However, MDMA’s particular molecular structure-part amphetamine ring and part mescaline ring-made it of interest to psychotherapists experimenting with psychedelic substances in California in the 1970s ( Stolaroff 2004). While MDMA is best known as a recreational drug, the substance is in fact an old product of the pharmaceutical industry that was originally synthesized and patented by Merck pharmaceuticals at the beginning of the 20th century, though the company never developed an application for the drug ( Freudenmann et al. They argued that MDMA’s therapeutic effects were not absent.

MAPS maintained that MDMA-contrary to the parameters of Schedule I-could be administered safely in a controlled environment and that the drug had a therapeutic application, albeit one that had not yet been formally studied in rigorously conducted clinical trials. By definition, Schedule I includes substances with a high probability for abuse and no therapeutic application.

Second, MDMA was then, and remains now, a Schedule I substance that is more commonly referred to as Ecstasy-a recreational drug known for producing powerful feelings of empathy and trust. First, the sponsor was neither a pharmaceutical company nor a research university, but a small nonprofit organization, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). The study was unusual for several reasons. In 2001, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an unusual protocol: a pilot study testing the safety and efficacy of ☓,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted psychotherapy in subjects with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). MDMA’s safety emerges from the careful management of relations through these documentary practices. This article tracks the production of safety through the inter-connected work of clinical documents, which manage both which bodies are allowed to absorb the drug and which bodily events count as effects. While researchers maintain that pure MDMA is distinct from Ecstasy, this article argues that the difference between the two hangs not on a distinction in substance, but on a distinction in safety that must be produced through the trial. Drawing from ethnographic research, this article interrogates MDMA researchers’ own distinction between MDMA and the street drug Ecstasy. Nonprofit efforts to develop drug ☓,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-better known as the street drug Ecstasy-as a prescription pharmaceutical provide the opportunity to examine recent theorizations of pharmaceuticals as fluid objects transformed in new informational and material environments.

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