Hacker News Reader

MDMA is the chemical name, like ethanol is the chemical name for alcoholic beverages.

Seems like an imperfect analogy because straight MDMA would be called ecstacy whereas straight ethanol would not be called beer or wine.

My understanding had always been the two were synonymous.

In my party days,I always understood MDMAas being pure MDMA while X was MDMA mixed with coke, meth, or heroin to make the drug effects last longer, as the half life of MDMA is smaller than those other three.

> In my party days,I always understood MDMAas being pure MDMA while X was MDMA mixed with coke, meth, or heroin to make the drug effects last longer, as the half life of MDMA is smaller than those other three.

This is a common misconception. MDMA is often presented as "pure" (often by the people selling it), but in reality, almost all MDMA outside of a pharmaceutical setting is impure. Most MDMA contains some amount of methamphetamine[0], but not necessarily enough to be subjectively identifiable by a user as "meth".

Also, the half-life of MDMA is longer than cocaine, but shorter than methamphetamine.

[0] MDMA is actually a methamphetamine, but it's not the one that people are referring to when they say "meth" colloquially.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com