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Q about shulgin / neurotoxicity

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infectedmushroom

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Hi guys,

I am wondering how Shulgin managed to synthesise so many seretonin / dopamine heavy (amongst other neuro transmitter) compounds, most of which he then tested on himself WITHOUT becoming mad, e-tarded, or extremely depressed. Was he mad in the first place? Some kind of genius? Or is the brain more adaptable then we give it credit for? I have a feeling he didn't stick to a 6 week rule. TBH I haven't read his books in which he may very well go into this, so apologies in advance if all I need to do is pick up a copy to find out. :D
 
I would imagine that he used very responsibly, in his own 'clinical' settings. Some people are just prone to suffering post-MDMA symptoms worse than others.

I really doubt Shulgin ever picked up a syringe and thought "I should inject half a gram of MDMA today!".
 
infectedmushroom said:
Hi guys,

I am wondering how Shulgin managed to synthesise so many seretonin / dopamine heavy (amongst other neuro transmitter) compounds, most of which he then tested on himself WITHOUT becoming mad, e-tarded, or extremely depressed. Was he mad in the first place? Some kind of genius? Or is the brain more adaptable then we give it credit for? I have a feeling he didn't stick to a 6 week rule. TBH I haven't read his books in which he may very well go into this, so apologies in advance if all I need to do is pick up a copy to find out. :D
Click to expand...


Have you seen any recent interviews with the man...? I'm guessing no.


He seems to speak mostly in riddles, and about random things... he has Dementia as well as a number of other medical problems. Not exactly the "picture of health".
 
He is certainly one of the most cooked scientists that ever lived.

Aside from him speaking, how do we know he doesn't have monsters in his head that he doesn't speak of?
 
Hey just be glad he dedicated his life for this. So we can have this discussion on how fried he is/isn't. Lol.
 
I found if you very lightly 'use' mdma , small doses rarely , not only is the euphoria explosively great but you do honestly seem to suffer a lot less than when you have too many heavy nights out.

After SSRI gave me permanent tolerance to mdma, i decided that dosing and dosing and getting hotter and hotter and more jaw clenchy just aint worth it so i wont take mdma for a long time now.
 
Folley said:
Have you seen any recent interviews with the man...? I'm guessing no.


He seems to speak mostly in riddles, and about random things... he has Dementia as well as a number of other medical problems. Not exactly the "picture of health".
Click to expand...

The guy is 88. He needs constant care now. As far as I know there's no evidence it's because of his experiments. I would think they would make this public if proven.

In his books he describes a week with daily MDMA use, but it's not certain that it was him doing the experiment, could be one of his friends.
Also I remember something like dosing every 3days, starting extremely low with each compound. He probably had some "permanent" tolerance but not in the way that it should influence the dosages needed. After all, lots of people complain about his doses being too low.
Yes, he invented a lot of releasers but I don't think he ever overdid them. Also, I think he never combined anything. (Anyone has got more info on that ?)

This guy will be a post mortem public hero for sure. Now it's still confined to the scientific community.
 
infectedmushroom said:
I have a feeling he didn't stick to a 6 week rule.
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I rather have a gut feeling that he did, at least for empathogens/entactogens/monoamine releasers/MDMA-like drugs, at least 98% of his research. one must not forget that (i) his research focus actually was on "classical psychedelics", i.e. 5HT2A-agonists like LSD or psilocybin, and (ii) not all the reports in PiHKAL and TiHKAL are by himself, but there was a larger group of friends involved in the self-testing.

Achten said:
In his books he describes a week with daily MDMA use, but it's not certain that it was him doing the experiment, could be one of his friends.
Click to expand...
I guess he probably did this once or two times in his lifetime, to experience the rapidly growing tolerance and side effects for himself. while this is definitely not the best thing to do, I also don't think this will give you permanent severe damage. as far as I know, the typical "e-tard" has a history of several high doses a week over several years of lifetime.

Achten said:
Also I remember something like dosing every 3days, starting extremely low with each compound.
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yes, but starting from sub-mg doses and slowly increasing, until a definitive active dose was reached. so even with a rather high frequency of dosing, most of this experiments were (almost) without action because of a much too low dose.
 
Achten said:
.
Yes, he invented a lot of releasers but I don't think he ever overdid them. Also, I think he never combined anything. (Anyone has got more info on that ?)
Click to expand...

