Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  The most compelling insight of that day was that this awesome recall 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. Everything I had recognized came from the depths of my memory and my psyche.

  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.

  It is now a matter of history that I decided to devote whatever energies and skills I might possess to unraveling the nature of these tools for self-exposure. It has been said that wisdom is the ability to understand others;

  it is the understanding of yourself that is enlightenment.

  I had found my learning path.

  CHAPTER 3. BURT

  In the late 1940's I married a fellow-student at University of California named Helen. We were both active members of a small social collection, a Tower-and-Flame/Honor-Student/Phi-Beta-Kappa group, that had a couple of small meeting rooms buried in an old campus building known as California Hall. In fact, we called ourselves the Cal Hall crowd, and we all shared the common characteristics of being reasonably intelligent and socially awkward. The beginning of my relationship with Helen, interestingly, had a certain chemical component, in that one day I came into Cal Hall reeking of vanillin (the essential component of the extract of vanilla) which I had been using in large quantities up in the chemistry labs. She liked the smell, and we soon became a going-steady twosome. She was also a single child, of Scottish descent, and she had red hair.

  We were married in the face of some rather strong parental objections on both sides, and about a year later, we had a son whom we would have named Stevens Alexander, had we followed the old Russian traditions dealing with the first-born. But we decided on Theodore Alexander instead, in honor of my father, and the nickname Theo has stuck. When, a few years later, I earned my Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Helen graduated with a A.B., having majored in Slavic Languages. Her Russian was very good; in fact, it was a lot better than mine.

  I was offered, and accepted, a position as a chemist with Dole Chemical Company, and within the first couple of years I made the powers that be very happy by predicting the structure of, and synthesizing, an insecticide that actually went into commercial production. In return for this they granted me freedom to research and develop anything I wished. This is the ultimate reward for any chemist.

  And what I wished to do, as a result of my remarkable mescaline experience, was to explore the world of centrally active drugs, with a special emphasis on the psychedelic drugs. I launched into a number of synthetic variations of the mescaline molecule, but a most unusual problem was becoming apparent. There is no animal model that has ever been developed or, as far as I can predict, will ever be developed, for the characterization and evaluation of a psychedelic drug. Thus, all discovery must use the human animal and I was, by default, that animal. Quite simply, as I developed new structures that might show some interesting action in the realms of thought or perception, I used myself as the experimental test subject to determine these actions. Although there were a few of the people I worked with who were aware of my tasting techniques, most were not. I had to construct some scientifically justifiable procedures that could be looked at, discussed, and rationalized as providing the evidence that might at least seem to answer the question, "How much does it take?" And that would be an infinitely easier question to pretend to answer than the obvious follow-up, "What does it do?"

  I read what little literature there was, on the effects of LSD-like drugs on experimental animals. I needed some scientific looking experimental structure, so that when the research director would bring by some visitors whom he wished to impress, he could point to the laboratory and tell the visiting firemen, "Here is where all the research on psychedelic drugs is done!" The two most popular small-animal demonstrations of the time were Siamese fighting fish and spiders. The spiders were reported to weave dose-dependent construction errors into their webs as a measure of the intoxication of LSD. And the fish (they were called Beta splendens, as I remember) were presumably quite sensitive to LSD, and would do something strange when small amounts of it were put in their water; swim backwards or upside down, or something else equally bizarre.

  Not wishing to set up cobwebs, I chose the fish route, and sent off to Van Waters and Rogers for several big battery jars, to the local pet store for a supply of fighting fish, and to the Swiss pharmaceutical house, Sandoz, for a gram of LSD. Everything arrived promptly, and along with it all came my dear friend Burt from the analytical department. He was a careful and most conservative gentleman, but he was also the most naturally curious person in the whole building. He had a continuing fascination with the strange goings-on in this "psychedelic"

  laboratory. He had seen the opened package from Sandoz Labs, which contained a small double-ended vial which, in turn, contained a glass ampule labeled, "Lysergide, an experimental compound, etc." He helped me in trying to establish normal behavior patterns with the fighting fish so that abnormal changes might be seen that would reflect exposure to a drug. He became, as a matter of fact, my constant companion.

  Well, the lab soon looked like an aquarium. Bell jars on all lab benches. Aerators bubbling and lights shining. Fish were being transferred here and there, in a very scientific manner, from the big tanks into beakers with graded amounts of LSD in them, while Burt and I watched and watched. We never saw anything occur that was even slightly suggestive of a drug effect.

  One thing that did become rapidly apparent, though, was that the growth of algae was not inhibited in the least by either the fish or the LSD, and soon the tanks were thickly green with fuzz. This led to the discovery that small snails could control the algae, but there was nothing that could control the snails. Anyone guiding a tour of the lab had to somehow improvise quite creatively to explain the assay procedures being used in the exploration of psychedelic drugs, since the fish could no longer be seen for the forest of competing wildlife which had taken over.

