Relationships + Drugs On Pihkal and Tihkal - Looking for input from Women

[Leprechaun]

Recently I had a thought about Pihkal and the Shulgin notebooks.

I see so much commentary about the compounds and discussions around the book often from men, I don't think I have even met a woman who read Pihkal or Tihkal.

Yet, the core and the spirit of the books emotion is written by Ann. So I would be interested in any women who have read them and ask their perspective.

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In a number of the reports, there were situations with physical malayise and negative effects.

In particular, a few reports mentioned Ann having arrythmias or very negative experiences.

Would really love to hear a womens perspective on the following:

1. How can a woman come to trust a man who creates substances that she has no idea how they could affect her, and possibly cause serious negative outcomes with health?
2. How do you perceive Ann in relationship to Sasha?
3. Ann used drugs all the way through to the 2000s, including significant weekly use of MDMA during the 90s (everyweek for a year or so I believe). Yet she lived well and functional as a teacher, therapist, mentor, writer and wife till the age of 92. How do you resolve this given so many stories around destructive drug use?

"People only use drugs for two reasons, self medicating and self exploration" - Ann Shulgin

 

[atara]

3. Ann used drugs all the way through to the 2000s, including significant weekly use of MDMA during the 90s (everyweek for a year or so I believe). Yet she lived well and functional as a teacher, therapist, mentor, writer and wife till the age of 92. How do you resolve this given so many stories around destructive drug use?

I'm not a woman, but this question is pretty easy. Sasha (and presumably Ann) always advocated lower doses of MDMA than are commonly used. PiHKAL initially recommended a dose of 120 mg and then I think Dr. Shulgin later revised that down to 90 mg. Yet people take over 200 mg in some cases.

The effective dose in humans is pretty close to the NOAEL when scaled down to rhesus monkeys (probably the best animal model), which is relatively frustrating:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/089203629390067X

MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) has been reported to produce serotonergic depletion in nonhuman primates at doses as low as 2.5 mg/kg (1–2 times the typical human dose). The current study evaluated the dose-response relationships of MDMA (1.25-20.0 mg/kg) using regional concentrations of serotonin (5-HT) and its metabolite, 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), and home cage behavior as endpoints. Adult female rhesus monkeys (n = 16) were treated orally with 0, 1.25, 2.5, or 20.0 mg/kg MDMA twice daily for 4 consecutive days. Eighteen behaviors were measured in the home cage prior to, during, and after MDMA treatment. One month after the last dose, the animals were sacrificed and brains dissected into several regions for neurochemical analyses. 5-HT and 5-HIAA were analyzed via HPLC/EC. The lower doses of MDMA (1.25 and 2.5 mg/kg) did not significantly alter 5-HT or 5-HIAA concentrations in any brain region except hippocampus in which 5-HT concentrations were decreased after 2.5 mg/kg.

Side note: I hate when studies do twice daily dosing because it doesn't seem very realistic to me.

As a consequence, people have highly divergent experiences regarding the long-term effects of MDMA. There are probably individual variances in susceptibility. I think 2.5 mg/kg in a rhesus monkey is close to 1.25 mg/kg in a human. There is uncertainty in allometric scaling which makes it effectively impossible to determine the threshold for human toxicity more precisely than a range like 0.5-2 mg/kg. "Twice daily" may be doing work here.

 

[Leprechaun]

I'm not a woman, but this question is pretty easy. Sasha (and presumably Ann) always advocated lower doses of MDMA than are commonly used. PiHKAL initially recommended a dose of 120 mg and then I think Dr. Shulgin later revised that down to 90 mg. Yet people take over 200 mg in some cases.

The effective dose in humans is pretty close to the NOAEL when scaled down to rhesus monkeys (probably the best animal model), which is relatively frustrating:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/089203629390067X

Side note: I hate when studies do twice daily dosing because it doesn't seem very realistic to me.

As a consequence, people have highly divergent experiences regarding the long-term effects of MDMA. There are probably individual variances in susceptibility. I think 2.5 mg/kg in a rhesus monkey is close to 1.25 mg/kg in a human. There is uncertainty in allometric scaling which makes it effectively impossible to determine the threshold for human toxicity more precisely than a range like 0.5-2 mg/kg. "Twice daily" may be doing work here.

Ann herself admitted her doses escalated to 240mg + 100mg booster. There's a video of her saying that she was abusing MDMA.

Not sure how it ended.

Also would be interested to know how Sasha saw that, whether he would advise her to stop using such high doses?

But still, she lived to 92 (or so)...

 

[Opana313]

In a number of the reports, there were situations with physical malayise and negative effects.

In particular, a few reports mentioned Ann having arrythmias or very negative experiences.

As with any psychedelic experience. This happens, especially when working her way up through different 2c novel compounds. Pioneers