He mentions priming LSD with a barely active compound, but I'm too lazy to find out what.
 
Achten said:
The guy is 88. He needs constant care now. As far as I know there's no evidence it's because of his experiments. I would think they would make this public if proven.
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I don't necessarily think they would.


I mean no disrespect to the man, but I don't really think what the OP is saying is true. He took a lot of risks, and I'm sure he understood that. The man has done more for the drug community than other singular person, but that was a long time ago... he is still a genius, but a very strung out one at that. I have a hard time deciphering his most recent interviews. Take a look at his twitter account, and I believe that was even from before the stroke he had in 2011...
 
I think the fact that he was using his own product, therefore clean and without any impurities that would avoid additional damage and also on top of the fact that he did not use these substances in a manner that they are commonly used today, ie at a rave, redosing while dancing around, dehydrated/hyperthermic etc etc.

But yeah it is a good question that I have pondered myself
 
i think shulgin is in pretty bloody good health considering his occupation and his age.

i have a friend and his mother has just been diagnosed with early onset parkinsons at the age of early 50s.

how old is shulgin?

to say he is strung out is laughable. just becasue his riddles go over most peoples heads does not mean he isnt making sense. the guy is a genius.

wannabes labeled einstein crazy just because he didnt wear shoes.

small people putting shit on these genious are just well very very average..
 
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Alexander "Sasha" Theodore Shulgin (born June 17, 1925)

so very old, and considering all the drugs hes tried hes still alive thats quite remarkable.
 
laugh said:
to say he is strung out is laughable. just becasue his riddles go over most peoples heads does not mean he isnt making sense. the guy is a genius.

wannabes labeled einstein crazy just because he didnt wear shoes.

small people putting shit on these genious are just well very very average..
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Who says you can't be a crazy genius? ;) Hell, I'm a little crazed myself. Vast amounts of psychedelics will do that to you.. it's not like Shulgin had a brain that could never be damaged, I'm sure he's taken more than his fair share of abuse in the past. I believe I remember him talking about taking 2C-B on the tail end of MDMA too, so I don't think he never mixed drugs.. probably just didn't want to publicize the riskier behaviors.



The man is still around and kicking though, so I'd say his opinion would be the greatest on this matter :)
 
Folley said:
I believe I remember him talking about taking 2C-B on the tail end of MDMA too, so I don't think he never mixed drugs..
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if I remember right, this way of combining MDMA and 2C-B was recommended to him by a psychotherapist working with both compounds. if you're a psychedelic / psycholytic psychotherapist working with only very few compounds has much more time for exploring such combinations. also for time reasons, I think that combining two drugs was more of an rare exception for Shulgin; he was simply much too busy testing all the compounds he created in his highly careful way. but don't quote me, that's mostly just my gut feeling.
 
ungelesene_bettlek said:
if I remember right, this way of combining MDMA and 2C-B was recommended to him by a psychotherapist working with both compounds. if you're a psychedelic / psycholytic psychotherapist working with only very few compounds has much more time for exploring such combinations. also for time reasons, I think that combining two drugs was more of an rare exception for Shulgin; he was simply much too busy testing all the compounds he created in his highly careful way. but don't quote me, that's mostly just my gut feeling.
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I think people often forget he is a human as well, haha. I'm sure personal motives strongly influenced what he published and what he did not. I'm sure he found a number of compounds he didn't want ANYONE finding out about and I know he wouldn't want to encourage poly-drug abuse.


It feels a bit wrong to talk about him in the third person, though. The man is still alive, surely he could answer this question best?
 
I have just looked up where the combination of MDMA and 2C-B is mentioned in PiHKAL. it is in the 2C-B entry, here is the relevant paragraph:

Many of the reports that have come in over the years have mentioned the combination of MDMA and 2C-B. The most successful reports have followed a program in which the two drugs are not used at the same time, nor even too closely spaced. It appears that the optimum time for the 2C-B is at, or just before, the final baseline recovery of the MDMA. It is as if the mental and emotional discoveries can be mobilized, and something done about them. This combination has several enthusiastic advocates in the psychotherapy world, and should be the basis of careful research when these materials become legal, and accepted by the medical community.
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so the way to take 2C-B at the end of a MDMA experience is optimized for best therapeutic results; I guess most recreational users will prefer to "stack peaks". there is a long thread about combining the two compounds in the psychedelic section here: CLICK. gonna read a bit into that.
 
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