got a job as a research chemist with Dow Chemicals, for whom he invented a profitable insecticide. As a reward, the company gave him a free hand and his own lab. Having had an exciting experience on Mescaline, Shulgin used the opportunity to research psychedelic drugs. An accepted test for psychedelic effects was to observe how fighting fish change their behavior. But there were problems with this method; fish cannot say when they are under the influence. His answer was to 'suck it and see'. Shulgin proceeded to test the drug MDMA on himself as well as several of his patients. It is impossible to ever know the true breadth of therapeutic MDMA usage achieved during the remaining years of his life, but at his memorial service, an old friend of his said, “Well, I've thought about that, and I think probably around four thousand, give or take a few.” Those first psychotherapists to use MDMA were keenly aware that they had found a valuable new tool. As one put it, "MDMA is penicillin for the soul, and you don't give up prescribing penicillin, once you've seen what it can do". They were equally aware that if MDMA became a popular street drug, it could follow in the footsteps of LSD and be criminalized by the US government. They agreed to do as much informal research as possible without bringing the drug to public attention, and did pretty well; MDMA only gradually became known as a fun drug and it wasn't until 1984 that the bubble burst. Those years 1977 to 1985 are looked back on as the 'golden age' of Ecstasy or Adam as it was then known. In psychotherapy, its use only appealed to a few experimental therapists since it didn't fit in with the usual fifty-minute psychotherapy session, but they did include some of the most dynamic people in the field, including some who claimed that a five hour Adam session w...
