--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, Explained, Sean Rameswaram here with Halima Shah, one of our reporters and producers here on the show.
--:-- Halima Shah: Thanks for having me, Sean.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The country's thinking about who the next president will be, what the next government will look like. But you're here to tell us about something that our current government might do this month, in August.
--:-- Halima Shah: Yeah, I'm here thinking about what the next big drug might be. MDMA, the drug that most people might know as ecstasy or MOLI, is actually under consideration by the FDA as a potential therapeutic drug.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this drug, unbeknownst to most probably, has been on quite a journey to get here.
--:-- Halima Shah: It has. And today we're going to take a journey from the 1970s all the way to today, where this drug goes from this kind of reflective, introspective drug to this demon drug of the dance floor, all the way to something that could potentially treat some of the toughest cases of PTSD.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Email sequences, those real-time reports, those powerful automations, which they claim can help you build what matters most, your company. You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Halima Shah: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place?
--:-- Halima Shah: Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- Halima Shah: Before we get too deep into the like history of MDMA and and various therapeutic treatments that may exist we should remind people that this drug is and for a very long time has been illegal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's true it has been illegal my entire life and it turns out it's been illegal my entire life.
--:-- Halima Shah: Yeah, it's something that the DEA has classified as a very bad drug since 1985.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basically, the agency has a way of classifying drugs from one to five. And the lower the number, the more the DEA has a problem with it.
--:-- Halima Shah: So Schedule 5 will have cough syrup and anti-diarrheal drugs, and Schedule 1 will have heroin and MDMA.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the thing is, is that recent science suggests MDMA has lower abuse potential than previously thought.
--:-- Halima Shah: So today there's these really promising and controversial trials that suggest MDMA plus therapy can treat PTSD, which is a really big deal because 6% of Americans will have it at some point, and some of them will improve with the treatments we've had for decades. Others will not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there are people with treatment-resistant PTSD who are hoping that this month the FDA approves MDMA-assisted therapy.
--:-- Halima Shah: But that might not happen because an independent advisory committee told the FDA that this therapy isn't ready to go public yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Although I did feel there was some effectiveness here, I don't feel like the risks, the missing data, the gaps, the unknowns outweigh that benefit.
--:-- Halima Shah: So now MDMA-assisted therapy, which was expected to be one of the first psychedelic therapies to emerge out of the underground, is at this kind of make-or-break point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as I started looking into the clinical trials and the FDA decision, I became fascinated by how old this idea of MDMA in therapy is, and how long people have been pushing for it.
--:-- Halima Shah: How old is it? Well, technically, MDMA was created over 100 years ago by a German drugmaker, but it sort of went dormant.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The story really gets going in the U.S. in the 1970s in Northern California.
--:-- Halima Shah: So you think you know how the mind works. It just is a lot to be found.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You have to find out by influencing, changing, disturbing.
--:-- Halima Shah: There's a chemist named Alexander, a.k.a. Sasha Shulkin. He's respected in his field.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He creates a successful pesticide for Dow Chemical. He did expert witness work for the DEA.
--:-- Halima Shah: But the thing that put him outside of the mainstream, besides his Hawaiian shirts and sandals, was his passion for psychoactive compounds, which he said he synthesized hundreds of.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My curiosity was if such a simple molecule can allow me this type of openness, this so-called psychedelic experience, what modifications that molecule will modify, improve, change, redirect that type of introspection.
--:-- Halima Shah: By 1976, Sasha manages to synthesize MDMA, and he tests it on himself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 25 milligrams, no effect. 40, no effect. 60 milligrams, no effect. 81 milligrams, I got a plus one.
--:-- Halima Shah: 53 minutes, smooth shift into a light intoxication.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Very scientific about taking drugs for fun. For science, sorry, for science.
--:-- Halima Shah: He wasn't the only one doing this in a science-y way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He'd take the stuff he made in his lab to a research group of about eight people, and they'd trip on it together.
--:-- Halima Shah: And then they'd record their observations, and these people were scientists, therapists, friends, who all kind of had their own way of looking at psychedelics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Including one woman in the group who was very interested in Jungian psychology.
--:-- Halima Shah: Her name was Anne. Basically, I see psychedelics as spiritual tools, which is not quite the way Sasha sees them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She eventually married Sasha Shulkin.
--:-- Halima Shah: And they were bonded by their mutual but differing interests in psychedelics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Anne and others who were into psychotherapy believed that the stuff her husband tinkered with in his lab could be like penicillin for the soul.
