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What do you think of The Book Pihkal.

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L_Star

L_Star

Rising Star
Fristly Swim wants to apologize if he has posted in a wrong location but he was unable to in the appropriate section.
He is currently reading Pihkal, very very good read so far, some of which has nearly brought tears to his eyes. It has so much valuable information, one that needs to be stored for infinite.

What do you think of the book? please give pros and cons.
 
I really enjoyed both books. I really like Anns stories. She is a great writer and so is Alexander but in a completely different way. They compliment each other nicely.
 
Bump...

I enjoyed both PIHKAL and TIHKAL for entertainment purposes, as the tales of psychedelic exploration offer unique insights into the workings of the human mind. However, I do have some regret that the mechanics behind the creations is beyond my present ability to comprehend, and that there are limitations in the steps that the narrative takes to get me further down that path. I think there would be immeasurable benefit from a more comprehensive explanation of the reasoning that the chemist used in the search for the active compounds, and perhaps from an illustration of not just one recipe, but a total synthesis of at least some of the materials. Using the "give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish" analogy, it seems to me as if the book is filled with stories of the trophy fish that the author has caught, but with insufficient instruction to allow another individual to fish at that level. Although, on the other hand, it would be difficult and unwise to instruct the lowest common denominator in this regard, and naturally, the more useful the information that is provided, the more the authorities would be fighting to stifle this research, so perhaps these books strike a delicate balance.

I definitely would appreciate future books, by these authors or others, using the same naming convention; books like
SIHKAL ("sickle" ) Stimulants...
NIHKAL ("nickel" ) NMDA receptor antagonists...
FIHKAL ("fickle" ) Flora and fauna (natural substances)...
etc...

obviously none of that is very technical, and perhaps those particular materials simply do not compel such detailed research. But then again, I once had a notion that this future research would be manifested online in a location...and now I'm here! I can't wait for the future!
 
Have you visited the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics dot org (www.cognitiveliberty.org) website? It has a sort of post forum called "Ask Dr. Shulgrin"...where he answers questions.

Not that I'm suggesting you ask him what he thinks of the books, he wrote them. Not at all I just found it and thought I'd put one more piece of the puzzle down.

The eternal Puzzle of all the pieces
 
Hi L_Star,

I think the pros are in the stories themselves. Every once in awhile I see critiques or at least confusion (I tried the material at the level mentioned in PIKHAL for a plus-3 and only got a slight body load) about The Chemical Story part. But I think as long as you keep in mind that it is dated and that Shulgin did the first self-experiments the materials on himself and that different people have different responces to different doses of various materials. This is clear if you read deep into the reports parts of The Chemical Story. Once he figures out a material, he offers it to his wife and friends. . .

I would respectfully encourage you to continue reading! Both PIKHAL and TIKHAL are remarkable books. The level of honesty about what it is to be human and go through life to be found within the stories in those chapters is truly mind boggling. Extreme, sometimes brutal, sometimes heartbreaking honesty is one of the things I love about good psychecelic writers and Dr. and Mrs. Shulgin in particular.

Peace & Love,
Pandora
 
Considering what Shulgin has done for the scientific and psychedelic community I do not think he has 'tooted" his own horn enough. It is a very honest story and talks a lot about personal struggles as well as conquests/successes. The books (PIHKAL and TIHKAL) are masterpieces and offer great life lessons as well as synthesis/science. It was a great idea to infuse the chemistry, activity, and biographical stories together. It was truly a unique touch and shows that the author intentions are genuine. Many other synthesis books lack such stories. Shulgin did not make these agents for recreation but rather for future researchers to explore the neuropharmacology of consciousness (Not that he is opposed to responsible recreational use). He has given this field (and the community) many useful tools.

There is no doubt in my mind that PIHKAL has personally changed my life for the better and opened up an entire path for which I will always be in debt and grateful to Shulgin. It was through PIHKAL that I saw the true utility of these agents as tools to explore the physiology of subjective experience. There is not a day that goes by that I am not thankful to him for this gift.

