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Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story

This book is a memoir that delves into the author's journey with psychedelic drugs, examining their influence on his life, relationships, and artistic endeavors. The narrative is interspersed with scientific and historical context, offering a unique perspective on the use and effects of these substances. more

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Alexander Shulgin
Alexander Shulgin

Alexander Shulgin, born on June 17, 1925, was an American organic chemist and pharmacologist renowned for his work in the field of synthetic drugs. His research focused on psychoactive substances, including the synthesis of LSD and other compounds. Shulgin is known for his contributions to drug chemistry, and his books 'PIHKAL' and 'TIHKAL' document his extensive research, which has had a profound impact on the understanding and application of psychoactive substances. more

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“Use them with care, and use them with respect as to the transformations they can achieve, and you have an extraordinary research tool. Go banging about with a psychedelic drug for a Saturday night turn-on, and you can get into a really bad place, psychologically. Know what you're using, decide just why you're using it, and you can have a rich experience. They're not addictive, and they're certainly not escapist, either, but they're exceptionally valuable tools for understanding the human mind, and how it works.”

KnowsMindHumansUseCareNightTurnsUnderstandingRichAchieveDrugResearchToolsTransformationExtraordinaryValuableHuman MindSaturdayTurn-onPsychedelicSaturday NightBangingEscapistsPsychedelic Drugs
Author:Alexander Shulgin
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“...wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behavior. For that there must be words, but words without reason... Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, encrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.”

ReasonHomeFallCoursesWaterRocksBehaviorComplexesHolesHardestDistinctionConditioningLiquidCrudeScarletDrop Of WaterWholesaleGranite
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.”

KindPurposeProcessProduceSolitudeExcessArtificialBlindnessDeliberateShortcomingsImpotenceAsceticismDeafness
Book:The end of Utopia: a study of Aldous Huxley's Brave new world
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“Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.”

FeelsShouldMomentsEyeDesireSidesArmsMetsCaughtWorthyTreasureCeaseQueensAshamedCheeksPaleSavagesTerrifiedTemperamentUnworthyNot WorthyRansom
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.”

ShouldFormSufferingEnemyFunctionPunishmentNew WorldPrincipalSymbolicBrave New WorldHuxleyBrave New World HappinessBrave New World FreedomBrave New World CharacterBrave New World TechnologyBrave New World ConsumerismBrave New World John
Book:Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books
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“Katy was neither a Methodist nor a Masochist. She was a goddess and the silence of goddesses is genuinely golden. None of your superficial plating. A solid, twenty-two-carat silence all the way through. The Olympian's trap is kept shut, not by an act of willed discretion, but because there's really nothing to say. Goddesses are all of one piece. There's no internal conflict in them. Whereas the lives of people like you and me are one long argument. Desires on one side, woodpeckers on the other. Never a moment of real silence.”

PeopleWayLongTwoRealMomentsDesireSidesSilencePiecesLike YouConflictArgumentTwentiesGoldenInternalsGoddessTrapsSuperficialDiscretionOne PieceOlympianMethodistsTwenty TwoInternal ConflictWoodpeckers
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Henry's universe was modeled on the highball. It was a mixture in which half a pint of the fizziest philosophical and scientific ideas all but drowned a small jigger of immediate experience, most of it strictly sexual. Broken reeds are seldom good mixers. They're far too busy with their ideas, their sensuality and their psychosomatic complaints to be able to take an interest in other people - even their own wives and children. They live in a state of the most profound voluntary ignorance, not knowing anything about anybody, but abounding in preconceived opinions about everything.”

PeopleChildrenIdeasStatesAbleUniverseInterestHalfOpinionKnowingWifeIgnoranceBrokenPhilosophicalProfoundBusySensualityNot KnowingComplaintsMixturesToo BusyReedsPintsInterest In Others
Book:Great Short Works of Aldous Huxley
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“Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.”

GirlUniverseClassEventsObjectsNormalMereDefinitionsCeaseConcreteCollapseUniquenessRepresentationAbstractionBeing In LoveSpillsIllustrationInsignificanceDerision
Author:Aldous Huxley
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