DOSAGE: 100 - 250 mg.

DURATION: moderate.

QUALITATIVE COMMENTS: (with 100 mg) I felt completely relaxed at one hour. Almost as if I was floating. There were no obvious effects on taste, and the relaxation and composed feeling is much like a small dose, maybe 20 mikes, of LSD. There was some dilation, and in the evening I was a little restless and slightly tired. I slept well, and awoke refreshed and happy.

(with 100 mg) It seemed to take 45 minutes to work and then it came on very suddenly, as if my eyeballs were being pulled out and my whole head expanding. Soon a cold feeling set in with shivering--this was not unpleasant. My state in about two hours seemed to be one of empathy and passivity, compassion of an impersonal sort. The music sounded artificial and canned and tinny, in contrast to the voices, which sounded rich and full and finely articulated and melodious.

(with 150 mg) We are on the beach at the river mouth drying seaweed, on split redwood. There is a slight nausea, slight cramps, and then my visual field starts to light up. Still vertigo but only with my eyes open, and heaviness and time stretches out; numbness in the chest as when an opiate is taken. There are geometric patterns, but the excess light on my closed eyelids interferes with this. A dance of the glittering diamond studded sea waves, increasing motion and beauty. More landscapes appear inside. This is a good introductory drug to the drugs of this class, to become familiar with the drug state in as gentle a fashion as possible. This substance seems to have a much gentler action than others of this class; perhaps more like cannabis or psilocybin. There is very little paranoia. I note hallucinations of two types: those which are strictly retinal and more minute and small and influenced by light and focused on the light ahead on the retina or lids; and the other, those deep in the visual tract and occiput which are larger and more global and dream-like and, when solid, are quite dramatic and unforgettable as in meditation.

(with 210 mg) MMDA tastes awful. The bitter alkaloid taste is followed by a distinctively chemical laboratory flavor as if from old rubber tubing. Nothing seems to happen for about 45 minutes when rather suddenly an anvil seems to lower itself over your head; you feel disoriented, and tend to withdraw from social contact a little. The drug gives less feeling of being ill than mescaline. The effect definitely reaches a climax with a pleasant afterglow following. Apparently there are no profound motor coordination problems. MMDA yields that 'Sunday afternoon' feeling of desiring to lie down and enjoy life; a luxurious feeling of 'layback.' No enhancement of colors in visual scene (except for some greenish tinges in faces) but upon closing eyes hallucinations appear to be quite real in 3-D, like watching a movie. First these dreams appear in black and white, but later colors start appearing. Chartreuse and magenta first appear, then blue and finally red. First I had visions of large numbers on gaming tables, then people. MMDA appears to bring dreams to the conscious level; is a link between the subconscious and the conscious.

(with 225 mg) I had a strange awareness of my hands in about 20 minutes--not a feeling in them as just that I was attracted to them somehow. Then I began to get fearful, an acute experience of aloneness. I lay face down (a depressed position for me). Next I was talking to the kids at school (an image) or to other teachers. This was very vivid. The scenes at school were more vivid that the real scenes around me here. Those people were much more real. I am actually very sleepy right now during the experiment. Of any experience I have had, this was most like a series of dreams easily remembered. When it was over, I felt as if I had had a long period of sleeping--I had gone to bed and had a series of dream-like states very vivid and colorful and real.

EXTENSIONS AND COMMENTARY: The phrase that had been used by several of the subjects in the early trials with MMDA, again and again, was "brain movies." Apparently the richest of the effects were to be had with the eyes closed. This is the compound that I had first completed in 1962, and had named it MMDA, and had begun the exploring of it when I heard that Dr. Gordon A. Alles, a professor of pharmacology at U. C. L. A. who had his own private laboratory in Los Angeles, had also synthesized it in 1962, had also named it MMDA, and had also begun exploring it. We made a date to meet and share ideas, and then he died, at the age of 62, in 1963.

This is a material that might be a contributing factor to the pharmacology of nutmeg. The major essential oil from that spice is myristicin, and it is the easiest source of MMDA. It has been reported that the passage of this oil through the liver of a rabbit will generate MMDA in that animal. The only difference between the two molecules, structurally, are the elements of ammonia. Myristicin plus ammonia gives MMDA. Another natural source of myristicin is Oil of Parsley, which is also an excellent source of apiole, mentioned under DMMDA. A rumor that had currency in the 1960's, that parsley could get you high, probably had its origins in the reports of myristicin being present, coupled with myristicin being the principal source of MMDA. The relationship to myristicin (an essential oil) led to the classifying of MMDA as a Essential Amphetamine. These relationships are expanded upon, under TMA.

At the time that the FDA issued its proclamation of dangerous drugs (in the mid-1960's), MMDA was being talked about, and in fact it had just become available commercially in England through the Koch Light Industries. But to my knowledge it had never appeared on the street, so its having being swept into the listings of evil drugs was simply a coincidence of bad timing. The close resemblance of initials between MMDA, and the currently notorious MDMA, has led to no small amount of confusion in the popular press. They remain totally separate and completely different drugs.

desværre kan jeg ikke få adgang til den fulde publikation ang. neurotoksicitet, og abstractet nævner intet om MMDA.

Some of the analogues investigated in the present study belong to yet a third class of centrally active phenylisopropylamine derivatives, typified by the compounds MMDA (3,4-methylenedioxy-5-methoxy-phenylisopropylamine) and DMMDA (2,5-dimethoxy-3,4-methylenedioxy-phenylisopropylamine)( 35, 36, 39). Structurally, these compounds are intermediates between the DOMlike compounds and the MDA-like compounds, in that they incorporate the methylenedioxy ring, together with one or two additional methoxy ring substituents (cf. Fig. 1). The human psychopharmacology of these compounds is also apparently intermediate between that of the "entactogenic" MDMA-like drugs, and the "hallucinogenic" DOM-like drugs (40). There is little or no information available on their behavioral effects in the drug discrimination assay. The present study provides the first information on the possible neurotoxicity and synaptosomal releasing ability of compounds in this intermediate class. While the results from the in vivo neurotoxicity studies presented here must be regarded as preliminary, they indicate that the presence of one or two methoxy substituents on the ring, in addition to the methylenedioxy substituent, abolishes the serotonergic neurotoxicity and dramatically attenuates the capacity of these agents to release 3H-DA from synaptosomes (Table 2, Fig. 5B); these derivatives still retain considerable potency as releasers of 3H-5-HT, however (Table 1, Fig. 5A). If the synaptosomal release of 3H-DA were a reliable index of serotonergic neurotoxicity, then the analogues in this intermediate class would be expected to lack neurotoxicity; however, some of these agents display similar potencies to ( --- )fenfluramine, ( --- )norfenfluramine, and ( +-- )MDE as 3H-DA releasers and these compounds are known to display serotonergic neurotoxicity. Although none of the analogues tested showed evidence of neurotoxicity at the comparatively low doses used in this preliminary study, it is possible that at higher doses they may exhibit activity as serotonergic neurotoxins.