ADVISORY BOARD
Alexander Shulgin
Alexander Shulgin (Ph.D., University of California Berkeley, 1954) is known for popularizing MDMA for psychopharmaceutical use in
the 1970s and 1980s. After serving in the Navy and subsequently earning his Ph.D. in 1954, he did post-doctorate
work in psychiatry and pharmacology at U.C. San Francisco and worked briefly as research director at BioRad
Laboratories and then as a senior research chemist at Dow Chemical Company. In 1965, he left Dow and became an
independent consultant, teaching public health at Berkeley and San Francisco General Hospital. His first experience
with MDMA took place in 1967. In 1976 he created a synthesized version of it, which in turn was introduced to
hundreds of therapists who worked with psychedelics. Since then, he has self tested hundreds of psychoactive
chemicals, and much of his work has been recorded in his writings.