The idea of being followed around a nightclub by a researc her bent on taking a blood sample and measuring your temperature may not be your idea of a good time. But studies like this may be the only way to study the full effects of MDMA.

"I'm not saying that we must go out into clubs and do naturalistic studies and that they're the only things to do, but those sorts of studies must be included in the spectra of what we're doing," he says.

"People out there will use much higher doses of the drugs than would ever be allowed ethically in a controlled clinical setting.

"So it gives you the opportunity ... to perhaps pick up data that you could never replicate in a laboratory."