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My experiences echo this nearly to a T.

I skipped a few grades in school and became a social outcast. I was hazed out of one school entirely and sort of gave up on understanding people for a while. My first experience on MDMA was like a physical light switch was flicked on inside of my body. I went from only wearing black/white/gray clothes to being the one known to wear loud colors and really putting myself out there visually and socially. I ended up feeling the need to move away from my home town because I felt "too popular." I couldn't go for a run without someone stopping on the side of the street to offer me a ride to wherever. This sort of behavior continued into music festivals where I learned to manage and lead large scale groups of ~strangers in tough environments/confusing mindsets.

I thought these skills wouldn't prove valuable in the work world, but, to my elation and surprise, it was the opposite. A lot of engineers are really smart but a bit weaker on the political and social side of things. I undoubtedly nuked a few brain cells acquiring all these experiences, but hey I can still code just fine and now I love getting in there, talking to people about their feelings and communicating about how I am feeling, and do so with a belief that others are interested in hearing/seeing me.

10/10 would do it all over again.

Really good experience myself here.

The key overall is always to not abuse and that should be adressed by education, not just mindlessly prohibit everything (even tho it's not too bad to forbid stuff somethimes).

> The key overall is always to not abuse and that should be adressed by education

Who is to say what's "abuse" really.

Why would taking MDMA in a therapist chair be "medicine" and taking it and dancing all night long be "abuse"? Because that's how they're going to try and control it. I'm not even sure which would be healthier for you or more effective. Like, obviously there's a point where it's too much, but if you let the "medical establishment" define it, it'll definitely be defined as any point in which people might actually be having fun.

Nobody in this thread said that taking it to dance all night is abuse; dance can be amazingly cathartic.

I've known people who did it nearly daily for long stretches, and others who would only take it once a month and take Prozac after to mitigate and potential damage. I'm not saying that the latter is the only non-abusive way of taking it, but clearly the former would constitute abuse.

This is one of the most tragic things to me about psychoactive substances in general. I've had and heard of very significant positive experiences from substances, and yet also, obviously, many people become alcoholics all the time, or become barely-functioning stoners who "wake and bake" every single day and are incapable of really anything anymore.

I think it's critical that all of us (however we feel about the 'morality' of doing drugs) have the humility to acknowledge that there isn't any policy "solution" to these problems. These are humanity problems (really, animal problems, since any animal can experience addiction and chemical dependence).

It is arguably deeply unfair to prohibit people from experiencing the best that these substances have to offer (and I don't just mean in a therapy setting). But it's also dangerous to "let" them get in over their heads. Unfortunately though, the verb "let" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Even well-meaning and trusted parents aren't able to effectively guarantee their children's safety (either with prohibition or with a more lenient, discussion-based strategy). How much less effective then, is a government which isn't and can't ever be completely trusted by its citizens? No matter what, we won't 'solve' this with some perfect policy.

> I've had and heard of very significant positive experiences from substances, and yet also, obviously, many people become alcoholics all the time, or become barely-functioning stoners who "wake and bake" every single day and are incapable of really anything anymore.

_Almost everyone_ who uses recreational drugs or drinks stops drinking or doing drugs _on their own_ without any intervention. There's this idea that's been propagated that drugs are this evil demon that you can never shake once you get addicted, because for people who deal with drug addicts professionally, _all they ever see_ are people who haven't quit drugs almost by definition. However, those drug addicts are a _small_ percentage of all the people who have used drugs.

https://www.drugfoundation.org.nz/matters-of-substance/archi...

Drug policy is basically based on the survivorship bias fallacy.

Enlightening article. Indeed, the high comorbidity of substance abuse disorders with other developmental, behavioral, and/or executive function disorders, suggests that a lot of it stems directly from untreated congenital conditions. Often the lack of treatment and exacerbation of the condition stem directly from socioeconomic conditions.

In other worlds, well-adjusted people with support networks rarely "get addicted" to drugs (as if they are some sort of cursed potion that anyone who consumes is afflicted).

Because MDMA is highly neurotoxic if you're not careful with supplementation and do it too often?

General rule of thumb is to not even do it more than 1x-2x a year. Even then most people say that it doesn't feel as good over time.

The claimed neurotoxicity was based on flawed study that has since been retracted [1]. They mistakenly used methamphetamine instead of MDMA.

