From the Vault: MDMA, Part 1

Time for a little bit of vault. Uh. You know what, since we just recently did this big exploration of psychedelics with a special focus on especially the fungal world of psychedelics and psilocybin, but we didn't really get into M d M A, we thought we should re air the episodes that you and Christian did back in about M d M A, right, And I do want to stress that these episodes, yeah, they are from um, you know, a lot of research has the research has continued in

subsequent years, and now we're at a point where we're really looking at the at M d M A potentially being rescheduled in the you know, in the in the near future. So just keep that in mind as you revisit these episodes. You know that the history is still valid, but the researcher has advanced and hopefully we'll be able to do a future new episode on M d M A and what the current research is telling us about this particular substance. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff

to Blow Your Mind. From how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Sager. Today we are going to be talking about a drug. We're gonna be talking about m d m A, also known as ecstasy, but specifically we're gonna be getting into kind of in this episode. What the you know, breakdown of it is, how it works in chemistry, how it works

in biology, what its effects are on human body. Then we're gonna do a second episode that's going to be mainly about experiments that have been conducted for what thirty years now maybe longer, on how you can use m d m A to cure all kinds of things or at least alleviate things from cancer to uh using it

in psychotherapy, and using it to help people with PTS. Yeah, so you can think of it as a one to approach to looking at a particular drug, and if you guide some gals like this, we can take the same approach with other substances in the future. Yeah, definitely. It seems like once we did the research for this, it

seems like this is rife. This avenue is right for for more research and episodes along these lines, you know, I'd love to do another kind of episode that's based on the pharmacology of designer drug or or a commercial kind of street drug. Yes, science based, open minded exploration of what the substance is, what its properties are, and then how can those properties conceivably be used to our

advantage in a non recreational way. Now, before we get started, I want to remind you all where you can find us and all the other things that we do a lot of people that we encounter actually think that the podcast is the only thing that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is, But we actually have blog posts and articles that we write every week that are available on stuff

to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh. Robert and I and Joe are also all working for How Stuff Works still and we write articles for the new How Stuff Works Now site, and robertson doing videos for them as well. Right, what was the last one that was? It was about the god helmet, right, which we've talked about doing on the show. Yeah, that's most recent want to come out, but yeah, it's generally something kind of weird in science.

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little love. We'd great really appreciate it. Okay, so let's get into M d M. First of all, there's a lot of preconceived notion about this drug, and in particular, uh we we were talking about this before the show, that there's preconceived notions on both sides, right which there's the anti drug side, the sort of uh, you know, this has to be legal side, and then there's the the the side that's like this is going to expand your mind and open up new horizons to you that

you weren't at all aware of UM and and change your life side kind of right, Yeah, because yeah, on one side you have the anti drug one drugs statements and then and then yeah, on the recreational side of it, you see basically two different types of messaging, right. You see individuals who are perhaps over emphasizing the spiritual qualities of a particular substance, and this goes around the board

for a number of different drugs. Yeah. Sure, but then you also see myths about its origin, myths about what it does, mis myths about the potential negative side effects, and uh, you know, between all of this, there's certainly a more objective view of what it is, is, where it came from, and what it can potentially do in

a beneficial means. So our goal in these episodes is going to be to kind of drill down between those lines and debunk some of this stuff or explain some of these stuff, some of this stuff a little bit more thoroughly cleanly. And I think a good place for us to start is UM with the journal entries of a guy named Alexander Shulgin, who will talk more about later. But he is considered the godfather of ecstasy, the godfather

of M d M A uh. And these are his journal entries published in his book Peak Hall about his first time after he synthesized M D m A taking it. This is, I believe in the seventies. So um, We've got two quotes here. This first one I'm going to read. This is from his journal entry on taking a hundred milligrams. He says, M D m A intrigued me because everyone I asked about it who had used it, answered the question what's it's like in the same way, and they said,

I don't know. So what happened? They would say nothing? And now I understand those answers. I too think nothing happened, But something seemed changed. Before the window opened completely, I had some somatic effects, a tingling sensation in the fingers and temples, a pleasant sensation that wasn't distracting. However, just after that, there was a slight naja and a dizziness similar to a little bit too much alcohol. All these

details disappeared as I walked outside. My mood was light and happy, but with an underlying conviction that something significant was about to happen. There was a change in perspective, both in the near visual field and in the distance. My usually poor vision was sharpened. That's something that's really interesting to me. Uh, and that he caught onto that immediately, because that's a that's a side effect that isn't that isn't well known. I saw details in the distance that

I could not normally see. After the peak experience had passed, my major state was one of deep relaxation. I felt that I could talk about deep or personal subjects with special clarity, and I experienced some of the feeling one has after a second martini, that one is scoorsing brilliantly and with a particularly acute analytical power. So that's that's his first Like, hey, he synthesized it. And as we'll get into later, he basically always started with with small doses.

He I think he starts sometimes with quite a bit smaller than a hundred milligrams, but at the hundred milligram this is where he started to really experience this mental clarity. Yeah, the one certainly gets a sense if you've ever heard like an album review where an individual was maybe chewing a little more than they bid off, as if maybe the there's less substance to really focus on, and he's having to really reach to find it. Um you get

a sense of that at the hundred milligram level. Something that's worth keeping in mind about these descriptions, too, is that Peak Hall was written in the nineties, a good twenty years after he took so I'm sure he took his journal entries and kind of spiced him up a little bit, you know, out of a little poetry, all right. So the next entry is from when he tried in d m A at the hundred and twenty milligram level, and you'll see a bit of a difference here. Quote.

I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria. I have never felt so great or believed this to be possible. The cleanliness, clarity, and marvelous feeling of solid inner strength continued throughout the rest of the day and evening and through the next day. I am overcome by the profundity of the experience and how much more powerful it was than previous experiences. For no apparent

reason other than a continually improving state of being. All the next day I felt like a citizen of the universe rather than a citizen of the planet, completely disconnecting time and flowing easily from one activity to the next. And again these are from Alexander Shulgan's book Peak Hall, which is uh subtitled a chemical love Story. We're we're gonna talk more about Shulgan later because he on his

own is just totally fascinating. But there's another quote that that you put in here that's from that book, which is M D m A. It was beginning to be a parent could be all things to all people. And it's kind of interesting because, uh, it hasn't now or until until recently with what you know what we're gonna be talking about towards the end of these two episodes about the I guess medical applications, medical and therapeutic applications, but it is, it is all things, you know what.

