A solution of 6.55 g of 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) as the free base and 2.8 mL formic acid in 150 mL benzene was held at reflux under a Dean Stark trap until no
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http://www.erowid.org/archive/... [erowid.org]
http://www.erowid.org/archive/... [erowid.org]
and last in honor of shulgan, his synth:
http://www.erowid.org/library/... [erowid.org]
Brightstar's way of doing things should be included. http://www.erowid.org/archive/... [erowid.org] was a link from one posted.
Good stuff (the articles).
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Oh c'mon, you have to try harder to earn your keep, narc.
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I lived withing spitting distance of a meth house a couple of years ago, in a nice neighborhood. Wouldn't have known anything were it not for the fact that it got raided. 'Course compared to LSD, Meth is nasty.
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Responsibly means using it in a controlled manner, where there is a sober and knowledgeable guidance to the usages. Preventing OD, insuring their body can handle it and that they have taking the correct precautions.
The problems with these drugs is they either block and/or excite parts of your brain functionally. In essence have your brain function erratically.
Now these people are using this to get cool dreams, feel bliss, or see things, while otherwise they are healthy adults, then they are misusing the dru
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let me introduce you to this little drug called 'alcohol', and his friends caffeine & nicotine
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let me introduce you to this little drug called 'alcohol', and his friends caffeine & nicotine
Let me introduce you to water and the effect of water intoxication, a potentially fatal disturbance to brain functioning that results from drinking too much water.
Anything is toxic in sufficient quantities. What matters is dose, abuse factors, and so on. While one can abuse ANYTHING a morning cup of coffee is NOT the same thing as taking LSD.
Alcohol, caffeine etc are also both 'traditional' and 'natural'. That'
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LSD has no such traditions. Its just a chemical to get you high.
LSD is a special case because it's very new. There hasn't been enough time to develop traditions around its use. That's not true for other, very similar drugs. These drugs have long traditions of usage outside the west. That includes peyote [wikipedia.org], psychedelic mushrooms [wikipedia.org], Ayahuasca [wikipedia.org], and ibogaine [wikipedia.org], to name just a few.
Typically these drugs are taken in group settings with an experienced person or group of people to guide the experience. It's really
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As a fan of hallucinogens let me just say LSD is COMPLETE shit. Just because Freud was the first psychologist doesn't mean Freudians are going to help you with you mental issues. Just because LSD was the first hallucinogen doesn't mean you should take it. It is a rough large dirty molecule that make you see things but can make you VERY unhappy. I liken it to this video. Old shit may look good but it isn't always the best choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If you want to get high their are many choices.
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I assure you that people have unhappy experiences on other hallucinogens as well. Also, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that LSD was the first. It's really more like one of the last. All the ones I listed have been used by human beings for thousands of years.
As far as religion is concerned, I think you misunderstand. It's not that much "religion" as in doctrine as it is an established practice that minimizes harm, but established practices designed to minimize the bad effects of the powerf
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Where did I state that that stuff was good for either, or stating that this stuff you should use instead?
Alcohol main issue is that it is ingrained with our culture, so getting rid of it will cause a ton of problems. Proposing starting new cultures where we take additional stuff that is bad for you is actually just stupid.
Caffeine, doesn't mess with your head the same way other drugs do. It just gives you extra energy. That said caffeinated food and drink is a bad idea, you should just stick to the food/d
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yes, all three substances affect the body quite differently if you take an up-close look at their chemical mechanisms. however that is completely tangential to the point i was making, or the post i was replying to.
read the post i was responding to again, and see if you can't grok my meaning.
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But they are still slowly messing up their brains.
That's no different than aging. At least drugs make you feel good.
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Now these people are using this to get cool dreams, feel bliss, or see things, while otherwise they are healthy adults, then they are misusing the drug. Aka Drug Abuse. As well many of these drugs have long term effects that build up over time. So the first time you are 99.99999% Ok, but after a while your brain gets more damaged.
You're equating changes in the brain with "brain damage". Many drugs enact changes within the brain, some permanent and some temporary. The term "brain damage" is a loaded and inflammatory term signifying that all changes as a result of drugs are bad. Some are not bad. Some might either be good or bad depending on who is defining what is desirable in a brain.
