Ann Shulgin
Pioneering researcher who with her husband Alexander explored the uses of psychedelic drugs
ANN SHULGIN, who has died aged 91, probably tried every available psychedelic drug; with her chemist husband Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin, who has been described as “the grandfather of ecstasy”, she was a pioneer in advocating the use of MDMA, or “ecstasy”, in a therapeutic context. “He was the scientist and I was the psychologist,” was how she summarised their collaboration, both acting as guinea pigs.
At the height of the 1990s explosion in “rave” culture, Ann Shulgin argued that MDMA and similar chemicals might counteract a lack of empathy and cohesion among those in their twenties and thirties. “Many young people who go to raves are from big cities and they grow up learning to be cautious, not to look strangers in the eye,” she said. “When young people go to a rave, it’s their first experience of being able to relax and expand boundaries, with ecstasy as a heart-opener.”
MDMA or 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methamphetamine, a stimulant with mild hallucinogenic properties which the Shulgins dubbed the “low-calorie martini”, was first synthesised and patented in 1912 by the German company Merck. From 1967 Sasha Shulgin had been testing the drug on himself with a monthly study group of selected friends. Noting its beneficial effects on empathy, he was convinced that MDMA, alongside the other psychedelics he was creating in the laboratory, had potential as tools for psychotherapy.
Then in 1976 he developed a new way of making the drug, bypassing the patent. The drug was banned in Britain in 1977 and in the US in 1985. As its popularity as the dance drug ecstasy or “E” exploded, with some 500,000 clubbers taking it every weekend, concerns were raised about its dangers. Tablets were often adulterated and “E” was linked with several high-profile deaths.
The Shulgins had worries about the use of MDMA in clubs, particularly about the high doses. For many years they had a good relationship with the US authorities, advising the Drug Enforcement Agency, testifying as expert witnesses at trials and analysing street drugs under a DEA licence.
“[The DEA] have few people they can talk to who are on the other side of the fence who are honest,” Ann Shulgin observed. And when in 1981 they were married in Shulgin’s back garden, a DEA agent officiated.
Ann had met Sasha Shulgin in 1979 at UC Berkeley, where he taught public health. They became soul-mates, bonded by a shared fascination with psychedelics; Ann had a fondness for the psychoactive cactus, peyote.
The Shulgins’ chummy relationship with officialdom crumbled, however, after the publication of their book PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (1991), PIHKAL standing for “phenethylamines I have known and loved”; the book was self-published because no publisher would touch the subject. Three years later the DEA raided their laboratory. “It is our opinion that those books are pretty much cookbooks on how to make illegal drugs,” said an agency spokesman.
Undeterred, the couple went on to publish TIHKAL (1997), standing for “tryptamines I have known and loved”. From their hilltop home known as “the Farm” in Lafayette, California, they continued to produce new psychedelic compounds faster than the authorities could ban them. “Inventing new psychoactive drugs is like composing new music,” Ann Shulgin told the Los Angeles Times.
By no means all Ann and Sasha’s experiences with psychedelics were happy ones. In 2001 they tested the cactus, Pachycereus pringlei, native to northwestern Mexico, dissolving an extract in fruit juice and each drinking a 100ml cup. While Sasha was overcome by a fear of movement, Ann “could see the full moon shining down on me with what felt like chilling contempt”. This would be, she thought, “an awful, stupid way to die”.
Laura Ann Gotleib was born in New Zealand on March 22 1931, the elder of two children of Bernard Gotleib, the US consul in Wellington, and his New Zealander wife Gwen (née Ormiston). Two years later her father was transferred to Sicily, and then to Trieste.
The family returned to America a month before Italy entered the war and were assigned to Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Her father’s postings took them to Cuba and Canada, where Ann studied at Alma College in St Thomas, Ontario, before attending High Mowing School in New Hampshire. When he retired she followed him to San Francisco and enrolled at art college.
Ann’s first psychedelic experience took place in Golden Gate Park: “I saw something forming in the air, slightly above the level of my head. I thought that it was perhaps a few feet from me, then I realised I couldn’t actually locate it in space at all. It was a moving spiral opening, up there in the cool air, and I knew it was a doorway to the other side of existence.”
Ann Shulgin was married four times and her first three marriages ended in divorce.
She met Shulgin, a widower, in 1978. A visitor in 2005 described an air of romance about them: “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.”
The Shulgins became revered elders of the psychedelic scene, travelling to events such as the Burning Man festival in Nevada, where they were praised by seekers of spiritual enlightenment. Latterly Ann was pleased to note a resurgence in legitimate research, with academics undertaking clinical trials of MDMA and publishing studies suggesting that the drug could help veterans of military conflict deal with trauma.
Sasha Shulgin insisted that psychedelics were “research tools” only. Ann, however, was more relaxed about their use for recreation: “I like to turn on and observe the universe,” she said in 2002. “Scientists try to explain that these drugs aren’t for fun – as if there’s something wrong with fun.”
Sasha died in 2014; Ann Shulgin is survived by a son from her first marriage and by two daughters and a son from her third.