I'll take it back, it's all things to all people in that like, everybody kind of brings their own thing to it. Yeah, and that's part of the problem as well discussed. That's one of the reasons that that legitimate exploration of M D m A fell out of favor because it became this counterculture thing. It became this recreational farm, pharmacological vehicle. And I actually have one quick quote that I want to read just to to drive home kind

of the the other end of the pool. And this is from a UK disco DJ, DJ Harvey Born DJ born Harvey Bassett. He says, quote, you can't understand the Blues until you've had your heartbroken, and you can't understand my music until you've had group sex on ecstasy. So that that's the kind of quote where it instantly makes you think, Okay, maybe I'm a less into this idea of m d m A. Is this this pure window into ourself? Um, it helps perpetuate a sort of mythology

about it. Yeah, and we and we should talk a little about about the mythology because I'm thinking we largely have three types of individuals out there. They're the individuals who have some level of experience with m d m A, with ecstasy, molly Adam, whatever you want to call it. And then and then their individuals who maybe have never heard of this before. But I think for the most part, you're gonna have that group who have encountered it time

and time again in movies and on TV shows. So many TV shows, it's become a standard trope it's like giving birth to a baby in an elevator. Yeah, it really did. I think probably the nineties was one that took off the most, um Robert. Robert posted to the again another reason why you should follow us on social media. We occasionally throw out questions the audience for these episodes. Robert asked our audience yesterday, uh for examples of these

from TV? And my wife, of all people, it was one of the people who posted this example from Beverly Hills nine O two and oh, okay, yeah the when? Uh was his name Brandon? Was he the main character on I O two and No? I can't remember the Yeah, so that's the same by the Bell Show. Okay, yeah, I get this. Uh yeah, no, no two and no.

He dated this girl for a little while. He was like kind of a bad girl, wore a leather jacket and had bleached hair, and like, of course, like she wanted to do M D M A. And so there's a whole episode about about his experience with that and and that, you know, you know, frankly, I think a lot of these TV examples perpetuate one of one side or the other of these stereotypes that we've been talking

about Yeah, it's either like the crazy rave person. Instantly think of the the episode of Space, classic British show, we had the ray Or character. I think he was like a bike courier. It's his name is Tires. Re watched this episode last night because it's one of my favorite episodes of Space, and when we all day doing the research for this, I just had Tires in my head.

And the scene with Nick Frost all in like army gear at a rave doing ecstasy and kind of like put pointing fake guns at the audience and shooting at them. And then he like puts a fake gun in his mouth and everybody's clapping. It's so ridiculous. But yeah, that's the other side, which is the like, this is so amazing. It makes you feel so great. And even at the very end, Tires the bike courier like he leaves and the voiceover says, my job is done here or my

work is done here. So you have that, and then you have sort of the comic oops, I took ecstasy kind of trope. And then uh, an increasingly dominant trope that that I see in a lot of series these days. Is Um is one of more of a shamanistic ecstasy experience where the characters are are learning something about themselves.

I think, uh, there's an episode of six ft Under that dealt with this, especially where I think, I remember this is David who takes it right, Maybe more than one character because I think the mother, Oh yeah, she accidentally takes it too. Yeah, it's been a while and she ends up having this profound experience and this experiences this openness with the world, which which I think Tie is in rather nicely with some of the the objective

material that we're going to look at here. Yeah, yeah, but but yeah, there's a we have a small list. This is not everything. I'm sure there's far more than this. Yeah, yeah, but but here just a few. We've seen ecstasy M d M A play in two episodes of Transparent. Excellent show. Yeah, the Carrie Diaries that like, it's like Sex in the City prequel, right, she's in high school. I think, how to make it in America, Orphan black Skins. It's always

stunning in Philadelphia, peep show. Um, you're a big fan. I still haven't seen people you'd recommen did it to me? Yes, yeah, yeah, there's I can't remember precisely what happened, but I know I do remember what happened, and I can't mention it here. But so there's Peep Show, Workaholics, Californication Party Down the episode is I like that one East Founding down um looking and uh yeah, just so many more. Yeah, and

it's funny. A lot of those examples are kind of more recent actually, and and I gravitate to that nine O two on O example because that's what I remember in the nineties, the like kind of like after school special plot that's like, alright, somebody's gonna get you to try to take this and they're gonna tell you that it's gonna feel so good, but watch what really happens.

You know, Like before we came into the studio, is talking to Joe about this, and Joe says to me, oh, are you guys gonna talk about the myth that it puts holes in your brain? And I was like, I've never even heard of that, And and sure enough, like

Joe had heard this whole myth growing up. You know, you take ecstasy and literally two through your brain matter apparently, so which, as far as I can tell from the research, is not true, right, It's interesting though that in just looking at the television portrayals we see this, uh, this

change from the the anti drug messaging. It's just this is something evil and awful, stay away from it, to where it is portrayed as more of a like a rite of passage, as this really more of a shamanistic experience. Even if the character is engaging in the shamanistic experience,

are not prepared for the experience. Yeah, I guess, like what I would like to see a move more towards and from reading the research on this, definitely, like the scholars who are studying this seemed to be in this area is understanding the chemical and the chemistry and how it interacts with human biology, as if like the brain is like a machine run on chemicals, which it is, you know, and how those are, how those kind of

work together. Right. That seems like a much more mature approach to this to me than than one side or the other. And and uh and hopefully we can kind of you know, bring that here. But also obviously we're gonna dip our toes into into the pop culture examples because that's what we're all familiar with. All right. Well, on that note, let's let's go ahead and dive in when we're talking about m d M A and ecstasy.

First of all, ecstasy. Ecstasy is of course the street variant, right, this is the pill version, and generally speaking there's m d m A in there, but there are probably other properties in there as well. Yeah, I mean, let's admit it, like, who knows who's making this stuff unless you're making it yourself. Yeah, it's coming from a lab and another continent. Yeah, it's

it's kind of an unknown quantity. One thing that was interesting that I saw in the research, though, is that m d m A, among many street drugs, is known for its purity, uh, and that it wasn't until I believe, like the late nineties or no, mid nineties that uh, the purity was in question. When they would test it, it was, you know, significantly lower than but since the mid two thousand's when they've been testing it, it's always been.

