Here's a good rule of thumb: If a book is banned, get it and read it. Find out for yourself what all the commotion is about. Usually, nervous bureaucrats and busybodies are trying to squash knowledge and debate. PIHKAL is no exception. The government of Australia, for instance, thought it should be banned -- not for child pornography or graphic mutilation, but because PIHKAL deigns to talk openly about drugs. In fact, its publication prompted reprisal by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which warranted agents to invade the home and ransack the lab of authors Sasha and Ann Shulgin.

Sasha Shulgin is an old-fashioned scientist who synthesized scores of new hallucinogens (more precisely phenethylamines), and then systematically tried them on his dog, his himself, and a willing group of fellow scientists and explorers, who dutifully took notes and recorded the results of their controlled experiments. Some of these efforts are recorded in PIHKAL, which is an acronym for Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved. Shulgin the chemist uses the last half of the book to detail scores of compounds individually. For each, he documents the chemical structure, effective dose, method of synthesis, and likely effects on the body. Since a majority of the population has tried psychoactive substances, this half of the book could answer the age-old question of kids in chemistry classes all over, "How are we going to use this in real life?"

The subtitle of the book is A Chemical Love Story, and Ann and Sasha honestly expose the details of their life and love. In their own individual voices, each chronicles their journey before meeting. Ann is the emotional, intuitive, poetic, spiritual half of the duo. Ann describes their relationship in the context of many hallucinogenic experiences, providing the reader a verbal rendering of a variety of drug trips. Sasha is the rational, analytic scientist and teacher, who marches to his own drummer. He documents his professional journey that led him to become a free agent chemist and inquirer into hallucinogens (he is generally disinterested in cannabis, opioids, and cocaine). After an Independence Day marriage in the backyard, they take turns telling of their life together.

Although the book is unabashedly positive about hallucinogens, it injects reality by discussing a periodic bad trip. In one particularly memorable episode, a member of their research group went catatonic for an extended period of time, causing all of the participants great anxiety and concern. All the bad trips have happy endings, though, perhaps because of the knowledge, maturity, and responsibility of the characters.

Tucked neatly in the middle is a small yet comprehensive treatise on the subject of drug policy, taken from one of his lectures as a professor at Berkeley. Shulgin eloquently argues for individual liberty while debunking many myths that prop up the failed prohibitionist drug policies in this country. Prohibitions -- whether of drugs or books like PIHKAL -- predictably fail. In this era of de facto censorship, when people do not discuss drug use openly for fear of incarceration, it is deeply refreshing to hear someone reprise with truth.

David Nott
President, Reason Foundation