Alexander Shulgin - 'Being Chemistry'

Music by 'Stars Of the Lid' and 'Windy and Carl'

Alexander Shulgin - chemist - features in this new film on the unexplored potential of psychedelic drugs. Having quit his post as a senior research chemist at Dow Chemical Company in 1965, together with his wife Ann he set forth on a personal quest to design new psychoactive drugs. 

The lifestyle drugs market is now estimated to be worth up to $25 billion annually, providing legal treatments for conditions ranging from depression to impotence. Why should man be prevented from using other drugs, which alter his mental and physical experiences? Many have been used for centuries and others continue to be applied in therapeutic, creative, religious, exploratory, recreational and military settings. Are these drugs so innately dangerous that people need to be protected from them? Or are there other reasons? Doctors prescribing MDMA for post traumatic stress disorder and terminal cancer, military psychiatrists testing LSD on troops, chemists developing new 'designer drugs,' shamans using psychedelics to heighten spiritual awareness, multiple sclerosis sufferers self-medicating with cannabis, artists using LSD as a creative tool. Such practices are at best restricted and at worst outlawed - but what are the motives behind the regulations? Further filming is planned in the US, the UK, the rest of Europe, and South America.

Others featured in the trailer are Ann Shulgin - writer, Dr. Wrye Sententia - Neuro Ethicist, Charles Grob - Professor of Psychiatry UCLA, Dr James Ketchum - US Army Psychiatrist (retired), Mark Kleiman - Professor of Policy Studies ULCA, Lady Amanda Neidpath - director of the Beckley Foundation and Paul Galbraith - Psychedelic Mushroom Grower.

Read Article 'The Ecstasy Man' in The Guardian

The footage has recently been turned into a full length documentary feature, Dirty Pictures.

Go to DIRTY PICTURES website