So I don't want to perpetuate like this fear that like, oh, yes, somebody cut like PCP into your m d M A or what who knows whatever? You know, all right, so let's talk about it. M d n A the substance itself, m d m A stands for methylene dioxy meth amphetamine, and it's a synthetic psychoactive drug. It's chemically similar to the stimulant meth amphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. It produces feelings of increased energy, euphoria, emotional warmth, distortions in time, perception,

tactile experiences. Interestingly enough, you don't see these um these experiences described generally as as states of ecstasy. Like, it's really kind of a misnomer to even call it that. It's more euphoric, it's more openness. It's more like the self becomes permeable and uh, you're allowed to interact with

the world a little more. That's another myth that I think is perpetuated by t t V and movies a little bit too about it, right, is that like everybody just wants to have sex the minute to take M d m A because it's ecstasy, right, And that's not

necessarily the case. There was another TV example which I've mentioned this show several times on on on our show Uh Millennium than the nine nineties show starring Lance Hendrickson the very first episode of that show, I believe or maybe it was like the third or fourth featured a couple who took M D M A and they were just so out of it and so in love with each other that a serial killer was able to capture them and kill them both. You know, it was just ridiculous.

But so anyways, it's important to remember that this drug, basically, it's a central nervous system stimulant right when you get down to it, and UH, it is particularly connected to the serotonin transporters in our brain. We're gonna drill down and look at that further later. Let's let's continue on with the basics. Yeah, it's so as I've said, it's a it's a unique combination of both stimulant and UH

and a psychatoman eddic UH substance. So some people actually tend to classify it as a enactogen or an empathogen, all due to its power to induce emotional communion again, this sense of oneness, emotional openness in the form of empathy and sympathy. Yeah, so it's pretty popular, and we know this because not just for from it showing up on TV and movies, but actually populations surveys show that it's the third most widely used illegal drug in the

world after cannabis and cocaine, which surprised me. I guess I, I guess I was surprised that cocaine was so much higher too. But um, uh, well, I mean the the various effects that we've discussed, I mean, without getting into any of the legal side of it, or the or the ramifications like who wouldn't want to feel that way? If someone said, hey, let me just ask you one quick question, would you like to feel like this? And you would say yes, I'd like to hear some more

information about what you're proposed. Yeah, exactly, Like it's like, uh, somebody handing up pamphlets at the trade station. Yeah, yeah, no,

I agree. I was talking with a friend last night actually who experienced using m d m A in the seventies, actually around the same time the children when was first experimenting with it, and uh, and that was kind of the conclusion that you know, he came to is that you know, well, people would say, you know, people even before there was a usage of it for psychoanalysts and therapy applications, they would say, well do you want to

feel good? You know, and and and lots of people out there, don't want to feel sad, don't want to be angry, don't want to be lonely. Sure, I want to feel good. But as we'll get to this isn't a particularly addictive drug either. So it's not like cocaine in the sense where it's like you're gonna feel good and then you're gonna have to feed in that monkey, right,

you know. Um, it's like this is more of a situation where you're gonna feel really good and then you're probably gonna want to take it again and uh a month or two, Yeah, yeah, exactly, maybe never depending you know.

It's um, yeah, well we'll get into those properties. In fact, to give you a sort of a broad look at how many people have potentially done it, European Monitoring the the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction surveyed all of Europe for how much they had used m d m A, how much the population used m d A m D M A, and they found that people between the ages of sixteen and sixty five, eight point six percent of them acknowledged that they had used it,

but like you said, the majority only used it a few times. Regular uses very rare it's very rare that somebody is taking ecstasy all the time. The vast majority of individuals seem to have taken it ten times or less. Yeah, exactly, that was the average. All right, So let's get into the origin story. This M d M A is a synthetic substance. It does not occur in nature. So you can't go pick M d m A in a field

of flowers, right. A shaman watering in the woods did not discover M d m A m The monk of picking mushrooms in then the hills didn't discover m d m A. M B m A was created in a laboratory, in a very interesting laboratory situation. Actually, yeah, so the origins of M dumay only go back to around nineteen twelve, and specifically you have to go to Uh to the laboratories of the German pharmaceutical company Mark. It's here that German chemist and Tom Kolish Uh was actually discovered the substance.

And Uh, it's we know next to nothing about this individual. We know that he died in nineteen sixteen, but that's about it. Um. We don't know when he was born. Not a lot of forthcoming biological biographical information about him. Um, and there's this really interesting study that we read for for this. That was all the study was about, was drilling down, going through all of Mark's archives to try

to figure out what the exact origin story was. And you know, basically they came up with what we're telling you. It wasn't a whole lot more on the record. Yeah, it's a it's a wonderful paper. Will link to a copy of the full paper on the landing page for this episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. But it was published in two thousand six in the German journal uh Fharma Z and the the English title is the Origin of M d M. A Ecstasy Separating the facts from the myth uh and uh some of

the myths. Just to get this out out there, there's a there are a couple of different myths relating to different actual chemists, one of whom was a Nobel Prize winner. Uh So, a lot of people like to gravitate towards that. They want there to be like a like a more fantastic origins. Yeah, Like like they want to know the guy responsible as opposed to uh, pour Anton here who's just completely lost to history. Um, the soldier myth is

also very uh attractive. There's this misconception that that it was, you know, it's some sort of an army uh project, either a U. S. Army project or or or a German military project trying to create some sort of you know, soldier enhancement drug. And while it's true that pretty much that the military has always been interested in ways to of course improve soldier performance, and certainly in the age of aviation, there's always been an interest in trying to

keep your soldiers awake, developed developed stimulants, etcetera. But there's basically this myth originates from just confusing the origin, saying all right, nineteen twelve Germany and then thinking about the US army experiments in the nineteen fifties and getting it all kind of mixed up, because ultimately, ecstasy is probably not the drug of choice when it comes to sending soldiers out into the field. It's it's probably not what you want to be giving people in the field when

their job is to kill people. Yeah, you don't want them theories found openness with the world. Yeah. Well, And I think it's also worth pointing out that as far as I can tell from the research. The only application for military use that it is now being used is for soldiers coming back with PTSD. That's right, and that there are soldiers who are being recommended for clinical trials of using m d m A to treat TSD. But

we'll get into that in the next episode. So if you look back at the original German patents, and that's certainly what they did in this two thousand and six U Pharmacy Journal paper. You look back at these original patents, the first one mentions no specific purpose or medical indication such as the use of as an appetite suppressant for soldiers as is sometimes cited. It was just a quote for sie dural patent for compounds which are important key

precursors for therapeutics. And in the second patent, m d m A is mentioned only as a byproduct and chemical intermediate in one in in the in one of the pathways that started from saffrol, that's a sassafras derived precursor to m d m A, also a precursor to an

insecticide and a fragrance. So essentially, you know, these chemists are just they're exploring and they're they're creating this road map of chemical interactions and along the way, you know, they're in the car Anton there and he says, hey, that's M D M A right there. I don't know anything about it, but there it is, and it's kind of it's noted in a ledger, and then everyone keeps going.

