Alexander Shulgin, a pharmacologist and chemist known as the ‘Godfather of Ecstasy,’ died on Tuesday, June 3 at the age of 88.

Alexander Shulgin Died Of Liver Cancer

Shulgin, known to many as ‘Sasha,’ died of liver cancer in his North Carolina home, surrounded by family and friends.

“Sasha died today, at exactly 5 o’clock in the afternoon. He was surrounded by family and caretakers and Buddhist meditation music, and his going was graceful, with almost no struggle at all,” reads a statement posted on Facebook by Shulgin’s wife, Ann Shulgin.

Shulgin, a graduate of Harvard and UC Berkeley, is credited with the synthesis and creation of hundreds of psychoactive drugs, including MDMA, or Ecstasy, earning him the title ‘Godfather of Ecstasy.’

Shulgin Would Test His Drugs With His Friends

He worked in a private lab as a research chemist and experimented his concoctions on himself, family and friends. Since the drugs, or compounds, he experimented with had not yet been invented outside of his lab, the drugs were not, technically, illegal.

“Sasha first tested his new creations on himself, starting with minuscule doses and cautionsly ramping them up until some manner of effect was noticed. Beginning in 1960, following Sasha’s initial bioassays, a small group of friends began to join in regular group testing sessions, meticulously recording their results…Working primarily with phenethylamines and tryptamines, a body of objective and subjective reports was created for hundreds of psychoactive chemical compounds,” reads a biography on the Shulgin Research website.

Though Shulgin was plagued with bad press after Ecstasy was found to have caused many drug overdoses and was beginning to be considered an epidemic and dangerous drug, Shulgin insisted that he did not endorse the use of impure Ecstasy.

“I’m disturbed by the fact that you get someone who wants to make a pile of money and doesn’t give a damn about the safety or the purity. It’s a motivation that I’m uncomfortable with. I consider it a very personal exploration. But I’m very disturbed by the overpowering of curiosity with greed,” Shulgin said in 2000.