Ann Shulgin

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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.^[4] Her father was U.S. Consul in Trieste for six years before World War II.^[5][4] Later in her childhood, she lived in the United States, Cuba, and Canada.^[4] During her mid-20s in the 1950s, she tried mescaline in the form of peyote, describing the experience as "one extraordinary blessed day".^[6][7][8][9] She studied art and became an artist, married an artist and had a child, and they later divorced.^[4] She had two more marriages ending in divorce and had three more children.^[4] Ann went back to work as a medical transcriber, and met Alexander Shulgin in 1978; they were married on 4 July 1981 in their back yard.^[4]

She worked as a lay therapist with psychedelic substances such as MDMA and 2C-B in therapeutic settings while these drugs were still legal.^[10] 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.^{[citation needed]}

Together with her husband she authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL.^[10] 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. She also contributed to the books Thanatos to Eros: 35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration, Entheogens and the Future of Religion, Ecstasy: The Complete Guide, The Secret Chief Revealed, Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, and Manifesting Minds: A Review of Psychedelics in Science, Medicine, Sex, and Spirituality.^{[citation needed]}

Shulgin said that she had more than 2,000 psychedelic experiences during her life.^[1] Her favorite psychedelic drug was 2C-B-FLY, which she found particularly enjoyable in terms of enhanced eroticism.^{[11][12][13][14][15]}

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.^[16]

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.^{[17][18][19][20]}

A spoken line by Ann Shulgin is sampled in Lost Shaman's 2014 song Inside of You.^[21] 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.^[21][22]

• Alexander T. Shulgin; Ann Shulgin (1991). PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (1st ed.). Berkeley, CA: Transform Press. ISBN 978-0-9630096-0-9. OCLC 25627628.
• Alexander T. Shulgin; Ann Shulgin (1997). TiHKAL: The Continuation (1st ed.). Berkeley, CA: Transform Press. ISBN 978-0-9630096-9-2. OCLC 38503252.
• Shulgin A (1995). "The New Psychotherapy: MDMA and the Shadow". Eleusis. 3: 3–11. Archived from the original on June 20, 2024.
• Ann Shulgin (1997). "Tribute to Jacob" (PDF). In Myron J. Stolaroff (ed.). The Secret Chief: Conversations With a Pioneer of the Underground Psychedelic Therapy Movement (PDF). Charlotte, North Carolina: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. ISBN 0-9660019-1-5.
• Ann Shulgin (2001). "The New Psychotherapy: MDMA and the Shadow". In Roberts TB (ed.). Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion. Council on Spiritual Practices. pp. 197–204. ISBN 978-1-889725-02-4. Archived from the original on July 7, 2025.
• Ann Shulgin (2019). "Foreword". In Crowley M (ed.). Secret Drugs of Buddhism: Psychedelic Sacraments and the Origins of the Vajrayana. Synergetic Press. ISBN 978-0-907791-74-4. OCLC 1467490010.