''But how much do you have to take? And how do you know it's not toxic?'' Leo asks, fingering the white powder in its petri dish.
''It's less toxic, Leo, don't you see? Plus it's much more effective, so you don't have to take as much. That way you don't get any side effects either. I'm on it right now!''
Leo had dropped a tab of acid about two hours ago but it wasn't doing anything. He licks his finger, dabs it in the mound of powder, and puts it on his tongue.
''That's a pretty big hit,'' Becker warns. "Probably about eight doses.''
Leo just shrugs and swallows. He can handle it. ''How fast can you make this stuff?''
''That's the joy. It's really simple to make. Just think of it as stir, filter, wash, and dry. That's all there is to it.''
As Becker goes over an ingredients checklist for a mass-production schedule, Leo collapses into a hammock and waits for the new drug to take effect. Both believe that they are on to something new and important.
By designing new chemicals, psychopharmacologists like Becker design reality from the inside out. They decide what they'd like reality to be like, then – in a kind of submolecular shamanic visionquest – compose a chemical that will alter their observations about reality in a specific way. Then, Leo, by distributing the new chemical to others who will have the same experience, literally spreads the new designer reality. The world changes because it is observed differently.
The other reason to make new drugs is to create unknown and, hence, legal psychedelics before the FDA has a chance to classify them as illegal. A relatively new law, however, has made that difficult. The Analog Substance Act classifies yet-to-be-designed chemicals illegal if they are intended to serve the same function as ones that are already illegal. This law was passed shortly after the "Ecstasy craze" in Texas, where the new, mild psychedelic got so popular that it was available for purchase by credit card at bars. As a result, according to Becker, "Lloyd Bentsen put a bee in the bonnet of the Drug Enforcement Agency, and it was stamped illegal fast."
But rather than simply stamping out Ecstasy use, its illegality prompted chemists like Becker to develop new substances. Like computer hackers who understand the technology better than its adult users, the kids making drugs know more about the chemistry than the regulatory agencies. The young chemists began creating new drugs just like Ecstasy, with just one or two atoms in different places. In Becker's language, "Thus, Ecstasy began to stand for MDMA, MDM, Adam, X, M-Ethyl, M methyl 3-4-methyline dioxy, also N-ethyl, which was sometimes called Eve, which had one more carbon, or actually CH2, added on." This flurry of psychopharmacological innovation prompted the Analog Act, and now almost everything with psychedelic intent is illegal or Schedule 1 (most controlled).
Despite its illegality, Ecstasy, even more than LSD and mushrooms, has remained on the top of the cyberian designer-substance hit parade. LSD, mushrooms, and mescaline – all powerful, relatively long-acting psychedelics – bifurcated, so to speak, into two shorter-acting substances, the mild, user-friendly Ecstasy, and the earth-shatteringly powerful and short-acting DMT. Both drugs can be found in many carefully manipulated chemical variations, and epitomize the psychedelic-substance priorities in Cyberia.
The E Conspiracy
The circuits of the brain which mediate alarm, fear, flight, fight, lust, and territorial paranoia are temporarily disconnected. You see everything with total clarity, undistorted by animalistic urges. You have reached a state which the ancients have called nirvana, all seeing bliss.
--Thomas Pynchon on MDMA
Cyberians consider Ecstasy, or E as it's called by its wide-grinning users, one of the most universally pleasant drugs yet invented. While negative experiences on Ecstasy are not unheard of, they are certainly few and far between. Everyone knows somebody who's had a bad acid trip. Ecstasy does not carry the same stigma, which may be why people don't "freak out" on it.
As Dr. Schoenfeld explains, another part of the reason may be that some of the substances aren't yet illegal, so users don't have the same negative associations and paranoia. In addition, according to the doctor, the Ecstasy drugs are nonaddictive and shorter-acting.
''As you know, there are drugs being used that the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency] isn't aware of. Once they get aware of them, they'll try to make them illegal; but people who take substances are becoming aware of these new drugs, which are nonaddictive, and which don't last as long as the other drugs used to last. They don't have the same adverse effects. For example, there are a few reports of people having bad experiences with MDMA or occasional freak-outs, but it's highly unusual. And even with LSD it wasn't that common to have freak-outs. You'd hear about the cases where people tried to fly or stop trains or things like that, but compared with the amount of use there was, that was uncommon. With a drug like MDMA, it's still less common for people to have bad experiences.''
But E is not just a kinder, gentler acid. The quality of the E-xperience is very different. Bruce Eisner wrote the book Ecstasy: The MDMA Story, still the most authoritative and enlightening text on the drug's history and use. His scholarly and personal research on the chemical is vast, and he describes the essence of the E-xperience welclass="underline"
''You discover a secret doorway into a room in your house that you did not previously know existed. It is a room in which both your inner experience and your relations with others seem magically transformed. You feel really good about yourself and your life. At the same time, everyone who comes into this room seems more lovable. You find your thoughts flowing, turning into words that previously were blocked by fear and inhibition.
''After several hours, you return to your familiar abode, feeling tired but different, more open. And your memory of your mystical passage may help you in the days and weeks ahead to make all the other rooms of your house more enjoyable.''
The main advantage of E is that it allows you to ''take your ego with you.'' Acid or even mushrooms can have the unrelenting abrasiveness of a belt sander against one's character. E, on the other hand, does not disrupt "ego integrity'' or create what psychologists call ''depersonalization.'' Instead, the user feels as open and loving and connected as he might feel on a stronger psychedelic but without the vulnerability of losing his "self'' in the process. If anything, E strengthens one's sense of self, so that the issues that arise in the course of a trip seem less threatening and infinitely more manageable. E creates a loving ego resiliency in which no personal problem seems too big or scary. This is why it has become popular in the younger gay and other alternative-lifestyles communities, where identity crises are commonplace.
E-volution
"You touch the darkness - the feminine, the gross, whatever you see as dark," Jody Radzik explains to Diana as they hand out flyers in the street for a new house club. "When you're on Ecstasy, the drug forces you to become who you really are. You don't get any positive experience from a drug like cocaine; it's a lie. But with Ecstasy, it can have a positive effect on the rest of your life!''
Jody and Diana are on their way to a club called Osmosis, a house event which occurs every Thursday night at DV8, a downtown San Francisco venue, for which Radzik serves as promotional director. Promoting house, though, is almost like promoting Ecstasy. The drug and subculture have defined and fostered each other. Osmosis is proud of the fact that it mixes gay, straight, ''glam,'' and house culture, and Radzik – a gamine, extremely young thirty-year-old with a modified Hamlet haircut and a mile-a-minute mouth – credits E with their success.