Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a little bit of vault. Uh. You know what,
Speaker 1: since we just recently did this big exploration of psychedelics
Speaker 1: with a special focus on especially the fungal world of
Speaker 1: psychedelics and psilocybin, but we didn't really get into M
Speaker 1: d M A, we thought we should re air the
Speaker 1: episodes that you and Christian did back in about M
Speaker 1: d M A, right, And I do want to stress
Speaker 1: that these episodes, yeah, they are from um, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of research has the research has continued in
Speaker 1: subsequent years, and now we're at a point where we're
Speaker 1: really looking at the at M d M A potentially
Speaker 1: being rescheduled in the you know, in the in the
Speaker 1: near future. So just keep that in mind as you
Speaker 1: revisit these episodes. You know that the history is still valid,
Speaker 1: but the researcher has advanced and hopefully we'll be able
Speaker 1: to do a future new episode on M d M
Speaker 1: A and what the current research is telling us about
Speaker 1: this particular substance. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. From how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Sager. Today
Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about a drug. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about m d m A, also known
Speaker 1: as ecstasy, but specifically we're gonna be getting into kind
Speaker 1: of in this episode. What the you know, breakdown of
Speaker 1: it is, how it works in chemistry, how it works
Speaker 1: in biology, what its effects are on human body. Then
Speaker 1: we're gonna do a second episode that's going to be
Speaker 1: mainly about experiments that have been conducted for what thirty
Speaker 1: years now maybe longer, on how you can use m
Speaker 1: d m A to cure all kinds of things or
Speaker 1: at least alleviate things from cancer to uh using it
Speaker 1: in psychotherapy, and using it to help people with PTS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can think of it as a one to
Speaker 1: approach to looking at a particular drug, and if you
Speaker 1: guide some gals like this, we can take the same
Speaker 1: approach with other substances in the future. Yeah, definitely. It
Speaker 1: seems like once we did the research for this, it
Speaker 1: seems like this is rife. This avenue is right for
Speaker 1: for more research and episodes along these lines, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd love to do another kind of episode that's based
Speaker 1: on the pharmacology of designer drug or or a commercial
Speaker 1: kind of street drug. Yes, science based, open minded exploration
Speaker 1: of what the substance is, what its properties are, and
Speaker 1: then how can those properties conceivably be used to our
Speaker 1: advantage in a non recreational way. Now, before we get started,
Speaker 1: I want to remind you all where you can find
Speaker 1: us and all the other things that we do a
Speaker 1: lot of people that we encounter actually think that the
Speaker 1: podcast is the only thing that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is, But we actually have blog posts and articles
Speaker 1: that we write every week that are available on stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh. Robert and I
Speaker 1: and Joe are also all working for How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: still and we write articles for the new How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works Now site, and robertson doing videos for them as well. Right,
Speaker 1: what was the last one that was? It was about
Speaker 1: the god helmet, right, which we've talked about doing on
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah, that's most recent want to come out,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's generally something kind of weird in science.
Speaker 1: E and I generally put together one a week, So
Speaker 1: if you wanna, you know, find out all this other
Speaker 1: stuff about us. So you just want to engage with
Speaker 1: us directly. We're on social media all over the place.
Speaker 1: You can interact with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler.
Speaker 1: And also every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time, we
Speaker 1: do a periscope where you can talk to us for
Speaker 1: like twenty or thirty minutes. We just hang out in
Speaker 1: front of an iPad and chat with our audience. Hey,
Speaker 1: and if you want to support the show, here's something
Speaker 1: you can do. Give us a little love on iTunes
Speaker 1: if you happen to listen to us through iTunes. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of reviews on there. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are pretty old. Help us out, help the algorithm,
Speaker 1: give us a little positive review there, Give us a
Speaker 1: little love. We'd great really appreciate it. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: get into M d M. First of all, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of preconceived notion about this drug, and in particular,
Speaker 1: uh we we were talking about this before the show,
Speaker 1: that there's preconceived notions on both sides, right which there's
Speaker 1: the anti drug side, the sort of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this has to be 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, mis 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 view of what it is, is, where
Speaker 1: it came from, and what it can potentially do in
Speaker 1: a beneficial means. So our goal in these episodes is
Speaker 1: going to be to kind of drill down between those
Speaker 1: lines and debunk some of this stuff or explain some
Speaker 1: of these stuff, some of this stuff a little bit
Speaker 1: more thoroughly cleanly. And I think a good place for
Speaker 1: us to start is UM with the journal entries of
Speaker 1: a guy named Alexander Shulgin, who will talk more about later.
Speaker 1: But he is considered the godfather of ecstasy, the godfather
Speaker 1: of M d M A uh. And these are his
Speaker 1: journal entries published in his book Peak Hall about his
Speaker 1: first time after he synthesized M D m A taking it.
Speaker 1: This is, I believe in the seventies. So um, We've
Speaker 1: got 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 opened 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 scoorsing brilliantly
Speaker 1: and with a particularly acute analytical power. So that's that's
Speaker 1: his first Like, hey, 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 bid 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 Peak Hall was written in the nineties, a good
Speaker 1: twenty years after he took so I'm sure he took
Speaker 1: his journal entries and kind of spiced him up a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, out of a little poetry, all right.
Speaker 1: So the next entry is from when he tried in
Speaker 1: d m A at the hundred and twenty milligram level,
Speaker 1: and you'll see a bit of a difference here. Quote.
Speaker 1: I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but
Speaker 1: pure euphoria. I have never felt so great or believed
Speaker 1: this to be possible. The cleanliness, clarity, and marvelous feeling
Speaker 1: of solid inner strength continued throughout the rest of the
Speaker 1: day and evening and through the next day. I am
Speaker 1: overcome by the profundity of the experience and how much
Speaker 1: more powerful it was than previous experiences. For no apparent
Speaker 1: reason other than a continually improving state of being. All
Speaker 1: the next day I felt like a citizen of the
Speaker 1: universe rather than a citizen of the planet, completely disconnecting
Speaker 1: time and flowing easily from one activity to the next.
