Interview by Zevtone Magazine — August 1998

An Interview with Bruce Eisner
San Francisco, August 20, 1998

Masashi Kitazato: How was MDMA first used and how did you become involved in writing about it?

Bruce Eisner: “Long before I first use MDMA 1978, MDMA was discovered in Germany around the turn of the century. However, nobody used it back then. In the ‘Fifties, they experimented on animals and in, and in early 70’s people started using it including some psychologists who began experiment with it. Dr Alexander Shulgin wrote the first paper about it. At the same time, a psychologist whose name is never mentioned began traveling around the US, and bringing it to the attention of other psychologists and psychiatrists. A new book called “The Secret Chief” from MAPS Publishing documents this.

It became popular among people that experiment with psychedelics, because it was a different kind experience for them. This was because MDMA is almost entirely without hallucinations.

I first used it with an old Austrian female friend of mine in 1978 — and at the same time yuppies, psychotherapists and former ‘Sixties hippies began to use it, in an underground way. My first experimented was in La Jolla in San Diego, and it was quite remarkable experience. I had first used LSD and other psychedelics in the 60’s but this took me in another direction, it reminded me my first time in psychedelic while it push me more into the WORLD and RELATIONSHIPS with people, MDMA is focused and targeted for that kind of experience,

I then didn’t take it for several years with the exception of one session in Santa Cruz in 1979. Then, while visiting Timothy Leary in Los Angeles, in one of our private conversations, he asked me: “have you heard of a drug called XTC?” I said “no—what does it do? Timothy explained that he and his wife, Barbara had used it in New York shortly before they were married. They had wonderful bonding experience and wanted to MDMA again. I then asked him if this XTC might be MDMA and he said, “yeah, that’s it” and asked me to get him some.

In those days it was still legal in the US. So I got some and shared it with him and I had so much left I began more experiments with it. I had parties with 50 to 100 people – this long before raves – and almost all of us had amazing experiences of communication and personal understanding.

> I moved to Santa Cruz after graduating with an advanced psychology degree. The way it was used at the beginning was similar to the way that LSD had been used at the beginning, being spread from person to person. It wasn’t used on a large scale until a large amount was made in 1984 when it was used in widely in Texas. They began to have XTC parties in bars and Texas cattle ranches, articles had came about it in TIME magazine, and LIFE magazine among other places.

At that point, people were cautioned not to talk about XTC outside of their immediate circle of friends. But when the articles began to appear, Dr.Shulgin suggesting that I write about ahead of the magazine articles about to be published – to get out an intelligent message I decided to write a book about it since I had written widely about psychedelics for magazines in the past

While I was writing the book, the drug got so popular that the government made it illegal. One of the main reasons for this is that it competes against alcohol and other drugs. At the same time, there was the president’s wife, Nancy Reagan’s JUST SAY NO campaign against drugs.

Now things have changed, there is a lot more information about XTC. But back when the Ecstasy: The MDMA Story (by Bruce Eisner, Ronin Publishing, Berkeley, CA) was published in 1989, it was the first complete over of MDMA. The book looks at the creative, therapeutic, the recreational spiritual uses for the drug. The ultimate therapy or spiritual effects that it allows to people experience themselves free them from their normal experiences

SPY.D Networks: Do you know of any danger of MDMA or MDMA use?

Bruce Eisner: “Obviously, one of the things that occurred back in 1985 was the release of a study by the government on rats and MDMA. In large doses with a related drug MDA, researchers found changes in nerve ending of seretonin receptors. More recent studies on humans indicate that if you use it once a month or less, it has no danger. The seretonin play a role in the brain, and the MDMA release enormous amount of serotonin. One of the ideas about how it works is that brain will not create more seretoin if you use MDMA frequently — but it appears to be very safe drug. I myself was exposed to it several hundred times and I still don’t have any brain damage that I can detect. I never had seen any damages damaging effect. I believe that there is more harm done by laws AGAINST drugs then by the use of the drugs themselves. In the United States, it is called the War on Drugs and it is really a war on drug users.

Back when the drug was first made illegal, the scene became quiet for a while. In 1987, in Ibiza, Spain in Ibiza using LSD in what were then mostly called HOUSE PARTIES because of the “acid house” music they played. Soon these early RAVERS started using MDMA. The scene spread to England where raves grew to sizes as large as 20,000 people did. English RAVE promoters were targeted by the police. Many of the promoters came to the US and the scene moved to here — especially to San Francisco. The Rave movement really took off about 1989-90 and grew very big quickly.

By 1990 the first TOON TOWN parties started and the youth culture start MDMA in large all-night dance parties. And the quality of the drug got lower because it was illegal and the underground made it weak and impure. The younger generation sometime misused the drug — like taking mixing it with other drugs like speed and many times took it too frequently. So at that point, we saw harm from making it illegal because the medical profession wanted to use it for helping people and they were stopped.

I’m on an Internet mailing list called sfraves — I used to answer a lot of questions on that list, and I was in a rave here, and a guy took MDMA and other drugs, like amphetamines, and because the kids were afraid of the police, they didn’t take him to emergency room because they were afraid of the police and the young person died His father put an anti-ecstasy web site. So I wrote him that his son would live if MDMA was legal because he would be in a hospital but because it is illegal, the oppression made him be scared of the law so he died instead.

Today the youth are talking a lot of hard drugs, like speed and heroin, and people has access to any drug they want, and if drugs would be legal, then kids could be educated about drugs instead of using them without any knowledge. I have the ISLAND FOUNDATION named for the last book written by Aldous Huxley, the English author. In this novel he paints picture of a society that integrate the drugs into the culture in harmonious way and I thin that is what need to be done in our society. Drugs needs to be taken away from the criminal and legal system and be integrated into society in an intelligent way rather then to turn away from them and try not to look at them. Education about what each drug does and how to use each of them with a knowldege of their proper use is the key to solving the “drug problem!”