I struggled for years with depression, anger management, and had difficulty relating to people. After smoking weed for a few months, my depressi
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A few people do end up rewiring their brains in negative ways from psychedelics, but
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Phenethylamines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Phenethylamine /fnlmin/ (PEA), -phenethylamine, or phenylethylamine is an organic compound and a natural monoamine alkaloid, a trace amine, and also the name of a class of chemicals with many members well known for psychoactive drug and stimulant effects.[1] Phenylethylamine functions as a neuromodulator or neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system.[2] It is biosynthesized from the amino acid phenylalanine by enzymatic decarboxylation. In add
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No the researcher was a fraud. The chemical provider sued him and said basically that their whole business model was based on not ever fucking up an order for any reason whatsoever.
As to meth being bad watch "Road Side Profits" https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Any drug Tim Leary says is bad is VERY FUCKING BAD.
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For the most part, the police aren't all that interested in arresting drug users (assuming their drug use is not creating a public problem). They're more interested in the distributors.
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Not if they're white anyway.
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Yes, I'm one of them. I'm not saying the police don't arrest users, I'm saying that their sting operations are not targeted at someone buying a dime bag of weed. They want the guys selling pounds of it. I would wager that the vast majority of drug arrests are people who were investigated for another crime and found to have drugs. Those people, whether or not they were on drugs at the time, were creating a public problem that the police responded to (in our case, we managed to fill the hallway of the dor
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Actual targeted police effort for the purpose of catching people with drugs are generally targeted at people producing and distributing.
And for those that weren't aware (Score:5, Informative)
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Before anyone goes "oh no, he tells you how to make drugs": No. Despite containing "recipes" for a lot of psychoactive chemicals, they don't work well as a "hobbyist cookbook to easy highs".
In a nutshell, if you can follow his "formula", you not only know what you're doing, you also have a rather well stocked lab and access to many things the average person could not even get his hands on by illegal means. So if you CAN follow his lead, you don't really need to, chances are, you did a long, long time ago if
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I read somewhere, years ago, that Shulgin had an "informal understanding" with the authorities: he would keep his "recipes" obscure enough to prevent casual duplication by anyone without a PhD in organic chemistry, and in return "they" would leave him alone to do his work -- and they would also reap the benefits of his research via his copious and detailed lab notes and trip reports.
I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds nice.
In any case, well played, Sasha... RIP.
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If that's what you heard, well... I heard that it wasn't an informal understanding so much as it was a Real Actual "Schedule 1" license to house and manufacture the most illegal chemicals known to man and laws, and it was revoked (informally or ostensibly because of the publishing of PIHKAL and TIHKAL) after a raid where they destroyed his lab because they managed to get a soil test from around his place that showed slightly elevated levels of mercury. In other words, a snow job.
Saw the old man 10 years ago (Score:3)
A friend of mine called me up and told me he was presenting a talk at MIT so we went. It was amazing to see a nearly 80 year old man bouncing around. He is the same age as my Grandmother, yet he had more energy and was more with it than she was at 60.
It was a really great talk; I could watch him talk about his "dirty pictures" all day long.
Very sad day but, it had to come someday.
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It was amazing to see a nearly 80 year old man bouncing around. He is the same age as my Grandmother, yet he had more energy and was more with it than she was at 60.
I'd love to know his secret.
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Ecstasy and other designer drugs he created. ;-)
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He probably looked at its molecular structure and "had a feeling" it would be psychoactive.
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> I'd love to know his secret.
Honestly, I think its that he kept active and kept working on things that excited and interested him.
If you understand the basics of what the human mind does, matching patterns and re-wiring itself to respond to them better, if you have seen the research on dementia and alzheimers and the evidence that novel environments that keep the mind active and experiencing new things can mean drastic differences....
Is it really any surprise that when comparing a person who has mostly
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http://www.reddit.com/r/LSD/co... [reddit.com]
specifically
http://www.erowid.org/archive/... [erowid.org]
This is not a telephone conversation. (Score:1)
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Why care about the NSA? You can't even say you are sad that someone died without them getting on your case?
What is this, the USSA?
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>What is this, the USSA?
No, but many paranoid SlashDerpsters think it is. The groupthink here ranges from exceptionally stupid to completely delusional.
It's been a real eye-opener as to the mental state of the tech community. People with minor technical skills who mistake themselves for smart people seem to go off the deep end just as readily as any far-right-wing nutjob on the wingnut blogs or Twitter wingnut tags like #TCOT or #TGDN.