Um careers at these chemical companies in the early twentieth century sound fascinating to me, both both Mark and then reading later. Dow Chemical is another place where psychedelics were developed under the auspices of commercial of pharmaceuticals, and especially when you're talking German chemists, because some of the more profound advancements in chemistry have come out of German chemistry labs in in the early part of the the twice but who knows, like they were for the most part, like

you said, they're trying to design pesticides or something. Yeah, and it just shows up as a curiosity. In fact, um Mark's patent number two seven does not patent M D M A as a substance, so there's seemed little or no interest in it, so it was effectively shelved. It was not tested pharmacal pharmacologically, and as such nobody knew what it did. Its side effects were. It wasn't until nineteen seven, and that's when Mark's Dr Max Oberlin,

and we don't know much about him either. He was born in eight and we don't know when he died. According to the pharmacy paper that were referenced earlier, but he resumed study of M d M A and observed its quote pure sympathetic effects and noted that it should be explored, though again it was shelved due to the high costs of saffral methyl mein. So we don't have a lot of details. But Overland probably didn't conduct experiments with humans, but we just don't know the details of

what his research methods were. But somehow he knew that there was something empathic about it. And this is where I threw this out on Facebook privately. But I think there's a lot of of potential here because we have the German chemists creating all these crazy uh and and highly influential substances. They're accidentally creating M d M A. Imagine if you you had a sort of a cabaret era, pre war period piece, and and here's this chemist who introduces very fictionally um M d M A into the

cabaret era club scene. Yeah, he's you're right, it's a German madmen. Yeah. Like he's working in like a kind of stodgy chemical company by day, but then at night he's he's slipping people. Yeah. So, if anybody out there is listening and you're trying to develop a show for AMC, we got a pitch for you. Yeah, this is our pitch.

Pick it up. Well, we'll talk, we'll talk. Well, the problem with Coalition and Oberlin is that they didn't just make this stuff in their own backyard and take it themselves, which is what the secondary since this is that we know of holding out hope, there must Yeah, there must have been something between Oberlin in and Alexander Alexander Shulgan,

who we've talked about already. H but I'll expand upon. Yeah, as far as we know, until AMC fills in the hole, it's got to be a Yeah, it just seems that m d m A just lingered and obscure four decades. What if the reason why we don't know when Max Oberlin died is because he's still alive and the m d m A has been keeping him alive. He's over a hundred years old, fueled by ecstasy. No, that's totally

not possible based on the research that we saw. Alright, So Alexander Shulgan, this guy is quoted, like I said at the top, as being the godfather of ecstasy. And here's why. Sulgan, like I said, basically cooked this stuff in his backyard and tested it on himself. And before I get to that, I think that we need to do a little bit of a setup on who Shilgan was. He passed away unfortunately last year, but who he was and what his methodology was and why he was the

guy to do this. So Shulgan was born in California. He went to Harvard when he was fifteen years old. Okay, so he's one of these wonder congeniuses. He drops out so he can join the U. S. Navy. Uh. And he claimed that while he was in the Navy, he memorized the Encyclopedia on Chemistry. Uh, and went back got his formal education finished, got a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California. In he goes and works for the Dow Chemical Company. So it sounds somewhat similar to

the Mark situation, right. Uh. He is eventually working they're producing pesticides, and he invents this stuff called zektrin, which was advertised as the world's first biodegradable pesticide, and it went over really well, and basically Dow was like, alright, do whatever you want now, like we're so happy with your results on that, go go to it. Wonder we wonder what you cook up next. Literally kind of a

Walter White scenario here. Uh, and and he Shelgan says, Okay, well, I'm going to devote all of my studies to psychedelic chemistry. And he starts publishing in Nature and Journal of Organic Chemistry talking about all of these drugs that he's inventing in Dow's labs. And when they find out what he's up to, their board of directors is like, no, this is gonna be bad publicity for us to keep him on.

This is the fifties. Um. So that so the the full counterard culture collapse has not occurred yet, but clearly there the roots are already present. Yeah, And so he eventually leaves the company in nineteen sixty six and he says, you know what I said at my own home lab, and uh, work out if he's gonna freelance out of the house and basically he's a consultant to research labs

and hospitals. Okay, but here's what he basically did. He invented hundreds of psychedelics, testing each new compound on himself. And the way that he did it was he would take the minimum amount required to have an effect, and then he would gradually increase the dosage. So those those quotes from his book peak all that we read at the beginning of the show. That's his typical process, right, is that he would go, Okay, so I need to take this many milligrams for to feel any effect, and

then I will gradually increase the dosage. And I think that's a a good lesson there for everyone, even if you're just dealing with something like like alcohol I legally consumable product or coffee. Don't just go diving in and getting the double triple espress though it starts, and work

your way up and see see what works well. Schilgn's a fascinating character because I mean, so he tested all of these psychedelics out on himself, and he it was like very fastidious about how he kept his his notes as journals all this, but then to confirm his data what he would do is he would share the substances with his wife, Ann, and he would find out what Ann's experiences were, and he would record those and then if they determined that further study was required, they invited

a quote research group of friends to come over and they would do these sessions for like maybe two or three days where they would test their reactions to whatever he had invented that week, right, and and maybe it was M D M A, maybe it was something else. I mean, like I said, there's hundreds. Those must have been interesting, um research groups to attend, because I guess you probably, I mean, he probably had some idea what to expect. But you're just you're you're very much a psychonag.