Speaker 1: And again these are from Alexander Shulgan's book Peak Hall,
Speaker 1: which is uh subtitled a chemical love Story. We're we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk more about Shulgan later because he on his
Speaker 1: own is just totally fascinating. But there's another quote that
Speaker 1: that you put in here that's from that book, which
Speaker 1: is M D m A. It was beginning to be
Speaker 1: a parent could be all things to all people. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting because, uh, it hasn't now or
Speaker 1: until until recently with what you know what we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about towards the end of these two episodes
Speaker 1: about the I guess medical applications, medical and therapeutic applications,
Speaker 1: but it is, it is all things, you know what.
Speaker 1: I'll take it back, it's all things to all people
Speaker 1: in that like, everybody kind of brings their own thing
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, and that's part of the problem as
Speaker 1: well discussed. That's one of the reasons that that legitimate
Speaker 1: exploration of M D m A fell out of favor
Speaker 1: because it became this counterculture thing. It became this recreational farm,
Speaker 1: pharmacological vehicle. And I actually have one quick quote that
Speaker 1: I want to read just to to drive home kind
Speaker 1: of the the other end of the pool. And this
Speaker 1: is from a UK disco DJ, DJ Harvey Born DJ
Speaker 1: born Harvey Bassett. He says, quote, you can't understand the
Speaker 1: Blues until you've had your heartbroken, and you can't understand
Speaker 1: my music until you've had group sex on ecstasy. So
Speaker 1: that that's the kind of quote where it instantly makes
Speaker 1: you think, Okay, maybe I'm a less into this idea
Speaker 1: of m d m A. Is this this pure window
Speaker 1: into ourself? Um, it helps perpetuate a sort of mythology
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, and we and we should talk a
Speaker 1: little about about the mythology because I'm thinking we largely
Speaker 1: have three types of individuals out there. They're the individuals
Speaker 1: who have some level of experience with m d m A,
Speaker 1: with ecstasy, molly Adam, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: And then and then their individuals who maybe have never
Speaker 1: heard of this before. But I think for the most part,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have that group who have encountered it time
Speaker 1: and time again in movies and on TV shows. So
Speaker 1: many TV shows, it's become a standard trope it's like
Speaker 1: giving birth to a baby in an elevator. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really did. I think probably the nineties was one that
Speaker 1: took off the most, um Robert. Robert posted to the
Speaker 1: again another reason why you should follow us on social media.
Speaker 1: We occasionally throw out questions the audience for these episodes.
Speaker 1: Robert asked our audience yesterday, uh for examples of these
Speaker 1: from TV? And my wife, of all people, it was
Speaker 1: one of the people who posted this example from Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills nine O two and oh, okay, yeah the when?
Speaker 1: Uh was his name Brandon? Was he the main character
Speaker 1: on I O two and No? I can't remember the Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's the same by the Bell Show. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get this. Uh yeah, no, no two and no.
Speaker 1: He dated this girl for a little while. He was
Speaker 1: like kind of a bad girl, wore a leather jacket
Speaker 1: and had bleached hair, and like, of course, like she
Speaker 1: wanted to do M D M A. And so there's
Speaker 1: a whole episode about about his experience with that and
Speaker 1: and that, you know, you know, frankly, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of these TV examples perpetuate one of one side
Speaker 1: or the other of these stereotypes that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about Yeah, it's either like the crazy rave person. Instantly
Speaker 1: think of the the episode of Space, classic British show,
Speaker 1: we had the ray Or character. I think he was
Speaker 1: like a bike courier. It's his name is Tires. Re
Speaker 1: watched this 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 head.
Speaker 1: And the 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 clapping. 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 courier 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 days.
Speaker 1: Is Um is one of more of a shamanistic ecstasy
Speaker 1: experience where the characters are are learning something about themselves.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, there's an episode of six ft Under
Speaker 1: that dealt with this, especially where I think, I remember
Speaker 1: this is David who takes it right, 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 experiences
Speaker 1: this openness with the world, which which I think Tie
Speaker 1: is 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 that like, it's like Sex in the
Speaker 1: City prequel, right, she's in high school. I think, how
Speaker 1: to make it in America, Orphan black Skins. It's always
Speaker 1: stunning in Philadelphia, peep show. Um, you're a big fan.
Speaker 1: I still haven't seen people you'd recommen did 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 is I like that one East Founding down um
Speaker 1: looking and uh yeah, just so many more. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's funny. A lot of those examples are kind of
Speaker 1: more recent actually, and and I gravitate to that nine
Speaker 1: O two on O example because that's what I remember
Speaker 1: in the nineties, the like kind of like after school
Speaker 1: special plot that's like, alright, somebody's gonna get you to
Speaker 1: try to take this and they're gonna tell you that
Speaker 1: it's gonna feel so good, but watch what really happens.
Speaker 1: You know, Like before we came into the studio, is
Speaker 1: 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. You know,
Speaker 1: you take ecstasy and literally two through your brain matter apparently,
Speaker 1: so which, as far as I can tell from the research,
Speaker 1: is not true, right, It's interesting though that in just
Speaker 1: looking at the television portrayals we see this, uh, this
Speaker 1: change from the the anti drug messaging. It's just this
Speaker 1: is something evil and awful, stay away from it, to
Speaker 1: where it is portrayed as more of a like a
Speaker 1: rite of passage, as this really more of a shamanistic experience.
