Tikhal

n 1991 an unusual book with an unusual title first began to circulate

among an unusual set of people: those convinced that there were significant

psychological and spiritual benefits to be derived from the use of psyche-

delic drugs. PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, consisted of two parts: Book I

included a number of first-hand accounts of the use of a dozen or so

psychedelics with enough detail for the reader to get a good feeling for the

set and setting. Woven in with this was the story of how the authors, Ann

and Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin (under the pseudonymous cloak of Alice

and Shura) met, loved, and eventually married. Like all good love stories,

a triangular suspense resolves when a German woman, with whom Shura

was initially involved, eventually fades into the permanent past tense. In

Book II of PIHKAL, the structures and syntheses of nearly 200 chemical

compounds were given in "recipe" form followed in most cases by brief

evaluations of their psychic or physical effects by self-experimentation on

the part of various anonymous volunteers. The compounds of PIHKAL's

Book II are all in the class known as phenethylamines, which explains the

acronym in the title: Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved.

The present book is based on the same format, but the compounds

of its Part II now fall into that other structural class to which almost all the

remaining psychedelics belong, the tryptamines. TIHKAL stands for

Tryptamines I Have Known And Loved. In TIHKAL, the human love triangle

is no longer present, and so the first half of the book consists rather of a rich

smorgasbord of narratives and essays concerning the origins and uses of

psychedelics. Here the natural products chemist can enjoy a delightful

ramble through the astonishing diversity of creatures — from fungi and

frogs to flowers — which contain DMT or its chemical near cousins. The

psychopharmacologist can wonder if a clue to the auditory hallucinations

so typical of schizophrenia can be found in the unique activity of DIPT. A

Jungian psychotherapist will be challenged by Alice's stories of the gentle

synergism exercised by a skilled therapist and the entactogen MDMA. And,

sadly, the civil libertarian may find reason to fear that something much like