PiHKAL
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story is a book by Dr. Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin which was published in 1991. The subject of the work is psychoactive phenethylamine chemical derivatives, notably those that act as psychedelics and/or empathogen-entactogens. The main title is an acronym that stands for "Phenethylamines i Have Known and Loved".
The book is arranged into two parts:
- A fictionalized autobiography of the couple.
- Detailed synthesis instructions for over 200 psychedelic compounds (most of which Shulgin discovered himself), including bioassays, dosages, and other commentary.
Shulgin's choices of synthesis procedures in the second half of the book are themselves perhaps a small act of subversion: while the reactions are beyond the ability of people with a basic chemistry education, some tend to emphasize techniques that do not require difficult to obtain chemicals. Notable among these are the use of mercury-aluminum amalgam (an unusual but easy to obtain reagent) as a reducing agent and detailed suggestions on legal plant sources of important drug precursors such as safrole.
See also
- Substituted Phenethylamine (PEA)
- Substituted Amphetamine (AMPH)
- Substituted Methylenedioxyphenethylamine (MDxx)
- Olivetol
