Alexander Shulgin, Godfather of Ecstasy (or Molly as the kids call it), RIP

The chemical scientist who reinvented the popular party drug ecstasy has died at the age of 88 from liver cancer.

Alexander Shulgin earned his nickname, the Godfather of ecstasy, after honing a way to make the drug – and testing it out on himself to check it had worked.

A Facebook post by his wife and research partner, Ann, said he died “surrounded by family and caretakers and Buddhist meditation music”.

He lived out his final years at his home in Northern California.

…During the swinging ’60s, he says he made and tested hundreds of concoctions.

In 1965, he parted company with Dow, but continued his studies and began teaching classes at local universities.

Nearly a decade later, he came across a compound closely related to what we now call ecstasy or MDMA.

MDMA had been previously synthesised and patented in 1912 by the pharmaceutical company Merck, but was never fully explored within humans. [BBC]

RIP Alexander.

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