  At about this time, I had need of a reference sample of psilocybin, so again I called upon Sandoz for a gift. In a few days, Burt wandered into the lab carrying a small double-ended vial that contained, in turn, a glass ampule labeled, "Psilocybin, for experimental use, etc." My gram had arrived. We fed it in varying amounts to the fish-algae-snails, but it did no better than the LSD.

  One morning, a couple of weeks later, I took a small, double-ended vial to Burt in his analytical lab down the hall, and asked him to please weigh out for me a small quantity of material into a separate container. The actual amount was not important, a few milligrams; what was important was that I wanted the weight accurate to four places. He disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared with the vial I had given him and also a weighing container holding a small amount of an almost white powder.

  "Here is 3.032 milligrams, exactly," he said, adding, "And it's slightly bitter."

  "How do you know?" asked I.

  "After I weighed out the psilocybin, there was a trace of dust on the spatula, so I licked it off.

  Slightly bitter."

  I asked him, "Did you read the label carefully?"

  "It's the vial of psilocybin you just received, isn't it?" he asked, looking at the funny-shaped tube still in his hand. He read the label. It said Lysergide. He said, "Oh."

  We spent the next several minutes trying to reconstruct just how much LSD might have been on the end of the spatula, and decided that it was probably not more than a few score micrograms. But a few score micrograms can be pretty effective, especially in a curious but conservative analytical chemist who is totally drug naive.

  "Well," I said to him, "This should damned well be a fascinating day."

  And indeed it was. The first effects were clearly noted in about twenty minutes, and during the transition stage that took pla
ce over the following forty minutes, we wandered outside and walked around the pilot plant behind the main laboratory building. It was a completely joyful day for Burt. Every trivial thing had a magical quality. The stainless steel Pfaudler reactors were giant ripe melons about to be harvested; the brightly colored steam and chemical pipes were avant-garde spaghetti with appropriate smells, and the engineers wandering about were chefs preparing a royal banquet. No threats anywhere, simply hilarious entertainment. We wandered everywhere else on the grounds, but the theme of food and its sensory rewards continued to be the leitmotif of the day.

  In the late afternoon, Burt said he was substantially back to the real world, but when I asked him if he thought he could drive, he admitted that it would probably be wise to wait a bit longer. By 5:00 PM, he seemed to be happily back together again, and after a trial run - a sort of figure-eight in the almost empty parking lot - he embarked on his short drive home.

  Burt never again, to my knowledge, participated in any form of personal drug investigation, but he maintained a close and intimate interest in my research and was always appreciative of the slowly evolving picture of the delicate balance between chemical structure and pharmacological action, which I continued to share with him while I remained at Dole.

  One periodically hears some lecturer holding forth on the subject of psychedelic drugs, and you may hear him give voice to that old rubric that LSD is an odorless, colorless and tasteless drug. Don't believe it. Odorless yes, and colorless when completely pure, yes, but tasteless, no. It is slightly bitter.

  And if you ever hear a rumor that marine snails can be used to assay psychedelic drugs, don't believe that, either. It was probably started by one of the visiting firemen touring my lab.

  CHAPTER 4. TMA

  It is 1960. Here I am, with my mescaline experience dramatically fresh in mind, a burning desire to explain its profound action to myself and the rest of mankind, and there is a total world inventory of, at best, a dozen such drugs known. And only two of them, TMA and MDA, have phenethylamine structures that in any way resemble mescaline. (Actually only one was known to me at this time, since the book in which the MDA report appeared didn't get into my hands for another two years.)

  So there was one analogue of mescaline known, and what was known about it? TMA had first been synthesized some 12 years earlier by a chemist named P. Hey at the University of Leeds.

  His literature presentation was pure, cold chemistry, but he must have tasted it, for the Peretz and Smythies group in Canada alluded in its report to a private communication from Dr. Hey that he had been impressed with its euphoric properties. In the Canadian study, TMA was administered in the 50 to 100 milligram range to nine subjects. There was noted at about an hour a transient headache and slight nausea which could be avoided by pretreatment with Dramamine. At two hours there was the onset of giddiness, an increase in movement and communication and some loss of inhibition. Some later trials involving dosages of up to 125

  milligrams were coupled with studies involving stroboscope-induced "hallucinations. "

  So this is where I started. The drug was easily synthesized, and my preliminary assays largely paralleled the Canadians' findings. At the 140 milligram level, I watched three close friends have three distinctly different experiences. Terry Major had a brief period of nausea, which evolved into a very euphoric and responsive mood. The talking of the two others bothered him and he spoke sharply to them; his exact words were, "Please shut up!" This was his only show of aggression. Sam Golding was free of nausea, and had much eyes-closed patterning. At about the four hour point, he became extremely talkative, and was the primary inspiration for Terry's spurt of irritability. These periods of talkativeness alternated with periods of reverie and ceiling-staring. Sam's over-all conclusion was that the drug was not completely pleasant, as it allowed him too intimate a view of himself. I refrained from editorializing on this remark, though sorely tempted. Paris Mateo, a psychiatrist, was also free of nausea, but he was very lightly affected. His major interest seemed to be in my reactions to his reactions (I was the control observer in this experiment, forgoing any personal imbibing). The consensus of all three was that the effects were of a potency almost twice that of mescaline, and that mescaline was to be preferred.

