The History of MDMA
June 29, 2023 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198867364.001.0001
Summary
The book provides a comprehensive overview of the complex history of MDMA, focusing on its development from early pharmaceutical use to recreational distribution in Europe and the United States. It examines various aspects, including research, political responses, and medical applications, highlighting the drug's potential toxicity and therapeutic uses. The narrative is not linear but rather a mosaic of interconnected stories that illustrate the multifaceted history of MDMA.
Abstract
Abstract This book is intended to provide an overview of the complex and dispersed history of MDMA, in the hope of making it more intelligible. In respect of the period up until the late 1980s, the book focuses on what was happening in Europe and the United States as other countries were not significant in this timeframe. This book does not describe the history of an illegal drug only as it is perceived in the public mind, but also in terms of the research into it, the political responses to it, its spread, and its medical use. It follows the early pharmaceutical history of MDMA shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, its researched military potential, and its early use in psychotherapy, followed by its distribution as a recreational drug and its spread throughout Europe and the United States and other parts of the world. Later chapters focus on the debate about its potential toxicity, its worldwide distribution as a dance drug since the 1990s, and the most recent research on MDMA and its therapeutic potentials. The history of MDMA is characterized by a range of parallel developments occurring at different levels and their many interactions. It is more of a mosaic than a linear story and cannot be described in terms of a simple narrative. This book tries to bring these multiple narratives and levels of its history and their complex interactions together in order to produce a coherent mosaic