--:-- Halima Shah: Penicillin for the soul.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They are very good tools for anyone who's on any kind of spiritual journey, whatever that means.
--:-- Halima Shah: And it means different things to different people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And psychotherapy can be a part of that.
--:-- Halima Shah: I mean, people who go into psychotherapy are on a spiritual quest, whether they call it that or not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did it go anywhere or was it just some, you know, Bay Area kids getting high?
--:-- Halima Shah: Well, these were grownups.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Anne and Sasha were both in their middle age when they met
--:-- Halima Shah: And they both died now but they have left a legacy behind
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I wanted to understand how their experimentation really set the stage for the world that we're in now.
--:-- Halima Shah: So I went to California to a place called Shulgin Farm.
--:-- Halima Shah: Okay, we're really taking a hike. Okay. Going up the side of the hill.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did you find any leftover MDMA from the 70s?
--:-- Halima Shah: I did not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I did find a woman named Wendy Tucker.
--:-- Halima Shah: Oh. I'm Ann Shulgin's daughter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wendy is Sasha's stepdaughter.
--:-- Halima Shah: She was in high school when her mom first started seeing him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She was really blossoming.
--:-- Halima Shah: And she came and spent more time out here with Sasha over those couple of years that they were first together.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I could just see the change in her.
--:-- Halima Shah: It was like this expansion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When her mother lived with Sasha, Wendy often visited.
--:-- Halima Shah: And she still visits because she's trying to turn this farm into a living museum to preserve everything from the tree the Shulgans tripped under to the house that they had dinners in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The back door heads out to the cactus garden out here.
--:-- Halima Shah: And these are San Pedro. San Pedro, a.k.a. drug cactus.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can extract mescaline from this stuff, which Sasha did.
--:-- Halima Shah: This path leads to the lab.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wendy says it's an active lab, still used today by a friend.
--:-- Halima Shah: This was Sasha's lab for years and years and years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you can hear something's running in here.
--:-- Halima Shah: That's the smell of chemistry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, it used to be even more pungent in here, I gotta say.
--:-- Halima Shah: It was like a nail polish remover and garlic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yum.
--:-- Halima Shah: There was a Fanta colored liquid that was just spinning in a glass funnel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as the fumes hit me, so did something else.
--:-- Halima Shah: This is a chemist's kitchen where the ingredients were things that either grew in his backyard or were on a shelf a few feet away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here, things that we know as drugs are still chemical compounds with effects that are waiting to be understood.
--:-- Halima Shah: And you could taste them and find out what those effects are at your own risk.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As you can see, it used to be a tool shed and a little basement to a house.
--:-- Halima Shah: There used to be an open fireplace here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I find it pretty poetic that Sasha's lab was a converted tool shed because as a chemist, he saw himself as a tool maker.
--:-- Halima Shah: I'm looking for tools that can be used for studying the mind
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And other people then will use the tools in finding out the aspects of the mental process and how it ties to the brain.
--:-- Halima Shah: And after synthesizing MDMA here in the tool shed, that's exactly who Sasha shared it with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: About 20 miles from Shulgin Farm in Berkeley, I met one of the people who used MDMA in his practice back in the 80s.
--:-- Halima Shah: His name is Phil Wolfson.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's a physician and a friend of the Shulgins.
--:-- Halima Shah: By the time I got into it, there were quite a few hundred practitioners using MDMA along with other psychedelics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I reached out to a lot of different experts about this early MDMA era, and one historian I spoke to suggested the number of MDMA therapists was closer to two dozen.
--:-- Halima Shah: But it's hard to verify because this wasn't happening very openly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because MDMA was in a regulatory gray zone.
--:-- Halima Shah: It was not an FDA-approved prescription drug, and it also was not scheduled as a controlled substance by the DEA.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What it was was promising to a small but influential circle of countercultural scientists and therapists.
--:-- Halima Shah: And the Shulgins were really at the center of that circle.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sasha was a chemist and Anne's development was around being kind of the wise woman for people and people would call her up and ask her advice.
--:-- Halima Shah: Phil Wolfson said she would run therapy groups with him, and he also offered MDMA-assisted therapy on his own.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's one couple that he told me about that he still remembers, a husband and wife from Ohio.
--:-- Halima Shah: They were a very dysfunctional couple.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They had been in a long-term marriage.
--:-- Halima Shah: They had four boys.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the woman was very unhappy in the marriage.
--:-- Halima Shah: And the man was fairly indifferent as a human being.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sounds like a description of many men.