Speaker 1: Even if the character is engaging in the shamanistic experience,
Speaker 1: are not prepared for the experience. Yeah, I guess, like
Speaker 1: what I would like to see a move more towards
Speaker 1: and from reading the research on this, definitely, like the
Speaker 1: scholars who are studying this seemed to be in this
Speaker 1: area is understanding the chemical and the chemistry and how
Speaker 1: it interacts with human biology, as if like the brain
Speaker 1: is like a machine run on chemicals, which it is,
Speaker 1: you know, and how those are, how those kind of
Speaker 1: work together. Right. That seems like a much more mature
Speaker 1: approach to this to me than than one side or
Speaker 1: the other. And and uh and hopefully we can kind
Speaker 1: of you know, bring that here. But also obviously we're
Speaker 1: gonna dip our toes into into the pop culture examples
Speaker 1: 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 substance itself,
Speaker 1: m d m A stands for methylene dioxy meth amphetamine,
Speaker 1: and it's a synthetic psychoactive drug. It's chemically similar to
Speaker 1: the stimulant meth amphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. It produces
Speaker 1: feelings of increased energy, euphoria, emotional warmth, distortions in time, perception,
Speaker 1: tactile experiences. Interestingly enough, you don't see these um these
Speaker 1: experiences described generally as as states of ecstasy. Like, it's
Speaker 1: really kind of a misnomer to even call it that.
Speaker 1: It's more euphoric, it's more openness. It's more like the
Speaker 1: self becomes permeable and uh, you're allowed to interact with
Speaker 1: the world a little more. That's another myth that I
Speaker 1: think is perpetuated by t t V 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 nine 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. You know, it was just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But 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 psychatoman eddic UH substance. So some people actually
Speaker 1: tend to classify it as a enactogen or an empathogen,
Speaker 1: all due to its power to induce emotional communion again,
Speaker 1: this sense of oneness, emotional openness in the form of
Speaker 1: empathy and sympathy. Yeah, so it's pretty popular, and we
Speaker 1: know this because not just for from it showing up
Speaker 1: on TV and movies, but actually populations surveys show that
Speaker 1: it's the third most widely used illegal drug in the
Speaker 1: world 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, well, I mean the the
Speaker 1: various effects that we've discussed, I mean, without getting into
Speaker 1: any of the legal side of it, or the or
Speaker 1: the ramifications like who wouldn't want to feel that way?
Speaker 1: If someone said, hey, let me just ask you one
Speaker 1: quick question, would you like to feel like this? And
Speaker 1: you would say yes, I'd like to hear some more
Speaker 1: information about what you're proposed. Yeah, exactly, Like it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody 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 when was first
Speaker 1: experimenting with it, and uh, and that was kind of
Speaker 1: the conclusion that you know, he came to is that
Speaker 1: you know, well, people would say, you know, people even
Speaker 1: before there was a usage of it for psychoanalysts and
Speaker 1: therapy applications, they would say, well do you want to
Speaker 1: feel good? You know, and and and lots of people
Speaker 1: out there, don't want to feel sad, don't want to
Speaker 1: be angry, don't want to be lonely. Sure, I want
Speaker 1: to feel good. But as we'll get to this isn't
Speaker 1: a particularly addictive drug either. So it's not like cocaine
Speaker 1: in the sense where it's like you're gonna feel good
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna have to feed in that monkey, right,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, it's like this is more of a
Speaker 1: situation where you're gonna feel really good and then you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna want to take it again and uh a
Speaker 1: month or two, Yeah, yeah, exactly, maybe never depending you know.
Speaker 1: It's um, yeah, well we'll get into those properties. In fact,
Speaker 1: to give you a sort of a broad look at
Speaker 1: how many people have potentially done it, European Monitoring the
Speaker 1: the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction surveyed
Speaker 1: all of Europe for how much they had used m
Speaker 1: d m A, how much the population used m d
Speaker 1: A m D M A, and they found that people
Speaker 1: between the ages of sixteen and sixty five, eight point
Speaker 1: six percent of them acknowledged that they had used it,
Speaker 1: but like you said, the majority only used it a
Speaker 1: few times. Regular uses very rare it's very rare that
Speaker 1: somebody is taking ecstasy all the time. The vast majority
Speaker 1: of individuals seem to have taken it ten times or less. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that was the average. All right, So let's get into
Speaker 1: the origin story. This M d M A is a
Speaker 1: synthetic substance. It does not occur in nature. So you
Speaker 1: can't go pick M d m A in a field
Speaker 1: of flowers, right. A shaman watering in the woods did
Speaker 1: not discover M d m A m The monk of
Speaker 1: picking mushrooms in then the hills didn't discover m d
Speaker 1: m A. M B m A was created in a laboratory,
Speaker 1: in a very interesting laboratory situation. Actually, yeah, so the
Speaker 1: origins of M dumay 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 published in two thousand six in the
Speaker 1: German journal uh Fharma Z and the the English title
Speaker 1: is the Origin of M d M. A Ecstasy Separating
Speaker 1: the facts from the myth uh and uh some of
Speaker 1: the myths. Just to get this out out there, there's
Speaker 1: a there are a couple of different myths relating to
Speaker 1: different actual chemists, one of whom was a Nobel Prize winner.
Speaker 1: Uh So, a lot of people like to gravitate towards that.
