Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Sager.
Speaker 1: Today we are going to be talking about a drug.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about m d m A, also
Speaker 1: known as ecstasy, but specifically we're gonna be getting into
Speaker 1: kind of in this episode. What the you know, breakdown
Speaker 1: of it is, how it works in chemistry, how it
Speaker 1: works in biology, what its effects are on human body.
Speaker 1: And then we're gonna do a second episode that's going
Speaker 1: to be mainly about experiments that have been conducted for
Speaker 1: what thirty years now maybe longer on how you can
Speaker 1: use m d m A to cure all kinds of
Speaker 1: things or at least alleviate things from cancer to uh
Speaker 1: using it in psychotherapy, and using it to help people
Speaker 1: with PTSD. Yes, so you can think of it as
Speaker 1: a one to approach to looking at a particular er
Speaker 1: drug and if you guide some gals like this, we
Speaker 1: can take the same approach with other substances in the future. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: It seems like once we did the research for this,
Speaker 1: it seems like this is rife. This avenue is right
Speaker 1: for for more research and in episodes along these lines.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd love to do another kind of episode
Speaker 1: that's based on the pharmacology of designer drug or or
Speaker 1: a commercial kind of street drug. Yeah, science based, open
Speaker 1: minded exploration of what the substance is, what its properties are,
Speaker 1: and then how can those properties conceivably be used to
Speaker 1: our advantage in a non recreational way. Now, before we
Speaker 1: get started, I want to remind you all where you
Speaker 1: can find us and all the other things that we do.
Speaker 1: A lot of people that we encounter actually think that
Speaker 1: the podcast is the only thing that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is, But we actually have blog posts and
Speaker 1: articles that we write every week that are available on
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh. Robert and
Speaker 1: I and Joe are also all working for How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works still and we write articles for the new How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works Now site, and robertson doing videos for them
Speaker 1: as well. Right, what was the last one that was?
Speaker 1: It was about the god helmet, right, which we've talked
Speaker 1: about doing on the show. Yeah, that's most recently want
Speaker 1: to come out. But yeah, it's generally something kind of
Speaker 1: weird in science. E and I generally put together one
Speaker 1: a week, So if you wanna, you know, find out
Speaker 1: all this other stuff about us. So you just want
Speaker 1: to engage with us directly, We're on social media all
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Speaker 1: in front of an iPad and chat with our audience. Hey,
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Speaker 1: little love. Would great really appreciate it. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: get into m d MC. First of all, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of preconceived notions about this drug, and in particular, uh,
Speaker 1: we we were talking about this before the show that
Speaker 1: they're preconceived notions on both sides, right, which there's the
Speaker 1: anti drug side, the sort of uh, you know, this
Speaker 1: has to be a legal side, and then there's the
Speaker 1: the the side that's like this is going to expand
Speaker 1: your mind and open up new horizons to you that
Speaker 1: you weren't at all aware of UM and and change
Speaker 1: your life side kind of right, Yeah, Because yeah, on
Speaker 1: one side you have the anti drug one drugs statements
Speaker 1: and then and then yeah, on the recreational side of it,
Speaker 1: you see basically two different types of messaging, right. You
Speaker 1: see individuals who are perhaps over emphasizing the spiritual qualities
Speaker 1: of a particular substance, and this goes around the board
Speaker 1: for a number of different drugs. Yeah. Sure, but then
Speaker 1: you also see myths about its origin, myths about what
Speaker 1: it does, and myths about the potential negative side effects,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, between all of this, there's certainly
Speaker 1: a more objective you of what it is, where it
Speaker 1: came from, and what it can potentially do in a
Speaker 1: beneficial So our goal in these episodes is going to
Speaker 1: be to kind of drill down between those lines and
Speaker 1: debunk some of this stuff or explain some of these stuff,
Speaker 1: some of this stuff a little bit more thoroughly cleanly.
Speaker 1: And I think a good place for us to start
Speaker 1: is UM with the journal entries of a guy named
Speaker 1: Alexander Shulgin, who will talk more about later, but he
Speaker 1: is considered the godfather of ecstasy, the godfather of M
Speaker 1: d M a uh. And these are his journal entries
Speaker 1: published in his book Peak Hall about his first time
Speaker 1: after he synthesized M d m A taking it. This
Speaker 1: is I believe in the seventies. So um, we've got
Speaker 1: two quotes here. This first one I'm going to read.
Speaker 1: This is from his journal entry on taking a hundred milligrams.
Speaker 1: He says, M d m A intrigued me because everyone
Speaker 1: I asked about it who had used it, answered the
Speaker 1: question what's it's like in the same way, and they said,
Speaker 1: I don't know, So what happened? They would say nothing?
Speaker 1: And now I understand those answers. I too think nothing happened,
Speaker 1: but something seemed changed. Before the window open completely, I
Speaker 1: had some somatic effects, a tingling sensation in the fingers
Speaker 1: and temples, a pleasant sensation that wasn't distracting. However, just
Speaker 1: after that, there was a slight naja and a dizziness
Speaker 1: similar to a little bit too much alcohol. All these
Speaker 1: details disappeared as I walked outside. My mood was light
Speaker 1: and happy, but with an underlying conviction that something significant
Speaker 1: was about to happen. There was a change in perspective,
Speaker 1: both in the near visual field and in the distance.
Speaker 1: My usually poor vision was sharpened. That's something that's really
Speaker 1: interesting to me. Uh and that he caught onto that immediately,
Speaker 1: because that's a that's a side effect that isn't that
Speaker 1: isn't well known. I saw details in the distance that
Speaker 1: I could not normally see. After the peak experience had passed,
Speaker 1: my major state was one of deep relaxation. I felt
Speaker 1: that I could talk about deep or personal subjects with
Speaker 1: special clarity, and I experienced some of the feeling one
Speaker 1: has after a second martini, that one is discoursing brilliantly
Speaker 1: and with a particularly acute analytical power. So that's that's
Speaker 1: his first the key he synthesized it, and as we'll
Speaker 1: get into later, he basically always started with with small doses.
Speaker 1: He I think he starts sometimes with quite a bit
Speaker 1: smaller than a hundred milligrams, but at the hundred milligram
Speaker 1: this is where he started to really experience this mental clarity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one certainly gets a sense if you've ever heard
Speaker 1: like an album review where an individual was maybe chewing
Speaker 1: a little more than they did off, as if maybe
Speaker 1: the there's less substance to really focus on and he's
Speaker 1: having to really reach to find it. Um you get
Speaker 1: a sense of that at the hundred milligram level. Something
Speaker 1: that's worth keeping in mind about these descriptions too, is
Speaker 1: that Peakal was written in the nineties, a good twenty
Speaker 1: years after he took so I'm sure he took his
Speaker 1: journal entries and kind of spiced him up a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, out of a little poetry, all right. So
Speaker 1: the next entry is from when he tried in d
Speaker 1: m A at the hundred and twenty milligram level, and
Speaker 1: you'll see a bit of a difference here. Quote. I
Speaker 1: feel absolute clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria.
Speaker 1: I have never felt so great or believed this to
Speaker 1: be possible. The cleanliness, clarity, and marvelous feeling of solid
Speaker 1: inner strength continued throughout the rest of the day and
Speaker 1: evening and through the next day. I am overcome by
Speaker 1: the profundity of the experience and how much more powerful
Speaker 1: it was than previous experiences. For no apparent reason other
Speaker 1: than a continually improving state of being. All the next
Speaker 1: day I felt like a citizen of the universe rather
Speaker 1: than a citizen of the planet, completely disconnecting time and
Speaker 1: flowing easily from one activity to the next. And again
Speaker 1: these are from Alexander Shulgan's book Peak Hall, which is
Speaker 1: uh subtitled a chemical love Story. We're we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: more about Shulgan later because he on his own is
Speaker 1: just totally fascinating. But there's another quote that that you
Speaker 1: put in here that's from that book, which is M
Speaker 1: D m A. It was beginning to be a parent
Speaker 1: could be all things to all people. It's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting because, uh, it hasn't now or until until recently
Speaker 1: with what you know what we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: towards the end of these two episodes about the I
Speaker 1: guess medical applications, medical and therapeutic applications, but it is
Speaker 1: it is all things, you know what. I'll take it back,
Speaker 1: it's all things to all people in that like everybody
Speaker 1: kind of brings their own thing to it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's part of the problem as well discussed. That's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that that legitimate exploration of M D
Speaker 1: m A fell out of favor because it became this
Speaker 1: counterculture thing it became this recreational farm, pharmacological vehicle. And
Speaker 1: I actually have one quick quote that I want to
Speaker 1: read just to drive home kind of the the other
Speaker 1: end of the pool, and this is from a UK
Speaker 1: disco DJ, DJ Harvey Born DJ Born Harvey Bassett. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: you can't understand the Blues until you've had your heartbroken,
Speaker 1: and you can't understand my music until you've had group
Speaker 1: sex on ecstasy on. So that that's the kind of
Speaker 1: quote where it instantly makes you think, Okay, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: a less into this idea of m d m A.
Speaker 1: Is this this pure window into ourself? Um? It helps
Speaker 1: perpetuate a sort of mythology about it. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: and we should talk a little about about the mythology
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking we largely have three types of individuals
Speaker 1: out there. They're the individuals who have some level of
Speaker 1: experience with m d m A, with ecstasy, molly adam,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. And then and then
Speaker 1: their individuals who maybe have never heard of this before.
Speaker 1: But I think for the most part, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: that group who have encountered it time and time again
Speaker 1: in movies and on TV shows. So many TV shows.
Speaker 1: It's become a standard trope. It's like giving birth to
Speaker 1: a baby in an elevator. Yeah, it really did. I
Speaker 1: think probably the nineties was one that took off the most,
Speaker 1: um Robert. Robert posted to the again another reason why
Speaker 1: you should follow us on social media. We occasionally throw
Speaker 1: out questions the audience for these episodes. Robert asked our
Speaker 1: audience yesterday for examples of these from TV and my wife,
Speaker 1: of all people, it was one of the people who
Speaker 1: posted this example from Beverly Hills nine O two and oh, okay,
Speaker 1: yeah the when Uh was his name Brandon? Was he
Speaker 1: the main character on I O two and No? I
Speaker 1: can't remember the Uh yeah, so that's the same by
Speaker 1: the Bell Show. Okay, yeah, I get this, Uh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no two and no. He dated this girl for a
Speaker 1: little while. He was like kind of a bad girl,
Speaker 1: wore a leather jacket and had bleached hair and like,
Speaker 1: of course, like she wanted to do M D M A.
Speaker 1: And so there's a whole episode about about his experience
Speaker 1: with that and and that, you know, you know, Frankly,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these TV examples perpetuate one
Speaker 1: of one side or the other of these stereotypes that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about. Yeah, it's either like the crazy
Speaker 1: rave person. Instantly think of the the episode of Space,
Speaker 1: the classic British show, we had the raver character. I
Speaker 1: think he was like a bike career. It's his name's Tires.
Speaker 1: Rewatched the episode last night because it's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite episodes of Space, and when we all day doing
Speaker 1: the research for this, I just had Tires in my
Speaker 1: head and scene with Nick Frost all in like army
Speaker 1: gear at a rave doing ecstasy and kind of like
Speaker 1: put pointing fake guns at the audience and shooting at them.
Speaker 1: And then he like puts a fake gun in his
Speaker 1: mouth and everybody's collapping. It's so ridiculous. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the other side, which is the like this is so amazing.
Speaker 1: It makes you feel so great. And even at the
Speaker 1: very end, Tires the bike career like he leaves and
Speaker 1: the voiceover says, my job is done here or my
Speaker 1: work is done here. So you have that, and then
Speaker 1: you have sort of the comic oops, I took ecstasy
Speaker 1: kind of trope. And then uh, an increasingly dominant trope
Speaker 1: that that I see in a lot of series these
Speaker 1: days is um is one of more of a shamanistic
Speaker 1: ecstasy experience where the characters are are learning something about themselves.
Speaker 1: I think there's an episode of six ft Under that
Speaker 1: that dealt with this, especially where think, I remember this
Speaker 1: is David who takes it right, and maybe more than
Speaker 1: one character because I think the mother, Oh yeah, she
Speaker 1: accidentally takes it too. Yeah, it's been a while and
Speaker 1: she ends up having this profound experience and this, you know,
Speaker 1: experiences this openness with the world, which which I think
Speaker 1: ties in rather nicely with some of the the objective
Speaker 1: material that we're going to look at here. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, there's a we have a small list.
Speaker 1: This is not everything. I'm sure there's far more than this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but here just a few. We've seen ecstasy M
Speaker 1: d M A play in two episodes of Transparent. Excellent show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Carrie Diaries. Like it's like Sex in the City prequel, right,
Speaker 1: she's in high school. I think, how to make it
Speaker 1: in America, Orphan Black Skins, it's always stunning in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: peep show. Um, you're a big fan. I still haven't
Speaker 1: seen people you've recommended it to me? Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's I can't remember precisely what happened, but I know
Speaker 1: I do remember what happened, and I can't mention it here.
Speaker 1: But so there's Peep Show, Workaholics, Californication Party down the
Speaker 1: episode it is, I like that one each founding down
Speaker 1: um looking and uh yeah, just so many more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's funny. A lot of those examples are kind
Speaker 1: of more recent actually, And and I gravitate to that
Speaker 1: nine O two on O example because that's what I
Speaker 1: remember in the nineties, the like kind of like after
Speaker 1: school special plot that's like, alright, somebody's gonna get you
Speaker 1: to try to take this and they're gonna tell you
Speaker 1: that it's gonna feel so good, but watch what really happens,
Speaker 1: you know, Like before we came into the studio, I
Speaker 1: was talking to Joe about this, and Joe says to me, Oh,
Speaker 1: are you guys gonna talk about the myth that it
Speaker 1: puts holes in your brain? And I was like, I've
Speaker 1: never even heard of that, And and sure enough, like
Speaker 1: Joe had heard this whole myth growing up that you know,
Speaker 1: you take ecstasy and it's literally two through your brain matter.
Speaker 1: So which, as far as I can tell from the
Speaker 1: research is not true. Right. It's interesting though that in
Speaker 1: just looking at the the television portrayals we see this, uh,
Speaker 1: this change from the the anti drug messaging. It's just
Speaker 1: this is something evil and awful, stay away from it
Speaker 1: to where it is portrayed as more of a like
Speaker 1: a rite of passage, as this really more of a
Speaker 1: shamanistic experience. Even if the character is engaging in the
Speaker 1: shamanistic experience, are not prepared, uh for the experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess like what I would like to see and
Speaker 1: move more towards and from reading the research on this, definitely,
Speaker 1: like the scholars who are studying this seemed to be
Speaker 1: in this area is understanding the chemical and the chemistry
Speaker 1: and how it interacts with human biology, as if like
Speaker 1: the brain is like a machine run on chemicals, which
Speaker 1: it is, you know, and how those are how those
Speaker 1: kind of work together. Right. That seems like a much
Speaker 1: more mature approach to this to me than than one
Speaker 1: side or the other. And and uh and hopefully we
Speaker 1: can kind of you know, bring that here. But also
Speaker 1: obviously we're gonna dip our toes into into the pop
Speaker 1: culture examples because that's what we're all familiar with. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's let's go ahead and dive in
Speaker 1: when we're talking about m d M A and ecstasy.
Speaker 1: First of all, ecstasy. Ecstasy is of course the street variant, right,
Speaker 1: this is the pill version, and generally speaking there's M
Speaker 1: d m A in there, but there are probably other
Speaker 1: properties in there as well. Yeah, I mean, let's admit it, like,
Speaker 1: who knows who's making this stuff unless you're making it yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's coming from a lab and another continent. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of an unknown quantity. One thing that was
Speaker 1: interesting that I saw in the research though, is that
Speaker 1: m d m A, among many street drugs, is known
Speaker 1: for its purity, uh, and that it wasn't until I believe,
Speaker 1: like the late nineties or no, mid nineties that uh,
Speaker 1: the purity was in question. When they would test it,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, significantly lower than but since the
Speaker 1: mid two thousand's when they've been testing it, it's always been.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to perpetuate like this fear that like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: somebody cut like PCP into your m d M A
Speaker 1: or what who knows whatever? You know, all right, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about it. M D N A the The
Speaker 1: substance itself, m d m A stands for methylene dioxy
Speaker 1: meth amphetamine, and it's a synthetic psychoactive drug. It's chemically
Speaker 1: similar to the stimulant and meth ampthetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline.
Speaker 1: It produces feelings of increased energy, euphoria, emotional warmth, distortions,
Speaker 1: and time perception tactile experiences. Interestingly enough, you don't see
Speaker 1: these um these experiences described generally as as states of ecstasy.
Speaker 1: Like it's really kind of a misnomer to even call
Speaker 1: it that. It's more euphoric, it's more openness. It's more
Speaker 1: like the self becomes permeable and uh, you're allowed to
Speaker 1: interact with the world a little more. That's another myth
Speaker 1: that I think is perpetuated by TV and movies a
Speaker 1: little bit too about it, right, is that like everybody
Speaker 1: just wants to have sex the minute to take M
Speaker 1: d m A because it's ecstasy, right, And that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the case. There was another TV example which I've
Speaker 1: mentioned this show several times on on on our show
Speaker 1: Uh Millennium than the ninety nineties show starring Lance Hendrickson.
Speaker 1: The very first episode of that show, I believe, or
Speaker 1: maybe it was like the third or fourth featured a
Speaker 1: couple who took M D M A and they were
Speaker 1: just so out of it and so in love with
Speaker 1: each other that a serial killer was able to capture
Speaker 1: them and kill them both. It was just ridiculous. But
Speaker 1: so anyways, it's important to remember that this drug, basically,
Speaker 1: it's a central nervous system stimulant right when you get
Speaker 1: down to it, and UH, it is particularly connected to
Speaker 1: the serotonin transporters in our brain. We're gonna drill down
Speaker 1: and look at that further later. Let's let's continue on
Speaker 1: with the basics. Yeah, it's so as I've said, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a unique combination of both stimulant and UH
Speaker 1: and a psychato mimetic substance. So some people actually tend
Speaker 1: to classify it as enactogen or an empathogen, all due
Speaker 1: to its power to induce emotional communion again, the sense
Speaker 1: of oneness, UH, emotional openness in the form of empathy
Speaker 1: and sympathy. Yeah, so it's pretty popular, and we know
Speaker 1: this because not just for from it showing up on
Speaker 1: TV and movies, but actually population surveys show that it's
Speaker 1: the third most widely used illegal drug in the world,
Speaker 1: after cannabis and cocaine, which surprised me. I guess I,
Speaker 1: I guess I was surprised that cocaine was so much
Speaker 1: higher too. But um uh, I mean the the various
Speaker 1: effects that we've discussed, I mean, without getting into any
Speaker 1: of the legal side of it, or the or the
Speaker 1: ramifications like who wouldn't want to feel that way? If
Speaker 1: someone said, hey, let me just ask you one quick question,
Speaker 1: would you like to feel like this? And you would
Speaker 1: say yes, I'd like to hear some more information about
Speaker 1: what you're proposed. Yeah, exactly, Like it's like, uh, somebody
Speaker 1: handing up pamphlets at the trade station. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I agree. I was talking with a friend last night
Speaker 1: actually who experienced using M d m A in the seventies,
Speaker 1: actually around the same time the children was first experimenting
Speaker 1: with it, and uh, and that was kind of the
Speaker 1: conclusion that you know, he came to is that you know, well,
Speaker 1: people would say, you know, people even before there was
Speaker 1: a usage of it for psychoanalysts and therapy applications, they
Speaker 1: would say, well, do you want to feel good? You know,
Speaker 1: and and and lots of people out there. Don't want
Speaker 1: to feel sad, don't want to be angry, don't want
Speaker 1: to be lonely. Sure, I want to feel good. But
Speaker 1: as we'll get to this isn't a particularly addictive drug either.
Speaker 1: So it's not like cocaine in the sense where it's
Speaker 1: like you're gonna feel good and then you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to feed in that monkey, right, you know. Um, it's
Speaker 1: like this is more of a situation where you're gonna
Speaker 1: feel really good and then you're probably gonna want to
Speaker 1: take it again and uh a month or two, Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, maybe never depending you know. It's um, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll get into those properties. And in fact, to give
Speaker 1: you a sort of a you know, a broad look
Speaker 1: at how many people have potential, they done it. European
Speaker 1: Monitoring the the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug
Speaker 1: Addiction surveyed all of Europe for how much they had
Speaker 1: used m d m A, how much the population used
Speaker 1: m d A m d M A, and they found
Speaker 1: that people between the ages of sixteen and sixty five,
Speaker 1: eight point six percent of them acknowledged that they had
Speaker 1: used it, but like you said, the majority only used
Speaker 1: it a few times. Regular uses very rare. It's very
Speaker 1: rare that somebody is taking ecstasy all the time. The
Speaker 1: vast majority of individuals seem to have taken it ten
Speaker 1: times or less. Yea, yeah, exactly, that was the average.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's get into the origin story. This
Speaker 1: M d M A is a synthetic substance. It does
Speaker 1: not occur in nature. So you can't go pick m
Speaker 1: d m A in a field of flowers, right. A
Speaker 1: shaman watering in the woods did not discover m d
Speaker 1: m A m the monk of picking mushrooms, and then
Speaker 1: the hills didn't discover m d m A. M d
Speaker 1: M A was created in a laboratory, in a very
Speaker 1: interesting laboratory situation. Actually, yeah, so the origins of m
Speaker 1: d m A only go back to around nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: and specifically you have to go to Uh to the
Speaker 1: laboratories of the German pharmaceutical company Mark. It's here that
Speaker 1: German chemist and Tom Kolish Uh was actually discovered the substance.
Speaker 1: And Uh, it's we know next to nothing about this individual.
Speaker 1: We know that he died in nineteen sixteen, but that's
Speaker 1: about it. Um. We don't know when he was born,
Speaker 1: not a lot of forthcoming biological biographical information about him. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's this really interesting study that we read for
Speaker 1: for this. That was all the study was about, was
Speaker 1: drilling down, going through all of Mark's archives to try
Speaker 1: to figure out what the exact origin story was. And
Speaker 1: you know, basically they came up with what we're telling you,
Speaker 1: It wasn't a whole lot more on the record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a wonderful paper. Will link to a
Speaker 1: copy of the full paper on the landing page for
Speaker 1: this episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: But it was probably in two thousand six in the
Speaker 1: German journal uh Pharma Z. And the English title is
Speaker 1: the Origin of M D M. A Ecstasy Separating the
Speaker 1: facts from the myth uh and uh some of the myths.
Speaker 1: Just to get this out out there, there's a there
Speaker 1: are a couple of different myths relating to different actual chemists,
Speaker 1: one of whom was a Nobel Prize winner. Uh. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people like to gravitate towards that. They
Speaker 1: want there to be like a like a more fantastic origins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like they want to know the guy responsible as
Speaker 1: opposed to uh, poor Anton here who's just completely lost
Speaker 1: to history. Um. The soldier myth is also very uh attractive.
Speaker 1: There's this misconception that that it was, you know, some
Speaker 1: sort of an army uh project, either a U. S.
Speaker 1: Army project or or or a German military project trying
Speaker 1: to create some sort of uh, you know, soldier enhancement drug.
Speaker 1: And while it's true that pretty much the military has
Speaker 1: always been interested in ways to of course improve uh
Speaker 1: so your performance, and certainly in the age of aviation,
Speaker 1: there's always been an interest in trying to keep your
Speaker 1: soldiers awake, develop developed stimulants, etcetera. But there's basically this
Speaker 1: myth originates from just confusing the origin, saying all right,
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve Germany and then thinking about US army experiments
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and getting it all kind of
Speaker 1: mixed up, because ultimately, ecstasy is probably not the drug
Speaker 1: of choice when it comes to sending soldiers out into
Speaker 1: the field. It's it's probably not what you want to
Speaker 1: be giving uh people in the field when their job
Speaker 1: is to kill people. Yeah, you don't want them theories
Speaker 1: found openness with the world. Yeah. Well, and I think
Speaker 1: it's also worth pointing out that as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell from the research, the only application for military
Speaker 1: use that it is now being used is for soldiers
Speaker 1: coming back with PTSD, and that there are soldiers who
Speaker 1: are being recommended for clinical trials of using m d
Speaker 1: M A to treat PTSD. But we'll get into that
Speaker 1: in the next episode. So if you look back at
Speaker 1: the original German patents, and that's certainly what they did
Speaker 1: in this two thousand six UH Pharmacy Journal paper. You
Speaker 1: look back at these original patents, the first one mentions
Speaker 1: no specific purpose or medical indication such as the use
Speaker 1: of as an appetite suppressant for soldiers as is sometimes cited.
Speaker 1: It was just a quote procedural patent for compounds which
Speaker 1: are important key precursors for therapeutics. And in the second patent,
Speaker 1: m d m A is mentioned only as a byproduct
Speaker 1: and chemical intermediate in one in in the in one
Speaker 1: of the pathways that started from saffrol, that's a sassafras
Speaker 1: derived precursor to m d m A, also a precursor
Speaker 1: to an insecticide and a fragrance. So essentially the you know,
Speaker 1: these chemists are just they're exploring and they're they're creating
Speaker 1: this road map of chemical interactions, and along the way,
Speaker 1: you know they're in the car. Anton is there and
Speaker 1: he says, hey, that's m d M A right there.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about it, but there it is
Speaker 1: in it's kind of it's noted in a ledger, and
Speaker 1: then everyone keeps going. Um careers at these chemical companies
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century sound fascinating to me, both
Speaker 1: both Murk and then reading later. Dow Chemical is another
Speaker 1: place where psychedelics were developed under the auspices of commercial pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 1: and especially when you're talking German chemists, because some of
Speaker 1: the more profound uh advancements in chemistry have come out
Speaker 1: of German chemistry labs in in the early part of
Speaker 1: the twice but who knows, like they were for the
Speaker 1: most part, like you said, they're trying to design pesticides
Speaker 1: or something, and it just shows up as a curiosity.
Speaker 1: In fact, um Mark's patent number two seven does not
Speaker 1: patent M d M A as a substance, so there
Speaker 1: seemed little or no interest in it, so it was
Speaker 1: effectively shelved. It was not tested pharmatical, pharmacologically, and as such,
Speaker 1: nobody knew what it did. What its side effects were.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until nineteen seven, and that's when murk dr
Speaker 1: Max Oberlin, And we don't know much about him either.
Speaker 1: He was born in and we don't know when he
Speaker 1: died according to the pharmacy paper that were referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: but he resumed study of M d M A and
Speaker 1: observed its quote pure sympathetic effects and noted that it
Speaker 1: should be explored, though again it was shelved due to
Speaker 1: the high costs of saffrol methyl meme. So we don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of details. But Overland probably didn't conduct
Speaker 1: experiments with humans, but we just don't know the details
Speaker 1: of what his research methods were. But somehow he knew
Speaker 1: that there was something empathic about it. And this is
Speaker 1: where I threw this out on Facebook privately. But I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of potential here because we have
Speaker 1: the German chemists creating all these crazy uh and and
Speaker 1: highly influential substances. They're accidentally creating M d M A.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you you had a sort of a cabaret era,
Speaker 1: pre war period piece, and and here's this chemist who
Speaker 1: introduces very fictionally um in d M A into the
Speaker 1: cabaret era club scene. Yeah, he's you're right, it's a
Speaker 1: German madmen. Yeah. Like he's working in like a kind
Speaker 1: of stodgy chemical company by day, but then at night
Speaker 1: he's he's slipping people. Yeah. So if anybody out there
Speaker 1: is listening and you're trying to develop a show for
Speaker 1: am we got a pitch for you. This is our pitch.
Speaker 1: Pick it up. Well, we'll talk, we'll talk. Well, the
Speaker 1: problem with Coalition and Oberlin is that they didn't just
Speaker 1: make this stuff in their own backyard and take it themselves,
Speaker 1: which is what the secondary Since this is that we
Speaker 1: know of holding out hope, there must Yeah, there must
Speaker 1: have been something between Oberlin in seven and Alexander Alexander Shulgan,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about already. H But I'll expand upon
Speaker 1: as far as we know, um and until AMC fills
Speaker 1: in the hall, it's got to be. Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: seems that m d m A just lingered in obscurity
Speaker 1: for decades. What if the reason why we don't know
Speaker 1: when Max Oberlin died is because he's still alive and
Speaker 1: the M d m A has been keeping him alive.
Speaker 1: He's over a hundred years old, fueled by ecstasy. No,
Speaker 1: that's totally not possible based on the research that we saw. Alright,
Speaker 1: So Alexander Shulgan, this guy is quoted, like I said
Speaker 1: at the top, as being the godfather of ecstasy. And
Speaker 1: here's why. Shilgan, like I said, basically cooked this stuff
Speaker 1: in his backyard and tested it on himself. And before
Speaker 1: I get to that, I think that we need to
Speaker 1: do a little bit of a setup on who Shilgan was.
Speaker 1: He passed away unfortunately last year, but who he was
Speaker 1: and what his methodology was and why he was the
Speaker 1: guy to do this. So Sulgan was born in California.
Speaker 1: He went to Harvard when he was fifteen years old. Okay,
Speaker 1: so he's one of these wonder congeniuses. He drops out
Speaker 1: so he can join the U. S. Navy. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he claimed that while he was in the Navy, he
Speaker 1: memorized the Encyclopedia on Chemistry. Uh, and went back got
Speaker 1: his formal education, finished, got a doctorate and by chemistry
Speaker 1: from the University of California. In he goes and works
Speaker 1: for the Dow Chemical Company. So it sounds somewhat similar
Speaker 1: to the Mark situation, right. Uh. He is eventually working
Speaker 1: they're producing pesticides, and he invents this stuff called Zektrin,
Speaker 1: which was advertised as the world's first biodegradable pesticide, and
Speaker 1: it went over really well, and basically Doo was like, alright,
Speaker 1: do whatever you want now, like we're so happy with
Speaker 1: your results on that, go go to it. Wonder we
Speaker 1: wonder what you cook up next. Literally kind of a
Speaker 1: Walter White scenario here, uh, And and he Shelgan says, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to devote all of my studies to psychedelic chemistry.
Speaker 1: And he starts publishing in Nature and Journal of Organic
Speaker 1: Chemistry talking about all of these drugs that he's inventing
Speaker 1: in Dow's Labs. And when they find out what he's
Speaker 1: up to, their board of directors is like, no, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be bad publicity for us to keep him on.
Speaker 1: This is the fifties. Um. So that so that the
Speaker 1: full uh counterard culture collapses not occurred yet, but clearly
Speaker 1: there the roots are already present. Yeah, And so he
Speaker 1: eventually leaves the company in nineteen sixty six and he says,
Speaker 1: you know what I said at my own home lab,
Speaker 1: and uh, work out if he's gonna freelance out of
Speaker 1: the house and basically he's a consultant or research labs
Speaker 1: and hospitals. Okay, but here's what he basically did. He
Speaker 1: invented hundreds of psychedelics, testing each new compound on himself.
Speaker 1: And the way that he did it because he would
Speaker 1: take the minimum amount required to have an effect, and
Speaker 1: then he would gradually increase the dosage. So those those
Speaker 1: quotes from his book peak all that we read at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the show. Though that's a typical process, right,
Speaker 1: is that he would go, Okay, so I need to
Speaker 1: take this many milligrams for to feel any effect, and
Speaker 1: then I will gradually increase the dosage. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a there's a good lesson there for everyone, even
Speaker 1: if you're just dealing with something like like alcohol equally
Speaker 1: consumable product or coffee. Don't just go diving in and
Speaker 1: getting the double triple espress though it starts, and work
Speaker 1: your way up and see see what works. Well. Children's
Speaker 1: a fascinating character because I mean, so he tested all
Speaker 1: of these psychedelics out on himself, and he it was
Speaker 1: like very fastidious about how he kept his his notes
Speaker 1: as journals all this, but then to confirm his data
Speaker 1: what he would do is he would share the substances
Speaker 1: with his wife, Ann, and he would find out what
Speaker 1: Ann's experiences were, and he would record those and then
Speaker 1: if they determined that further study was required, they invited
Speaker 1: a quote research group of friends to come over and
Speaker 1: they would do these sessions for like maybe two or
Speaker 1: three days where they would test their reactions to whatever
Speaker 1: he had invented that week, right, and and maybe it
Speaker 1: was M D M A, maybe it was something else.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, there's hundreds. Those must have
Speaker 1: been interesting, um research groups to attend, because I guess
Speaker 1: you probably, I mean, he probably had some idea what
Speaker 1: to expect. But you're just you're you're very much a psychonage.
Speaker 1: You're very much they I think. And Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: documentary about Shulgun I believe is on YouTube and they
Speaker 1: talk about these parties quite a bit, and I believe
Speaker 1: I might I might be wrong here. I wrote about
Speaker 1: Shilgun once before for for How Stuff Works, and will
Speaker 1: link to that as well on the podcast page. But um,
Speaker 1: my understanding was that Shilgn had one rule, which was
Speaker 1: basically that well, first of all, they weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: take any medications. For a couple of days before hands,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be going any kind of complications. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they weren't allowed to have sex with people that they
Speaker 1: weren't already established in a relationship with, So they would
Speaker 1: be there for two to three days and whatever it
Speaker 1: was that they were taking in. And his first name,
Speaker 1: his first name is Alexander, but everybody called him Sasha,
Speaker 1: uh Sasha. Basically their rule was like, no, you can't
Speaker 1: just go off with somebody else. We don't want any
Speaker 1: kind of drama being reintroduced to this thing. But again,
Speaker 1: another great MC show in the making, I think, I
Speaker 1: think so yeah, and one that we definitely have far
Speaker 1: more biographical information to go. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh so Okay. Children created over two hundred unique
Speaker 1: drugs to stimulate the mind doing this, he tested everything,
Speaker 1: speeding it up, slowing it down, tapping into empathy. The
Speaker 1: d A actually gave his garden laboratory a license to
Speaker 1: produce Schedule one substances so he could be an expert
Speaker 1: in their cases. Right, He was like their go to
Speaker 1: guy for stuff they would find out in the field
Speaker 1: and he would he would consult with them. In fact,
Speaker 1: I don't have the notes here in front of me.
Speaker 1: But he was like best friends with the guy who
Speaker 1: is the head of his local d A chapter. They
Speaker 1: worked very closely to go. So we have a really
Speaker 1: curious individual here, one who is he seems to exist
Speaker 1: right at the crossroads between the counterculture of drug exploration
Speaker 1: and the hard nosed you know, precursor to what would
Speaker 1: ultimately become the War on drugs. Right, Yeah, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean he my understanding, his position was basically like, I'm
Speaker 1: just creating this stuff and I'm testing it for educational
Speaker 1: and scientific purposes. What people do with it commercially is
Speaker 1: up to them, and it's not his responsibility if something
Speaker 1: goes wrong. Um. So that brings us to m d
Speaker 1: m A because he was criticized highly for not only
Speaker 1: creating resynthesizing m D m A. He didn't create it,
Speaker 1: It was created at Mark, but publishing how to make
Speaker 1: it and and uh letting letting other people know, you know,
Speaker 1: basically the recipe. Yeah, I mean, he's just to go
Speaker 1: back to the road analogy. He is mapping the chemical Highway,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to go down every road. He's
Speaker 1: not saying drive down here. You don't have to go there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is the map so Shilgan and m d
Speaker 1: M A. He first synthesized it in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: but he didn't try it. So actually, if you look
Speaker 1: at the numbers there, he was still at DOW at
Speaker 1: the time that he first synthesized it, but he didn't
Speaker 1: try it. Then again, I think there was like a
Speaker 1: what what is this for? Right kind of thing? Uh
Speaker 1: And then in the nineteen seventies he heard about it's
Speaker 1: quote special effect from a friend. This makes me wonder
Speaker 1: to what extent there is there there is a history
Speaker 1: something between between it's it's supposed to disappearance and what
Speaker 1: somebody was making it in the background and using it. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: so he resynthesizes it and tests it on himself in
Speaker 1: this usual manner that it described in September of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, and that's where we got those journal notes
Speaker 1: that we we we read you earlier from Peak Hall
Speaker 1: and along with a guy named David Nichols, he publishes
Speaker 1: the first paper on the pharmacological action of M d
Speaker 1: M A and human beings. And this is why people
Speaker 1: sometimes refer to him either as the father of m
Speaker 1: d M A or the godfather of M D m
Speaker 1: a UM. PEA Call is his his his most widely
Speaker 1: known book, and it stands for Fennel ethel A means
Speaker 1: I have known and loved And it's sort of part memoir,
Speaker 1: part cookbook on how to make these drugs and includes
Speaker 1: instructions on how to synthesize all the things in there there.
Speaker 1: I believe there's like a hundred and seventy nine different
Speaker 1: substances in it. And then he followed this up with
Speaker 1: a book T Call, which is tripped to means I've
Speaker 1: known and loved similar kind of thing, just looking at
Speaker 1: a different based group. UM. But it got to the
Speaker 1: point where you know, these books were published and there
Speaker 1: widely known. I first heard about Shilgun I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe nineties six or something like that, so I think,
Speaker 1: like you know, pecoll was published in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: so it had been out for a little while by them,
Speaker 1: but I first heard about it like hanging out with
Speaker 1: some guys at M I T who like, had founded
Speaker 1: on the Internet, and we're talking about how they were
Speaker 1: all like engineers or chemistry for years and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how they were going to cook this stuff
Speaker 1: up because they were fascinated by this guy. Um, it's
Speaker 1: like the chemical necronomicon. Yeah, yeah, totally um. And so
Speaker 1: you can understand why, like any time, if he gave
Speaker 1: a word of praise, even the slightest praise to a
Speaker 1: drug in these books or any of his other writings,
Speaker 1: it was almost guaranteed that it would gain popularity. So
Speaker 1: this also came with media scrutiny and outrage and that
Speaker 1: this guy had created this horrible thing and was destroying
Speaker 1: the world. But like I said, he believed his research
Speaker 1: should be openly available. This guy was like, like I said,
Speaker 1: like peakle totally available online. He wasn't in it for
Speaker 1: the money because of the educational reasons, for the purposes
Speaker 1: of people being able to learn from it. And when
Speaker 1: you interviews with this guy, especially video interviews that I've
Speaker 1: seen online, first of all, he seems like it's such
Speaker 1: a tender, genuine guy. But also beard. Yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: a very He looks like what you would expect. He
Speaker 1: kind of wears like Hawaiian short sleeve shirts and and
Speaker 1: has a huge white beard. But he's also just so
Speaker 1: smart and so fascinated with just the world of chemistry
Speaker 1: and and and putting all the parts together in his head.
Speaker 1: You can see the gears going when he's talking about it.
Speaker 1: So he it's easy to want to compare him to
Speaker 1: people like Timothy Leary or Lily but but his focus,
Speaker 1: uh was was was almost exclusively on the chemistry on
Speaker 1: that chemical map, not what can I do with it
Speaker 1: to speak to beings from another dimension or anything of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't get that impression. And although you know, he
Speaker 1: was certainly continuing to create new stuff and tested on himself.
Speaker 1: I think probably up until he died in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen. I think I think it was lung cancer
Speaker 1: then that caused him to pass away. But um in
Speaker 1: the whole d A thing flipped and agents rated his
Speaker 1: home and lab, probably because the publication of Picole revoked
Speaker 1: his license and find him twenty five thousand dollars, So
Speaker 1: that kind of relationship sort of went away, although I'm
Speaker 1: sure probably behind the scenes there were still guys coming
Speaker 1: to him and being like, we don't understand this particular
Speaker 1: substances because he's the foremost expert in the fields, like
Speaker 1: the Hannibal Lecter of the d A. You know, like
Speaker 1: they're they're like, we don't we don't get these chemical compounds,
Speaker 1: and they they're not supposed to talk to him, but
Speaker 1: they go out and visit him on the right. I
Speaker 1: mean in that to sort of go back to our
Speaker 1: detective episode we did a few months back. He's in
Speaker 1: that shamanistic role. He's on the edge. He's between the worlds.
Speaker 1: And who do you go to when you want to
Speaker 1: understand the other world? You go to the shaman. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: In fact, another person who I mentioned on this show
Speaker 1: quite a bit, war In l Us, has adapted Shilgan
Speaker 1: into some of his writings. Believe there's an Iron Man
Speaker 1: comic out there in which iron Man is having sort
Speaker 1: of like a crisis of confidence and he goes and
Speaker 1: visits a Shilgn like figure at his estate and sit
Speaker 1: down and talk about, you know, the future of chemistry
Speaker 1: and technology together. Interesting. Yeah, all right, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's time we take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we when we come back, we're going to get into
Speaker 1: um the specifics of what M D M A does
Speaker 1: to the mind of to the body, the pros, the cons, Yeah,
Speaker 1: debunk the myths. Let's get down to the nitty gritty.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So what does M. D m
Speaker 1: A do and how does it do it? Well, We're
Speaker 1: gonna try to not get too lost in the details here,
Speaker 1: because you're ultimately talking about chemistry and biochemistry and you
Speaker 1: can really go down the dep end it's certainly above
Speaker 1: my head. And and that was one thing when I
Speaker 1: was looking at the research, which was kind of, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do we translate this for our audience into something
Speaker 1: that's digestible. And my rule of thumb was sort of like,
Speaker 1: if I'm reading this in my eyes started glossing over
Speaker 1: and I can't figure out what it is, it might
Speaker 1: be best to sort of try to paraphrase that in
Speaker 1: another way, right, you know, Yeah, I mean just to
Speaker 1: read a bit from that German paper that I referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: like a very sort of clinical uh. Description of what
Speaker 1: M d m A does is as follows. Quote. D
Speaker 1: m AS effects mainly result from an increased synaptic availability
Speaker 1: of serotonin five HT based on serotonin reuptake inhibition and
Speaker 1: serotonin release from pre synaptic storage. Is The stimulant and
Speaker 1: emotional effects are mainly produced by the acute release of
Speaker 1: five HT, while the hallucinogenic effects of M DUMA are
Speaker 1: mainly evoked by direct interactions with post synaptic five ht
Speaker 1: to A receptors similar to last masculine, etcetera. Right, so
Speaker 1: this is what you talked about earlier. The m d
Speaker 1: m A sort of balances the stimulant effects of methamphetamines
Speaker 1: with the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline. Right, to break it
Speaker 1: down a little more, Okay, you have you're talking about euphoria,
Speaker 1: blood pressure, um, effects on your you know, your appetite,
Speaker 1: your attention. These are all regulated by a group of
Speaker 1: neurotransmitters in just the normal non ecstasy taking body and brain.
Speaker 1: So the biogenic amines and the monoamine neuro transmitters. So
Speaker 1: normally neurons communicate with each other and they fire impulses
Speaker 1: through the brain via the neuro transmitters. You can think
Speaker 1: of this is it's kind of like the bank tellers, right, Oh,
Speaker 1: you need you need to take so much out to
Speaker 1: take care of this. All right, let me do the paperwork.
Speaker 1: Here you go, here's the cash balances this stuff out
Speaker 1: for you, or at least it's supposed to write, right.
Speaker 1: M d M A is more like a Robin Hood
Speaker 1: bank robber going into the bank and saying, actually I
Speaker 1: have some different I want what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: So m D M A release increases the levels of
Speaker 1: the monoamine neurotransmitters dopamine UH, neuro repineprin, and serotonin in
Speaker 1: the sign. It dumps them into into the synaps in
Speaker 1: quantities quality in quantities much larger than those seen with cocaine.
Speaker 1: But it releases much more serotonin and much less dopamine
Speaker 1: UH than amphetamines. So this results in a decrease in
Speaker 1: aggressiveness and increase in body temperature and a relatively low
Speaker 1: addiction potential. Yeah, right, which we mentioned earlier. Right, most
Speaker 1: people who have used m D M A at the
Speaker 1: most ten as many times, because how many times can
Speaker 1: you just robbed the bank? Right? Well? Yeah, And as
Speaker 1: we'll get into, there's after effects that that decrease the
Speaker 1: positive effects and increase the negative effects of taking m DMAGE.
Speaker 1: And I feel like a lot of it's very you know,
Speaker 1: it's very zen that idea that experiences in life for
Speaker 1: this pendulum, And and you're gonna have extremes on both side.
Speaker 1: And the further you swing the pendulum over in one direction,
Speaker 1: the further it has the potential to swing back in
Speaker 1: the other. So yeah, my friend who I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: who took this stuff in the seventies. His example was,
Speaker 1: like you know, Shaman's when they take hallucinogens, they're clearly
Speaker 1: they weren't making M d M A and labs and
Speaker 1: taking this stuff, but but things similar to it. It's
Speaker 1: not like they were taking it every day, right there.
Speaker 1: They take it maybe once a year, and there's an
Speaker 1: elaborate ritual and they give themselves the time to come
Speaker 1: down off of it, and they give it reverence, right
Speaker 1: uh and and exactly right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, it's swinging.
Speaker 1: Uh sorry, what is it? The past fire thing? And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about why dance club culture plays into this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has a purpose huge yeah, okay, So what are
Speaker 1: there it's immediate effects? Well, first of all, a typical
Speaker 1: street dose I guess is around a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five milligrams in a tablet. Yeah, I've also seen it
Speaker 1: as low as a hundred but okay, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: around what was taking it at um and most people
Speaker 1: ingested orally, but others have uh taken something called M
Speaker 1: D M A bombs, which I hadn't heard of before
Speaker 1: reading about this, but apparently you take the equivalent of
Speaker 1: like two to three ablets worth. You wrap it up
Speaker 1: in paper and swallow that, so you get a much
Speaker 1: higher dosage all at once. Uh. And the other way
Speaker 1: to get quicker results is to either snort it or
Speaker 1: to inject it um. This has quicker results, but then
Speaker 1: it also has worst effects during the calm down. So
Speaker 1: what are those effects all? Right? First of all, it
Speaker 1: increases your body temperature. Sometimes it gives you not hypothermia,
Speaker 1: hyper thermia, so your body temperature starts going up a lot.
Speaker 1: That's why, like all the stereotypical examples of ravers taking
Speaker 1: M D M A, you see them drinking walker all
Speaker 1: the time. And it's also important to note that the
Speaker 1: hyperthermia is probably going to be a byproduct of environment.
Speaker 1: Are you, Yeah, if you're taking it in a you know,
Speaker 1: in a living room, that's one thing. But are you
Speaker 1: are you in a hot room dancing all night? Well,
Speaker 1: then that's another situation entirely, and that's what leads to
Speaker 1: a lot of feelings of dehydration with it. Some users
Speaker 1: actually drink way too much water to compensate for this,
Speaker 1: and so they develop some thing called hypone autrema, which
Speaker 1: is where the sodium electrolytes in your blood get diluted,
Speaker 1: and that's not good either. So studies have found actually
Speaker 1: that there's an overrepresentation of women in these cases, and
Speaker 1: they think that it's probably because they have a lower
Speaker 1: mean body weight, but who knows, um and a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of these studies. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting was they sometimes they accounted for this,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they couldn't. They said, well, there's different effects
Speaker 1: on people who are part of the rave culture because well,
Speaker 1: they're staying up late at night, they have different circadian rhythms,
Speaker 1: or maybe they're taking other drugs or who knows, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of variables that are thrown in there
Speaker 1: and alcohol, are they combining it within it with another
Speaker 1: with some sort of illucingen And then ultimately, yeah, are
Speaker 1: you are you jumping around all night in the hot room?
Speaker 1: Are you exactly suffering from sweep deprivation as well as
Speaker 1: the come down effects of extacy use. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a totally different Uh. My understanding from from the research
Speaker 1: is that when it's taken it dance clubs, the stimulatory
Speaker 1: effects were much stronger, especial because of all the environmental
Speaker 1: sites and sounds, but also when you consider the environmental
Speaker 1: effects of it being hot and what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: There was a study that came out in the last
Speaker 1: few years that positive that that loud music actually increases
Speaker 1: the effects. So that makes sense, uh, and and would
Speaker 1: make sense along these lines to It increases your heart rate,
Speaker 1: it heightens your blood pressure, you have faster breathing. It
Speaker 1: also produces jaw clenching and tooth grinding, which we learned
Speaker 1: that there's terms for these. I didn't know this. Apparently,
Speaker 1: jaw clenching is trismas and tooth grinding is bruxi is um,
Speaker 1: which is stuff to blow your mind. Word of the weight.
Speaker 1: It's very very British sounding. But but this is why
Speaker 1: you you see the whole pacifiers because not you know,
Speaker 1: you're going out to a rag. You don't have time
Speaker 1: to get fitted for a mouth guard. What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? You get a pacifier and then you know
Speaker 1: it has lights and do dads on and then you
Speaker 1: just fit into the scene. Right, So that's the sort
Speaker 1: of you know, physiological after effects are immediate effects rather uh.
Speaker 1: But you know, like we said, it's increasing levels of chemicals,
Speaker 1: so it increases your cortisol levels. In fact, eleven of
Speaker 1: twelve studies have reported a significant increase of cortisol and
Speaker 1: cortisol just to you know, give you a quick one
Speaker 1: on it. It's important for the homeostatic control of our bodies,
Speaker 1: for just our feeling of general well being. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you have low cortisol levels, you're probably not feeling
Speaker 1: particularly good about yourself or or physically feeling well. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also, as as we mentioned earlier, reduces the serotonin
Speaker 1: transporter levels across the cerebral cortex. Now, what this does
Speaker 1: is it reverses that normal process of serotonin reuptake. So
Speaker 1: an acute dose can release up to eighty percent of
Speaker 1: the available serotonin that's inside your synaptic cleft. So it's
Speaker 1: just basically saying like, hey, just dump it all out,
Speaker 1: just robbed the bank, take all the all the money
Speaker 1: and run. Yeah. And it also affects dopamine, UH, nour
Speaker 1: adrenaline and other narrow transmitter systems. So like you know
Speaker 1: that this is where the mood effects come from. That
Speaker 1: we all know about their plex and they're variable though
Speaker 1: they're not always euphoric. In fact, they can also intensify
Speaker 1: negative emotional states. And in some instances they increase anxiety,
Speaker 1: over stimulation, panic, or the loss of personal control. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll get into some of its therapeutic uses
Speaker 1: in the next episode, but that's where you certainly see
Speaker 1: some some negative manifestations occurring. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um. And
Speaker 1: the other thing to pay attention to is that both
Speaker 1: positive and negative moods can appear in the same individual, right,
Speaker 1: so one person can also can be both euphoric and
Speaker 1: depressed at the same time on m d M A uh.
Speaker 1: And some users attribute this to the importance of having
Speaker 1: positive expectancy when you take the drug. So this kind
Speaker 1: of idea, right that like you just got to be
Speaker 1: in the right zone, man, Like you gotta you gotta
Speaker 1: go into it expecting happy things. Well, it's the very
Speaker 1: statement you see from from from raver culture. You see
Speaker 1: in shamanistic use of more ancient substances, and you see
Speaker 1: it in the medical usage of these these these substances
Speaker 1: because they're powerful, potent, uh, drugs that interact with your brain,
Speaker 1: that interact with yourself. Um. Of course you want to
Speaker 1: prime yourself profitly. Yeah, if your brains a car engine,
Speaker 1: like instead of putting oil into it, this is like
Speaker 1: putting I don't know jet fuel into it, right, you know,
Speaker 1: so who knows what these effects are gonna be. It's
Speaker 1: gonna it's gonna be across the board though. Uh. It also,
Speaker 1: this is really fascinating and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: this more in depth as well in the next episode.
Speaker 1: But it causes apoptosis, which is programmed cell death. It
Speaker 1: especially is good at killing cells in our livers and
Speaker 1: our retinats, which is fascinating as well. Uh. Basically it
Speaker 1: can lead to fatal acute liver failure in some limited cases. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's easy to imagine like a rave melting
Speaker 1: in a club because it's it's not quite so renounced
Speaker 1: and it's not like all your cells are going to
Speaker 1: degrade all at once. Yeah. But but the so you know,
Speaker 1: we'll get into this later. There's potential medical benefits there.
Speaker 1: So you could potentially use this for cancer therapy if
Speaker 1: you're able to direct it. Uh, this program sell death
Speaker 1: at cancer cells. Okay. Uh. There are other acute fatalities
Speaker 1: that are known of with m d m A, and
Speaker 1: they're from all kinds of things. Cardiac arrest, brain seizure,
Speaker 1: destruction of skeletal muscular tissue and even the failure of
Speaker 1: blood clotting. But my understanding from the literature is that
Speaker 1: these are rare cases that are what you have to
Speaker 1: consider here is you're taking a unique chemical and you're
Speaker 1: and in some cases, like we talked about before, you
Speaker 1: don't know how pure this chemical is, and you're inserting
Speaker 1: it into a unique biological machine that has all kinds
Speaker 1: of responses to chemicals. Right, So who knows, maybe there's
Speaker 1: an allergy that that happens that leads to something, or
Speaker 1: maybe you have a weak heart right and the heart
Speaker 1: rate response uh that increases for most people ends up
Speaker 1: giving you cardiac arrest. So it's it's depending on each
Speaker 1: individual in our sort of fingerprint of biochemistry. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: so one takes this substance and regardless of the circumstance,
Speaker 1: the effects we're off. And sometimes it's described as more
Speaker 1: of a just a complete crash, right, where it's just
Speaker 1: weir right. Other times it's more gradual. Certainly, um the
Speaker 1: quote that we read from Shulgin earlier described in a
Speaker 1: very easy glide back into a normal life. But it
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just a sharp drop off again that pendulum
Speaker 1: has to swing back so for up to two weeks
Speaker 1: after the use of m d M, a number of
Speaker 1: side effects are are often reported. Uh. Physical side effects
Speaker 1: can include lockjaw, loss of appetite, and insomnia. And on
Speaker 1: the psychological inside, effects can include anxiety, paranoia, your ability, restlessness,
Speaker 1: difficulty focusing, a loss of interest in normally fulfilling activities. Uh,
Speaker 1: you might end up having to watch a lot of
Speaker 1: Miyazaki movies on the couch. You know. It's it's the
Speaker 1: pendulum is gonna swing back the other way. Bank has
Speaker 1: been robbed. All these levels have to be built back
Speaker 1: up again. Yeah, your brain now only has like of
Speaker 1: the serotonin levels it was supposed to have to be
Speaker 1: able to fulfill your everyday needs. Yeah, so during this
Speaker 1: time period especially, you're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: take it again and experience all of its empathic qualities.
Speaker 1: If you were to take it again the next weekend,
Speaker 1: you're probably just going to benefit from the stimulant properties,
Speaker 1: right And uh so this is where we get into
Speaker 1: the long term effect type thing. So there's a chronic
Speaker 1: tolerance that children actually first noticed in Peak Hall in
Speaker 1: his entry for m d M A uh, and he's
Speaker 1: very precise. Basically he gives the exact dosages in the
Speaker 1: times of day of consumption and how that there's these
Speaker 1: different effects basically with them, and how the tolerance builds
Speaker 1: up in the human body so that there's fewer gains
Speaker 1: but more problems over time, And there's several studies that
Speaker 1: backed this up. Basically, this leads to most users quitting
Speaker 1: on their own. Um most, like we've said repeatedly already
Speaker 1: in this episode, most users report that they've only had
Speaker 1: a lifetime use of ten occasions, and this is probably why,
Speaker 1: because after a while it just doesn't do for you
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to do. In fact, I believe was
Speaker 1: it children or somebody else who referred to it as
Speaker 1: the loss of magic. I'm not sure where the term
Speaker 1: more originated, but it's used on arrowood dot org, which
Speaker 1: is always a great source for information about about the
Speaker 1: beliefs that has the entire pea call antique. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's there's a loss of magic. Why are
Speaker 1: you gonna keep doing it if there's less magic and
Speaker 1: you still have to deal with the rammifications of the use.
Speaker 1: So this is your sort of basic long term effect,
Speaker 1: is the chronic tolerance building up right, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of long term I guess what we would call
Speaker 1: long term harm effects. Uh. First of all, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about the purity. I want to make sure
Speaker 1: like that we get back to this. The purity level
Speaker 1: of m d m A is much higher than most
Speaker 1: street level drugs. Uh. It was only really in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties that they started to be purity control issues.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know that you call them purity
Speaker 1: control issues when it's street level rather than like in
Speaker 1: a scientific lab. But that's not necessarily as much of
Speaker 1: an issue in term of the long term harm cases.
Speaker 1: But the serotonin thing can be a significant issue. Is
Speaker 1: it leads to something called serotonin or gic neurotoxicity. And
Speaker 1: they've tested this in animals, and what it sounds like
Speaker 1: to me is that this it depletes your serotonin levels
Speaker 1: so much that it leads to dysfunction in the serotonin
Speaker 1: parts of your brain. It leads to a pronounced reduction
Speaker 1: in markers for serotonin across higher brain regions. And every
Speaker 1: study of heavy users of m d m A has
Speaker 1: found that they have a significant reduction in their higher
Speaker 1: brain regions of this stuff, you know, the serotonin making
Speaker 1: neuroimaging shows us as well too, so when they actually
Speaker 1: scan these people's brains, they can see this, um, there's okay,
Speaker 1: So that's the serotonin long term problem. There's also deficits
Speaker 1: in retrospective memory, which is your memory of things that
Speaker 1: happened in the past, but also of prospective memory, which
Speaker 1: is your memory for the future, so you remembering to
Speaker 1: remember something that wrote. Uh. They've also found lots of
Speaker 1: varied results on this research because, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: there's all these other factors at work, right, Yeah, says basically,
Speaker 1: you're messing with the cocktail of the brain, the cocktail
Speaker 1: of yourself, and that's going to vary from person a
Speaker 1: person who's gonna depend on usage history, etcetera. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: like we said earlier with with the people who are
Speaker 1: really into the dance scene, they may stay up later
Speaker 1: at night and therefore they have different circadian rhythms. So
Speaker 1: if you're trying to analyze their retrospective memory or their
Speaker 1: sleep deficits or something like that, you're gonna get different
Speaker 1: results and it might not necessarily be the empty man.