--:-- Halima Shah: Well, the thing about MDMA is that it makes you feel open and empathetic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So for a psychedelic therapist, that's great stuff if your client is too indifferent to notice problems in his marriage.
--:-- Halima Shah: What happens with certain people with MDMA who are not easily intimate is that they get close with MDMA and it wears off.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then they have a panic about the closeness that they felt.
--:-- Halima Shah: But the couple came and persisted, and I saw them for a long period of time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Phil Wolfson's memories of this time are pretty hazy.
--:-- Halima Shah: And he actually told me that the woman in this couple died.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I can't ask her what she thought of all of this.
--:-- Halima Shah: But in her therapist's opinion, things went really well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They eventually got divorced, which was good.
--:-- Halima Shah: And they each went their separate ways, found other partners.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she became a remarkable supporter of MDMA work and our work.
--:-- Halima Shah: There's a shift for the woman in this couple.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The quote-unquote work of changing her marriage becomes the work of changing therapy with psychedelics.
--:-- Halima Shah: And it's all happening in an era when people felt like psychiatry needed a breakthrough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The medicines we're talking about promote love and kindness.
--:-- Halima Shah: Not in every case, but psychiatry has always been suppressive and repressive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now we're expansive and we have been for a long time.
--:-- Halima Shah: This sounds so lovey-dovey, but not everyone's loving MDMA, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right.
--:-- Halima Shah: There's stories of incredible success, but there's also accounts of abuse from this early era.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was a psychiatrist and a therapist who were both considered pioneers of this.
--:-- Halima Shah: And they lost their licenses after patients sued them for abusive sexual behavior in MDMA sessions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But MDMA's days, I think, were always numbered because it came on the scene after President Nixon declared a war on drugs.
--:-- Halima Shah: And what the drug war had already done by that point was make another psychedelic, which had therapeutic potential and became a recreational drug, illegal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the Shulgans were very aware of that, and they didn't want the same for MDMA.
--:-- Halima Shah: So they wanted the drug to stay therapeutic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But obviously, that did not work out.
--:-- Halima Shah: The DEA comes for MDMA when we return on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime is a financial technology company that says they understand that every dollar counts.
--:-- Halima Shah: So when you set up direct deposit through Chime, they say you get access to fee-free features, such as free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit, so much more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime says with qualifying direct deposits, you can be eligible for free overdraft, up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals.
--:-- Halima Shah: Plus, they say you don't need to worry about monthly fees or maintenance fees.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can work on your financial goals through Chime Today, you can open an account in two minutes at chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Halima Shah: That's chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime feels like progress.
--:-- Halima Shah: Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancor Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC.
--:-- Halima Shah: Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Timing depends on submission of payment file.
--:-- Halima Shah: Fees apply at out-of-network ATMs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bank ranking and number of ATMs according to U.S. News and World Report 2023.
--:-- Halima Shah: Chime checking account required.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's.
--:-- Halima Shah: It's almost fall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting.
--:-- Halima Shah: Because while everyone loves a breezy summer outfit, let's be real, layering is even more fun.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's why Macy's Fall Fashion Guide has everything you need to piece together the perfect look for you.
--:-- Halima Shah: It's your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves, curated by their experts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Add a statement shoe to your collection, like the calf-hair loafers from Steve Madden.
--:-- Halima Shah: Or tap into your romantic side with flowy dresses from CC and sheer pieces from INC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can even throw in some textural layers for contrast, like a faux fur bomber jacket from Karl Lagerfeld Paris.
--:-- Halima Shah: Whether your old favorite sweater or coat is on its last threads or you're just craving a new vibe to switch things up, Macy's has got you covered this season.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Find the perfect layering pieces for you by exploring the Macy's Fall Fashion Style Guide.
--:-- Halima Shah: Shop in-store or online at Macy's.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for the show today comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR.
--:-- Halima Shah: What's in your life kit?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm asking.
--:-- Halima Shah: They didn't ask that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key.
--:-- Halima Shah: Instead, you can listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: LifeKit offers real stories about common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career.
--:-- Halima Shah: If you're looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance on living better, LifeKit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: From fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout, each episode is full of relevant insights and clear takeaways about things we all could use a little help with.
--:-- Halima Shah: LifeKit wants to help you approach your own life with confidence and clarity and walk away with a game plan you can implement right away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Enough from me.
--:-- Halima Shah: Go listen to the show Life Kit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a podcast from NPR.
--:-- Halima Shah: Today Explained back with Halima Shah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Halima, up until this point, we've been talking about MDMA and therapy. kind of these experimental sessions that people are having in the 70s.
