The History of MDMA

As recent statistics show, more than 100 million people on the planet have used MDMA. After cannabis, it is the second most used drug worldwide. Yet there are many misconceptions surrounding the drug, which have affected attempts to use it as a legitimate and highly effective therapeutic aid. Despite the enormous extent of its use, and abuse, MDMA produced neither a large number of medical complications nor social harm on a larger scale, and has very limited addictive potential.

In The History of MDMA, Torsten Passie aims to explore a deeper and more differentiated understanding of MDMA and its history. He has conducted personal interviews with most of the people significant in the history of MDMA and provides a lot of new material to present the first comprehensive overview of the history of MDMA in Europe and the U.S. This not just as it is perceived in the public mind, but also in terms of its history as an underground drug, the research into it, political responses to it, its spread, and its medical use. Passie brings these multiple narratives and levels of its history and their complex interactions together in order to make this book an essential reading for anyone interested in the topic.

Torsten Passie MD is a Professor of Psychiatry at Hannover Medical School, Germany. He is the co-author of The Pharmacology of LSD (OUP, 2010).