From the Vault: MDMA, Part 1

Some of you have tried the ecstasy. Others have merely heard about the drug on a TV sitcom, or heard about it in a news report. Either way, MDMA's power resonates through our culture -- and sometimes it's hard to distinguish the truth form the misinformation. But what exactly is this psychoactive agent? Where does it come from and what sort of effect does it have on the human experience? Join Robert and Christian as they explore the origins and properties of MDMA. (Originally published Dec. 15, 2015)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
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

(00:27):
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

(00:49):
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,

(01:17):
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

(01:38):
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,

(02:00):
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

(02:23):
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

(02:43):
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

(03:03):
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.
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.

(03:25):
You can interact with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler.
And also every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time, we
do a periscope where you can talk to us for
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front of an iPad and chat with our audience. Hey,
and if you want to support the show, here's something
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if you happen to listen to us through iTunes. We

(03:46):
have a lot of reviews on there. A lot of
them are pretty old. Help us out, help the algorithm,
give us a little positive review there, Give us a
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

(04:07):
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

(04:28):
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

(04:50):
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

(05:11):
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

(05:32):
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,

(05:54):
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

(06:16):
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,

(06:38):
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

(07:01):
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,

(07:21):
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

(07:44):
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

(08:06):
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

(08:29):
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

(08:52):
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

(09:13):
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

(09:35):
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

(09:58):
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

(10:18):
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,

(10:39):
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.

(10:59):
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,

(11:23):
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

(11:44):
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

(12:06):
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

(12:26):
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

(12:48):
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

(13:11):
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,

(13:32):
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

(13:54):
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

(14:15):
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

(14:36):
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

(14:58):
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

(15:19):
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

(15:40):
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

(16:02):
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

(16:25):
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,

(16:48):
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

(17:09):
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,

(17:34):
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

(17:56):
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

(18:20):
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

(18:41):
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

(19:02):
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

(19:23):
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

(19:44):
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,

(20:05):
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

(20:25):
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,

(20:45):
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

(21:07):
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

(21:28):
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

(21:49):
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

(22:12):
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.

(22:33):
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.

(22:55):
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

(23:16):
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

(23:40):
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

(24:00):
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

(24:22):
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

(24:43):
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

(25:07):
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

(25:28):
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

(25:51):
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

(26:12):
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

(26:35):
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

(26:59):
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

(27:21):
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

(27:44):
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

(28:07):
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

(28:28):
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,

(28:51):
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

(29:14):
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

(29:37):
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

(30:02):
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

(30:22):
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,

(30:43):
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

(31:05):
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

(31:25):
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

(31:46):
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

(32:08):
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

(32:29):
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.

(32:50):
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

(33:11):
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

(33:33):
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,

(33:56):
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

(34:21):
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

(34:44):
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

(35:06):
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,

(35:28):
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

(35:48):
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

(36:12):
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

(36:34):
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

(36:56):
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

(37:19):
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,

(37:42):
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

(38:05):
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,

(38:26):
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

(38:47):
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

(39:10):
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,

(39:33):
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

(39:54):
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

(40:14):
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,

(40:35):
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

(40:57):
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

(41:17):
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

(41:41):
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

(42:04):
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.

(42:24):
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.

(42:46):
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

(43:07):
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,

(43:27):
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

(43:50):
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

(44:10):
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,

(44:30):
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

(44:50):
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

(45:13):
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

(45:36):
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

(45:59):
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

(46:19):
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,

(46:41):
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

(47:02):
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

(47:23):
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.

(47:43):
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

(48:04):
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

(48:25):
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

(48:48):
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

(49:10):
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

(49:31):
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

(49:53):
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

(50:15):
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.

(50:39):
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

(50:59):
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.

(51:20):
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,

(51:41):
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

(52:03):
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

(52:26):
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,

(52:48):
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

(53:08):
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

(53:29):
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

(53:53):
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

(54:14):
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

(54:34):
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.

(54:54):
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

(55:16):
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

(55:37):
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,

(56:00):
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

(56:23):
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.

(56:45):
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

(57:08):
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

(57:30):
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

(57:53):
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

(58:14):
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

(58:37):
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,

(58:59):
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.

(59:22):
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.

(59:45):
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

(01:00:05):
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

(01:00:29):
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

(01:00:51):
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,

(01:01:13):
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

(01:01:35):
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

(01:01:56):
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.

(01:02:18):
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

(01:02:40):
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,

(01:03:03):
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

(01:03:25):
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

(01:03:47):
right now or coming up in the future, don't forget
to check us out on social media. We are everywhere.
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in touch with us directly, you want to send us
some email, you want to talk about your own experiences

(01:04:10):
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

(01:04:32):
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.

(01:04:59):
Does it how stuff? What's dot com? I think many
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