--:-- Halima Shah: But of course, that's not how most people know this drug. They know it as ecstasy. They know it as X. They know it from popular culture. They know it from raves.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When did people start to use this drug for fun?
--:-- Halima Shah: By the early 80s, it's obvious that MDMA isn't just a therapy drug. It's a club drug.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the journalist Rachel Neuer has written about these clandestine labs that start making MDMA and how the drug gets to the dance floor.
--:-- Halima Shah: She writes that you could order a beer and ecstasy at the Stark Club in Dallas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow. And that is pretty much how it gets on the DEA's radar.
--:-- Halima Shah: The agency wants to ban this stuff that young club goers are using.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Ann Shulgin catches wind of this and decides to take matters into her own hands.
--:-- Halima Shah: So this is a letter that Ann Shulgin wrote to President Reagan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: July 25th, 1984.
--:-- Halima Shah: And back at Shulgin Farm, where there's photos of Anne and Sasha decorating the walls of the house, Wendy read her mom's words to me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dear Mr. President, I am writing to you privately and urgently in the hope that the information I have received from a single source who could well be misinformed is valid.
--:-- Halima Shah: Anne is like, this stuff is great for therapy. It dissolves barriers to communication and it creates empathy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It seems to allow contact with what might be called the God space within.
--:-- Halima Shah: And she's like, look, if the DEA makes this a schedule one drug, we can't even use it in therapy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So why not make it a schedule three drug, which is less restrictive?
--:-- Halima Shah: You can still crack down on the shady stuff in those clandestine labs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: While allowing the informed and medically or psychologically trained people to continue using it in therapy.
--:-- Halima Shah: And then she builds up to this case about the Cold War, that a group of dissident psychonauts and spiritual leaders had shared the recipe for MDMA with like-minded people in the Soviet Union.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: MDMA might become the avenue for communication between the intelligent, concerned people of both countries in the effort to prevent nuclear war and the destruction of the human experiment on Earth.
--:-- Halima Shah: Can we assume that's never happened?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Based on the way the world is going right now, it's either happened and hasn't worked or it hasn't happened.
--:-- Halima Shah: So Anne's writing Reagan being like, Ron, baby, this thing's going to bring about world peace.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You don't want to make it Schedule I.
--:-- Halima Shah: Meanwhile, what's the DEA saying in his ear?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, the DEA hates this.
--:-- Halima Shah: Well, guess what? We've got another drug.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is synthetic, and it makes you love everybody.
--:-- Halima Shah: This is an episode of The Phil Donahue Show from April 25th, 1985.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It features a very frustrated DEA agent.
--:-- Halima Shah: But what we've seen in the last couple of years is an escalation of the availability.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are you concerned about?
--:-- Halima Shah: A lot of young kids bouncing around.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Precisely.
--:-- Halima Shah: The other thing is when we apprehend these people, they can be dealt with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At the present time, it's not against the law.
--:-- Halima Shah: So you can't apprehend them now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We cannot.
--:-- Halima Shah: But you really want to, don't you?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's important.
--:-- Halima Shah: Just one month later, that same DEA agent, Gene Hayslip, speaks at a press conference.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This morning, the Drug Enforcement Administration is announcing its intention to place the drug known as MDMA, or by the street name, ecstasy, under emergency controls in Schedule 1
--:-- Halima Shah: The DEA says this is a health risk and effectively bans the drug.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And research becomes very very difficult to do
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is a big moment for the trajectory of MDMA.
--:-- Halima Shah: Yeah. MDMA is now a public enemy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Sasha still has a DEA license that allows him to analyze scheduled substances.
--:-- Halima Shah: But the Shulgans have some fearful thoughts about what the drug war will do to their research.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I remember both of us lying in bed speculating.
--:-- Halima Shah: We do other things and speculate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We had a vague picture in our minds of masked intruders breaking into the laboratory with baseball bats.
--:-- Halima Shah: To keep their findings from being destroyed or stashed away from the public, Anne and Sasha decide that they want to publish a book, and they name it PCOL.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For phenethylamines I have known and loved.
--:-- Halima Shah: Wow. I know, right? Rolls right off the tug.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Phenethylamines are drugs that can have hallucinogenic or stimulant effects, like MDMA.
--:-- Halima Shah: And the book is this thinly-veiled memoir that covers everything from the chemistry of psychedelics to the chemistry of the Shulgans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It talks about their childhood and their courtship, and it talks about the sex they had.
--:-- Halima Shah: No, it's not sex. It's fantastic for making love.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there is a difference.
