Crazy Town: Money. Marriage. Meth. by Sterling R. Braswell

Author:Sterling R. Braswell [Braswell, Sterling R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: methamphetamine, abuse, true crime
Publisher: Kallisti Publishing
Published: 2011-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

cønsequences

Perhaps the street chemists’ most enduring achievements have to do with the simplification and refinement of methods used to manufacture Ecstasy, or MDMA. Ecstasy was first synthesized by the Merck Company in Germany in 1912, an unplanned byproduct of an attempt to synthesize Hydrastinin, a blood-clotting agent to which one of Merck’s competitors held the patent. Merck filed for a patent for its discovery but didn’t specify a purpose; the patent was issued in 1914. Though it’s common belief that MDMA was intended as an appetite suppressant, there seems to be no evidence that it was ever marketed or used as such. In any case, and not surprisingly in light of subsequent developments, Merck plays down the importance of the synthesis and the patenting of MDMA.

But that doesn’t stop the revisionists from romanticizing the history of the drug. Urban legend has it that MDMA was issued to German soldiers in World War I, and according to one tale, the “Christmas truce of 1914” – a brief and unofficial cessation of hostilities on the Western Front that saw German and British troops joining together for a little merrymaking – was fueled in part by Ecstasy. Though it almost seems a shame to put a damper on such a bohemian and almost decadent scenario, it wasn’t X that the soldiers brought to the party; it was good old ethyl alcohol.

In any event, MDMA did not fade to oblivion. Sixty years after the War to End All Wars, in the 1970s, it was actually thought to be an effective aid in psychotherapy, and within a decade it would become the drug of choice among Ravers in England. Ecstasy was popular there for a half-dozen years before wending its way through security at Florida airports in the mid-eighties. In South Florida it quickly became popular within the gay community in general and the dance clubs in particular. From there it made its way up the east coast, and then leapfrogged over the Heartland to California where it was immediately accepted and thought tremendously hip.

Statistics confirm that the drug’s popularity has hardly abated. In 1998 U.S. Customs officials confiscated a total of 750,000 doses of Ecstasy. The following year they seized three million. In 2000 the total exceeded six million – and these are only among the drugs that smugglers attempt to bring in from abroad, and that were subsequently confiscated. And a shocking reality lay just under the surface. By then Ecstasy, like methamphetamine, was easily and widely manufactured in domestic clandestine labs, and this is the source of the overwhelming majority of the Ecstasy used today. Surely one of Ecstasy’s greatest assets is the fact that young people are among its most ardent fans, a seemingly built-in trait that keeps it perennially popular. A federally sponsored survey of high school students indicated that Ecstasy use among high school seniors had increased fifty-five percent in the twelve months from 1998 to 1999.

Its recent history is peculiar indeed, and bespeaks the mercurial nature of the amphetamine molecule.

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