Speaker 1: They want there to be like a like a more
Speaker 1: fantastic origins. Yeah, Like like they want to know the
Speaker 1: guy responsible as opposed to uh, pour Anton here who's
Speaker 1: just completely lost to history. Um, the soldier myth is
Speaker 1: also very uh attractive. There's this misconception that that it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it's some sort of an army uh project,
Speaker 1: either a U. S. Army project or or or a
Speaker 1: German military project trying to create some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: soldier enhancement drug. And while it's true that pretty much
Speaker 1: that the military has always been interested in ways to
Speaker 1: of course improve soldier performance, and certainly in the age
Speaker 1: of aviation, there's always been an interest in trying to
Speaker 1: keep your soldiers awake, developed developed stimulants, etcetera. But there's
Speaker 1: basically this myth originates from just confusing the origin, saying
Speaker 1: all right, nineteen twelve Germany and then thinking about the
Speaker 1: US army experiments in the nineteen fifties and getting it
Speaker 1: all kind of mixed up, because ultimately, ecstasy is probably
Speaker 1: not the drug of choice when it comes to sending
Speaker 1: soldiers out into the field. It's it's probably not what
Speaker 1: you want to be giving people in the field when
Speaker 1: their job is to kill people. Yeah, you don't want
Speaker 1: them theories found openness with the world. Yeah. Well, And
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth pointing out that as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell from the research. The only application
Speaker 1: for military use that it is now being used is
Speaker 1: for soldiers coming back with PTSD. That's right, and that
Speaker 1: there are soldiers who are being recommended for clinical trials
Speaker 1: of using m d m A to treat TSD. But
Speaker 1: we'll get into that in the next episode. So if
Speaker 1: you look back at the original German patents, and that's
Speaker 1: certainly what they did in this two thousand and six
Speaker 1: U Pharmacy Journal paper. You look back at these original patents,
Speaker 1: the first one mentions no specific purpose or medical indication
Speaker 1: such as the use of as an appetite suppressant for
Speaker 1: soldiers as is sometimes cited. It was just a quote
Speaker 1: for sie dural patent for compounds which are important key
Speaker 1: precursors for therapeutics. And in the second patent, m d
Speaker 1: m A is mentioned only as a byproduct and chemical
Speaker 1: intermediate in one in in the in one of the
Speaker 1: pathways that started from saffrol, that's a sassafras derived precursor
Speaker 1: to m d m A, also a precursor to an
Speaker 1: insecticide and a fragrance. So essentially, you know, these chemists
Speaker 1: are just they're exploring and they're they're creating this road
Speaker 1: map of chemical interactions and along the way, you know,
Speaker 1: they're in the car Anton there and he says, hey,
Speaker 1: that's M D M A right there. I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about it, but there it is, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's noted in a ledger, and then everyone keeps going.
Speaker 1: Um careers at these chemical companies in the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century sound fascinating to me, both both Mark and then
Speaker 1: reading later. Dow Chemical is another place where psychedelics were
Speaker 1: developed under the auspices of commercial of pharmaceuticals, and especially
Speaker 1: when you're talking German chemists, because some of the more
Speaker 1: profound advancements in chemistry have come out of German chemistry
Speaker 1: labs in in the early part of the the twice but
Speaker 1: who knows, like they were for the most part, like
Speaker 1: you said, they're trying to design pesticides or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it just shows up as a curiosity. In fact,
Speaker 1: um Mark's patent number two seven does not patent M
Speaker 1: D M A as a substance, so there's seemed little
Speaker 1: or no interest in it, so it was effectively shelved.
Speaker 1: It was not tested pharmacal pharmacologically, and as such nobody
Speaker 1: knew what it did. Its side effects were. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until nineteen seven, and that's when Mark's Dr Max Oberlin,
Speaker 1: and we don't know much about him either. He was
Speaker 1: born in eight and we don't know when he died.
Speaker 1: According to the pharmacy paper that were referenced earlier, but
Speaker 1: he resumed study of M d M A and observed
Speaker 1: its quote pure sympathetic effects and noted that it should
Speaker 1: be explored, though again it was shelved due to the
Speaker 1: high costs of saffral methyl mein. So we don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of details. But Overland probably didn't conduct experiments
Speaker 1: with humans, but we just don't know the details of
Speaker 1: what his research methods were. But somehow he knew that
Speaker 1: there was something empathic about it. And this is where
Speaker 1: I threw this out on Facebook privately. But I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of 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 M 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 AMC,
Speaker 1: we got a pitch for you. Yeah, 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 and Alexander Alexander Shulgan,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about already. H but I'll expand upon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, until AMC fills in the hole,
Speaker 1: it's got to be a Yeah, it just seems that
Speaker 1: m d m A just lingered and obscure four decades.
Speaker 1: What if the reason why we don't know when Max
Speaker 1: Oberlin died is because he's still alive and the m
Speaker 1: d m A has been keeping him alive. He's over
Speaker 1: a hundred years old, fueled by ecstasy. No, that's totally
Speaker 1: 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. Sulgan, 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 Shulgan 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 in biochemistry from
Speaker 1: the University of California. In he goes and works for
Speaker 1: the Dow Chemical Company. So it sounds somewhat similar to
Speaker 1: the Mark situation, right. Uh. He is eventually working they're
Speaker 1: producing pesticides, and he invents this stuff called zektrin, which
Speaker 1: was advertised as the world's first biodegradable pesticide, and it
Speaker 1: went over really well, and basically Dow 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 the the
Speaker 1: full counterard culture collapse has 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 to 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 was 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. That's his 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 a good lesson there for everyone, even if
Speaker 1: you're just dealing with something like like alcohol I legally
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. Schilgn'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 psychonag.
Speaker 1: You're very much them, I think. And Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: documentary about Shilgun 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 children 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 beforehands, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be still in 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 one that we definitely have far more biographical information
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot. Yeah uh so, okay,
Speaker 1: children created over two hundred unique drugs to stimulate the
Speaker 1: mind doing this, he tested everything, speeding it up, slowing
Speaker 1: it down, tapping into empathy. The d A actually gave
Speaker 1: his garden laboratory a license to produce Schedule one substances
Speaker 1: so he could be an expert in their cases. Right,
Speaker 1: he was like their go to guy for stuff they
Speaker 1: would find out in the field and he would he
Speaker 1: would consult with them. In fact, I don't have the
Speaker 1: notes here in front of me. But he was like
Speaker 1: best friends with the guy who is the head of
Speaker 1: his local d A chapter. They worked very closely together.
