History of MDMA and MDA

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MDMA

MDMA was synthesized in 1912 and patented in Germany by Merck in 1914 but was not the subject of human research at that time. In the 1950s it was briefly researched by the U.S. Government as part of the CIA's and the Army's chemical warfare investigations. It was forgotten until the middle 1970s when it was rediscovered by the psychedelic therapy community and began to be used as an adjunct to psychotherapy by psychiatrists and therapists who were familiar with the field of psychedelic psychotherapy. MAPS published a book, The Secret Chief, about the leader of this therapy community.

In the early 1980s, the drug began to be used non-medically, particularly in Texas, under the name Ecstasy. Both the non-medical and therapeutic use of MDMA were made illegal in 1985 despite the Drug Enforcement Administration Administrative Law Judge Francis Young's ~publish/mdma.htm"recommendation that physicians be permitted to continue to administer it to their patients. Rick Doblin, Alise Agar and Debby Harlow helped coordinate the pro-MDMA contingent in the DEA lawsuit. For an excellent history of the early use of MDMA, see Pursuit of Ecstasy by Beck and Rosenbaum.

In 1986, with the goal of developing MDMA's therapeutic potential through FDA-approved protocols, a non-profit organization opened a Drug Master File for MDMA with data gathered from the standard preclinical animal toxicity studies required by FDA. Five different applications for permission to conduct research with MDMA were submitted to FDA between 1986 to 1988, to the Neuropharmacologic Drug Products Division directed by Dr. Paul Leber. All five applications were rejected. Three protocols for double-blind controlled trials were from researchers at, respectively, Harvard Medical School, UC San Francisco Medical School, and U. of New Mexico Medical School, and were all rejected. Two applications submitted by individual physicians were for single case studies, one for a terminal cancer patient who had been successfully treated for pain with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy prior to the criminalization of MDMA and the other for a unipolar depression patient for whom all available treatments had been attempted without success. Both of these single-patient INDs were also rejected. The FDA based its rationale for rejecting all protocols and single case studies on the hypothetical risk of functional consequences of potential neurotoxicity from MDMA Proponents of MDMA research claimed that the rejection of all efforts to conduct FDA-approved MDMA research was based not on rational risk/benefit assessments but on an underlying cultural prejudice against medical research with drugs that were criminalized and on one or more FDA officials' personal opposition to human research with psychedelics. Since FDA Review Divisions are sometimes described as operating like fiefdoms under the control of their Directors, proponents felt profoundly stymied. Proponents claimed that concerns about MDMA neurotoxicity, which numerous studies had failed to link with functional or behavioral consequence and which in any case had not been clearly demonstrated to occur at all at therapeutic does levels, were reminiscent of scientific research in the 1960s that claimed to prove that LSD damaged chromosomes. These reports were effective in generating public disapproval of LSD and in hindering research but were later determined to have no clinically significant effect.

In 1992, FDA reviewed a MAPS-supported protocol submitted by Dr. Charles Grob, then at UC Irvine, for a study of the use of MDMA in the treatment of pain, anxiety and depression in cancer patients. FDA's Drug Abuse Advisory Committee recommended that the cancer patient study be postponed and that a Phase 1 dose-response safety study be conducted first. The protocol was redesigned, with FDA giving final approval for the Phase 1 safety study on November 5, 1992. The safety study was completed in 1995. Data from the safety study revealed no unusual risks and indicated that MDMA could be safely administered within a clinical research context. Dr. Grob submitted the first draft of the protocol for the study of cancer patients in 1997. Negotiations with FDA moved very slowly, due to initial FDA decisions to put MDMA psychotherapy research on a slow track to nowhere. However, FDA opposition eventually lessened as MAPS and Dr. Grob persisted in our efforts to obtain permission for research into the use of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in cancer patients.

MAPS and MDMA Research

Doblin founded MAPS in 1986 when it became clear that only through FDA-approved research would MDMA ever become legal again. After years of effort, the first FDA- approved research with MDMA was finally approved in 1992 under the direction of
Dr. Charles Grob, Harbor-UCLA.

MDMA is off-patent and is considered to be an Orphan Drug, meaning that the pharmaceutical industry sees no financial incentives in conducting research with it. As a result of the non-medical use of MDMA, funding from government agencies for studies into the beneficial uses of MDMA have not been obtainable. MAPS has been working to support MDMA research since 1986 and opened a Drug Master File for MDMA at the FDA. Opening a Drug Master File is a required step for any drug before it can be legitimately researched in the U.S. MAPS has spent over $170,000 on MDMA research since 1986 and has supported FDA-required animal toxicity studies at the University of Arkansas and Stanford (1986-1988), human safety studies at Stanford and Johns Hopkins (1988-1991), and Dr. Charles Grob's FDA-approved Phase 1 study into the physiological and psychological effects of MDMA in humans (1992-1995). Most recently MAPS granted $6,000 to the Psychiatric University Hospital in Zürich for a PET scan study of MDMA-naive subjects and $10,000 for the publication of papers on EEG and prepulse inhibition in ecstasy users. Since 1986, MAPS' primary research goal has been a therapy study in cancer patients.

A footnote on the history of MDMA

Pascale, a thesis canditate in the MAPS group, wanted to be sure and contacted Merck, Germany, for the true story. She found out that:

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Merck stumbled across MDMA when they tried to synthesize Hydrastinin, a vasoconstrictive and styptic medicine. MDMA was merely an unplanned by-product of this synthesis. As usual, the process of its synthesis was patented.

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It can not be reconstructed to what extent Merck tested MDMA and what the results of such testing were, but it can be excluded with certainty that MDMA was ever considered as an appetite supressant (and, as Merck adds, this indication was not relevant in 1912, something which could have certainly occurred earlier to the more clever minds among us...)

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It is also certain that MDMA was never considered for marketing by Merck. So, thinking of Public Enemy who said, "Don't believe the hype," I would even go further and say: "Don't believe anything unless you've checked it for yourself!"

This histroy was taken from MAPS
http://maps.org

MDA

There is a broad and checkered history concerning the use and abuse of MDA, and it is not the case that all the use was medical and all the abuse was social. One of the compulsive drives of both the military and the intelligence groups, just after World War II, was to discover and develop chemical agents which might serve as "truth serums" or as incapacitating agents. These government agencies considered the area of the psychedelics to be a fertile field for searching. The giving of relatively unexplored drugs in a cavalier manner to knowing and unknowing subjects was commonplace. There was one case in 1953, involving MDA and a psychiatric patient named Howard Blauer that proved fatal. The army had contracted with several physicians at the New York State Psychiatric Institute to explore new chemicals from the Edgewood Arsenal and one of these, with a chemical warfare code number of EA-1298, was MDA. The last and lethal injection into Blauer was an intravenous dose of 500 milligrams.

There have been a number of medical explorations. Under the code SKF-5 (and trade name of Amphedoxamine) it was explored as an anorexic agent. It has been found promising in the treatment of psychoneurotic depression. There are several medical reports, and one book (Claudio Naranjo's The Healing Journey), that describe its values in psychotherapy.

MDA was also one of the major drugs that was being popularly used in the late 1960's when the psychedelic concept exploded on the public scene. MDA was called the "hug-drug" and was said to stand for Mellow Drug of America. There was no difficulty in obtaining unending quantities of it, as it was available as a research chemical from several scientific supply houses (as were mescaline and LSD) and was sold inexpensively under its chemical name.

This Clip was taken from an article from Erowin.
http://www.erowid.org//library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal100.shtml