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1074501

That is one study from 2002. There's dozens of more recent studies on this subject. By neurotoxicity the question is does frequent use of MDMA make it more difficult for your brain to produce serotonin? Research and anecdotal evidence from recreational users point to this being the case.

When your brain becomes dependent on a drug that fries your brain temporarily with serotonin you will not feel as good without the drug if your brain and body becomes dependent on it to trigger normal serotonin production. Doesn't sound like a fun time to me.

https://dancesafe.org/drug-information/is-mdma-neurotoxic/#1

On the spectrum from never doing it, to every weekend until your brain stops being able to produce serotonin, how often would you recommend as reasonable?

I'm not claiming I know the long term negative side effects on MDMA use, but like any powerful drug why would I not suspect something that floods your brain with serotonin would not end up in a situation where your brain anticipates the drug and creates an dependency situation where your brain does not produce serotonin in normal levels without it? Anecdotal evidence from long term users in MDMA forums suggest lots of frequent users don't ever feel the same without it.

Bizarre we have gotten to the point where the default is "take powerful drug because no scientist has proven not to in a century long twin study!!"

Long term abuse to the point that "users don't ever feel the same without it" is quite concerning and very problematic, but once or twice over the course of a lifetime seems fine.

In absence of a century long twin study, I'd weigh the opinions of millions of people who've taken it a few times, over the secondary source of someone who read something off some random Internet forum (reddit?) from people who are seriously abusing it (like Thursday, Friday, Saturday every weekend).

> but like any powerful drug why would I not suspect something that floods your brain with serotonin would not end up in a situation where your brain anticipates the drug and creates an dependency situation where your brain does not produce serotonin in normal levels without it?

Because this is such an incredible oversimplification of what goes on in the brain. SSRIs also dramatically increase the overall serotonin flux, to the point where if you quit suddenly, the brain is left in a deficit, the effects of which can be quite unpleasant. And contrary to the "serotonin is happy chemical, more serotonin = more better" myth, the net result of all this serotonin is that 5-HT receptors actually downregulate. Ultimately, the result of all these changes is an increase in neuroplasticity.

Blasting 5-HT receptors (eg by LSD, psilocin, etc, and to an extent MDMA) is also shown to increase neuroplasticity.

Neurotoxicity and psychopharmacology are extremely complicated. It's beyond reductionist to say "drug floods brain ergo bad".

You are wrong. Your own link gets a claim to neurotoxicity which is 'backed up' by this very same flawed study:

[1] Hatzidimitriou, McCann, and Ricaurte, “Altered serotonin innervation patterns in the forebrain of monkeys treated with MDMA seven years previously: Factors influencing abnormal recovery”, The Journal of Neuroscience, June 15, 1999, 19(12):5096-5107. Abstract.

The same Ricaurte that 'accidentally' gave excessive methamphetamine to monkeys intsead of MDMA. The same study.

so you'd have no problem recommending indefinite weekly use of MDMA because in your mind no one has proven there's long term negative side effects?

Don't strawman me. I just pointed out your link relies on a totally flawed study.

I recommended nothing, and I didn't say there were no negative side effects. See HN guidelines please.

Your own link says that the axons fairly quickly regrow from any damage, if it occurs at all which is not at all a settled matter, and it further says that large scale studies show no differences between former users and non-users. Again, these claims of neurotoxicity are exaggerated.

...in your mind frequent long term use of MDMA has no negative long term side effects?

Neither of us have any idea of the side-effects of undefined "frequent", "long-term" use, that's my point, and contrary to what you claimed. No serious harm is apparent from the sparse evidence we do have though.

Bizarre logical reasoning. So because no one has completed a 100 year study on a powerful drug the default should be to feel safe using it long term instead of not using it?

And no there's plenty of anecdotal evidence from long term users who never feel the same after frequent use, even after stopping. But again by your logical reasoning because there's no peer reviewed study on humans that sufficiently backs this up people should ignore that.

What's bizarre is how you repeatedly misconstrue someone pointing out that your claims of harm from MDMA are not supported by evidence, into claims that it's perfectly safe to use with no qualifications.

> And no there's plenty of anecdotal evidence from long term users who never feel the same after frequent use, even after stopping.

People who use one drug often use others, and often concurrently. People with a history of mental health are also drawn to drugs. We use science to disentangle confounders like this.

I have no problem with people advising caution in using powerful drugs, and advising against them fully if they have a family history of mental health issues. I do have a problem when people try to use flawed science to give this caution a false sense of authority, or that elevate anecdotes to the level of general scientific advice.

