It is not intended to provide conclusions. It is intended to be raw material for later people to use as evidence for their conclusions. This is not a scientific paper, this is raw material you make scientific papers out of. Medical fields tend to use these quite a lot.
I seriously doubt the people involved are ignorant of the possibility that this person went into this experience with a non-normal brain. Nevertheless, a subject that appears to have consumed over an order of magnitude more of a certain drug than any other known person is intrinsically interesting.
Nevertheless, a subject that appears to have consumed over an order of magnitude more of a certain drug than any other known person is intrinsically interesting.
I guess they, or the journal editors, didn't think it was all that interesting, or they wouldn't have limited themselves to a giving a one-sentence summary of his history with the other drugs. I suppose it was heavily edited for length, which is tragic and ludicrous given the cost of storing and presenting a few kilobytes of data these days.
Also, if this is supposed to be data for further study, I'm not sure why they decided that in the limited space available it was less important to report the actual raw data they collected than to summarize general knowledge from other sources, such as:
All ecstasy misusers would develop a (mild-degree, in most cases) serotonin syndrome after acute drug intake, which is characterized by enhanced physical activity, hyperthermia and sweating, increased muscle rigidity, rhabdomyolysis, hyperreflexia, trismus, jaw-clenching, myoclonus, tremor, and nystagmus.4
Mr. A reported current cannabis consumption, together with a previous history of polydrug misuse (i.e., solvents, benzodiazepines, amphetamines, LSD, cocaine, heroin).
Decrease in level of cannabis intake led both to disappearance of his paranoid ideas and hallucinations and reduction of his panic attacks
I agree; they have no idea what caused what. Why didn't they at least mention how extensively he used (for example) solvents? Plus, who knows what was actually in the pills? Is ecstasy typically pure? A few times I thought about taking a small dose of ecstasy before a psychotherapy appointment (its original intended use,) but as far as I know, there's no way to reliably get a pure, known dose illegally.
If you don't want to pay $120 for molly or $40 for pills to have your stuff analyzed at the lab using mass spectrometer, then the next best option is the complete kit from DanceSafe for $50. If I ever tried MDMA I would probably just do both, but then again my anxiety is why I don't partake in the first place.
32% of the street ecstasy tablets they tested were pure MDMA, and 50% contained no MDMA at all. 29% contained stimulants, so you're just as likely to get a dose of unknown stimulants as you are to get pure MDMA. Yeah, drug lottery? No thanks.
Ecstasy is not typically pure MDMA. Around here (Kansas) it is usually entirely dextromethorphan, caffeine, methamphetamine, MDA or a combination of the lot. Very rarely a batch will turn up that is pure MDMA or a mixture of MDA/MDMA (usually called Molly in the club scene.)
Getting pure MDA or MDMA feels very different than a mixture. It is pretty easy for one who's past all the glitz/glamor associated with early years of drug use to become a kind of connoisseur and nail down long term relationships with the dealers who supply reliable product.
I seriously question the scientific method of anyone who draws any conclusions from this account.