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Comment by LouisSayers | Hacker News Reader

It's good that people with serious issues can get some help via drugs like MDMA, but I do think people should be careful.

I feel that certain groups of people are a bit flippant about drug use, and seem eager to promote them as these great things.

As an example of why we should still remain vigilant - studies have shown MDMA users to literally have shrunken bits of their brain. http://www.maps.org/news/media/2462-media-reports-of-ecstasy...

I remain cautious of people that promote these things - we should know about the side effects so we can make informed decisions.

Overall, I think it's good to open up laws to allow usage of this, but let's not forget the people who suffer from or may be prone to suffer from drug abuse, and maybe think twice before promoting these things to friends.

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> studies have shown MDMA users to literally have shrunken bits of their brain. http://www.maps.org/news/media/2462-media-reports-of-ecstasy....

I only had a chance to skim that article, but it is equating tablets of ecstasy with MDMA, which is a false equivalence. "Ecstasy tablets" usually contain some MDMA, but can also contain a whole bunch of other shit, including cocaine, heroine, speed, MDA, etc. I think the jury's still out on whether pure MDMA has the same downsides from frequent use.

You are generally correct but I just want to add: tablets sold as ecstasy almost never contain heroin. See here: https://www.ecstasydata.org/results.php?start=0&search_field...

The most common additives are caffeine and methamphetamine, but 50%+ of the time, the pills are uncut MDMA. And these stats are distorted pessimistically, as people who are confident in what they are buying aren't likely to send drugs they paid for off to be tested.

https://www.ecstasydata.org/stats.php

And even then, there's a huge difference between "frequent recreational use" (and it's not uncommon for recreational users to take 10+ pills in a night, and to use every weekend) and "theraputic use". Habitual club users do tend to get pretty fuzzy after a while but they're not using the drug in any remotely responsible way. Taking them as a reason to keep MDMA illegal is like saying that drunks exist and so doctors shouldn't be allowed to use alcohol swabs.

I dunno about other places, but in Europe the average dose in a single tablet is ~200mg. This is largely due to a stupid law in the Netherlands where getting caught with a single tablet got you a slap on the wrist, but getting caught with multiple would have them try to pin "dealer" on you. The result is that in the past 10 years or so, the average dose per tablet went from 30mg to 200mg and I've even seen pills of 270mg (we have free, anonymous testing labs). On the bright side, they are much less often contaminated with amphetamines and caffeine nowadays...

AFAIK, the LD50 of MDMA isn't known, but as a frequent recreational user I can tell you that taking over 2000mg in a single night is definitely not common. I know a lot of people who use recreationally on a frequent basis, and none of them will go over 400mg on a night, and even 400 is considered pretty bonkers. Most folks who use every weekend are probably pretty new to the experience and haven't noticed the side effects when using more than once per month.

Wow, that's way larger a dose per pill than used to be common when I got my information. Goes to show how much local scene knowledge you need in order to have a chance of trying these substances safely, which is one of my big gripes with the 'war on drugs' phenomenon. Prohibition is definitely a case where the cure is worse than the disease.

Interesting link, and an important note on it:

> Additional commentary: Upon examining this report, human neuroscience researcher Matthew Johnson noted that the researchers did not do a convincing job at "matching" the ecstasy users and control participants on other drug use. The ecstasy users had considerably more use of other drugs, but the statistical tests of whether the groups differed in this respect lacked sufficient power to detect differences in drug use.

I agree. Not the brain stuff, but the slippery-drug-gateslope theory.

It's extremely unlikely that a single dose of MDMA will cause lasting brain damage.

What is problematic, however, is that it's probably much more of a gateway drug than, for example, grass. The path from MDMA to Speed to Meth is shallow enough that some non-neglible percentage of people will probably follow it.

Not everyone, obviously. But if it's 2% or 3%, that may not be worth it.

which leads to the only logical conclusion that you should totally try MDMA if you're the type of person that would never try MDMA :)

I highly disagree.

As opposed to MDMA grass doesn't have the full-blown in-your face effects. Just as it's way easier to become an alcoholic by drinking a few beers daily than by getting drunk off a bottle of vodka.

Moreover - the potential for abuse with grass here is way wider, since it's not that easy to come to work with the MDMA eyeballs, while getting a few puffs during lunchtime isn't such a big deal in certain professions.

The problem with drugs are the people who never tried them - rather than at least just shutting up and voting to legalise the research (to look at the maths), they end up with the same discussion having little evidence _every_single_time_.

I think it's more that the settings in which you use (and buy) MDMA is closer to "harder" drugs than weed.

Also it gets you into the whole party lifestyle. I've personnally used it only twice a few years ago, but the people I took it with (most of us first timers) now spend a huge amount of time planning their trips and talking about drugs, and moved on to LSD and different mixes. Tbh I think it's sad that this has become such a big part of their fun. I enjoyed it, and it definitely changed me, but even though I don't worry at all for them, I don't think that's a very sane way to spend week ends.

I've never been interested in smoking weed, and my edible experience was not fun enough to encourage me to continue there either. But still, I didnt feel so "close" to the drugs world when I was hanging around stoner friends than party-goers.

Never tried MDMA, so not to be some drug defender here. But I think its worth noting that study is a sampling of people who have used an average of 281 "MDMA" tablets over the past 6 years.

It could be that MDMA abuse just has negative affects versus something in a controlled setting for therapy.

Just anecdotally, I was a rave DJ for 5-6 years and rolled almost weekly for several years of that time frame, along with mixing and matching various other club drugs pretty frequently.

I was a mess as a human being for a big chunk of that time frame, but ten years later I’m a senior software developer making very good money, with a wife and kids. As far as I can tell, I’ve had zero long term negative effects from years of poly drug abuse, even though if you had talked to me at the time, you’d have thought I was a drug casualty. (Though I was working as a network engineer and getting promotions and raises the entire time.)

I wouldn’t _recommend_ going crazy with it like i did, but part of the problem I had was that all of the scare tactics I had heard were transparent lies, and the real issues around drug use were much more subtle that I had need prepared to look out for.

I would absolutely agree.

During my final years of the university I had spent 1 to 2 years being absolutely stoned - even had the same routine described in Infinite Jest, where I would plan for the week, how much and when should I smoke.

Over that time those who would notice me being sober would assume I was actually stoned, due to the visible changes in my behaviour. Again, not a single person knew me sober: not coworkers and neither any of my friends.

I had successfully finished the university since then and I am currently working a senior software engineer in London City.

Neither would I recommend trying the same - but what I did learn was that anything officially stated about that drug is way far away from the truth, and that _is_ the problem. The devil is in the subtleties.

Not to miminize, but tobacco and alcohol also have that effect in some scenarios.

Many drugs have powerful side effects — but we balance those effects against benefits. Chemotherapy is poison, yet it’s judged to be better than cancer, to take an extreme example.

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