--:-- Halima Shah: The orgasm is a connection with God.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When the Shulkins self-published PCOL, they classified it as fiction, as an effort to protect themselves legally.
--:-- Halima Shah: The book was no longer an account or a manual for illegal drugs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It would become a story that featured illegal drugs.
--:-- Halima Shah: The first people we had sent copies to were people we knew in the DEA, the chemists in particular.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we felt that there was a possibility that the DEA would find this so interesting and even perhaps useful in some way that maybe they wouldn't be too angry with us.
--:-- Halima Shah: It didn't quite work out that way, though.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Especially because after the book came out, Sasha boasted about his DEA license in the press.
--:-- Halima Shah: And I think that probably was a little bit of a slap in the face for them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow.
--:-- Halima Shah: Wendy thinks that's why the DEA did, in fact, raid Shulgin Farm in 1994.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Classic.
--:-- Halima Shah: They were very polite when they came in their jeans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not quite masked men with bats.
--:-- Halima Shah: These were agents who noticed that Sasha Shulgin had chemical samples scattered around the place instead of cataloged and locked up like scheduled substances are supposed to be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was here that day.
--:-- Halima Shah: We were just walking around the house with them as they were finding things that weren't locked up and pulled out little envelopes from the shelf with samples that people would send him and say, this is a $10,000 fine, Dr. Shulgin.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is a $10,000 fine, Dr. Shulgin.
--:-- Halima Shah: And the fines came out to $25,000.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Sasha also relinquished his DEA license.
--:-- Halima Shah: He certainly kept doing chemistry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He wasn't going to stop, but he had to be a lot more private about it.
--:-- Halima Shah: So in the decades that followed, Sasha kept doing chemistry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: DARE programs and schools talked about the dangers of ecstasy.
--:-- Halima Shah: Lawmakers kept on with their drug war.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that included a senator named Joe Biden who introduced something called the Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy, or Rave Act, in 2001.
--:-- Halima Shah: If I were governor of my state or mayor of my town, I would be passing new ordinances relating to stiff criminal penalties for anyone who held a rave.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The promoter, the guy who owned the building.
--:-- Halima Shah: So at this time, the scientific establishment is pretty against this too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Johns Hopkins University, which is now a ground zero for psychedelic research, publishes this really famous study in 2002.
--:-- Halima Shah: And in that study, it says that MDMA is neurotoxic, which means that it's poisonous for the brain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wait, how does this go from a drug that some nice-sounding people in the Bay Area are tinkering with in the 70s to neurotoxic, poison for your brain, by the early 2000s to, like, we're back at, you know, this is a potential psychotherapy for PTSD or something in 2024.
--:-- Halima Shah: What's that arc?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, well, fun fact about the study is that it was eventually retracted because it turns out that Johns Hopkins injected the test subjects, which were 10 monkeys, with the wrong drug.
--:-- Halima Shah: What? What did they give the poor monkeys?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They gave them speed.
--:-- Halima Shah: Oh my goodness.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. Wow, Johns Hopkins.
--:-- Halima Shah: I know, it was embarrassing for them, but the damage is done at this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, the narrative around MDMA is neurotoxic, is out there.
--:-- Halima Shah: You hear that in the D.A.R.E. programs in school.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But at the same time, there are people from the Shulgin era who don't buy that narrative.
--:-- Halima Shah: And that's why almost right after the DEA bans it, a psychedelic advocacy group is born.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's called the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS.
--:-- Halima Shah: And for the last 40 years, it's been advocating to make the drug medicinal, including by running clinical trials.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And their advocacy has really taken hold in the last decade after a new era of U.S. wars and an epidemic of veteran suicides.
--:-- Halima Shah: I grew up in the D.A.R.E. era, where you had good drugs and bad drugs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Good drugs gave us the opiate epidemic.
--:-- Halima Shah: Bad drugs cured my PTSD.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And tomorrow, we'll get into how MDMA's reputation goes from bad drug to healing drug, starting with veterans.
--:-- Halima Shah: Okay, cliffhanger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was Halima Shah. She reports and produces at Today Explained. Her reporting this time around is supported by a grant from the Ferriss-UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship.
--:-- Halima Shah: Thanks guys.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as she mentioned, we've got a few more episodes coming for you this one was edited by Lissa Soep and Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Rob Byers, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Halima Shah: For anyone who is wondering.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We used clips from two documentaries, one's called Dirty Pictures and the other's called Better Living Through Chemistry.
--:-- Halima Shah: Find them where you find your docs and find us right here, Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You
