Barn Raising For Shulgin Farm

Shulgin Farm, home of the late Ann and Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, has become a nonprofit organization to help safeguard the legacy of two of the most influential figures in psychedelic history. The property, perched in the rolling hills of the San Francisco Bay Area city of Lafayette, has long been a gathering place for scientists, researchers, and psychonauts who were drawn to the Shulgins’ commitment to openness, community, and multidisciplinary inquiry.

Sasha Shulgin synthesized over 200 psychoactive compounds and tested them with friends, assiduously recording their effects. Ann joined him in this work, contributing a perspective that anticipated current psychedelic-assisted therapy protocols. They published their experiences and the formulas for these compounds in two comprehensive volumes — PiHKAL and TiHKAL. 

Wendy Tucker, Ann Shulgin’s daughter, is seeking to preserve the property. For many years Tucker has supported the research and production of the Shulgins’ books, and currently leads Transform Press, the Shulgins’ publishing company. 

Together with a group of supporters, she has established Shulgin Farm, a nonprofit organization that aspires to purchase the property from Ann Shulgin’s four heirs and develop it as an active community space for fellowship, research, and events that can contribute to the ongoing evolution of psychedelic culture.

Bollingen By The Bay

In psychedelic communities, Shulgin Farm is revered in the same light as Carl Jung’s Bollingen Tower in Switzerland. Built by the psychiatrist, he lived on the grounds and wrote much of his pivotal work there. Shulgin Farm was constructed by Sasha Shulgin’s family. He lived and worked there throughout his life, investigating compounds in a small laboratory on the property.  

The Shulgin family moved to Lafayette in 1935 when Sasha was 10. After their first house on the property burned down, “Sasha and his father built this house that I’m in now,” Tucker says, speaking on Zoom from the late chemist’s office. “The lab is the basement of the original house,” which was used as a tool shed after the fire. “When Sasha left Dow Chemical, he used the basement of the old house to make his laboratory,” she says. 

Many of the psychedelic compounds that Shulgin is credited with creating were developed in that lab. Tucker says it is still “an active, utilized space” where chemistry is conducted by members of the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute. “It looks very much like it did when Sasha was there,” says Tucker. “Just less cobwebs.”

Tucker says that preserving the lab was a priority for Ann and Sasha. “There was talk about dissembling the lab and bringing it to the Smithsonian,” she says. “The lab is the place. But, gosh, to me, it’s the whole house. All of the research group work that was done here. All of the thousands of experiences that have happened here on the property. This place is very special.”

A Psychedelic Homestead

Tucker was a teenager when her mother met the chemist in 1978. “Seeing [her] come from being a single mom, into meeting Sasha, really falling in love and being here – I was so happy for her,” Tucker says. “It was important that she had her time at this point in life.”

The Shulgins married on July 4,1981 when Ann was 50 and Sasha was 56. By then, Sasha had rediscovered MDMA and was developing the 2C-class of compounds. Ann and Sasha established an ongoing research group for self-experimentation and analysis of the effects of the novel chemicals he produced. 

A pioneer in the field of psychedelic-assisted therapy and especially in the investigation of the “shadow,” Ann played a key role in exploring how therapists can work with psychedelic medicines to help heal their patients. An artist and lay therapist, she integrated Jungian psychology and a deep understanding of the human psyche into a style of healing that explored the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics. Together, Ann and Sasha encouraged careful consideration of the healing powers of these compounds through community building, research, and extensive public speaking.

“I was so fascinated with Sasha and the work he was doing,” says Tucker, who began working as an assistant in Sasha’s lab and office in the early 1990s. “Doing things methodically, doing them well, taking notes, being very conscientious about everything you’re doing entering those spaces all just felt so right,” she says.

Coming Together

“This community is important,” says Tucker, who seeks to preserve the property and its traditions. Long running events at the farm include Easter and 4th of July potlucks. During these gatherings, mainstream and underground researchers mingle with psychonauts and therapists who were invited “to the farm to be in a safe space to share information and be their multidimensional selves,” Tucker says. “That started before mom was in the picture. We are keeping those gatherings going because this really is about community.”

“They were extremely open and generous with their time and their space,” says Tucker. “If somebody would call and say, ‘I’m really a fan and I’ve been following your work,’ they would say ‘come over for lunch.’  They were just generous that way. Bringing people to the farm to talk about things and share all of the knowledge.”

The Future of Shulgin Farm

Tucker seeks to open Shulgin Farm for classes, lectures, screenings, and other gatherings that promote knowledge about psychedelics. “It feels like the right thing to do,” she says. “When my mom was still alive it was hard for her to wrap her head around what’s gonna happen after she passed, but there was this feeling that this is an important space to keep alive. It needs to be a living, breathing place where people come and do things.” 

Tucker says the organization aims to strike a balance between maintaining the space “as much like Ann and Sasha had it as possible, but also have the rooms be used.” In addition to the lab, Shulgin Farm is preserving the house, which includes the office and its library of research materials and the living room where many psychedelic therapy sessions were held. The dining room is especially meaningful to Tucker. 

“Name a psychedelic luminary who’s been to the farm, they sat there at that table. It’s a very special space to me,” she says. They also seek to refurbish a barn on the property as a large event space that can accommodate 80 to 100 people.

Shulgin Farm is currently at the beginning of a capital campaign that seeks to raise $3 million by the anniversary of Ann Shulgin’s birth next March to secure the acquisition of the property and needed repairs. According to Tucker, “we’re about 10% there. It’s a lot of money to raise, but there’s a lot of people in this community. This is an important piece of history and an important legacy.” 

A Pivotal Moment

“This moment in time is very pivotal and important in the history of psychedelics,” Tucker says, acknowledging the recent FDA decision about the Lykos Therapeutics proposal for MDMA-AT for PTSD. She believes that while Ann and Sasha would be “really happy” with the growing mainstream acceptance of psychedelics, they would also be “a little wary with how fast it’s happening and all the money that’s involved.” 

Tucker believes the Shulgins “would also be seeing that there’s work to be done in bringing people back to earth a little bit.” She says it’s important to “teach people how to use these medicines correctly and have great respect for them.” 

“It’s all about education,” Tucker says. “You need to teach people about these things, the truth, not just the good parts and not just the bad parts. The whole truth, and only out of that can you have safe use and informed decision making. That was really what they were about. The truth, you know, the whole truth.”