PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story - The Shulgins' account of phenethylamine research, altered states, and intimate partnership

PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story presents the work and relationship of psychopharmacologist Alexander Shulgin and his wife and research partner, Ann Shulgin. Book I recounts decades of creating and investigating psychedelic drugs as tools for studying the human mind, while exploring altered-state experiences through the context of intimacy. Book II focuses on phenethylamines, describing their synthesis and physical properties, structural relationships to activity in the human central nervous system, observed dosages and effect durations, and questions about why some compounds are inactive, unexpectedly active, too toxic to evaluate, or not yet tested by the authors. First published in 1991, the book has received more than 20 reprints and has been translated into Spanish, with additional translations planned.