MDMA: Pharmacological Ecstasy

And 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 PTSD. Yes, so you can think of it as a one to approach to looking at a particular er 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 in 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. Yeah, 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 recently want to come out. But yeah, it's generally something kind of weird in science. E and I generally put together one a week, So if you wanna, you know, find out all this other stuff about us. So you just want to engage with us directly, We're on social media all over the place. You can interact with us on Facebook, Twitter,

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Give us a little positive review there, give us a little love. Would great really appreciate it. Okay, so let's

get into m d MC. First of all, there's a lot of preconceived notions about this drug, and in particular, uh, we we were talking about this before the show that they're preconceived notions on both sides, right, which there's the anti drug side, the sort of uh, you know, this has to be a 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, and myths about the potential negative side effects, and uh, you know, between all of this, there's certainly a more objective you of what it is, where it came from, and what it can potentially do in a beneficial 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 open 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 discoursing brilliantly and with a particularly acute analytical power. So that's that's his first the key 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 did 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 Peakal 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 absolute 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. 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 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 on. 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 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 Uh 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, the classic British show, we had the raver character. I think he was like a bike career. It's his name's Tires.

Rewatched the 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 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 collapping. 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 career 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 there's an episode of six ft Under that that dealt with this, especially where think, I remember this is David who takes it right, and 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, you know, experiences this openness with the world, which which I think ties 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. 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've recommended 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 it is, I like that one each 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, I was 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 that you know, you take ecstasy and it's literally two through your brain matter. 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 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, uh for the experience. Yeah, I guess like what I would like to see and 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 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 and meth ampthetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. It produces feelings of increased energy, euphoria, emotional warmth, distortions,

and 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 TV 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 ninety 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. 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 psychato mimetic substance. So some people actually tend to classify it as enactogen or an empathogen, all due to its power to induce emotional communion again, the sense of oneness, UH, 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 population 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, 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 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. And in fact, to give you a sort of a you know, a broad look

at how many people have potential, they 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. Yea, 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, and then the hills didn't discover m d m A. M d M A was created in a laboratory, in a very interesting laboratory situation. Actually, yeah, so the origins of m d m A 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 probably in two thousand six in the German journal uh Pharma Z. And 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, poor 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, 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 uh, you know, soldier enhancement drug.

And while it's true that pretty much the military has always been interested in ways to of course improve uh so your performance, and certainly in the age of aviation, there's always been an interest in trying to keep your

soldiers awake, develop 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 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 uh 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, and that there are soldiers who are being recommended for clinical trials of using m d M A to treat PTSD. 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 six UH 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 procedural 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 the 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 is there and he says, hey, that's m d M A right there. I don't know anything about it, but there it is in 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 Murk and then reading later. Dow Chemical is another place where psychedelics were developed under the auspices of commercial pharmaceuticals, and especially when you're talking German chemists, because some of the more profound uh advancements in chemistry have come out of German chemistry labs in in the early part of the twice but who knows, like they were for the most part, like you said, they're trying to design pesticides or something, 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 seemed little or no interest in it, so it was effectively shelved. It was not tested pharmatical, pharmacologically, and as such, nobody knew what it did. What its side effects were. It wasn't until nineteen seven, and that's when murk dr Max Oberlin, And we don't know much about him either.

He was born in 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 saffrol methyl meme. 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 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 in 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 am we got a pitch for you. 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 seven and Alexander Alexander Shulgan, who we've talked about already. H But I'll expand upon as far as we know, um and until AMC fills

in the hall, it's got to be. Yeah, it just seems that m d m A just lingered in obscurity for 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. Shilgan, 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 Sulgan 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 and by chemistry 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 Doo 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 that the full uh counterard culture collapses 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 or 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 because 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. Though that's a 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 there's a good lesson there for everyone, even if you're just dealing with something like like alcohol equally 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. Children'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 psychonage.

