The Fun Train to Reno

The stepfather of rave's favorite pharmaceutical
Lives in the hills behind San Francisco
In the early '60s, Dr
Alexander Shulgin was one of the Dole
Chemical Company's top analytical chemists
He turned his skills to making psychoactive drugs
It cost him his job, but turned him into
A folk hero to the rave generation
In the mid-1960s, he resynthesized an obscure drug that
Had been patented but then ignored by the German company E
Merck in 1911
It was called 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, MDMA for short
It would later acquire the street name Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
To Dr
Shulgin, it was just one of hundreds of mind-altering drugs
He'd concocted and tested on himself and his close friends
Today in his garden shed laboratory, Dr
Shulgin is synthesizing what he hopes will
Be a brand-new psychedelic substance
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
MDMA, Ecstasy
In the weeks to come, he will try it in larger and largеr doses and
Assess whethеr or not the trips it will produce are worth taking
Around 20 years ago, Dr
Shulgin made these careful notes, the
First recorded experience on Ecstasy
This is, this is one of the early studies on, on MDMA
I called it N-methyl MDA at the time
Uh, 16 milligrams, that was in 1976
Actually, the first, first trial in that particular guise
Was on a, a train trip, uh, going from here to Reno
It was a, was a thing called the Fun Reno Train
MDMA
MDMA
MDMA
MDMA
MDMA
MDMA
MDMA
Ecstasy
Ecstasy
Ecstasy
MDMA
Ecstasy
Ecstasy
Ecstasy
MDMA
Ecstasy