Eisner, Bruce

In the two books already on the market about MDMA — Through the Gateway of the Heart by Sophia Adamson (Four Trees Publications, Box 31220, San Francisco, CA 94131, 15.50) and Ecstasy The MDMA Story by Bruce Eisner (ibid.) — quite a number of accounts are given by individuals who not only felt their bodies releasing "character armor" and other physical stress, but who actually came to feel that MDMA sessions had attenuated arthritic or skeletal problems. This action is not well understood as of yet, but the testimony is quite persuasive. 

Predictability and Reliability. With the classic psychedelics, there is almost always a substantial element of unpredictability. While the experience of MDMA is somewhat affected by circumstance, it is remarkably consistent. Bruce Eisner, in introducing his study of MDMA, had this to say about its reliability ... 

Robert Masters, coauthor of The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience and Psychedelic Art, is a therapist who has been impressed with MDMA s efficacy in treating severe depression. He has discussed this in correspondence with Bruce Eisner, who summarized Masters position ... 

By 1965, the first massive manufacturing and distributing operation had come into being—Owsley s marvelous "tabs. Yet Stanley Owsley came from a background of interest in amphetamine, and some users soon raised questions as to whether he liked to add "speed to the product. Bruce Eisner, who has written much about the question of psychedelic purity, talked with Owsley s lab assistant, Tim Scully, and believes that speed was never added. 

Along with greater sophistication about the many roles played by psychoactive compounds in people s lives and the possibility of exposure to a wider variety of psychedelics, users in the future will also be beneficiaries of recent techniques that (1) aim at realizing the "peaks of the psychedelic experience through nondrug means, and/or (2) are designed to enhance the productiveness of sessions. Bruce Eisner, writing about such contemporary research, sketched some examples ... 

These matters are raised here to indicate how difficult it is to establish the purity of a psychedelic substance with certainty. Bruce Eisner has discussed issues arising from this situation in "LSD Purity Cleanliness is Next to Godheadliness (High Times, January 1977). He has since remarked that... 

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