You're very much them, I think. And Uh, there's a documentary about Shilgun I believe is on YouTube and they talk about these parties quite a bit, and I believe I might I might be wrong here. I wrote about Shilgun once before for for How Stuff Works, and will link to that as well on the podcast page. But um, my understanding was that children had one rule, which was basically that well, first of all, they weren't allowed to take any medications for a couple of days beforehands, I

wouldn't be still in any kind of complications. Yeah, but they weren't allowed to have sex with people that they weren't already established in a relationship with, So they would be there for two to three days and whatever it was that they were taking in. And his first name, his first name is Alexander, but everybody called him Sasha, uh Sasha. Basically their rule was like, no, you can't just go off with somebody else. We don't want any kind of drama being reintroduced to this thing. But again,

another great MC show in the making. I think, I think one that we definitely have far more biographical information to go. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot. Yeah uh so, okay, children created over two hundred unique drugs to stimulate the mind doing this, he tested everything, speeding it up, slowing it down, tapping into empathy. The d A actually gave his garden laboratory a license to produce Schedule one substances

so he could be an expert in their cases. Right, he was like their go to guy for stuff they would find out in the field and he would he would consult with them. In fact, I don't have the notes here in front of me. But he was like best friends with the guy who is the head of his local d A chapter. They worked very closely together.

So we have a really curious individual here, one who is he seems to exist right at the crossroads between the counterculture of drug exploration and the hard nosed you know, precursor to what would ultimately become the War on drugs. Right, Yeah, absolutely, I mean he my understanding his position was basically like, I'm just creating this stuff and I'm testing it for educational and scientific purposes. What people do with it commercially is up to them, and it's not his responsibility if

something goes wrong. Um. So that brings us to m d m A because he was criticized highly for not only creating resynthesizing m D m A. He didn't create it. It was created at Mark, but publishing how to make it and and uh letting letting other people know, you know, basically the recipe. Yeah, I mean, he's just to go back to the road analogy. He is mapping the chemical Highway, and you don't have to go down every road. He's

not saying drive down here, you don't have to go there. Yeah, but this is the map so Shilgun and M d M A. He first synthesized it in nineteen sixty five, but he didn't try it. So actually, if you look at the numbers there, he was still at DOW at the time that he first synthesized it, but he didn't try it. Then again, I think there was like a

what what is this for? Right kind of thing? Uh And then in the nineteen seventies he heard about it's quote special effect from a friend, and this makes me wonder to what extent there is there there is a history something between, you know, between it's it's supposed to disappearance and what somebody was making it in the background

and using it. Yeah. Uh, so he resynthesizes it and tests it on himself in this usual manner that I described in September of nineteen seventy six, and that's where we got those journal notes that we we we read you earlier from Peak Hall and along with a guy named David Nichols, he publishes the first paper on the pharmacological action of M d M A and human beings. And this is why people sometimes refer to him either as the father of m d M A or the

godfather of M D m. A. Um. Peacall is his his his most widely known book, and it stands for Fennel ethel a means I have known and loved And it's sort of part memoir, part cookbook on how to make these drugs and includes instructions on how to synthesize all the things in there there. I believe there's like a hundred and seventy nine different substances in it. And then he followed this up with a book T Call, which is tripped to means I've known and loved, similar

kind of thing, just looking at a different based group. Um. But it got to the point where you know, these

books were published in there widely known. I first heard about Shulgun I don't know, maybe nineties six or something like that, so I think, like you know, pecoll was published in the early nineties, so it had been out for a little while by them, but I first heard about it like hanging out with some guys at M I T who like, had founded on the Internet, and we're talking about how they were all like engineers or chemistry a years and trying to figure out how they

were going to cook this stuff up because they were fascinated by this guy. Um, it's like the chemical necronomicon. Yeah, yeah, totally um. And so you can understand why, like any time, if he gave a word of praise, even the slightest praise to a drug in these books or any of his other writings, it was almost guaranteed that it would gain popularity. So this also came with media scrutiny and outrage and that this guy had created this horrible thing

and was destroying the world. But like I said, he believed his research should be openly available. This guy was like like I said, like peakal totally available online. He wasn't in it for the money because of the educational reasons, for the purposes of people being able to learn from it. And when you interviews with this guy, especially video interviews that I've seen online, first of all, he seems like

this such a tender, genuine guy. But also beard. Yeah, he's got a very He looks like what you would expect. He kind of wears like Hawaiian short sleeve shirts and and has a huge white beard. But he's also just so smart and so fascinated with just the world of chemistry and and and putting all the parts together in his head. You can see the gears going when he's

talking about it. So he it's easy to want to compare him to people like Timothy Leary or Lily But but his focus, uh was was was almost exclusively on the chemistry on that chemical map, not what can I do with it to speak to beings from another dimension or anything of that. Yeah, I didn't get that impression, although you know, he was certainly continuing to create new stuff and tested on himself, I think probably up until

he died in two thousand and fourteen. I think I think it was lung cancer that that caused him to

pass away. But um in the whole d A thing flipped and agents rated his home and lab, probably because of the publication of Pekle, revoked his license and find him twenty five thousand dollars, So that kind of relationship sort of went away, although I'm sure probably behind the scenes there were still guys coming to him and being like, we don't understand this particular substance because he's the foremost expert in the field, like the Hannibal Lecter of the

d A. You know, like they're they're like, we don't we don't get these chemical compounds, and they they're not supposed to talk to him, but they go out and visit him on their right. I mean in that to sort of go back to our Detective episode we did a few months back. He's in that shamanistic role. He's on the edge, he's between the worlds, And who do you go to and you want to understand the other world,

you go to the shaman absolute. In fact, another person who I mentioned on this show quite a bit, Warren Ellis, has adapted Shulgin into some of his writings. Believe there's an Iron Man comic out there in which iron Man is having sort of like a crisis of confidence and he goes and visits a Shulgin like figure at his a state and sit down and talk about, you know,

the future of chemistry and technology together. Interesting. Yeah, all right, you know, I think it's time we take a quick break and when we when we come back, we're going to get into um the specifics of what M. D M A does to the mind of to the body, the pros, the cons, Yeah, debunk the myths. Let's get down to the nitty gritty. All right, we're back. So what does M. D M A do and how does

it do it? Well, we're gonna try to not get too lost in the details here, because you're ultimately talking about chemistry and bio chemy street and you can really go down the dep end. It's certainly above my head. And that was one thing when I was looking at the research, which was kind of Okay, how do we

translate this for our audience into something that's digestible. And my rule of thumb was sort of like, if I'm reading this in my eyes started glossing over and I can't figure out what it is, it might be best to sort of try to paraphrase that in another way, you know, Yeah, I mean just to read a bit from that German paper that I referenced earlier, like a very sort of clinical description of what m d M