> And no there's plenty of anecdotal evidence from long term users who never feel the same after frequent use, even after stopping.

Aging is a thing. Most adults don’t “feel the same” after the passage of a “long term” span of time, regardless of their level of substance use.

Do you have any evidence that it does? Sounds like you're trying to straw-man people because you have zero evidence that isn't just straight up fraud.

From personal experience of having done it almost weekly for a long stretch (multiple years), and then quitting cold turkey, it took me a few months to fully land back in reality, but I've since had a successful career as a software developer, with a happy and healthy family life, and that's typical of the people who I knew back them that I've kept in touch with.

Whatever the serotonin generation issues are (and I definitely had them, and that's why I stopped taking it), they seem to recover over time.

Does this imply that Science, similar to drugs (religion, etc), can also distort human perception of reality?

What's next, internet discussion forums? Is anywhere safe??? :)

I do it once a week when I can get it, over long periods. No impairment and it feels fine, no "doesn't feel as good" happening.

(Personal observation, everyone's different though)

The "medical establishment" is full of people who like to get high off molly and dance the night away on their weekends. If the medical establishment can say, with science, "this is, chemically speaking, how much you can do, and how often, and here are the supplements to take, so you don't lose the magic", that would be amazing!

While not 100% exactly what you're looking for, Huberman Labs episode on MDMA is pretty close. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slUCmZJDXrk The "don't lose the magic" supplementation is addressed but it is speculation based on anecdotal evidence and conjecture.

Here's a piece of education : MDMA drops your serotonine levels, and they take 6 weeks to fill up. This means that if you take it more than 4 times a year, you spend more than half of your time in a abnormal state.

To me you can do it for like a year maybe if you wanna have fun, but staying in that state for more than that is on the edge of abuse.

Once again, I support trying MDMA. But most people who do it don't do their research

I found MDMA similarly eye-opening, dealing with depression and anxiety. It was the first time I truly felt free of anxiety, like it just vanished and I could feel somewhat normal. This was many many years ago, and since then I use these experiences as a sort of guiding star. It's good to take some every now and then to realign and recalibrate with this feeling.

Similarly for me, MDMA opened me out to the possibility of feeling good without the drug.

Despite the intense good feeling while you are on it, the understanding that I am basically OK persists afterwards.

> I overdid it. A lot of people over did it

Growing up in a poor neighborhood I had friends who were going to parties at like 13/14. MDMA, speed, LSD.

Still good friends with some of them and they are mostly ashamed of that period, and you can see severe permanent effects of abuse on some (again we knew each other since childhood).

I tried what I could get my hands on because I was curious, and I would go out with this crowd occasionally. It's far from roses and rainbows - getting emotionally unstable people riled up - I've seen/heard scary shit.

You can draw parallels to alcohol - drinking can be great for socialisation - and alcohol can ruin people, so I guess you could say it's unfair that one is illegal.

But I don't share the sentiment either way - "I wish alcohol/drugs were available to more people" is not something I'd like to see in practice.

Alcohol is not life changing like MDMA. Has alcohol ever received any kind of therapeutic recognition, or emergency use authorization to treat PTSD like MDMA? This is a poor analogy IMO.

> Has alcohol ever received any kind of therapeutic recognition, or emergency use authorization to treat PTSD like MDMA?

The regulatory status is irrelevant IMO. Personally, I know that many of the most profound experiences of my life have been mediated by alcohol. My life has certainly been changed by it.

As someone who has used a larger number of psychedelics, MDMA, ayahuasca and so on - yes, alcohol at 16 for a few years was absolutely life changing for many of the same reasons: increased sociability and being able to talk to people uninhibitely about many things. I didn't overdo it and haven't drunken alcohol in years.

Alcohol can be life changing, but I said "not life changing like MDMA". All of the sociability benefits you received from alcohol are achievable via other means that don't require the use of drugs, like CBT and plain old practice/experience. That is simply NOT the case for MDMA and depression and PTSD. If you think so, then show me examples of alcohol making someone relieved, normal and happy in 30 mins after literally years of depression and suicide attempts. They just aren't in the same league.

I'm pretty sure alcohol's benefits have just been acknowledged since antiquity. Social lubrication/chemical courage and delaying pain... both of which can help immensely with the bottom-most tiers in Maslow's hierarchy (physiological and safety). MDMA arguably assists with achieving some of the higher tiers, however it seems like a relatively niche solution that many people do not handle well.

