Feature documentary · 2026 · 90 min
Prophet
of Ecstasy
The search for enlightenment brings Ecstasy to the world.
Synopsis
A priest gave the world Ecstasy. Then the world made it illegal.
Prophet of Ecstasy explores art, politics and consciousness through the improbable life of Michael Clegg — the former Catholic seminarian who introduced MDMA to the world, and gave it the name Ecstasy.
Clegg believed he had found a sacrament. He moved from the seminary to the largest underground distribution network in America, selling millions of pills before his arrest in 1992. Around him: a Filipina-American chemist producing up to fifty kilograms a month of what was considered the purest MDMA in the world; a Harvard-trained therapist working in the psychedelic underground; a marine-life activist turned distributor; and a researcher who has spent forty years trying to make the same molecule legal medicine.
Their destinies are bound to MDMA's own — discovery, criminalization, and a slow re-emergence from the shadows into FDA breakthrough-therapy trials.
The people
Six lives, one molecule.
Interviewed across four decades of history, from the Blue Ridge foothills of Georgia to the labs of Panama and Brazil.
Michael Clegg
The Prophet
The former seminarian who became the world's biggest Ecstasy dealer, and then an enlightened yogi. Interviewed at his home in the Blue Ridge foothills.
Carina Leveriza
The Chemist
A Filipina-American chemist and one of the largest underground producers of MDMA in the 1980s — up to 50 kg a month, considered the best in the world.
Rick Doblin
The Advocate
Founded MAPS in 1984 and has campaigned for MDMA research ever since. The FDA later designated his PTSD trials a breakthrough therapy.
Debby Harlow
The Therapist
A Harvard graduate from the psychedelic therapeutic underground of the 1970s, and a founder of the Earth Metabolic Design Lab in 1984.
Bob McMillen
The Distributor
A marine-life activist and retired marijuana distributor, cured of cocaine addiction through MDMA therapy — and later Clegg's distributor.
David Carlson
Organic Chemist
Hired to run MDMA labs in Panama and Brazil, supplying the European market as American enforcement closed in.
Official clips
Three minutes in.
Ecstasy as Eucharist
Clegg on why he believed he was administering a sacrament, not selling a drug.
A Deep Relationship with a Molecule
Carina Leveriza on precision, purity and forty years of secrecy.
A New Kind of Bar Mitzvah
Rick Doblin on rites of passage, and what he thinks the molecule is for.
The filmmakers
Who made it
Elias C. Varoutsos
Director
A background in psychology and film, drawn to stories where belief and chemistry meet.
Karen Cho
Co-director · Writer
An award-winning documentarian known for socio-political work on Canadian history and identity.
Lori Braun
Executive Producer · Writer
Owner of Laurus Productions and a producer-writer with over 100 hours of television across comedy, science and crime.
Sergeo Kirby
Producer
Co-founder of Loaded Pictures, with two decades of internationally co-produced documentary behind him.
Credits
Full billing block
Directed by Elias C. Varoutsos
Co-directed by Karen Cho
Written by Lori Braun, Charles Beaudette, Karen Cho
Cinematography Alexandre Bussière
Editor Max Chalifoux
Music Louis-Joseph Cliche
Producer Sergeo Kirby
Executive Producer Lori Braun
Produced with the participation of Fifth Season · Radio-Canada · INA Noble Arts · SODEC Québec · Canada Media Fund · Telefilm Canada · Government of Canada · Documentary Channel