Speaker 1: So we have a really curious individual here, one who
Speaker 1: is he seems to exist right at the crossroads between
Speaker 1: the counterculture of drug exploration and the hard nosed you know,
Speaker 1: precursor to what would ultimately become the War on drugs. Right, Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean he my understanding his position was basically like,
Speaker 1: I'm just creating this stuff and I'm testing it for
Speaker 1: educational and scientific purposes. What people do with it commercially
Speaker 1: is up to them, and it's not his responsibility if
Speaker 1: something goes wrong. Um. So that brings us to m
Speaker 1: d m A because he was criticized highly for not
Speaker 1: only 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 Shilgun 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, and this makes me
Speaker 1: wonder to what extent there is there there is a
Speaker 1: history something between, you know, between it's it's supposed to
Speaker 1: disappearance and what somebody was making it in the background
Speaker 1: and using it. Yeah. Uh, so he resynthesizes it and
Speaker 1: tests it on himself in this usual manner that I
Speaker 1: described in September of nineteen seventy six, and that's where
Speaker 1: we got those journal notes that we we we read
Speaker 1: you earlier from Peak Hall and along with a guy
Speaker 1: named David Nichols, he publishes the first paper on the
Speaker 1: pharmacological action of M d M A and human beings.
Speaker 1: And this is why people sometimes refer to him either
Speaker 1: as the father of m d M A or the
Speaker 1: godfather of M D m. A. Um. Peacall is his
Speaker 1: his his most widely known book, and it stands for
Speaker 1: Fennel ethel a means I have known and loved And
Speaker 1: it's sort of part memoir, part cookbook on how to
Speaker 1: make these drugs and includes instructions on how to synthesize
Speaker 1: all the things in there there. I believe there's like
Speaker 1: a hundred and seventy nine different substances in it. And
Speaker 1: then he followed this up with a book T Call,
Speaker 1: which is tripped to means I've known and loved, similar
Speaker 1: kind of thing, just looking at a different based group. Um.
Speaker 1: But it got to the point where you know, these
Speaker 1: books were published in there widely known. I first heard
Speaker 1: about Shulgun I don't know, maybe nineties six or something
Speaker 1: like that, so I think, like you know, pecoll was
Speaker 1: published in the early nineties, so it had been out
Speaker 1: for a little while by them, but I first heard
Speaker 1: about it like hanging out with some guys at M
Speaker 1: I T who like, had founded on the Internet, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about how they were all like engineers or
Speaker 1: chemistry a years and trying to figure out how they
Speaker 1: were going to cook this stuff up because they were
Speaker 1: fascinated by this guy. Um, it's like the chemical necronomicon. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally um. And so you can understand why, like any time,
Speaker 1: if he gave a word of praise, even the slightest
Speaker 1: praise to a drug in these books or any of
Speaker 1: his other writings, it was almost guaranteed that it would
Speaker 1: gain popularity. So this also came with media scrutiny and
Speaker 1: outrage and that this guy had created this horrible thing
Speaker 1: and was destroying the world. But like I said, he
Speaker 1: believed his research should be openly available. This guy was
Speaker 1: like like I said, like peakal totally available online. He
Speaker 1: wasn't in it for the money because of the educational reasons,
Speaker 1: for the purposes of people being able to learn from it.
Speaker 1: And when you interviews with this guy, especially video interviews
Speaker 1: that I've seen online, first of all, he seems like
Speaker 1: this such a tender, genuine guy. But also beard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got a very He looks like what you would expect.
Speaker 1: He kind of wears like Hawaiian short sleeve shirts and
Speaker 1: and has a huge white beard. But he's also just
Speaker 1: so smart and so fascinated with just the world of
Speaker 1: chemistry and and and putting all the parts together in
Speaker 1: his head. You can see the gears going when he's
Speaker 1: talking about it. So he it's easy to want to
Speaker 1: compare him to people like Timothy Leary or Lily But
Speaker 1: but his focus, uh was was was almost exclusively on
Speaker 1: the chemistry on that chemical map, not what can I
Speaker 1: do with it to speak to beings from another dimension
Speaker 1: or anything of that. Yeah, I didn't get that impression,
Speaker 1: although you know, he was certainly continuing to create new
Speaker 1: stuff and tested on himself, I think probably up until
Speaker 1: he died in two thousand and fourteen. I think I
Speaker 1: think it was lung cancer that that caused him to
Speaker 1: pass away. But um in the whole d A thing
Speaker 1: flipped and agents rated his home and lab, probably because
Speaker 1: of the publication of Pekle, revoked his license and find
Speaker 1: him twenty five thousand dollars, So that kind of relationship
Speaker 1: sort of went away, although I'm sure probably behind the
Speaker 1: scenes there were still guys coming to him and being like,
Speaker 1: we don't understand this particular substance because he's the foremost
Speaker 1: expert in the field, like the Hannibal Lecter of the
Speaker 1: d A. You know, like they're they're like, we don't
Speaker 1: we don't get these chemical compounds, and they they're not
Speaker 1: supposed to talk to him, but they go out and
Speaker 1: visit him on their right. I mean in that to
Speaker 1: sort of go back to our Detective episode we did
Speaker 1: a few months back. He's in that shamanistic role. He's
Speaker 1: on the edge, he's between the worlds, And who do
Speaker 1: you go to and you want to understand the other world,
Speaker 1: you go to the shaman absolute. In fact, another person
Speaker 1: who I mentioned on this show quite a bit, Warren Ellis,
Speaker 1: has adapted Shulgin into some of his writings. Believe there's
Speaker 1: an Iron Man comic out there in which iron Man
Speaker 1: is having sort of like a crisis of confidence and
Speaker 1: he goes and visits a Shulgin like figure at his
Speaker 1: a state and sit down and talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: the future of chemistry and technology together. Interesting. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's time we take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we when we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to get into um the specifics of what M. D
Speaker 1: M A does to the mind of to the body,
Speaker 1: the pros, the cons, Yeah, debunk the myths. Let's get
Speaker 1: down to the nitty gritty. All right, we're back. So
Speaker 1: what does M. D M A do and how does
Speaker 1: it do it? Well, we're gonna try to not get
Speaker 1: too lost in the details here, because you're ultimately talking
Speaker 1: about chemistry and bio chemy street and you can really
Speaker 1: go down the dep end. It's certainly above my head.
