Alexander Shulgin - Life and Career

Life and Career

Shulgin was born in Berkeley, California to Theodore Stevens Shulgin (1893–1978) and Henrietta D. Shulgin (1888–1960). Theodore was born in Orenburg, Russia, which is just north of Kazakhstan, and immigrated to the United States in 1923, while Henrietta was born in Illinois. Both Theodore and Henrietta were public school teachers in Alameda County.

Shulgin began studying organic chemistry as a Harvard University scholarship student. In 1943, at the age of 19, he dropped out of school, and joined the U.S. Navy, where he eventually became interested in pharmacology. After serving in the Navy (a veteran of World War II), he returned to Berkeley, California, and in 1954 earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Through the late 1950s, Shulgin completed post-doctoral work in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacology at University of California, San Francisco. After working at Bio-Rad Laboratories as a research director for a brief period, he began work at Dow Chemical Company as a senior research chemist.

It was at this time that he had a series of psychedelic experiences that helped to shape his further goals and research, beginning with an experience with mescaline.

I first explored mescaline in the late '50s, Three-hundred-fifty to 400 milligrams. I learned there was a great deal inside me.

— Alexander Shulgin, LA Times, 1995

He would later write that everything he saw and thought "had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid ... I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability."

Shulgin's professional activities continued to lean in the direction of psychopharmacology, furthered by his personal experiences with psychedelics. But during this period he was unable to do much independent research. His opportunity for further research came with his development of Zectran, the first biodegradable pesticide, a highly profitable product. Showing unusual humility in his famous book PIHKAL, Dr. Shulgin limits his pesticide days at Dow Chemical to a one sentence in 978 pages. However, Dow Chemical Company, in return for Zectran's valuable patent, gave Shulgin great freedom. During this time, he created and patented drugs when Dow asked, and published findings on other drugs in journals such as Nature and the Journal of Organic Chemistry. Eventually, Dow Chemical requested that he no longer use their name on his publications.

In 1965, Shulgin left Dow to pursue his own interests, and became a private consultant, also frequently teaching classes in the local universities and at the San Francisco General Hospital. Through his friend Bob Sager, head of the U.S. DEA's Western Laboratories, Shulgin formed a relationship with the DEA and began holding pharmacology seminars for the agents, supplying the DEA with samples of various compounds, and occasionally serving as an expert witness in court. He also authored a definitive law enforcement reference book on controlled substances and received several awards from the DEA.

On April 8, 2008, at the age of 82, he underwent surgery to replace a defective aortic valve. On November 16, 2010, Dr. Shulgin suffered a stroke. He is expected to fully recover. In December 2010, he suffered another stroke, followed by skin-grafting surgery to save his left foot from an amputation. Due to Alexander and Ann's serious financial trouble for some years, the website at CaringBridge has been started to receive donations for paying for medical services to treat the ulcer.