Speaker 1: And I think this is definitely important to keep in
Speaker 1: mind for anyone out there who is you know, considering
Speaker 1: trying it is that it's gonna vary. So somebody saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the thing to do, they don't have your
Speaker 1: same at chemistry, so they can't only only you can
Speaker 1: say for certain yeah, yeah, absolutely. So on top of
Speaker 1: the memory effects, there's also known to be some cognitive
Speaker 1: effects as well. It seems to impair even people who
Speaker 1: are abstinate users, who aren't using it anymore. It can
Speaker 1: impair your executive processing, your logical reasoning, problem solving, and
Speaker 1: the emotional intelligence in your brain. Uh. However, basic cognitive
Speaker 1: skills like reaction time, or your attention levels or your vigilance,
Speaker 1: those are not affected. So this is what they know
Speaker 1: in terms of that. Sleep has also been slightly studied.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, there's some deficits in sleep architecture
Speaker 1: and sleep apnea, but there isn't a ton of research
Speaker 1: and there needs to be more explored. There can also
Speaker 1: lead to psycho motor impairments in children of women who
Speaker 1: take it while they're pregnant, so there are known to
Speaker 1: be effects on children of of you know, m d
Speaker 1: m A users. And then there's one small thing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of research done. Schilgan mentioned this
Speaker 1: in his journal report about the complex vision has He
Speaker 1: said his vision got better and there's there's studies about
Speaker 1: that and that, Uh, there's evidence for that as well.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, like I said earlier, there's also
Speaker 1: evidence that it attacks the retina cells too, So there
Speaker 1: needs to be more research done in both those areas.
Speaker 1: All right, So in terms of overdose and just the
Speaker 1: key dangers, Uh, do you want to drive home again
Speaker 1: that that environment plays into a lot of it. According
Speaker 1: to psychiatrist Ingrid Pacy, she's a lead investigator UH in
Speaker 1: m d M, a assisted therapy for treatment resistant post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress disorder at the University of British Columbia. She
Speaker 1: says that the m duma related deaths to hear about
Speaker 1: are are all about environment. Typical dosage is taken inn
Speaker 1: a normal setting are perfectly safe. It's when you're taken
Speaker 1: in a hot environment, dance all night, you don't hydrate,
Speaker 1: you don't sweep, That's when things get potentially dangerous. You
Speaker 1: didn't get into that hyperthermia area um which you know,
Speaker 1: if which is totally a product of what you do
Speaker 1: while you're on the substance substance, but as with anything
Speaker 1: of course, even water. As we already mentioned, you can
Speaker 1: consume a dangerous amount of M D M A. Uh.
Speaker 1: Specifics are are sketchy based on the material I was
Speaker 1: looking at, because again it's going to vary depending on
Speaker 1: who you are and which your body is saying. But
Speaker 1: the average ecstasy pill is UH ten two D and
Speaker 1: fifty milligrams. That those are the yea the mbum a
Speaker 1: bombs I think, or maybe like two or three times yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and just for anyone who's a little shaky on
Speaker 1: their metrics, there's a there are a thousand milligrams in
Speaker 1: a gram generally speaking, And again this is just a ballpark.
Speaker 1: Don't take this as as any kind of a measure
Speaker 1: that you should apply to any kind of dosages or anything.
Speaker 1: But if you were to take one or one point
Speaker 1: five grams, you would definitely be in overdose territory. It's
Speaker 1: like taking ten tablets at once, yeah, or or so
Speaker 1: or it's a situation where it's danger consumption. So if
Speaker 1: you're at a place where there's like unlimited ecstasy, when
Speaker 1: you're drinking all this water and then you keep taking
Speaker 1: ecstasy trying to keep this feeling going, that's how you
Speaker 1: could creep up on this, uh, this overdose territory rather easily.
Speaker 1: And if you are to overdose, the typical symptoms of
Speaker 1: m d M A overdose include high bloodplot pressure, faintness,
Speaker 1: panic attacks, loss of consciousness, and seizures. So we talked
Speaker 1: about Shulgin and him designing this stuff, and then you
Speaker 1: know it eventually seeping into popular consciousness and being used
Speaker 1: really heavily in the commercial street market, but in the
Speaker 1: United States, at least where we're based out of it's
Speaker 1: popularity in the mid eighties led to it being placed
Speaker 1: on the most restrictive category of the Federally Controlled Substances Act,
Speaker 1: so it's real illegal here, uh, And this removed it
Speaker 1: from clinical experimentation as well as human research. Shilgun was
Speaker 1: kind of bummed out about this, as you would imagine.
Speaker 1: He thought that it's going to make it so that
Speaker 1: studies that like like what he was doing would have
Speaker 1: to be conducted overseas from now on. And in a way,
Speaker 1: he's kind of right. A lot of the research we
Speaker 1: read was remember overseas, I want to the five key
Speaker 1: nations involved in maps are are are outside the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you see this. Uh you see this attitude shift
Speaker 1: in the mid eighties. Yeah, it becomes it becomes an
Speaker 1: illegal substance. Um. And there are a number of factors here,
Speaker 1: the political, the cultural, the war on drugs generally just
Speaker 1: sort of the post the post sixties um almost like
Speaker 1: cultural revulsion against all things related to psychedelics, and it
Speaker 1: becomes just a part of the subculture and the counterculture
Speaker 1: movement um. And even today, as we'll discussing in the
Speaker 1: next episode, we've seen a you know, huge uptick recently
Speaker 1: in the availability of of various substances of particularly psychedelics
Speaker 1: for study under clinical settings, in in clinical settings, for
Speaker 1: a host of of possibilities, for a host of potential uses.
Speaker 1: But still the cultural trauma of the nineties sixties still
Speaker 1: permeates even the even the field, even even though the
Speaker 1: clinical opinion of these substances has shifted again more towards
Speaker 1: the positive. Yeah. I mean, like, I think about the
Speaker 1: cultural effect of that nine O one, nine O two
Speaker 1: and o episode just sitting in the back of somebody's head.
Speaker 1: It's still back there, and and they go, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I can experiment with this stuff to maybe solve care cancer.
Speaker 1: I don't know, remember what happened to Brendan. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: there's a there's an excellent ideas CBC Ideas of radio
Speaker 1: show episode that came out recently. They did a three
Speaker 1: part series called high Culture. The deals with just overall
Speaker 1: the the re emergence of psychedelics into clinical trials and
Speaker 1: and and and clinical explorations. And they were talking again
Speaker 1: to psychiatrist Ingrid Pascy, and she was talking about all
Speaker 1: the different security measures they had to legally take to
Speaker 1: keep ecstasy in the lab and involved like bullet proof
Speaker 1: poof glass and regular investigations. I remember reading about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to have like special enforced doors and all
Speaker 1: this stuff and and uh and it's incredibly expensive. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that next episode as well. That's the cost
Speaker 1: of medical grade government m D is enormous. All right,
Speaker 1: So there you have it again. Pick up with us
Speaker 1: in the next episode and we will get into these
Speaker 1: therapeutic possibilities for m D. M A, what what is
Speaker 1: the res what did the research say in the past,
Speaker 1: what's the research saying now, and how can this undeniably
Speaker 1: powerful substance potentially be utilized to HEALSS. So, just to
Speaker 1: remind you one more time. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us and see what we're talking about
Speaker 1: on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, or what
Speaker 1: video we're shooting this week, or what's going on in
Speaker 1: the podcast right now or coming up in the future.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to check us out on social media. We
Speaker 1: are everywhere. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumblr,
Speaker 1: and we are on Periscope on Fridays at noon Eastern
Speaker 1: Standard time, all of those platforms, you can find us
Speaker 1: at the handle Blow the Mind. And if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly, you want to
Speaker 1: send us an email, you want to talk about your
Speaker 1: own experiences with M D m A, your opinions on
Speaker 1: M D m A, your thoughts on television shows that
Speaker 1: had patriot ecstasy. We'd love to hear from you. And hey,
Speaker 1: if it's something you don't want us to put back
Speaker 1: out there into the end of the ether, just yes, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're fine. You want to always be careful with something
Speaker 1: that you send us privately, and I you know, I
Speaker 1: would also love to hear from people just maybe there's
Speaker 1: something about the chemistry here that you know Either I'm
Speaker 1: sure we pronounced something wrong, but I'm but I'm also
Speaker 1: sure that there's there's more insights into the chemistry that
Speaker 1: we maybe didn't glean from the research, so let us know.
Speaker 1: In the place to do that is blow the mind
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. The memory three three four point support f