Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin (born June 17, 1925) is a pharmacologist, chemist and drug developer.
Shulgin is generally credited with the popularizing of ecstasy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He and his wife Ann Shulgin authored the books TiHKAL and PiHKAL. Shulgin discovered many other noteworthy phenethylamines including the 2C* family of which 2C-T-2, 2C-T-7, 2C-I, and 2C-B are most well known.
Shulgin was given authorization by the DEA to synthesize and test the effects of psychoactive drugs. He had a group of between 20 and 30 friends with whom he regularly tested his creations. They had a systematic way of ranking the effects of the various drugs, with a vocabulary to describe the visual, auditory and physical sensations. He personally tested hundreds of drugs, mainly analogues to various tryptamines (family containing DMT and psilocybin) and phenethylamines (family containing MDMA, and mescaline). There are an infinite number of slight chemical variations, all of which produce slight variations in effect--some pleasant and some unpleasant--and all of which are meticulously recorded in Shulgin's books.
Some of the more interesting chemicals mentioned in Shulgin's books include DIPT (diisopropyltryptamine), which appears to almost exclusively affect the sense of hearing. Perceived frequencies of sounds are shifted down nonlinearly (as opposed to each pitch shifting the same amount), which indicates that the drug might affect cortical processing areas rather than the ear itself.
He currently works at home in Lafayette, CA. He is producing two new books on isoquinoline analogues, chemicals which are primarily found in cacti.
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