Naturally the anti-drugs lobby had quite a bit to say about that, and one of the loudest complainents was drugs campaigner Jan Betts. Understandably so when you consider her daughter, Leah Betts, died after taking ecstasy at a nightclub. She was just 18 years of age.

Although PTSD is normally associated with returning veterans who have served active service, there is another train of thought which shows MDMA, the clinically derived or "pure" form of ecstasy, may assist patients who are suffering with PTSD as a result of a life trauma.

Trauma's such as rape for instance.

The human brain is a complex organism which has inbuilt, a number of self-defense mechanism's which it uses to help deal with high stress life-situations which can only be described as "out of the ordinary".

One of these mechanism's is the ability to "close out" parts of the brain which hold memories of situations it would rather not have to deal with, a little like locking them in a filing cabinet which no-one can access once its locked shut.  Not even the victim.

But in doing so, it (the brain) actually makes it difficult or impossible for the victim to achieve "closure". That point when a victim has come to terms with whats happened to them. Dealt with it. Drawn a line under it and is then able to move on in life.

So scientists in America have recently started using pure MDMA to open up these locked areas of the brain in a bid to help people suffering PTSD, and State Democrats MP Sandra Kanck has told State Parliament's Upper House that trials of the drug have shown excellent results for treating United States and Israeli soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ms Kanck was criticised by her own party back in 2006 for saying ecstasy could have helped people traumatised by bushfires which swept across Eyre Peninsula.

She concedes her latest suggestion will not be well-received at first.

"I imagine [what] the minister's kneejerk reaction will be ... but I hope that he will go beyond that and look at the science," she said.

"They've done it with rape victims, they've done it with war victims and everywhere they've tried it in these trials they have found it to be a superlative drug."

Ecstasy, a brief history:

Ecstasy
Back at the start of the year as well as at the start of this article, Richard Brunstrom made some comments regarding ecstasy, which had people with only a small (read:dangerous) amount of  actual knowledge of the topic up in arms, as he was quoted as saying "ecstasy is safer than aspirin".

But if you look the statistics of people who have been harmed as a result of aspirin, and the same as a result of ecstasy, you will see he is actually quite correct.

N-methyl-3,4-methylenedioxyphenylisopropylamine
"The holders of the original patent for MDMA, were the German pharmaceutical giant, Merck. The same company who were fined $4.5 Billion dollars recently, for lying about "wonder drug" Vioxx . $4.5 Billion which got paid straight into G-dubya's war fund.

The popular myth that it (MDMA) was marketed as an appetite suppressant is almost certainly untrue - the original purpose of the compound was as an intermediate in the manufacture of other products. A by-product.

Had it not been for the intervention of World War I, the world might have discovered Ecstasy sooner, but as it was, the substance was shelved and forgotten about.

The American military showed a fleeting interest in it during the Fifties, when they were experimenting with psychedelic chemicals in search of a "truth serum".

But they were all so off their heads on LSD that they failed to pay it any real attention. It was not until the Sixties that it was rediscovered by the legendary latter-day alchemist Alexander Shulgin.

Alexander Shulgin
The son of Russian emigres, Shulgin first became interested in the power of mind-altering chemicals when he was given morphine for an injured hand.

Later, as a young biochemist, he experimented with mescaline and became fascinated by psychedelic drugs.

While working for Dow Chemicals, he invented a profitable insecticide, and was rewarded with the opportunity to research anything he wanted.

He set about synthesising and testing psychedelic chemicals on the most reliable guinea-pig he could find - himself. A bit like Mr Brunstrom and his "Tazar" experiment I guess.

Although Dow eventually became uncomfortable with Shulgin's work and withdrew their support, he was able to continue, with the blessing of the US Government, thanks to his discrete approach and scientifically valuable results.

However, his license was withdrawn in 1994, soon after the publication of the landmark classic PIHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved), which contains detailed information of some 179 compounds he synthesised and sampled, number 109 being Ecstasy.

Shulgin didn't so much "rediscover" the compound, rather he picked up the ball and ran with it.

In 1967, one of his graduate students brought it to his attention, having experimented with it herself. After witnessing uniformly positive results in himself and his associates, in 1977 Shulgin introduced it to Leo Zoff, a psychologist friend nearing retirement.

When he tried the drug for himself, Zoff was so impressed that he deferred his retirement, and instead went around the country distributing MDMA to other psychologists.

It is estimated that some 4,000 professionals were introduced to the drug in this way.

The psychiatric profession greeted MDMA with quiet enthusiasm.

Following the hi-jacking of LSD by the hippie counter-culture and its subsequent criminalisation, everyone involved was keen that this new "wonder-drug" (there's that term again....canna zine) should be kept under wraps.

That didn't stop a large number of practitioners experimenting on themselves and their patients, with some very striking results.

However, few formal papers were ever written on the work of these pioneering therapists because of the drug's potential for controversy.

Needless to say, MDMA didn't stay secret for long.

A member of The Boston Group, the company that manufactured the then-legal drug for therapeutic purposes, spotted a whole new, untapped market for it, and enlisted a bunch of cocaine dealers to help him set up shop.

Pretty soon, the spin-off company was selling XTC in bars and clubs, and on credit card hot-lines.

By the time it was finally made illegal in the States in 1985, it had become a mainstay of New York's hedonistic gay clubs"
verbatim: ephidrina.org

Seldom if ever, will the compound MDMA be found responsible for the deaths of people ingesting it when the quantity and the purity of the drug are carefully controlled, and a recent cover story published by respected US publication the Washington Post , broke the story that the US government were actually using MDMA as Alexander Shulgin meant it to be used; as a treatment for psychological disorders.

But as a result of the prohibition of the substance in 1985, the only MDMA available on the street has been created in dirty, unhygienic council estate kitchens by drop out chemists who recognised a far more lucrative means to earning a living, synthesizing MDMA using a cockatil of illicit and licit chemicals.

DIY alchemy, which started, as history proves has always been the case, as a result of the pharmaceutical industry looking at more ways to capture and control the minds of the public at large.

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