Draft:Ezekiel Golan

• Comment: Just wanted to note that multiple user accounts including User:EzekielGolan and User:Ezekiel Golan Doc Zee have edited content related to the individual Ezekiel Golan here on Wikipedia in the recent past. I personally reverted and replaced such content in the MEAI article. Also some of the sourcing here clearly fails WP:RS (e.g., clearmindmedicine.com, GlobeNewswire) or content isn't sourced at all (e.g., "Early career in software and bioinformatics" section). Thanks. – AlyInWikiWonderland (talk, contribs) 03:18, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

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Ezekiel Golan
Born	Ezekiel Golan 1970 (age 55–56) Tel Aviv, Israel
Other names	Dr. Zee, Doc Zee
Alma mater	Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Occupations	Chemist, inventor, software engineer
Employer	Clearmind Medicine (advisor)
Known for	Novel psychoactive substances; mephedrone, MEAI, hagigat

Ezekiel Golan (born 1970), widely known by the pseudonym Dr. Zee (also styled Doc Zee), is an Israeli-Canadian inventor and designer of psychoactive substances. Trained in mathematics and computer science rather than formal chemistry, he is best known for creating and popularizing several "legal highs" — novel psychoactive substances sold legally before regulators moved to ban them — including the synthetic cathinone hagigat, the stimulant mephedrone, and the alcohol-alternative compound MEAI. British press has described him as "the godfather of legal highs." Since 2021 he has worked as a scientific advisor to the Vancouver-based biotechnology company Clearmind Medicine, where MEAI is being developed as an experimental treatment for alcohol use disorder.

Early life and education

Golan was born in Tel Aviv in 1970. He spent part of his childhood in Toronto, Canada, before his family returned to Israel, an upbringing that left him bilingual in English and Hebrew. He served in the Israel Defense Forces and later studied at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science. He has characterized his approach to drug design as closer to mathematics than to traditional chemistry, working from the molecular "skeletons" of known compounds and reasoning about possible substitutions.

Early career in software and bioinformatics

Before his work with psychoactive compounds, Golan worked as a software developer, including a period at Oracle in the United States and at Israeli technology firms. He subsequently moved into bioinformatics, holding roles connected to gene-discovery and agricultural-biotechnology work in Israel. During this period he was named as a co-inventor on patents relating to crop stress-tolerance, among the more than one hundred patents he is reported to hold.

Novel psychoactive substances

Hagigat and cathinone

Golan's entry into psychoactive chemistry began with khat, a plant chewed by Yemenite communities in Israel whose active stimulant, cathinone, was legal at the time. After studying Israeli drug law and finding cathinone unlisted, he synthesized the compound himself. Sold from kiosks around Tel Aviv beginning in 2003 under the name hagigat, it became briefly popular before the Knesset added cathinone to Israel's list of controlled dangerous drugs in 2004, following reports of adverse health effects.

Mephedrone

After cathinone was banned, Golan examined its molecular structure for legal alternatives and, around 2003, is credited with rediscovering mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone), a stimulant first synthesized in 1929 but largely forgotten. Manufacturing shifted to China, driving prices down, and the drug — nicknamed "meow meow" — spread across Europe. Its rise became the subject of an intense British tabloid drug scare around 2010 before mephedrone was banned in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

MEAI and Pace

Golan developed MEAI (5-methoxy-2-aminoindane), a compound he promoted as an "alcohol alternative" and binge-drinking mitigator. Its pharmacology was described in peer-reviewed papers co-authored with the psychopharmacologist David Nutt in 2017 and 2018. A consumer drink containing MEAI, marketed as Pace, was sold briefly in Canada until a 2018 CBC News report on the unregulated product ended its commercial run.

3-MMC and other work

Golan is a co-inventor named on a patent application filed by the drug-development company MindMed concerning 3-MMC (3-methylmethcathinone) as an adjunct to psychotherapy. He has said he has personally tested more than 270 of his own compounds, beginning with small doses and scaling up only those he finds tolerable — a self-experimentation practice that has drawn both fascination and criticism.

Clearmind Medicine and current work

Since 2021, Golan has served as a special advisor for innovation and new initiatives at Clearmind Medicine, a biotechnology company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, whose intellectual-property portfolio draws on his patents. Clearmind's lead candidate, CMND-100, is an MEAI-based oral drug being studied as a potential treatment for alcohol use disorder. A FDA-cleared Phase I/IIa clinical trial began in 2025 at sites including Johns Hopkins, Yale, Hadassah Medical Center, and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center; interim reviews reported a favorable early safety profile.

Media and reception

The "Dr. Zee" persona was created for the 2013 documentary Legally High, directed by Dan Reed, to distinguish the public character from Golan himself. He has since been profiled by The Guardian (which dubbed him "the godfather of legal highs"), the BBC, New Scientist, Chemistry World, Tablet, and The Walrus. Coverage has been mixed: some framing his work as harm reduction and legitimate pharmacology, while others emphasize the public-health risks of unregulated designer drugs and the drug scares his creations helped trigger.

References

Category:1970 births Category:Living people Category:Israeli inventors Category:Canadian inventors Category:Israeli emigrants to Canada Category:Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni