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Comment by friendlybus | Hacker News Reader

There are downsides to MDMA. Been through the advertised open and connected experience with a group of decade old friends, came out the other side feeling depressed that you can buy love in a pill and that my normal self would not get to those conversations normally. It feels inauthentic to observe people I have known for decades behave very differently to how I know them and would probably not have accessed that experience without a pill. Buying love in a pill robs the story of what it took to get to love normally. It stops being real, and starts being a side effect of a drug.

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Your problem, then, is believing that the pill contains something you can never generate without it.

This is a false belief.

You absolutely can, and should, make the conscious decision to be more like X in your everyday life, where X is how you behave under the influence of MDMA.

I had the same problem, and got a horrible down when the drug wore off, UNTIL I realized that what the pill actually does, is SHOW ME WHAT I'M CAPABLE OF FEELING. The very INSTANT I believed it was possible, all bad feels disappeared and I was left with an afterglow that lasted for weeks.

It's not a downside of MDMA, quite the opposite; a reflection of your own weakness, the knowledge of which helps you fix it!

The 'X' I was under with MDMA was a feeling I can reach when I'm in a loving relationship and have had my needs met. I don't need a pill to get there, but knowing all the meaning and work I put into getting to a relaxed and contented atmosphere can be bought for a few dollars a pill fundamentally changes what those feelings are worth and mean for the worse.

The feeling of bliss should come from a successful relationship with others, not some drug.

> There are downsides to MDMA.

According to here[0], you are quite correct:

Amphetamines are a class of psychostimulant drugs that are widely abused for their stimulant, euphoric, empathogenic and hallucinogenic properties. Many of these effects result from acute increases in dopamine and serotonin neurotransmission. Subsequent to these acute effects, methamphetamine and 3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) produce persistent damage to dopamine and serotonin nerve terminals. This review summarizes the numerous interdependent mechanisms including excitotoxicity, mitochondrial damage and oxidative stress that have been demonstrated to contribute to this damage. Emerging non-neuronal mechanisms by which the drugs may contribute to monoaminergic terminal damage, as well as the neuropsychiatric consequences of this terminal damage are also presented. Methamphetamine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) have similar chemical structures and pharmacologic properties compared to other abused substances including cathinone (khat), as well as a relatively new class of novel synthetic amphetamines known as ‘bath salts’ that have gained popularity amongst drug abusers.

0 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870191/

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