Out of all these experiments, Shulgin is best known for resynthesizing MDMA, a compound first developed by German pharmaceutical company Merk in 1912, noticing it powerfully boosted empathy, and telling a few psychiatrist friends that it might have therapeutic potential. Those friends tried it out for themselves and were impressed with the results. They started using it with patients and those patients told their friends and pretty soon word hit the street of a love bomb in pill form and the Ecstasy craze was born.
