Herbal Ecstasy & The Billion Dollar Smart Drug Boom - Shaahin Cheyene

Mar 23, 2026

Shaahin Cheyene, entrepreneur who created the 1990s supplement Herbal Ecstasy and built multimillion-dollar businesses as a teen. He recounts rave culture origins, inventing a legal MDMA alternative, regulatory backlash, and commercializing plant medicines like salvia. Conversations cover indigenous entheogens, microdosing and integration, ibogaine’s therapeutic promise, and building media and product brands in health and wellness.

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ANECDOTE

Teen Built Herbal Ecstasy Into A Rave Phenomenon

Shaahin Cheyene created Herbal Ecstasy at 15 and sold it into the 1990s rave scene as a legal substitute for MDMA.
He used herbal stimulants like ephedra blends, sold covertly through club dealers, and scaled to over $100M before regulatory pressure hit.

INSIGHT

Government Crackdowns Fuel Public Curiosity

Media and regulatory scrutiny can paradoxically boost demand by signalling something works, Shaahin says TV coverage amplified interest in Herbal Ecstasy.
After crossing a revenue threshold the FDA/DEA targeted the product, increasing publicity and paradoxical consumer curiosity.

INSIGHT

Plants Have Personalities And Cultural Context Matters

Indigenous and tribal traditions treat plant medicines as individualized tools with cultural frameworks, not universal quick fixes.
Shaahin learned shamans use different plants for different people and context/ritual shapes outcomes.

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Herbal Ecstasy & The Billion Dollar Smart Drug Boom

In this episode of The Psychedelic Podcast, Paul F. Austin sits down with entrepreneur Shaahin Cheyene, creator of the controversial 1990s supplement "Herbal Ecstasy," which helped launch the legal smart-drug movement.

Find full show notes and links here: https://thethirdwave.co/podcast/episode-348/?ref=278

Shaahin shares how he built a multimillion-dollar business at just fifteen by creating a legal herbal alternative to MDMA during a shortage in the rave scene.

The conversation explores 1990s rave culture, the ethics of prohibition, and how natural supplements intersect with psychedelics, entrepreneurship, and personal freedom. They also discuss his later ventures in Amazon commerce, podcast media, and YouTube.

Shaahin Cheyene is the creator of Herbal Ecstasy, a supplement that helped spark the legal smart-drug movement in the 1990s. He built the business as a teenager into a multimillion-dollar company.

Over the past three decades, Shaahin has become an award-winning entrepreneur, Amazon expert, inventor, author, and filmmaker whose ventures have generated over a billion dollars in revenue. He is the founder of PodcastCola and Viral Mirage.

Through his businesses, Shaahin continues to mentor entrepreneurs and develop health and wellness products focused on optimizing human performance.

Highlights:

Creating Herbal Ecstasy at age fifteen
The MDMA shortage that created opportunity
Rave culture and the 1990s club scene
Natural supplements as legal alternatives
Freedom, regulation, and drug policy debates
Health and wellness entrepreneurship
Building product brands in emerging markets
Podcasting and YouTube as influence platforms

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The Practitioner Certification Program by Third Wave's Psychedelic Coaching Institute.
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