It was re-discovered in 1965 by Alexander Shulgin, an exiled Russian chemist, who by this time was creating potential mind altering drugs in his back garden and testing them on himself, his wife and their friends. Of MDMA he said:.
"I found it unlike anything I had taken before. It was not a psychedelic in the visual or interpretive sense, but the lightness and warmth of a psychedelic was present and quite remarkable- .
It has been called an empathogen' (helping one to experience someone else's feelings as their own.) In the late 1970s it began to be used as a therapeutic tool and was kept under wraps as a special drug which should not be exploited in the way LSD was used after Timothy Leary's famous phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."" MDMA was seen as drug which should be kept for therapy or intellectual contemplation, not used for kicks. Timothy Leary himself, keen not to see history repeat itself, said of MDMA:.
"Let's face it, we're talking about an elitist experience. XTC is a drug which is known by word of mouth, by sophisticated people No-one wants sleazy characters [to] hang around college dorms peddling pills they falsely call XTC to lazy thrill seekers."".
Unsurprisingly word of XTC' got out. In the early 1980s it was legal and it's potential for use as a dance drug was soon discovered.
MDMA was taken up rapidly and avidly in the late 1980s. It has a dual effect: like amphetamines it releases large quantities of dopamine into the brain. This gives a buzz that acts primarily as an insomniac and an appetite suppressant. Combined with this however, it also releases serotonin (5-HT), giving rise to the phrase loved-up'. Simon Reynolds relates how when it was given to combat casualties they expressed a desire for the end to war and 75% of them also expressed love for the enemy. On the dance floor this translated into " people being swirled together in a promiscuous chaos."" However "Very little sex happened - as the feeling was one of love and oneness with everybody.