UMANTIS: If one reads the descriptions following each synthesis he does go into the reasoning behind many of the compounds. Also there are so many reactions present that one could teach themselves chemistry with these books. However if one wants more general info on drug design and SAR pick up a medicinal chem or drug design text book of which there are many (check out amazon). This is a complicated area and to go into it in detail would require an emense work of its own. Although Shulgin does explain many of the reasons for each compound. That said I see your point and to see his lab notes and the order of progression would likely be usuful for your interests. One can obtain some of these online for free although they mainly detail the activity rather than the synthesis.
 
bufoman said:
UMANTIS: If one reads the descriptions following each synthesis he does go into the reasoning behind many of the compounds. Also there are so many reactions present that one could teach themselves chemistry with these books. However if one wants more general info on drug design and SAR pick up a medicinal chem or drug design text book of which there are many (check out amazon). This is a complicated area and to go into it in detail would require an emense work of its own. Although Shulgin does explain many of the reasons for each compound. That said I see your point and to see his lab notes and the order of progression would likely be usuful for your interests. One can obtain some of these online for free although they mainly detail the activity rather than the synthesis.
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You're completely right. These books were among the first I read relating to the scientific frontier, and it's only after years of additional research that I can even think of going back to the "bible" and say that it might be lacking in any way. That was hasty, and I'm only too happy to recognize this and apologize. I'm still firmly in the "Shulgin hasn't tooted his own horn enough" camp, but really, he's done PLENTY. I would also like to learn more about the works of Szara and Nichols, and any others that could be recommended. I also appreciate the reminder about the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics.
 
he's certainly tooted his own horn, imo
but then again, so do other docs who've been doing their thing for a while

i did like his chapters dealing with legal authority, and how he questions their agendas.
his chapter "DMT is everywhere" (from TIHKAL) is also a nice read.

Hallucinogens- A Reader is a nice book for casual reading, has a collective of pioneers in psych research
 
Pihkal is a valuable book. This is clearly work based on his own expertise.

But Tihkal is a piece of junk, mostly work from others, not Shulgin, and there’s a lot of regurgitated “facts” and dosage information that’s just plain wrong. He’s clearly not the right person to write a book about tryptamines. I found too much of the information needed to be double checked for accuracy, and there was no new information present in the book. I didn’t find it useful at all, just redundant; all that information exists elsewhere; and to make it worse the pages are not soft enough to be used as toilet paper, so it’s utterly useless. You can have my copy for free. I'll even pay to ship it to you.
 
I guess I'm being overly harsh of Tihkal. I was expecting another Pihkal, and Tihkal is just not another Pihkal.

Pihkal has a lot of original work from Shulgin that doesn’t appear anywhere else. Tihkal is the opposite.

Tihkal would be useful if I didn’t own any other books on tryptamines. The fact that I own many other books on tryptamines, and found pretty much everything in the reference half Tihkal was just a reprint of earlier work by others, with some words rearranged, and a little commentary added by Shulgin, makes the book redundant.

I was hoping to find some new information, at least a page or two.

I would only recommend the book for those who don’t already own a bunch of other books on the subject.

You will find Tihkal pretty much ignores LSD in the chemical half of the book. It also apparently has an outdated chemical synthesis of it given. This is the one thing that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. To have Pihkal, and have such a great section on mescaline, and then totally gloss over LSD in Tihkal, as if it didn’t have any impact on mankind, is remarkably sad. Especially since LSD is both a tryptamine and a phenethylamine. With Shulgin so enthusiastic about phenethylamines, you would think he’d appreciate LSD because its both a phenethylamine and a tryptamine and so he’d have a good section on it. But no. The LSD section is a very big disappointment.
 
69ron, do you think that the fact that LSD is poorly reviewed in Tihkal has something to do with some feelings towards Albert Hofmann?
I have heard and read that many people told Shulgin that his drug (MDMA) was bad and that Hofmann's (LSD) was good.

There is even a tape online where one can listen Shulgin almost crying at the end of his lecture at the Psychedelic and Spirituality Conference in 1983, and giving a hint about this at the beginning of the same.

URL:


I suppose that both genius chemists are beyond that absolute "good" and "bad" bs.
But I still have the little feeling that Shulgin was kind of trying to emphasize the importance of phenethylamines?
 
69ron said:
To have Pihkal, and have such a great section on mescaline, and then totally gloss over LSD in Tihkal, as if it didn’t have any impact on mankind, is remarkably sad.
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I heard that Shulgin's first psychedelic experience was with mescaline, perhaps therein lies the imbalance towards phenethylamines, maybe it's a case of a "your first is your favorite" kind of thing. If people really were hassling him about not inventing the next LSD, then maybe he purposefully avoided going into adequate detail about it in his book.

I could also see how TIHKAL could be useful as an aggregator, making the previous data available in one volume and in a popular format, but then that doesn't take into consideration the errors you claim, and it doesn't properly credit the sources of that information anyway.
 
It is interesting I guess but he went off on tangents making whole series of not very exciting drugs and never came back to finish exploring other possibilities. Maybe he got tired or something but in the end he never discovered anything as good as mescaline.
 
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