A does is as follows. Quote. M d M AS effects mainly result from an increased synaptic availability of serotonin five ht based on serotonin reuptake inhibition and serotonin release from pre synaptic storage. Is The stimulant and emotional effects are mainly produced by the acute release of five h D, while the hallucinogenic effects of m d M A are mainly evoked by direct interactions with post synaptic five HT to A receptors similar to last masculine, etcetera. Right, so

this is what you talked about earlier. The m d m A sort of balances the stimulant effects of methamphetamines with the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline. Right, to break it down a little more, Okay, you have you're talking about euphoria, blood pressure, um, effects on your you know, your appetite, your attention. These are all regulated by a group of neurotransmitters in just the normal non ecstasy taking body and brain.

So the biogenic amines and the monoamine neurotransmitters. So normally neurons communicate with each other and they fire impulses through the brain via the neurotransmitters. You can think of this is it's kind of like the bank tellers. Right, Oh, you need you need to take so much out to take care of this. All right, let me do the paperwork. Here you go, here's the cash balances this stuff out for you, or at least it's supposed to write, right.

M d M A is more like a Robin Hood bank robber going into the bank and saying, actually, I have some different I wanted what we're going to do. So m D M A release increases the levels of the monoamine neurotransmit There's dopamine UH, nero repineprin, and serotonin in the synaps. It dumps them into into the synaps in quantities quality in quantities much larger than those seen with cocaine. But it releases much more serotonin and much

less dopamine UH than amphetamines. So this results in a decrease in aggressiveness and increase in body temperature and a relatively low addiction potential, right, which we mentioned earlier. Right, most people who have used m D M A at the most ten as many times, because how many times can you just robbed the bank? Right? Well? Yeah, And as we'll get into, there's after effects that that decrease the positive effects and increase the negative effects of taking

m DMAGE. And I feel like a lot of it's very you know, it's very zen that idea that experiences in life for this pendulum, And and you're gonna have extremes on both side. And the further you swing the pendulum over in one direction, the further it has the potential to swing back in the other So, yeah, my friend who I mentioned earlier, who took this stuff in

the seventies. His example was that, like you know, shaman's when they take hallucinogens, they're clearly they weren't making m d M A and labs and taking this stuff, but things similar to it. It's not like they were taking it every day, right there. They take it maybe once a year, and there's an elaborate ritual and they give themselves the time to come down off of it, and they give it reverence. Right uh and and I just exactly right, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, it's swinging. Uh sorry,

what is it? The past fire thing? And we'll talk about the why dance club culture plays into this. Yeah, yeah, it has a purpose huge yeah. Okay, So what are there it's immediate effects? Well, first of all, a typical street dose I guess is around a hundred and twenty

five milligrams in a tablet. Yeah, I've also seen it as low as a hundred but okay, yeah, which is around what was taking it at um and most people ingested orally, but others have uh taken something called m d M A bomb, which I hadn't heard of before reading about this, But apparently you take the equivalent of like two to three tablets worth, you wrap it up in paper and swallow that, so you get a much

higher dosage all at once. Uh. And the other way to get quicker results is to either snort it or to inject it um. This has quicker results, but then it also has worst effects during the calm down. So what are those effects? All? Right? First of all, it increases your body temperature. Sometimes it gives you not hypothermia, hyper thermia, so your body temperature starts going up a lot. That's why, like all the stereotypical examples of ravers taking M D M A, you see them drinking walker all

the time. And it's also important to note that the hyperthermia is probably going to be a byproduct of environment. Are you, Yeah, if you're taking it in a you know, in a living room, that's one thing. But are you are you in a hot room dancing all night? Well, then that's another situation entirely, and that's what leads to

a lot of feelings of dehydration with it. Some users actually drink way too much water to compensate for this, and so they developed something called hypone autrema, which is where the sodium electrolytes in your blood get diluted, and that's not good either. So studies have found actually that there's an overrepresentation of women in these cases, and they think that it's probably because they have a lower mean body weight, but who knows, um and a lot a

lot of these studies. One of the things that I thought was interesting was they sometimes they accounted for this,

but sometimes they couldn't. They said, well, there's different effects on people who are part of the rave culture because well, they're staying up late at night, they have different circadian rhythms, or maybe they're taking other drugs or who knows, right, Like, there's a lot of variables that are thrown in there, and alcohol, are they combining it within it with another with some sort of illucingen And then ultimately, yeah, are you are you jumping around all night in the hot room?

Are you exactly suffering from sleep deprivation as well as the come down effects of easy use? So yeah, it's a totally different Uh. My understanding from from the research is that when it's taken a dance clubs, the stimulatory effects were much stronger, especially because of all the environmental sites and sounds, but also when you consider the environmental effects of it being hot and what we're talking about.

There was a study that came out in the last few years that positive that that loud music actually increases the effects. So that makes sense and would make sense along these lines to It increases your heart rate, it heightens your blood pressure, you have faster breathing. It also produces jaw clenching and tooth grinding, which we learned that

there's terms for these. I didn't know this. Apparently, jaw clenching is trismas and tooth grinding is bruxi is um, which stuff to blow your mind word of the weight. It's very very British sounding. Yeah, but but this is why you you see the whole pacifiers because not you know, you're going out to a rape. You don't have time to get fitted for a mouth guard. What are you gonna do? You get a pacifier and then you know it has the lights and do dads on it. Then

you just fit into the scene. Right, So that's the sort of you know, physiological after effects are immediate effects rather uh. But you know, like we said, it's increasing levels of chemicals, so it increases your cortisol levels. In fact, eleven of twelve studies have reported a significant increase of cortisol and cortisol just to you know, give you a quick one on it. It's important for the homeostatic control

of our bodies for just our feeling of general well being. Right, so if you have low cortisol levels, you're probably not feeling particularly good about yourself or or physically feeling well. Uh. It also, as as we mentioned earlier, reduces the serotonin transporter levels across the cerebral cortex. Now, what this does is it reverses that normal process of serotonin reuptake. So an acute dose can release up to eighty percent of