> You can draw parallels to alcohol

Fossil fuels, etc.

> But I don't share the sentiment either way - "I wish alcohol/drugs were available to more people" is not something I'd like to see in practice.

Fits the fossil fuels (and modern culture?) analogy nicely!

empath-nivana's life was saved through illicit MDMA usage. They didn't shoot up a school or music concert, didn't send out mysogynistic screeds to women online, didn't abuse or kill a sex worker, didn't commit suicide, or any other number of awful things going on in the world committed by emotionally blunted individuals. I wish the emotional revitalization that comes from MDMA, the healing, being able to step away from the trauma, the openness, the vulnerability - I wish that on everybody.

I wish people were well-adjusted and have fulfilling and happy lives. If it takes broadly available MDMA to get there, then so be it.

> I wish the emotional revitalization that comes from MDMA, the healing, being able to step away from the trauma, the openness, the vulnerability - I wish that on everybody [...] If it takes broadly available MDMA to get there, then so be it.

> Completely unable to relate to other human beings, afraid of being touched, never had a girl friend or any kind of real friendship.

I'm convinced that most people identifying with this don't know how to articulate what their problem is. The magic words: you're struggling with intimacy.

Where MDMA isn't an option, intimacy coaches (not prostitutes-by-another-name, and not sexual surrogacy) specialize in this domain and can help you navigate these very issues.

Interesting how experiences can be so different. I have experienced the, technically, happiest moments of my life while on MDMA, but ultimately it changed nothing. Like pretty much any drug, it's temporary, fake, extreme happiness at the cost of your brain permanently melting from using it too much.

I took nothing away from it but increased insight into how unnaturally happy one can be (on drugs) and how incredibly dull, depressing and soul crushing the average work day is.

Would I recommend others trying it? Yes, sure, it's fantastic -you gonna experience happiness on it you CAN NOT get without drugs, that's an interesting experience.

i found that it showed me the path to that happy place, and now that i know the route, i can find my way back from time to time. Of course without mdma i can't stay there for long, but when i do visit its sublime and doesn't involve the multi week depression afterwards

I think a lot of how "life changing" it is depends on how much unresolved trauma you have to deal with.

How much of this is MDMA and how much of this is just having a welcoming scene where people emphasize physical touch and friendly interaction? How much of this is just living in a society that otherwise doesn’t allow for that in other ways?

About 100%. The expectation that people in this environment are on mdma makes it so.

I’m just saying, I’ve been in similar situations without the drugs involved. There are people out there who act like that and will be like that with each other without MDMA. Myself included.

It's a combination of the scene and the MDMA opening me up to the experience. I would have been _freaked the fuck out_ by random people hugging me without it.

But your point is why I am skeptical of the value of MDMA as like a one-on-one therapeutic tool. For me, it was not just that I was having the best night of my life, but that I was surrounded by people who were also having the best night of their lives. You could just look around and make eye contact with a random person and you both _knew_.

And that community didn't just _happen_. It was the product of lots of people curating that community -- the djs, the promoters, the dancers, etc. You can't just throw drugs into any random pool of people and expect that kind of magic to happen. There was an artistry to it.

I guess this speaks more to the extremes of how some people are and how it can be an effective tool for people out there on the edges of society with weird issues. I was never in this position and I don't know many people who would have such a severe reaction to hugs either. I have always been able to do platonic touch without much of a care even though I never experienced much of it growing up as a man in rural America.

> how much of this is just having a welcoming scene where people emphasize physical touch and friendly interaction?

Most of it, I would bet. From experience, I can say a night out on MDMA can be almost as lonely/alienating as one on ethanol. Still super interesting and fun, but nothing as enlightening as the positive anecdotes above.

Example: if you're physically attractive, but socially stunted, an MDMA night will give you a taste of The Other Side. If your situation is the other way around, guess what - physically unattractive people are still very much unwelcome on a dance floor, and people will still make that clear to you.

This shit is tricky, which is why we need more experienced users in society who can guide newcomers through it.

I've never done MDMA but I have had similar experiences to what is described. I'm more open minded and willing to try things outside of my comfort zone. But your description of being physically unattractive or whatever is definitely true in my world. I found that when people were on drugs at events I was at that they got even more callous.

It was quite unpleasant to be surrounded by these people who clearly would only associate with others who fit whatever beauty norms they justified. I'm not someone who doesn't take care of themselves either but I am not blessed genetically either.