Speaker 1: And that was one thing when I was looking at
Speaker 1: the research, which was kind of Okay, how do we
Speaker 1: translate this for our audience into something that's digestible. And
Speaker 1: my rule of thumb was sort of like, if I'm
Speaker 1: reading this in my eyes started glossing over and I
Speaker 1: can't figure out what it is, it might be best
Speaker 1: to sort of try to paraphrase that in another way,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, I mean just to read a bit
Speaker 1: from that German paper that I referenced earlier, like a
Speaker 1: very sort of clinical description of what m d M
Speaker 1: A does is as follows. Quote. M d M AS
Speaker 1: effects mainly result from an increased synaptic availability of serotonin
Speaker 1: five ht based on serotonin reuptake inhibition and serotonin release
Speaker 1: from pre synaptic storage. Is The stimulant and emotional effects
Speaker 1: are mainly produced by the acute release of five h D,
Speaker 1: while the hallucinogenic effects of m d M A 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 neurotransmitters. So normally
Speaker 1: neurons communicate with each other and they fire impulses through
Speaker 1: the brain via the neurotransmitters. You can think of this
Speaker 1: 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 wanted what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: So m D M A release increases the levels of
Speaker 1: the monoamine neurotransmit There's dopamine UH, nero repineprin, and serotonin
Speaker 1: in the synaps. It dumps them into into the synaps
Speaker 1: in quantities quality in quantities much larger than those seen
Speaker 1: with cocaine. But it releases much more serotonin and much
Speaker 1: less dopamine UH than amphetamines. So this results in a
Speaker 1: decrease in aggressiveness and increase in body temperature and a
Speaker 1: relatively low addiction potential, right, which we mentioned earlier. Right,
Speaker 1: most people who have used m D M A at
Speaker 1: the most ten as many times, because how many times
Speaker 1: can you just robbed the bank? Right? Well? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: as we'll get into, there's after effects that that decrease
Speaker 1: the positive effects and increase the negative effects of taking
Speaker 1: m DMAGE. And I feel like a lot of it's
Speaker 1: very you know, it's very zen that idea that experiences
Speaker 1: in life for this pendulum, And and you're gonna have
Speaker 1: extremes on both side. And the further you swing the
Speaker 1: pendulum over in one direction, the further it has the
Speaker 1: potential to swing back in the other So, yeah, my
Speaker 1: friend who I mentioned earlier, who took this stuff in
Speaker 1: the seventies. His example was that, like you know, shaman's
Speaker 1: when they take hallucinogens, they're clearly they weren't making m
Speaker 1: d M A and labs and taking this stuff, but
Speaker 1: things similar to it. It's not like they were taking
Speaker 1: it every day, right there. They take it maybe once
Speaker 1: a year, and there's an elaborate ritual and they give
Speaker 1: themselves the time to come down off of it, and
Speaker 1: they give it reverence. Right uh and and I just
Speaker 1: exactly right, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, it's swinging. Uh sorry,
Speaker 1: what is it? The past fire thing? And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about the why dance club culture plays into this. Yeah, 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 bomb, 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 tablets 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 developed something called hypone autrema, which is
Speaker 1: where the sodium electrolytes in your blood get diluted, and
Speaker 1: that's not good either. So studies have found actually that
Speaker 1: there's an overrepresentation of women in these cases, and they
Speaker 1: think that it's probably because they have a lower mean
Speaker 1: body weight, but who knows, um and a lot a
Speaker 1: lot of these studies. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: 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 sleep deprivation as well as
Speaker 1: the come down effects of easy 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 a dance clubs, the stimulatory
Speaker 1: effects were much stronger, especially 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 and would make sense
Speaker 1: along these lines to It increases your heart rate, it
Speaker 1: heightens your blood pressure, you have faster breathing. It also
Speaker 1: produces jaw clenching and tooth grinding, which we learned that
Speaker 1: there's terms for these. I didn't know this. Apparently, jaw
Speaker 1: clenching is trismas and tooth grinding is bruxi is um,
Speaker 1: which stuff to blow your mind word of the weight.
Speaker 1: It's very very British sounding. Yeah, but but this is
Speaker 1: why you you see the whole pacifiers because not you know,
Speaker 1: you're going out to a rape. 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 the lights and do dads on it. Then
Speaker 1: you just fit into the scene. Right, So that's the
Speaker 1: sort of you know, physiological after effects are immediate effects
Speaker 1: rather uh. But you know, like we said, it's increasing
Speaker 1: levels of chemicals, so it increases your cortisol levels. In fact,
Speaker 1: eleven of twelve studies have reported a significant increase of
Speaker 1: cortisol and cortisol just to you know, give you a
Speaker 1: quick one on it. It's important for the homeostatic control
Speaker 1: of our bodies for just our feeling of general well being. Right,
Speaker 1: so if you have low cortisol levels, you're probably not
Speaker 1: feeling 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 neurotransmitter systems. So like you know that
Speaker 1: this is where the mood effects come from. That we
Speaker 1: all know about their complex and they're variable though they're
Speaker 1: not always euphoric. In fact, they can also intensify negative
Speaker 1: emotional states, and in some instances they increase anxiety, over stimulation, panic,
Speaker 1: or the loss of personal control. Yeah. I mean, we'll
Speaker 1: get into some of its therapeutic uses in the next episode,
Speaker 1: but that's where you certainly see some some negative manifestations occurring. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: And the other thing to pay attention to is that
Speaker 1: both 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 rab culture. You see
Speaker 1: it in shamanistic use of more ancient substances, and you
Speaker 1: see it in the medical usage of these these these
Speaker 1: substances because they're powerful, potent uh, drugs that interact with
Speaker 1: your brain, that interact with yourself. Um. Of course you
Speaker 1: want to prime yourself profitly. Yeah, if your brain is
Speaker 1: a car engine, like instead of putting oil into it.