the available serotonin that's inside your synaptic cleft. So it's just basically saying like, hey, just dump it all out, just robbed the bank, take all the all the money and run. Yeah. And it also affects dopamine, uh, nour adrenaline and other neurotransmitter systems. So like you know that this is where the mood effects come from. That we all know about their complex and they're variable though they're

not always euphoric. In fact, they can also intensify negative emotional states, and in some instances they increase anxiety, over stimulation, panic, or the loss of personal control. Yeah. I mean, we'll get into some of its therapeutic uses in the next episode,

but that's where you certainly see some some negative manifestations occurring. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um. And the other thing to pay attention to is that both positive and negative moods can appear in the same individual, right, so one person can also can be both euphoric and depressed at the same time on m d M A uh. And some users attribute this to the importance of having

positive expectancy when you take the drug. So this kind of idea, right that like you just got to be in the right zone, man, like you gotta you gotta go into it expecting happy things. Well, it's the very statement you see from from from rab culture. You see it in shamanistic use of more ancient substances, and you see it in the medical usage of these these these substances because they're powerful, potent uh, drugs that interact with your brain, that interact with yourself. Um. Of course you

want to prime yourself profitly. Yeah, if your brain is a car engine, like instead of putting oil into it. This is like putting I don't know jet fuel into it, right, you know, so who knows what these effects are gonna be. It's gonna it's gonna be across the board though. Uh. It Also, this is really fascinating and we're going to talk about this more in depth as well in the next episode. But it causes apoptosis, which is programmed cell death. It especially is good at killing cells in our livers

and our retinants, which is fascinating as well. Uh. Basically it can lead to fatal acute liver failure in some limited cases. Yeah. So it's it's easy to imagine like a ray melting in a club because it's it's not quite se renounced and it's not like all your cells are going to degrade all at once. Yeah. But but the so you know, we'll get into this later. There's potential medical benefits there. So you could potentially use this for cancer therapy if you're able to direct it. Uh,

this program sell death at cancer cells. Okay. Uh. There are other acute fatalities that are known of with m d m A, and they're from all kinds of things. Cardiac arrest, brain seizure, destruction of skeletal muscular tissue, and

even the failure of blood clotting. But my understanding from the literature is that these are rare cases that are what you have to consider here is you're taking a unique chemical and you're and in some cases, like we talked about before, you don't know how pure this chemical is, and you're inserting it into a unique biological machine that

has all kinds of responses to chemicals. Right, So who knows, maybe there's an allergy that that happens that leads to something, or maybe you have a weak heart right in the heart rate response uh that increases for most people ends up giving you cardiac arrest. So it's it's depending on each individual and our sort of fingerprint of biochemistry. Yeah, indeed, so one takes this substance and regardless of the circumstance,

the effects where off. And sometimes it's described as more of a just a complete crash right where it's just well right. Other times it's more gradual. Certainly, the quote that we read from Shulgin earlier described in a very easy glide back into a normal life. But sometimes it's just a sharp drop off again that pendulum has to swing back. So for up to two weeks after the use of m d M. A number of side effects

are are often reported. Uh. Physical side effects can include lockjaw, loss of appetite, and insomnia, and on the psychological inside, effects can include anxiety, paranoia, your ability, restlessness, difficulty focusing, a loss of interest in normally fulfilling activities. Uh, you might end up having to watch a lot of Miyazaki movies on the couch. You know. It's it's the pendulum is gonna swing back the other way. The bank has been robbed. All these levels have to be built back

up again. Yeah, your brain now only has like the serotonin levels it was supposed to have to be able to fulfill your everyday needs. Yeah. So during this time period especially, you're not going to be able to take it again and experience all of its empathic qualities. If you were to take it again the next weekend, you're probably just going to benefit from the stimulant properties, right And uh so this is where we get into the

long term effect type thing. So there's a chronic tolerance that children actually first noticed in Peak Hall in his entry for m d M A uh, and he's very precise. Basically, he gives the exact dosages in the times of day of consumption, and how that there's these different effects basically with them, and how the tolerance builds up in the human body so that there's fewer gains but more problems

over time, And there's several studies that backed this up. Basically, this leads to most users quitting on their own um most, like we've said repeatedly already in this episode, most users report that they've only had a lifetime use of ten occasions and this is probably why, because after a while it just doesn't do for you what it's supposed to do. In fact, I believe was it children or somebody else

who referred to it as the loss of magic. I'm not sure where the term or originated, but it's used on aerrowood dot org, which is always a great source for information about about believes that has the entire pea call antique. So yeah, so yeah, it's there's a loss of magic. Why are you gonna keep doing it if there's less magic and you still have to deal with

the rammifications of the use. So this is your sort of basic long term effect is the chronic tolerance building up right, But there's a lot of long term I guess what we would call long term harm effects. UH. First of all, you know, we talked about the purity. I want to make sure like that we get back to this. The purity level of m d m A is much higher than most street level drugs. Uh. And it was only really in the mid nineties that they

started to be purity control issues. I guess I don't know that you call im purity control issues when it's street level rather than like in a scientific lab. But that's not necessarily as much of an issue in term of the long term harm cases. But the serotonin thing can be a significant issue. Is it leads to something called serotonin or gic neurotoxicity. And they've tested this in animals, and what it sounds like to me is that this it depletes your serotonin levels so much that it leads

to dysfunction in the serotonin parts of your brain. It leads to a pronounced reduction in markers for serotonin across higher brain regions. And every study of heavy users of m d m A has found that they have a significant reduction in their higher brain regions of this stuff, you know, the serotonin making neuroimaging shows us as well too, so when they actually scan these people's brains, they can see this, um, there's okay, So that's the serotonin long

term problem. There's also deficits in retrospective memory, which is your memory of things that happened in the past, but also of prospective memory, which is your memory for the future,

so you remembering to remember something that wrote. Uh. They've also found lots of varied results on this research because, like I said earlier, there's all these other factors at work, right, Yeah, I say, basically, you're messing with the cocktail of the brain, the cocktail of yourself, and that's going to vary from

personal person who's gonna depend on usage history, etcetera. Yeah, Like like we said earlier with with the people who are really into the dance scene, they may stay up later at night and therefore they have different circadian rhythms.

