Too much negativity here..
Hey folks, I found this thread and I thought I would comment. There are MANY routes to MDMA. Most of them require chemicals that you probably can only buy through chem supply houses. However, there are a few that you can do which require only things that can be purchased OTC. The trick is getting your hands on Safrole bearing essential oil. Sassafras and camphor (brown and yellow) are watched very closely. Anything with Piperonal in it is also (since there is a synth for MDA with Piperonal floating around). You can definitely find oils that have lower safrole content, on the order of 10%, which are not terribly expensive.. or you can look into other methods.. google for "sustainable safrole" and learn about botany
Once you have the Safrole, it actually gets pretty easy. Shulgin's method is pretty simple, compared to some of the methods (using Nitromethane in a pressure vessel, and so on). If you want a reliable method using Nitromethane, look around for "osmium" and "nitromethane" and find his method which adds a step. Takes longer but it seems more reliable. There are other ways as well, using acetic acid (instead of formic acid) which are seriously OTC. Again.. RESEARCH. Bottom line is.. to synth anything from anything, you had BETTER have an organic chem textbook, have learned it, and have played around with chems and substances before, otherwise you risk making an inactive or even poisonous compound, without knowing you've done so. Let alone the whole explody problem when dealing with flammable liquids. Oh and BTW, the synth CAN be done without lab glassware.. but you need to know which steps require which conditions, and be handy with tools, tubes, seals, and so on. Some of them can be done in metal without harm, some cannot. Some can be done in normal glass, some cannot. Kitchen sections are great for Pyrex vessels and silicone gasket material (auto store) is great for seals. And yes, LSD is a -hard- synth.. one which you simply cannot do without $10k in lab equipment, along with proper isolation and so on (so you don't trip the second you make it
MDMA is NOT a -hard- synth. It's only difficult because the obvious precursors are so heavily watched.