Speaker 1: This is like putting I don't know jet fuel into it, right,
Speaker 1: you know, so who knows what these effects are gonna be.
Speaker 1: It's gonna it's gonna be across the board though. Uh.
Speaker 1: It Also, this is really fascinating and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about this more in depth as well in the
Speaker 1: next episode. But it causes apoptosis, which is programmed cell death.
Speaker 1: It especially is good at killing cells in our livers
Speaker 1: and our retinants, which is fascinating as well. Uh. Basically
Speaker 1: it can lead to fatal acute liver failure in some
Speaker 1: limited cases. Yeah. So it's it's easy to imagine like
Speaker 1: a ray melting in a club because it's it's not
Speaker 1: quite se renounced and it's not like all your cells
Speaker 1: are going to degrade all at once. Yeah. But but
Speaker 1: the so you know, we'll get into this later. There's
Speaker 1: potential medical benefits there. So you could potentially use this
Speaker 1: for cancer therapy if you're able to direct it. Uh,
Speaker 1: this program sell death at cancer cells. Okay. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are other acute fatalities that are known of with m
Speaker 1: d m A, and they're from all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Cardiac arrest, brain seizure, destruction of skeletal muscular tissue, and
Speaker 1: even the failure of blood clotting. But my understanding from
Speaker 1: the literature is that these are rare cases that are
Speaker 1: what you have to consider here is you're taking a
Speaker 1: unique chemical and you're and in some cases, like we
Speaker 1: talked about before, you don't know how pure this chemical is,
Speaker 1: and you're inserting it into a unique biological machine that
Speaker 1: has all kinds of responses to chemicals. Right, So who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe there's an allergy that that happens that leads to something,
Speaker 1: or maybe you have a weak heart right in the
Speaker 1: heart rate response uh that increases for most people ends
Speaker 1: up giving you cardiac arrest. So it's it's depending on
Speaker 1: each individual and our sort of fingerprint of biochemistry. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: so one takes this substance and regardless of the circumstance,
Speaker 1: the effects where off. And sometimes it's described as more
Speaker 1: of a just a complete crash right where it's just
Speaker 1: well right. Other times it's more gradual. Certainly, the quote
Speaker 1: that we read from Shulgin earlier described in a very
Speaker 1: easy glide back into a normal life. But sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just a sharp drop off again that pendulum has to
Speaker 1: swing back. So for up to two weeks after the
Speaker 1: use of m d M. A number of side effects
Speaker 1: are are often reported. Uh. Physical side effects can include lockjaw,
Speaker 1: loss of appetite, and insomnia, and on the psychological inside,
Speaker 1: effects can include anxiety, paranoia, your ability, restlessness, difficulty focusing,
Speaker 1: a loss of interest in normally fulfilling activities. Uh, you
Speaker 1: might end up having to watch a lot of Miyazaki
Speaker 1: movies on the couch. You know. It's it's the pendulum
Speaker 1: is gonna swing back the other way. The 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 the
Speaker 1: serotonin levels it was supposed to have to be able
Speaker 1: to fulfill your everyday needs. Yeah. So during this time
Speaker 1: period especially, you're not going to be able to take
Speaker 1: it again and experience all of its empathic qualities. If
Speaker 1: you were to take it again the next weekend, you're
Speaker 1: probably just going to benefit from the stimulant properties, right
Speaker 1: And uh so this is where we get into the
Speaker 1: long term effect type thing. So there's a chronic tolerance
Speaker 1: that children actually first noticed in Peak Hall in his
Speaker 1: entry for m d M A uh, and he's very precise. Basically,
Speaker 1: he gives the exact dosages in the times of day
Speaker 1: of consumption, and how that there's these different effects basically
Speaker 1: with them, and how the tolerance builds up in the
Speaker 1: human body so that there's fewer gains but more problems
Speaker 1: over time, And there's several studies that backed this up. Basically,
Speaker 1: this leads to most users quitting on their own um most,
Speaker 1: like we've said repeatedly already in this episode, most users
Speaker 1: report that they've only had a lifetime use of ten
Speaker 1: occasions and this is probably why, because after a while
Speaker 1: it just doesn't do for you what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1: In fact, I believe was it children or somebody else
Speaker 1: who referred to it as the loss of magic. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where the term or originated, but it's used
Speaker 1: on aerrowood dot org, which is always a great source
Speaker 1: for information about about believes that has the entire pea
Speaker 1: call antique. So yeah, so yeah, it's there's a loss
Speaker 1: of magic. Why are you gonna keep doing it if
Speaker 1: there's less magic and you still have to deal with
Speaker 1: the rammifications of the use. So this is your sort
Speaker 1: of basic long term effect is the chronic tolerance building
Speaker 1: up right, But there's a lot of long term I
Speaker 1: guess what we would call long term harm effects. UH.
Speaker 1: First of all, you know, we talked about the purity.
