Ann Shulgin

Laura Ann Shulgin ( Gotlieb; March 22, 1931 – July 9, 2022) was an American author and the wife of chemist Alexander Shulgin, with whom she wrote the books PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved) and TiHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved).

Life and career Laura Ann Gotlieb was born in Wellington, New Zealand, to parents Bernard Gotlieb and Gwen Ormiston, but grew up in the village Opicina outside the Italian city Trieste. Her father was U.S. Consul in Trieste for six years before World War II. She studied art and became an artist, married an artist and had a child, and they later divorced. In her writings she stressed the potential of these drugs from a Jungian psychoanalytic perspective, as well as their use in combination with hypnotherapy. She often appeared as a speaker at conventions and continued to advocate the use of psychedelics in therapeutic contexts.

Together with her husband she authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL.

According to her daughter, Shulgin had been in ill health because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Shulgin died July 9, 2022, at her and her late husband's Lafayette residence.

Along with its founders Dillan DiNardo and Thomas S. Ray, Shulgin was one of the three co-owners of the psychedelic pharmaceutical company Mindstate Design Labs, founded in 2021, until her death in 2022.

Popular culture A spoken line by Ann Shulgin is sampled in Lost Shaman's 2014 song Inside of You. The line is "Any drug, including MDMA, the most it can do is open up what’s inside you", which Shulgin spoke at the Horizons 2008 conference on psychedelics.

Publications