An effect that refused to end
Some psychonautic accounts do not seek to dazzle with the intensity of the experience, but rather to show what happens when something goes off-script. Chapter 38 of PIHKAL, written by Ann Shulgin, is one of them. What begins as just another session in the lives of the Shulgins—she under the effects of a substance, he taking notes as he always did—becomes the chronicle of a reaction neither Ann nor Alexander expected.
The scene we recall here takes place on a Monday morning. Ann wakes up with light streaming through the ceiling and, for an instant, believes the previous day is already in the past. As she sits up, she realizes with a jolt that it isn’t over. The effect is still there. For the first time, as she writes, she felt fear.
The question no one wants to ask
What makes this passage memorable is not the substance itself—which the text does not even name precisely—but the underlying question: What if this doesn’t go away? Ann recalls having returned to baseline the night before; she even describes the small twitches while falling asleep as residue of the comedown. And yet, she wakes up again at what she places around a “+2,” a medium intensity on the scale the Shulgins used to describe effects.
Her bewilderment is also chemical. Alexander—whom she calls Shura—had noticed practically nothing with a similar amount, while she, with only a little more, had not only had a clear effect but was dragging it into the next day. The hypothesis that scares her is not pharmacological, but psychic: “Is it possible that something opened in my psyche and remained open?”
The “Cold Mind”: The content of fear
The core of the story is the appearance of what Ann describes as an intelligence that observes everything without any affection. She calls it a “Cold Mind,” a “Thinking Machine,” a consciousness present everywhere that sees her but feels nothing toward her. She probes it looking for emotion and finds none: only recording, only surveillance.
Her reaction is one of frontal rejection. Faced with the possibility that this emotionless mind might be the ultimate truth of the divine, she responds with indignation and rage: she refuses to accept it. It is a scene worth reading without romanticizing it. It is not a luminous revelation, but an inner combat with a terrifying image, sustained for hours and accompanied by an almost continuous trickle of tears that, as she recounts, did not always respond to a specific emotion.
The support: Not being alone with fear
The most instructive part of the chapter, from today’s perspective, is how Ann does not go through this alone. Before leaving for work, Alexander does not minimize what she feels. When she asks what would happen if the state turned out to be permanent, he does not reassure her with falsehoods: he replies that, if that were the case, they would learn together to adapt to living at that level, just as she would do for him. Ann notes this with lucidity: she had asked “a frightened child’s question” and he had answered “as if I were an adult.”
That tone—taking fear seriously without feeding it—reappears in her phone call from work and, above all, in the conversation with Adam Fisher, the psychologist whom both considered a wise, almost grandfatherly figure.
Adam Fisher’s advice: Do not get in the way of the process
Fisher’s intervention condenses an idea that remains central to supporting difficult experiences. He tells her three things. First, that she has not discovered anything about the cosmos: what she is facing is not “out there,” but inside her, and it is best to treat it as an aspect of herself, not as the face of God. Second, that she is going through a process that she does not need to understand right now; the only thing she must do is not get in its way. And third, he assures her that she will be out of it before the weekend.
Ann perceives the maneuver with some admiration: Fisher is, in part, “programming” her unconscious to trust in an exit. Beyond the anecdote, there is a recognizable principle here: stop fighting the content, accept that something is happening that will pass, and have a figure available “at any hour of the day or night.” When Alexander returns home in the afternoon and she summarizes the day for him, he in turn summarizes the attitude that will sustain her: it sounds reasonable.
Critical reading
It is worth placing this text in its context. PIHKAL and TIHKAL are autobiographical and literary works, not clinical studies; what we read is Ann Shulgin’s subjective account, not a protocol or pharmacological evidence. The intensity scales she uses (“+2”) are her own domestic language, not a standardized measure.
That said, the episode illustrates several things that subsequent research on adverse experiences has highlighted. That the response to the same amount can vary enormously from one person to another. That effects can be prolonged or reappear unexpectedly. And that the decisive factor in getting through a bad moment is rarely heroic: it involves not being alone, having someone calm and available, not forcing immediate understanding, and trusting that the state is transient. Ann’s anguish is not dissolved by a brilliant argument, but by stopping the fight and feeling accompanied.
As an educational archive, we include this passage for its human and cultural value, not as an invitation to replicate anything. We do not describe substances, amounts, or procedures: what is worth keeping is the attitude toward the crisis. If someone finds themselves in a situation of intense discomfort or with effects that do not subside, the prudent course is to seek a safe environment, trusted company, and, in the face of concerning physical or psychic signs, medical attention, without fear of asking for help.