Speaker 1: I want to make sure like that we get back
Speaker 1: to this. The purity level of m d m A
Speaker 1: is much higher than most street level drugs. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it was only really in the mid nineties that they
Speaker 1: started to be purity control issues. I guess I don't
Speaker 1: know that you call im purity control issues when it's
Speaker 1: street level rather than like in a scientific lab. But
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily as much of an issue in term
Speaker 1: of the long term harm cases. But the serotonin thing
Speaker 1: can be a significant issue. Is it leads to something
Speaker 1: called serotonin or gic neurotoxicity. And they've tested this in animals,
Speaker 1: and what it sounds like to me is that this
Speaker 1: it depletes your serotonin levels so much that it leads
Speaker 1: to dysfunction in the serotonin parts of your brain. It
Speaker 1: leads to a pronounced reduction in markers for serotonin across
Speaker 1: higher brain regions. And every study of heavy users of
Speaker 1: m d m A has found that they have a
Speaker 1: significant reduction in their higher brain regions of this stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, the serotonin making neuroimaging shows us as well too,
Speaker 1: so when they actually scan these people's brains, they can
Speaker 1: see this, um, there's okay, So that's the serotonin long
Speaker 1: term problem. There's also deficits in retrospective memory, which is
Speaker 1: your memory of things that happened in the past, but
Speaker 1: also of prospective memory, which is your memory for the future,
Speaker 1: so you remembering to remember something that wrote. Uh. They've
Speaker 1: also found lots of varied results on this research because,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, there's all these other factors at work, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I say, basically, you're messing with the cocktail of the brain,
Speaker 1: the cocktail of yourself, and that's going to vary from
Speaker 1: personal person who's gonna depend on usage history, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like we said earlier with with the people who
Speaker 1: are really into the dance scene, they may stay up
Speaker 1: later at night and therefore they have different circadian rhythms.
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to analyze their retrospective memory or
Speaker 1: their sleep deficits or something like that, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: different results and it might not necessarily be the mp
Speaker 1: D may And I think this is definitely important to
Speaker 1: keep in mind for anyone out there who is you know,
Speaker 1: considering 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 body 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. However, basic cognitive skills
Speaker 1: 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 used RS. And then there's one small thing.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a little bit of research done. But
Speaker 1: Silgan mentioned this in his journal report about the complex
Speaker 1: vision has He said his vision got better and there's
Speaker 1: there's studies about that and that, Uh, there's evidence for
Speaker 1: that as well. But also, you know, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: there's also evidence that it attacks the retina cells too,
Speaker 1: So there needs to be more research done in both
Speaker 1: those areas. All right, So in terms of overdose and
Speaker 1: just the key dangers, uh, do you want to drive
Speaker 1: home again that that environment plays into a lot of it.
Speaker 1: According to psychiatrist Ingrid Cacy, she's a lead investigator UH
Speaker 1: in m d M, a assisted therapy for treatment resistant
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress disorder at the University of British Columbia.
Speaker 1: She says that the m duma related deaths to hear
Speaker 1: about are are all about environment. Typical dosage is taken
Speaker 1: in a normal setting are perfectly safe. It's when you're
Speaker 1: taken in a hot environment, dance all night, you don't hydrate,
Speaker 1: you don't sleep. That's when things get potentially dangerous. You
Speaker 1: don't get into that hyperthermia area um which you know,
Speaker 1: if which is totally aduct of what you do while
Speaker 1: you're on the substance substance, But as with anything, of course,
Speaker 1: even water. As we already mentioned, you can consume a
Speaker 1: dangerous amount of M D M A. Uh specifics are
Speaker 1: are sketchy based on the material I was looking at,
Speaker 1: because again it's going to vary depending on who you
Speaker 1: are and which your body is saying. But the average
Speaker 1: ecstasy pill is uh what ten two hundred and fifty milligrams.
Speaker 1: That those are the yeah, the M D M 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 any kind of a measure that
Speaker 1: 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 there's a situation where it's a danger consumption. So
Speaker 1: if you're at a place where there's like unlimited ecstasy
Speaker 1: and you're drinking all this water and then you keep
Speaker 1: prinking ecstasy trying to keep this feeling going, that's how
Speaker 1: you could creep up on this, uh, this overdose territory
Speaker 1: rather easily. And if you are to overdose, the typical
Speaker 1: symptoms of 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
Speaker 1: ways kind of right, a lot of the research we
Speaker 1: read was remember overseas, I on US. 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 clinical settings for a
Speaker 1: host of of possibilities for a host of potential youth.
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, think about the cultural
Speaker 1: effect of that nine O one, nine O two and
Speaker 1: 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 solved 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 a psychiatrist, Ingrid Pascy, and she was talking about
Speaker 1: all the different security measures they had to legally take
Speaker 1: to keep ecstasy in the lab and involved like bullet
Speaker 1: proof poof yess and regular investigations. I remember reading about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to have like special reinforced 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. Alright, So
Speaker 1: there you have it again. Pick up with us in
Speaker 1: the next episode and we will get into these therapeutic
Speaker 1: possibilities for m D. M A, what what is the
Speaker 1: res what did the research say in the past, what's
Speaker 1: the research saying now, and how can this undeniably powerful
Speaker 1: substance potentially be utilized to HEALSS. So, just to remind you,
Speaker 1: one more time. If you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us and see what we're talking about on stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com, or what video we're
Speaker 1: shooting this week, or what's going on in the podcast
Speaker 1: right now or coming up in the future, don't forget
Speaker 1: to check us out on social media. We are everywhere.
Speaker 1: We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumblr, and
Speaker 1: we are on Periscope on Fridays at noon Eastern Standard time,
Speaker 1: all of those platforms, you can find us at the
Speaker 1: handle Blow the Mind. And if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly, you want to send us
Speaker 1: some email, you want to talk about your own experiences
Speaker 1: with M D m A, your opinions on M D
Speaker 1: m A, your thoughts on television shows that had patriot ecstasy.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. And hey, if it's
Speaker 1: something you don't want us to put back out there
Speaker 1: into the end of the ether, just uh, yeah, we're fine.
Speaker 1: You want to always be careful with something that you
Speaker 1: sent us privately, And I know I would also love
Speaker 1: to hear from people just maybe there's something about the
Speaker 1: chemistry here that you know either I'm sure we pronounced
Speaker 1: something's wrong, but I'm but I'm also sure that there's
Speaker 1: more insights into the chemistry that we maybe didn't glean
Speaker 1: from the research, so let us know. In the place
Speaker 1: to do that is blow the mind at how stuff work.
Speaker 1: Stuff com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff? What's dot com? I think many
Speaker 1: three foot first