I'm pretty libertarian when it comes to recreational drugs, but I do worry that we're not exploring the mechanism of these drugs properly when there is polarization to either those seeking prohibition of recreational drugs or those seeking the pleasure from the same drugs. I'm of the opinion that if a root cause of your issues, and mine, could be established an optimized treatment could be determined that maximizes the beneficial outcome and minimizes the detrimental. My root cause is ADHD / dopamine dysregulation and I respond well to medication like Low Dose Naltrexone and Low Dose Modafinil. I think for people with my kind of issues we'd benefit much more from those than from MDMA even if they are much less fun medications to take. It's unfortunate that doctors do a terrible job here so the libertarian part of me is very thankful for the black/grey markets and I benefit from the self experimentation of others, at the same time I think it's incumbent on me to let others know about alternatives to MDMA that I think are worth exploring.

There are some pretty prominent voices like Dr Gabor Mate who think that ADHD stems from stressful family life/structure and/or traumas growing up.

I myself was diagnosed with ADHD, and psychedelics healed me and my past to the point where I no longer needed prescribed stimulants, so it’s possible that MDMA could help.

I don’t think I had a remotely stressful family life growing up and I am a near prototypical case of ADHD. So is my mom. It’s anecdata, but I think that perspective is complete bullshit and it makes me upset because it allows people to shame you for using stimulant medication.

Extending this line of reasons not to be as dismissive: perhaps both are true and result in the same behaviors. It seems totally possible that a rough and stressful family life could result in similar effects to have a physiologically innate issue. The term ADHD is rather broad a describes quite a few different things, which I don’t think are effectively taxonomised in current practice e.g. overlap with autism etc.

In some ways this sounds very similar to my situation (in other ways very different) and it took more than one drug to fix, including prescription antidepressants which took away the appalling, appalling nightmare depression[1] but ultimately it was MDMA that kind of pushed my brain off its rails and onto a new and vastly better track. I'll never have a normal life nor will my siblings but at least it's somewhat tolerable now.

[1] (thanks parents! You pair of evil cunts. At least one of you knew exactly what you were doing, and the other one just watched as it happened in front of you and did nothing)

I can really relate to this. Thanks for sharing your story.

What’s your take on the « next morning » of mdma ?

I find those really depressing and they can completely outweighs the benefit of the night for me.

It's not really the next morning, there was usually a "glow" that lasted for a couple of days. It was mostly midweek that the depression sunk in, and really that only happened to me after I had been going to raves regularly for a year.

Mostly for me it was a matter of understanding what the cause of that was. But yes, over time it was what stopped from me from continuing to take it, but all the benefit I really got out of it, therapeutically, happened in the first 2 or 3 times I took it, before I ever had the mid-week crash. Everything after that was just for fun.

How much sleep are you getting afterwards? If it's laced with any type of amphetamine, probably not very much, and from my personal experience, the sleep dep feels like the main problem and not the after-effects of the substance itself.

There are some ways to mitigate this, although they're not always possible depending on the setting:

* Get a good sleep, ideally at about the same time as usual. If you normally sleep 11pm-7am then obviously a 4am-8am sleep is obviously going to have an effect on your mood. The closer you can get to your normal routine, the better. This might mean taking it pretty early, which doesn't necessarily make sense in a club setting.

* Take magnesium before/during the high to prevent gurning (if this is a problem). A sore jaw makes everything worse the next day.

* Take 5-HTP as soon as you wake up.

* Either sleep in the same house as the people you dropped with, or get back together as soon as possible in the morning. This is essential to processing the experience in a positive, social way.

* Don't have anything scheduled involving work or family for at least a couple of days afterwards, ideally a week.

on 5-HTP the general guideline is to not take it within 24 hours of using MDMA. likely to do with avoiding serotonin syndrome.

https://rollsafe.org/mdma-supplements/?_ga=2.33100862.187361...

> * Either sleep in the same house as the people you dropped with, or get back together as soon as possible in the morning. This is essential to processing the experience in a positive, social way.

Looking back on my raving career, now retired of course, this is fantastic advice and something I would never have thought to articulate.

I read about NAC (N-Acetyl L-Cysteine) in various forums and it seems to be a relatively safe antioxidant that does wonders for MDMA after effects and "losing the magic". YMMV but I highly recommend.

I'm so happy for you. I've known a few people with similar stories, including my mother. Before and After.