Drug Culture Pioneers

Simple answer: Maybe.

Or was it:

Sasha?

Alexander Theodore "Sasha" Shulgin (June 17, 1925 – June 2, 2014) was an American medicinal chemist, biochemist, organic chemist, pharmacologist, psychopharmacologist, and author.


He is credited with introducing MDMA ("ecstasy" or "molly") to psychologists in the late 1970s

Pioneering designer of psychedelic drugs, he became a hero of the counterculture, known as the 'godfather of ecstasy' 
 

Shulgin invented hundreds of new psychedelic drugs, which he tested on himself, his wife, Ann, and friends, documenting their preparation and effects. 

But he wasn't satisfied with mere discovery – he argued passionately for the rights of the individual to explore and map the limits of human consciousness without government interference.

He was most famously responsible for the emergence of one of the world's most enduringly popular recreational designer drugs,  known as MDMA, or ecstasy.  Shulgin was responsible for creating a new and easier synthesis of it.

He introduced the material to a psychiatrist friend, Leo Zeff, who was so astounded by the drug's powers that he delayed his retirement and travelled the US administering the drug to thousands of patients. 

Due in part to Shulgin's extensive work in the field of psychedelic research and the rational drug design of psychedelic drugs, he has since been dubbed the "godfather of psychedelics".

The drug found its way into Dallas nightclubs, including the Starck Club, and on to the Balearic island of Ibiza, fuelling the 1980s acid house dance-drug craze.

It was not Shulgin's intention to launch a global drug culture, nor to have that compound consumed with such abandon by millions of people. 

But it was his connection with this drug that made him a folk hero for the counterculture, known as the "godfather of ecstasy", and a folk devil for many outside it.

I remember people talking about Art being a chemist but about the same time, there was speculation that Sasha leaked the drugs he created to ortganized criminals.  Maybe they worked together?  Conspiracy

And who was Owlsy?

Owsley Stanley. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 – March 12, 2011) was an American audio engineer and clandestine chemist.

He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decade's counterculture.

Robert Greenfield interviewed Berkeley-dropout-turned-acid-cooker Owsley Stanley III – whose pure, potent LSD was favored by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and the Grateful Dead – for Rolling Stone. "

The chaotic and bizarre life of Owsley, who provided a generation of West-Coast hippies with mind-altering acid, using the profits of his illegitimate business to finance the Grateful Dead into the spotlight.

Also a shameless audiophile, Owsley was the band's original sound man, credited with inventing the famous Wall Of Sound PA system

("It was Owsley's brain, in material form," drummer Bill Kreutzmann told Greenfield. "Impossible to tame.")

 

He also had the bright idea to plug a recorder directly into the soundboard during concerts and rehearsals, thus providing the world with tapes of the Dead during their heyday, which would otherwise never have existed.

But beyond his interaction with the band, exploring Stanley's life also brought Greenfield deep within the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s, from the Monterey Pop Festival to Altamont to the streets of the Haight.

GOOD BOOK FOR WAYBACK MACHINE MUSINGS...

Owsley Stanley - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley


Good account of his drug promoting days:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/03/alexander-shulgin


more details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin

Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict (originally titled Junk, later released as Junky) is a novel by American beat generation writer William S. Burroughs, published initially under the pseudonym William Lee in 1953. His first published work, it is semi-autobiographical and focuses on Burroughs' life as a drug user and dealer. It has come to be considered a seminal text on the lifestyle of heroin addicts in the early 1950s.

William-S.-Burroughs-and-Hunter-S.-Thompson