Merck and Dole are the proud parents of MDMA
I was there, Le Junk, in Texas in 1984, and everything you are saying is true. I've been reading threads for almost two hours now, trying to figure out what the explanation is. I have an MD and a PhD in Neuroscience, but my knowledge of straight-up chemistry is fairly limited. All the hostility about old people being assholes who complain without merit about the X of the old days is lost on me. I thought the point was to question what the difference might be in order to facilitate the distribution of whatever-it-was-that-I-used-to-consume-in-the-80s. I miss it so much. It seems to me that your friend is the best person to explain it.
I found an great article that reviews the chemical origin of MDMA. I'll add the link. It was originally created in 1912 by Merck pharmaceuticals as a BYPRODUCT in the formation of some sort of blood thinning medication. Apparently, there has been a fiery debate over who truly owns the patent for MDMA, since the one filed by Merck includes the structure of MDMA within the text, but it is not specifically tested or named as an end-product for ownership. This should make this race to produce FDA-approved ecstasy pretty fun to watch. Some random guy from Poland published an article in the 1950s describing the synthesis of MDMA out of the blue, but nothing else was said about why he decided to make it in this article. Then a guy working at Dole made MDMA again in the 1960s, and he published a test of its psychotropic effects.
I'm tripping all over myself to say that Ecstasy was first created by Merck pharmaceuticals and was later co-opted by Dole. Merck and Dole proudly present MDMA.
Ecstasy emerged later in the 70s for use in psychotherapy, and then it quickly became a hit with the street crowds. I like to imagine some chemistry nerd working for Dole with a pineapple on his desk, realizing that he had uncovered a pretty fantastic drug that had gone unnoticed for 55 years. I like to think he started making it for his friends and then their friends and then he just walked out of that big Pineapple lab.
What I found most interesting is that this original MDMA, this by-product Merck stumbled on, was first called "safrylmethylamine". Safrole was the initial chemical ingredient used to start the chemical reactions that eventually formed MDMA (safrylmethylamine).
Merck stopped making the derivative forms of the MDMA that they were trying to sell because it was too expensive to make the MDMA itself. I read some old thread on this site entitled "that's how we rolled in the 90s" or something like that, and a chemist in this group finally spoke up and pointed out that the MDMA of today is not made from this initial safrole compound. They use something else as a precursor now. People argued for pages that if the final product is chemically authentic MDMA, with all the molecules correctly aligned, than it shouldn't matter what the progenitor compound is. MDMA is MDMA. I cannot argue with that. However, I can make the argument that we weren't going around testing pills before we took them. I watched people grab them out of bowls like free candy at a bar in Dallas. Real, honest to God party favors. Will you ask your friend if starting with safrole has any possibility of making a difference? Even if his answer is no, I'm willing to bet that the chemical compound is just a tiny bit different somehow. I don't buy the shit about enantiomers. The drugs feel too different.
Here is there article. And Cheers to the guy who worked for Dole, where he resurrected one great compound.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conte...rt00015?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf
...very weak signal, but unmistakable.