You're very much they I think. And Uh, there's a documentary about Shulgun 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 Shilgn had one rule, which was basically that well, first of all, they weren't allowed to take any medications. For a couple of days before hands,

I wouldn't be going 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 so yeah, and 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 to go. 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 Shilgan 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. This makes me wonder to what extent there is there there is a history something between 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 it 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. PEA Call 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 and there

widely known. I first heard about Shilgun 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 for 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 peakle 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 it's 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. And 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

then that caused him to pass away. But um in the whole d A thing flipped and agents rated his home and lab, probably because the publication of Picole 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 substances because he's the foremost expert in the fields, 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 the 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 when you want to understand the other world? You go to the shaman. Absolutely.

In fact, another person who I mentioned on this show quite a bit, war In l Us, has adapted Shilgan 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 Shilgn like figure at his estate 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 biochemistry and you can really go down the dep end it's certainly above my head. And 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, right, you know, Yeah, I mean just to read a bit from that German paper that I referenced earlier, like a very sort of clinical uh. Description of what

M d m A does is as follows. Quote. 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 HT, while the hallucinogenic effects of M DUMA 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 neuro transmitters. So normally neurons communicate with each other and they fire impulses through the brain via the neuro transmitters. 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 want what we're going to do. So m D M A release increases the levels of the monoamine neurotransmitters dopamine UH, neuro repineprin, and serotonin in the sign. 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. Yeah, 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, 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 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 exactly right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, it's swinging. Uh sorry, what is it? The past fire thing? And we'll talk about why dance club culture plays into this. 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 bombs, which I hadn't heard of before reading about this, but apparently you take the equivalent of

like two to three ablets 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 develop some thing 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 sweep deprivation as well as the come down effects of extacy use. So yeah, it's a totally different Uh. My understanding from from the research is that when it's taken it dance clubs, the stimulatory effects were much stronger, especial 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, uh, and 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 is stuff to blow your mind. Word of the weight. It's very very British sounding. But but this is why you you see the whole pacifiers because not you know, you're going out to a rag. 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 lights and do dads on and 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 narrow transmitter systems. So like you know that this is where the mood effects come from. That we all know about their plex 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 raver culture. You see 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 brains 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 retinats, 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 rave melting in a club because it's it's not quite so 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 and 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 in our sort of fingerprint of biochemistry. Yeah, indeed, so one takes this substance and regardless of the circumstance,

the effects we're off. And sometimes it's described as more of a just a complete crash, right, where it's just weir right. Other times it's more gradual. Certainly, um the quote that we read from Shulgin earlier described in a very easy glide back into a normal life. But it 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. Bank has been robbed. All these levels have to be built back

up again. Yeah, your brain now only has like of 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 more originated, but it's used on arrowood dot org, which is always a great source for information about about the beliefs 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. 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 them 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, says basically, you're messing with the cocktail of the brain, the cocktail of yourself, and that's going to vary from person a 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 empty man. 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 at 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. Uh. 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 users. And then there's one small thing. You know, there's a little bit of research done. Schilgan 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 Pacy, 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 inn 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 sweep, That's when things get potentially dangerous. You didn't get into that hyperthermia area um which you know, if which is totally a product 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 ten two D and fifty milligrams. That those are the yea the mbum 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 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 it's a situation where it's danger consumption. So if you're at a place where there's like unlimited ecstasy, when you're drinking all this water and then you keep taking 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 way, he's kind of right. A lot of the research we read was remember overseas, I want to 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 in clinical settings, for a host of of possibilities, for a host of potential uses. 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, I 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 solve 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 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 glass and regular investigations. I remember reading about this. Yeah, they had to have like special enforced 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. All right, 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 an 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 yes, uh, yeah,

we're fine. You want to always be careful with something that you send us privately, and I you 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 wrong, but I'm but I'm also sure that there's 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 works dot com for more on this

and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. The memory three three four point support f