  About a month later, I took 225 milligrams of TMA, having already taken 50 milligrams of Marezine (an anti-nausea drug) one hour earlier. This drug mixture is a process that I have long since abandoned. If nausea is to be part of the drug's effect, then let it be experienced and assigned. And when one is exploring a new drug, why complicate any observations by superimposing a second drug? Drug-drug interactions are a complex study unto themselves.

  I had two baby-sitters, Helen and my old friend, Terry Major, again.

  About three-quarters of an hour after taking the TMA, I experienced a moderately severe nausea, but this didn't last long. During the period of peak intoxication (from about the one and a half hour point to about four hours) there was only a modest color enhancement, and several of the other mescaline-like features were also noted. There was some slight change in the perception of motion and time, and some loss of physical coordination. But it was my mental attitude, and responses to, and identification with external stimuli (primarily musical) that were the most startling. While reading Bernstein's "Joy of Music," I felt, with great delight, that I could actually hear every musical phrase mentioned, but Helen claimed that I was making pugnacious and condemnatory remarks about what I was reading.

  I turned on the radio to a music station, curled up and closed my eyes. Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto provided me a structure from which I could suspend myself so as not to touch the ground, holding on to the finely woven strands of arpeggios which were knotted with chords.

  Then, after some commercials which annoyed me, came the rather noisy and strident music-poem, "Slaughter on 10th Avenue," which proved to be an unfortunate choice, because I went somewhat sociopathic. Helen remarked on the don't-cross-me-if-you-know-what's-good-for-you look on my face.

  I was handed a rose (which under mescaline would have been precious and entrancing) and was asked if I could hurt it. I crushed it without hesitation. At that point, Terry asked me if I might consider taking a small amount of a tranquilizing medication. My response was a thinly veiled threat to push him downstairs if he tried to medicate me. He didn't pursue the subject.

  Shortly thereafter we all headed for the open spaces of Tilden Park (I remarked grimly that it was just as well there was a car which could serve to protect other people from me) and/ once there, I discharged the anger with a couple of thrown rocks and a stick (barely missing Terry's car, not out of consideration for him, but because I knew that making a dent in it would cause me all sorts of problems later, such as having to pay for the damage). This acting-out period passed and the nicer aspects - visual fun and games, for the most part - remained uppermost for the rest of the day.

  This was an immensely important learning experience for me. My earlier mescaline experiment had been full of beauty and light, and I had rejoiced that this was what my soul contained, deep within, that this sensitivity and compassion was what had been brought to the surface by that simple catalyst. Yet here was a substantially identical molecule that produced something, at least in me, quite opposite. It was only after a great deal of introspection that I realized that mescaline no more produced beauty than TMA produced anger. Just as the beauty was always within me, so was the anger.

  Different drugs may sometimes open different doors in a person, but all of those doors lead out of the same unconscious.

  Paris conducted twelve additional experiments with TMA in South America, all in the 150 to 200 milligram range. He sent back reports that strongly emphasized color effects, and made considerable comparisons to LSD, equating the effects to the one hundred to two hundred microgram range of the latter drug.

  All of these findings, taken together, led to a research paper that was published in the British journal Nature
, in which the psychedelic properties were discussed for audience appeal, but the aggressive potential was specifically mentioned as an observed reaction. It was my first publication in the area of the action of psychedelics in man.

  Some 17 years later, with more experience behind me, I tried TMA again to get a feeling of just how I might have changed in my responses over time and with repeated exposures to these materials. This recalibration is a process that I do periodically. It is something like going to the firing range or your internist once every ten years or so, but always with the same pistol (and the same body). It is good to get an objective evaluation of changes that have occurred in yourself as you age. This is especially true when the response to a drug is strongly colored by attitudes and interpretations, which are invariably tempered by the passing of the years.

  Anyway, I re-titrated TMA from the lowest levels all over again, and got to a plus two at 130

  milligrams, the very level at which my three allies had found it interesting but not particularly exciting. The observed chronology was unchanged, but the qualitative aspects of the experience were indeed not too pleasant. Two adjectives are sometimes used interchangeably: psychedelic and psychotomimetic, the first denoting a fundamentally benign alteration of consciousness, and the other (literally, the imitation of psychosis) implying a lack of empathy and caring. I have limited my use of the latter to titles of articles that are to be published in journals that might look upon the use of the term "psychedelic" as advocative. But I still feel that TMA might show hints of the latter meaning.

  I was also aware of a considerable body discomfort and physical side-effects such as muscular twitching, and I was relieved when the experiment was over. Having safely exited the world of TMA, I could think of no compelling reason to enter it ever again.