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"The Love Drug"
from "The Marriage Of The Sun And Moon"
by Andrew Weil
Houghton Mifflin Co., publishers, 1980
MDA is known as the love drug in the American subculture
because of its reputation for producing loving feelings in groups
of people. The initials stand for 3,4-Methylene-dioxy-amphetamine
and the drug is a straightforward derivative of amphetamine,
first synthesized in Germany in 1910. Its effects on human beings
are much more interesting than simple stimulation. When I first
encountered MDA in 1970, I took it a number of times and since
then have observed its effects on a great many people.
The usual dose of MDA is 90 to 150 milligrams, taken orally
in a capsule. Its effects become apparent in twenty to sixty
minutes and persist for ten to twelve hours. People perceive the
onset of these effects differently. Some experience initial
nausea. Some feel a warm glow spreading through their bodies.
Most people become aware of a sense of physical and mental
well-being that intensifies gradually and steadily. MDA commonly
induces a state of profound relaxation and patience in which
anxiety and defensiveness are left far behind. "It is impossible
to imagine anything being a threat in that state," one user tells
me.
Unlike most stimulants, MDA does not increase motor
activity. In fact, it suppresses it in a remarkable way, so that
people can remain comfortable and content in one position for
long periods. This effect is most dramatic in people who are
heavily dependent on coffee and cigarettes, who are always in
motion of one sort or another. Under the influence of MDA they,
too, can be calm and motionless. Pharmacologists call this the
"antikinetic" action of the drug, but that is a negative way of
describing something very positive. I prefer to call it a
centering action.
The combined effects of relaxation and centering greatly
facilitate certain kinds of physical activities, such as yoga,
martial arts, and any disciplines requiring balance and
maintenance of posture. For example, i can maintain a headstand
longer when I take MDA than normally. Although it is extremely
pleasant just to lie still and enjoy a respite from nervous
activitiy in this state, i have tried rock climbing and swimming
after taking MDA and again find that my body works in a more
coordinated, smoother fashion and that I can do more than usual.
One novel experience, conferred temporarily by the drug, is the
ability to interact with kinds of external stimulation that would
ordinarily be painful and not get hurt. It may become poossible
to walk barefoot over sharp stones, for instance, and experience
no discomfort or injury, apparently because the muscles are so
free from imposed tension that they can respond with precise
counterpressure to the point of a stone. In this way, the skin
feels no net force.
Such experiences confirm in a powerful way the sense of
well-being. It fels as if nothing is threatening, and, in fact,
things in the external world behave differently. This theme
carries through to interpersonal relations. When people feel
well, centered, unthreatened, and aware of their own strength and
loveliness, they are able to drop many of the usual barriers that
develop in groups. It is common in group MDA experiences for
people to explore mutual touching and the pleasures of physical
closeness. Participants may feel very loving toward one another,
but the feelings are not explicitly sexual because MDA tends to
decrease the desire for orgasm. For many people the experience of
enjoying physical contact and feeling love with others in the
absence of a specific hunger for sex is unique and welcome. (Some
people do use MDA to heighten sexual experience.)
Other hungers and desires may also disappear int he MDA
state. Habitual users of tobacco feel no need to smoke. Chain
smokers of marijuana do not need their weed. Nail biters leave
their fingers alone. Compulsive talkers become quiet. Compulsive
eaters do not think about food. Moreover, this desireless
condition feels supremely natural and valuable. Becaue MDA
affects the senses minimally, everything appears as it does
usually. There are no hallucinations, illusions, or distortions,
simply a great aura of peace and calm. It is not possible to
pretend, as it often is with hallucinatory drugs, that the
experience is coming from without. Clearly, all of the important
effects, including the ability to be free of anxiety and desire,
are part of the human repertory, often unexpressed, to be sure,
but there nonetheless.
The trouble with obtaining this state through the use of a
drug is that it does not last. After five or six or eight hours,
the old habits begin to creep back. before long the experience of
loving peace and desirelessness is in the past. The value of the
drug is that it can show people that certain ways of being are
possible and available; it gives no information about maintaining
them.
I do not mean to paint a picture of MDA as a trouble-free
panacea. Like all psychoactive drugs, its effects vary greatly
with expectation and setting. People who take it in combination
wit alcohol and downers at wild parties with strangers are not
likely to realize its pootential. MDA also releases much energy
stored in the nervous system, so that those who take it often
feel tired and sluggish the next day. It should not be used
unless one is in good physical shape with adequate energy
reserves. For unknown reasons, it seems to be harder on womena nd
may activate latent infections or problems in the female
genitourinary tract. Women should take lower doses than men until
they are sure the drug agrees with them and should avoid the drug
altogether if their pelvic organs are ailing. Many people of both
sexes report that the drug causes tension of the muscles of the
jaw and face. In some individuals this effect becomes very
annoying, progressing to involuntary grinding of the teeth. All
of the adverse physical effects of the drug are dose-related.
Whenever I have interviewed people who have had bad experiences
with MDA, I have determined that they have taken excessive
doeses, been in poor settings, or taken other drugs masquerading
as MDA.
In the right hands, MDA is quitte safe. Out of hundreds of
experiences with it htat I have observed, I have seen only three
anxiety reactions. The medical potential of the drug is great and
quite unexplored. I have noted repeatedly that people under the
influence of MDA, when feeling high, centered, and free of
desire, are in a state complete anergy - that is, they manifest
no allergic reactions, even to allergens to which they have a
lifelong sensitivity. Asthma disappears, hay fever disappears,
cat allergies go away, and there are even no responses to
mosquito bites. This effect is temporary and appears to be the
analogue in the body of the mental experience of complete
relaxation and lack of anxiety. It might be reproducible without
the drug if we could learn to spend more time in that state. I
can envision a training program in allergy control in which
patients would go through ten seesions with decreasing doses of
MDA in settings designed to maximize the centering effect and
demonstrate the possibility of coexisting with allergens. By the
tenth session the dose would be zero and pateitnts would be doing
it all on their own.
Unfortunately, the federal government, having declared MDA
to be a drug with high abuse potential and no redeeming
therapeutic value, has placed it in a category (Schedule I) that
makes it unavailable to physicians and available to researchers
only with difficulty. I know of no ongoing research with MDA in
this country and consider this lack to be another result of
unenlightened policies on substances that could be helpful to us.
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