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Umm... obviously they DO care about you drugging yourself. "War on drugs" rings a bell? For some odd reason that I don't really understand they actually DO care a fair lot whether people put their brains into an orbit.
I'd really love to know why. One thing I'm fairly certain is that it's not because they actually give half a shit about us being "healthy".
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Go ahead. It is no secret that I consider the legal situation concerning drugs more than just a tad bit questionable. To the point where I dare say that a mature adult should have the unalienable right to do with his body and mind whatever he pleases.
At the very least I'd like an answer to the question why tobacco and alcohol are legal while other drugs, which are according to various scientific sources less addictive and less damaging to the human mind or body, are not.
i hope they do closed casket (Score:1)
Bad headline, give Shulgin the credit he is due (Score:1)
This headline is terrible - Shulgin was WAY more than just some "godfather of ecstasy." He was a true scientist, pioneer, and explorer - a brilliant chemist and great writer. Everyone should at least read his book, PIHKaL. You'll get great insight into why he explored psychoactive chemicals, how he synthesized them, and (imo, most interestingly) how he went about exploring their effects.
Not just the Godfather of Ecstasy (Score:2, Interesting)
He was much more than just the Godfather of Ecstasy. A brilliant chemist who wanted to unlock the secrets of the brain and the inner workings of the mind and soul. He was bigger than just one drug, his work was far more important than just the Rave culture. He won't be understood in his own time and his contributions will not be fully understood for hundreds of years. Once humanity has decided that chemical and substance research can be of great use to mankind, his contributions will finally be recognized.
R
RIP Sasha (Score:2)
MDMA: Empathy (Score:5, Informative)
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Too bad fear rules all. MDMA was highly effective in couples therapy, leading to years of progress in hours.
Until two days later when they went back to hating each other again but twice as bad. MDMA can give you some short term breakthroughs in communication, but the side effects are counter productive. The experiments were far from "highly effective." Now if we can just get a drug that ratchets up serotonin production without the re-uptake "hacks" like Prozac or short term "dumps" like MDMA we would have something.
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The side effect you talk of is simply a resistance to the natural serotonin in your brain, due to an over abundance of it when taking advanced doses. The serotonin resistance & associated depression disappear after a couple of hours/days, once natural levels are restored.
This isn't experienced with the low doses used in therapy however. Therapeutic doses are a fraction of those used by recreational users.
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He documented his wife? (Score:1)
Re:Drugs can be bad mmkay! (Score:5, Insightful)
Shulgin's work had nothing to do with weed, addictive drugs or getting a body high.
He invented and classified an entire new spectrum of chemicals closely related to the brain's chemicals such as serotonine. He tried to synthesize every possible combination, moving the amino groups around, substituting existing compounds with allyl or methoxy groups, and experimented with all these chemicals on himself with precise procedures to ensure his safety. These chemicals have proven to be extremely powerful consciousness-altering drugs, active at just a few milligrams, producing profound mind-bending effects and providing an unparalleled insight in the inner workings of the mind and its chemical balance.
He has provided the public with detailed descriptions of these chemicals, both synthesis and their subjective effects. He never profited financially and risked his life and freedom many times just to chase this knowledge. (And have great sex, as he states in his books). Alexander Shulgin was a genius, and the way society is developing there will probably never be a man like him again.
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That just means that we have too many regulations due to too lax liability suits.
Current drug research precludes development of drugs that have "getting high" as a predominant effect, because the medical establishment considers any such effects "side effects" even if it was the intended effect!
One cannot develop an antidepressant drug, if it actually makes someone feel good!
Basically we are still in the midst of an inquisition against pleasure, thanks to you know who, dating back to the Opium Wars.
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Can you be more specific about that last bit? I know cynacism runs deep within the Slashdot community (a lot of it justified) but it's not as if we won't have geniuses in the future able to make contributions to the world. Maybe the US will have some problems but not everyone is bound to America's way of doing things (or being prevented from doing).
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I don't expect that you will be allowed to have such a laboratory in your house anymore.
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Fortunately, you have no physical addiction to deal with. But if you do backslide, don't smoke one of the super powerful varieties. Find a more mellow one where the anti-psychotic cannabinoids are proportionally stronger.
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Baaaaah...