hehe... Not for me. Despite my bad memory, mention something with Shulgin in it and I'll remember it, whether it's next week or next year!!
......scratches mark on the desk....6 more to go
I don't feel the great man has received nearly as much (positive) media attention for someone who's played such a major part in colouring the world. He and his wife have also been long associated with lobbying groups aiming to decriminalize MDMA for psychotherapeutic uses.
And sometime last year they won....well sort of. If you can find it (good luck) it's well worth listening to the Ecstasy Conference Tapes from 2001 at the Lindesmith Institute for Drug Law Reform.
Notable speakers included:
Ann and Sasha Shulgin
Dr George Ricaurte (question time is just dandy
)
Dr John Mendelson
Dr Charles Grob
Jessica Malberg
Rick Dobson Phd (from MAPS)
Dr David Nichols
There are also personal accounts by Marcel ot' Atoron and Susan Stevens which will leave all but the hardest in tears. Susan Stevens story is very sad, involving their use use of MDMA during the final stages of her young husband's life. Suffering from kidney cancer at 22, this touching story speaks of beautiful moments of peace when he felt no pain allowing them both to let go and feel each others love. Very deep
Marcel ot'Atoron's story is a harrowing account of how MDMA unleashed past memories, landing her in an Asylum within a few hours of taking her first tablet. Later in her treatment MDMA was used therapeutically to untangle what the drug originally re-evoked. She eventually went on to work with Jose Carlos Bouso in Spain using MDMA to treat PTSD. Work from this clinic has also leant great support to therapeutic claims.
Just what this conference accomplished is hardly appreciated by most people. The outcome definitely resulted in reclassification of MDMA for therapeutic research, possibly one of the main reasons Shulgin is now looked upon by mainstream media as not being "the most evil man in the world" but instead has demonstrated that there is a place for psychotherapeutic tools such as LSD and MDMA in psychiatry and PTSD counseling.