So if you're trying to analyze their retrospective memory or their sleep deficits or something like that, you're gonna get different results and it might not necessarily be the mp D may And I think this is definitely important to keep in mind for anyone out there who is you know, considering trying it is that it's gonna vary. So somebody saying, hey, this is the thing to do, they don't have your same body chemistry, so they can't only only you can

say for certain yeah, yeah, absolutely. So on top of the memory effects, there's also known to be some cognitive effects as well. It seems to impair even people who are abstinate users, who aren't using it anymore. It can impair your executive processing, your logical reasoning, problem solving, and the emotional intelligence in your brain. However, basic cognitive skills like reaction time, or your attention levels or your vigilance, those are not affected. So this is what they know

in terms of that. Sleep has also been slightly studied. As I mentioned earlier, there's some deficits in sleep architecture and sleep apnea, but there isn't a ton of research and there needs to be more explored. There can also lead to psycho motor impairments in children of women who take it while they're pregnant, so there are known to be effects on children of of you know, m d M A used RS. And then there's one small thing.

You know, there's a little bit of research done. But Silgan mentioned this in his journal report about the complex vision has He said his vision got better and there's there's studies about that and that, Uh, there's evidence for that as well. But also, you know, like I said earlier, there's also evidence that it attacks the retina cells too, So there needs to be more research done in both

those areas. All right, So in terms of overdose and just the key dangers, uh, do you want to drive home again that that environment plays into a lot of it. According to psychiatrist Ingrid Cacy, she's a lead investigator UH in m d M, a assisted therapy for treatment resistant post traumatic stress disorder at the University of British Columbia. She says that the m duma related deaths to hear about are are all about environment. Typical dosage is taken

in a normal setting are perfectly safe. It's when you're taken in a hot environment, dance all night, you don't hydrate, you don't sleep. That's when things get potentially dangerous. You don't get into that hyperthermia area um which you know, if which is totally aduct of what you do while you're on the substance substance, But as with anything, of course,

even water. As we already mentioned, you can consume a dangerous amount of M D M A. Uh specifics are are sketchy based on the material I was looking at, because again it's going to vary depending on who you are and which your body is saying. But the average ecstasy pill is uh what ten two hundred and fifty milligrams. That those are the yeah, the M D M A bombs I think, or maybe like two or three times yeah, yeah.

And and just for anyone who's a little shaky on their metrics, there's a there are a thousand milligrams in a gram generally speaking, And again this is just a ballpark. Don't take this as any kind of a measure that you should apply to any kind of dosages or anything. But if you were to take one or one point five grams, you would definitely be in overdose territory. It's like taking ten tablets at once, yeah, or or so

or there's a situation where it's a danger consumption. So if you're at a place where there's like unlimited ecstasy and you're drinking all this water and then you keep prinking ecstasy trying to keep this feeling going, that's how you could creep up on this, uh, this overdose territory rather easily. And if you are to overdose, the typical symptoms of m d M A overdose include high bloodplot pressure, faintness,

panic attacks, loss of consciousness, and seizures. So we talked about Shulgin and him designing this stuff, and then you know it eventually seeping into popular consciousness and being used really heavily in the commercial street market, but in the United States, at least where we're based out of it's popularity in the mid eighties led to it being placed on the most restrictive category of the Federally Controlled Substances Act. So it's real illegal here, uh, And this removed it

from clinical experimentation as well as human research. Shilgun was kind of bummed out about this, as you would imagine. He thought that it's going to make it so that studies that like, like what he was doing, would have to be conducted overseas from now on, and in a ways kind of right, a lot of the research we read was remember overseas, I on US. The five key nations involved in maps are are are outside the United States. Yeah, so you see this uh, you see this attitude shift

in the mid eighties. Yeah, it becomes it becomes an illegal substance. Um. And there are a number of factors here, the political, the cultural, the war on drugs generally just sort of the post the post sixties um almost like cultural revulsion against all things related to psychedelics, and it becomes just a part of the subculture and the counterculture

movement um. And even today, as we'll discussing in the next episode, we've seen a you know, huge uptick recently in the availability of of various substances of particularly psychedelics for study under clinical settings, in clinical settings for a host of of possibilities for a host of potential youth. But still the cultural trauma of the nineties sixties still permeates even the even the field, even even though the clinical opinion of these substances has shifted again more towards

the positive. Yeah, I mean, like, think about the cultural effect of that nine O one, nine O two and o episode just sitting in the back of somebody's head. It's still back there, and and they go, wait a minute, I can experiment with this stuff to maybe solved care cancer. I don't know, remember what happened to Brendan. Yeah, like there's a there's an excellent ideas CBC Ideas of radio show episode that came out recently. They did a three

part series called high Culture. The deals with just overall the the re emergence of psychedelics into clinical trials and and and and clinical explorations. And they were talking again to a psychiatrist, Ingrid Pascy, and she was talking about all the different security measures they had to legally take to keep ecstasy in the lab and involved like bullet proof poof yess and regular investigations. I remember reading about this. Yeah, they had to have like special reinforced doors and all

this stuff and and uh and it's incredibly expensive. We'll talk about that next episode as well. That's the cost of medical grade government m D is enormous. Alright, So there you have it again. Pick up with us in the next episode and we will get into these therapeutic possibilities for m D. M A, what what is the res what did the research say in the past, what's the research saying now, and how can this undeniably powerful substance potentially be utilized to HEALSS. So, just to remind you,

one more time. If you want to get in touch with us and see what we're talking about on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, or what video we're shooting this week, or what's going on in the podcast right now or coming up in the future, don't forget to check us out on social media. We are everywhere. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumblr, and we are on Periscope on Fridays at noon Eastern Standard time, all of those platforms, you can find us at the

handle Blow the Mind. And if you want to get in touch with us directly, you want to send us some email, you want to talk about your own experiences with M D m A, your opinions on M D m A, your thoughts on television shows that had patriot ecstasy. We'd love to hear from you. And hey, if it's something you don't want us to put back out there into the end of the ether, just uh, yeah, we're fine.

You want to always be careful with something that you sent us privately, And I know I would also love to hear from people just maybe there's something about the chemistry here that you know either I'm sure we pronounced something's wrong, but I'm but I'm also sure that there's more insights into the chemistry that we maybe didn't glean from the research, so let us know. In the place to do that is blow the mind at how stuff work. Stuff com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

Does it how stuff? What's dot com? I think many three foot first