[2] He is acknowledged to have introduced to broader use, in the late 1970s, the prior synthesized compound MDMA ("ecstasy"), in research psychopharmacology and in combination with conventional therapy, the latter through presentations and academic publications, including to psychologists; and for the rediscovery, occasional discovery, and regular synthesis and personal use and distribution, of possibly hundreds of psychoactive compounds (for their psychedelic and MDMA-like empathogenic bioactivities).

[2][3][1] In 1991 and 1997, he and his wife Ann Shulgin compiled the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved, likewise for Tryptamines),[4][5] from notebooks that extensively described their work and personal experiences with these two classes of psychoactive drugs.

[3] Upon waking he learned that the crystals were undissolved sugar, and that doctors had administered anesthesia after he was already unconscious—an experience Drake Bennett of The New York Times Magazine referred to as "revelatory", and a "tantalizing hint of the mind's odd strength",[3] as "his collapse was caused entirely by the placebo effect".

[16] Through the late 1950s, Shulgin completed post-doctoral work in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacology at University of California, San Francisco.

He first spent two years studying neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, leaving to work on a consulting project.

In 1988, he authored a then-definitive law enforcement reference book[21] on controlled substances, and received several awards from the DEA.

[22] Shulgin set up a chemical synthesis laboratory in a small building behind his house, which gave him a great deal of career autonomy.

In 1976, Shulgin was introduced to MDMA by a student in the medicinal chemistry group he advised at San Francisco State University.

Shulgin went on to develop a new synthesis method, and in 1976, introduced the chemical to Leo Zeff, a psychologist from Oakland, California.

[24] After judicious self-experiments, Shulgin enlisted a small group of friends with whom he regularly tested his creations, starting in 1960.

They developed a systematic way of ranking the effects of the various drugs, known as the Shulgin Rating Scale, with a vocabulary to describe the visual, auditory and physical sensations.

The agency requested that Shulgin surrender his license for violating its terms, and he was fined $25,000 for possession of anonymous samples sent to him for quality testing.

[26] Richard Meyer, spokesman for DEA's San Francisco Field Division, has stated that, "It is our opinion that those books are pretty much cookbooks on how to make illegal drugs.

With progression of the dementia since 2010, his wife, Ann Shulgin, had been trying to sell part of their property to raise more money to cover care costs.

Shulgin said that mescaline made him aware of a world submerged in human spirit, whose "availability" was "catalyzed" by such chemicals; the consequences of his insights were called "devastating" by the reviewers.

Alexander refers to "The Owl Club" in chapter 11 of PiHKAL: One evening in the late 1950s, I was invited to a musical soiree at an old comfortable home in the Berkeley Hills.

The only person I can remember from that evening was a handsome, proper gentleman with a small grey moustache and the residues of an English accent.