This is something you might be intrested, a variation of the Leuckart, that doesn't even use formic acid and has yields reported as high as 70%
"The setup used is the same as in fig. 12(remember no vacuum!). and into the rxn flask is placed 275ml formamide, 80g MDP2P and 55ml of 9% glacial acetic acid (50ml dH2O + 5ml GAA) This is slowly heated to 140-150°C in the oil bath and kept there for 5 hours. The lower the temperature at which a sustained reaction (bubbling) can occur the better. Suffice to say that 150°C should not be passed. Very early on the water and AcOH will have distilled over and can be discarded.
After 5 hours the reaction is stopped and the flask cooled. The formyl-MDA can be isolated and hydrolized by any of the ways Strike just mentioned a few paragraphs back, but this method offers a third, very convenient way which should be tried. What the chemist does is forget about letting the flask and its contents cool. Instead, she removes the oil bath, places the flask back on the stirplate (distillation setup still attached), attaches a vacuum and distills off all the formamide. What remains is a dark, heavy formyl-MDA precipitate that is allowed to cool down while the chemist makes up a solution of 150g KOH, 500ml EtOH and 125ml dH2O. This solution is poured into the formyl-MDA residue, the condenser from the distillation set is plopped in vertically and the solution refluxed for a mere 30 minutes. The solution is then acidified with concentrated HCl solution, the distillation setup reattached and all the ethanol distilled off under vacuum. What is left is MDA and aquaeous HCl and from this the MDA is liberated, as usual, by basifying with NaOH, extracting with solvent, drying the solvent and distilling to get MDA in 70% yield."
figure 12 shows just a simple distillation setup in an oilbath on a stir/hotplate.
--psyloxy-- Yeah mdma is funny but has anyone ever experienced ayahuasca ?