Beginning in the nineteen-fifties, psychedelics had been used to treat a wide variety of conditions, including alcoholism and end-of-life anxiety. The American Psychiatric Association held meetings centered on LSD. Some of the best minds in psychiatry had seriously studied these compounds in therapeutic models, with government funding.
Between 1953 and 1973, the federal government spent four million dollars to fund a hundred and sixteen studies of LSD, involving more than seventeen hundred subjects. Through the mid-nineteen-sixties, psilocybin and LSD were legal and remarkably easy to obtain. Sandoz, the Swiss chemical company, gave away large quantities of Delysid—LSD—to any researcher who requested it, in the hope that someone would discover a marketable application.
Now, forty years after the Nixon Administration effectively shut down most psychedelic research, the government is gingerly allowing a small number of scientists to resume working with these powerful and still somewhat mysterious molecules.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:19AM
Its close enough, its a phenethylamine - well technically an amphetamine but all amphetamines are phenethylamines ("amphetamine" stands for "alphamethylphenethylamine"). Its in the same category as the 2C-x series, DO-x series, and TMA-x series of psychedelics, which also includes mescaline. Since you're mentioning Shulgin, you know that MDA and its derivatives are featured in PiHKAL. "Entactogen" vs "psychedelic" vs "entheogen" vs whatever is just semantics.