It was said that nobody ever took more mind-altering drugs and lived to tell the tale than Ann Shulgin and her husband, Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin. Yet the couple were not countercultural warriors or freewheeling hippie hedonists. Rather they were serious researchers, intent on expanding the frontiers of the mind and for whom psychoactive drugs were a gateway to self-understanding as well as a therapeutic cure for psychological disorders and depression.

Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychology lecturer and LSD advocate who in the 1960s popularised the phrase “turn on, tune in and drop out”, considered the husband and wife team to be “two of the most important scientists of the 20th century”.

Their roles in the partnership were clearly defined. “He was the scientist, and I

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