The History of MDMA as an Underground Drug in the United States, 1960-1979

Introduction

By the 1990s MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-methylamphetamine, “ecstasy”) had become a major recreational drug worldwide, but its early history as an underground substance in the United States is incompletely documented. Earlier work shows MDMA was synthesised as early as 1912 and resynthesised for pharmaceutical research, while animal testing by the U.S. Army in the 1950s remained largely unpublished until declassification. The chemically related amphetamine MDA had already circulated as a recreational and psychotherapeutic agent in the 1950s–1960s and was scheduled in 1970, creating a context in which altered analogues such as MDMA could be produced as “legal alternatives.” Passie and colleagues set out to reconstruct the emergence and spread of MDMA as an underground recreational drug in the U.S. between about 1960 and 1979. Drawing on previously overlooked sources — notably a 1984 DEA internal document recommending Schedule I control — together with published literature, forensic laboratory reports, seizure records, conference proceedings and laboratory notebooks (notably those of Alexander Shulgin), the study maps forensic detections, clandestine production, distribution patterns and early clinical/perceptual characterisations of MDMA during that period. The paper focuses on the 1960s and 1970s and does not attempt an exhaustive account of developments after 1980, although brief remarks on later scheduling are provided in the summary.