I did my first hit of E New Years Eve 87'/88 @ an Oakland dead show a few days before NYE. I took it with a friend and I started to go off right when the New Years fireworks went off. It was Molly and the guy I got it from claimed he lnew the chemist in Berkley. I know "thats what they all say" but this was a time you could trust people in "the family" especially if you yourself was a hippie. i also got a quarter of strong shrooms and a bunch of good acid. Hommie told me to snort it so I did and tasted that unmistakeable MDMA taste I would come to recognize. After doing E a couple dozen times in the interim I went to my first rave, fall of 91', early and avante garde by San Diego standards. Their I did a cap of E (called X back then) a white cap that floored me for 10-15 minutes on the come up but left me with a plateau lasting 5 hours with a mellow comedown were I felt empathy and a connection with everybody. This context, a rave that we found on a foggy night after several mapoints was like being on the cutting edge of something revolutionary. This stuff cleaned your soul and made you feel pure. I did E for the next several years and experienced many different effects including one visual batch that took 1.5 hrs to kick in and then gave me gentle eye closed hallucinations. In 94-95 we were getting strong pills. They would give you visuals on the come up and floor you so you had to sit down until the plateau- sometimes puke and go off. But the plateau was clean and strong with mild visual distortions. Wonder if it was a big dose of MDMA or MDA.
So from your informed experience, how does MDA high compare with MDMA? What are the differences? Uncle fester prefered MDA. In PIHKAL the synthetic routes are different. In particular the good doctor substitutes isosafrole in his recipe for I think Piperonal in the MDA receipe. I think he might present more than one receipe for MDMA, Now a days Safrole is the precursor of choice. In his book, the good doctor Shulgin found that raceimic MDMA had a "sparkle" that various isomers lacked, even (+) MDMA, the more active isomer.
With MDA a "cone of silence" is described. Anyone who tried known MDA, can you desribe this phenomena?
Do you guys consider MDMA a hard or soft drug?, how about MDA? or inbetween, (I consider hard/soft too simplsitic, but I wouldn't hesitate to consider alcohol a hard drug and cannabis/ cafeine soft drugs if i had to make the call.)