> An amine and a proton complex with each other to form an ammonium ion
> (lewis base + lewis acid), our complex ion.
you've got a point there.
but while technically H+ is a lewis acid, it's an exception in that
you wouldn't call an ammonium compound a complex. all Hs on the nitrogen
are equivalent, so it's just a covalent bond. (ok, you could say that N---
is a quadruple lewis base, but this would be quite a stretch, wouldn't it?)
for this type of compound the lewis acid/base theory just doesn't fly as
well as the broensted one (yeah, i know - lewis is a superset of broensted).
and even if you call it a complex, the correct way to write it would be
[MDMA*H]Cl or something like that. or Na[CH3COO*H]. i don't think i could
get used to this.
so imho MDMA*HCl or MeNH2*HCl is slightly wrong. from a formal point of
view it describes what happens (MDMA gives an electron pair to HCl), but
it gives an incorrect picture of the actual electron configuration. (as
shown by indole_amine's confusion)