I think part of the bad rep MDMA gets as a theraputic drug comes from street-known MDMA not actually being pure MDMA. It’s often laced with ketamine or some other drugs that give different effects than what’s being used in this PTSD treatment.
Generally it's laced with amphetamine/methamphetamine as they're cheaper (per dose), and these days it's often laced with other substituted amphetamines such as mephedrone or PMA, neither of which are substances people would otherwise take as they're nasty shit.
Generally when you hear about people being hospitalised or dying after taking ecstasy, it's due to the other shit in the pills. MDMA is a relatively safe drug (although not without its risks, especially taken in a non-therapeutic setting).
> and these days it's often laced with other substituted amphetamines such as mephedrone or PMA
"Often"? Often where? I'd say no since we'd hear about accidents with ecstasy "often" as well. This happens rarely, still.
EDIT: Found some data [1]:
"Although more recent ED data are not publicly available, the number of reported poisonings involving “hallucinogenic amphetamines” (which are most commonly MDMA and MDMA-like drugs) rose from 2057 (including 3 deaths) in 2009 to 2514 (including 14 deaths) in 2013"
"Ecstasy purity was low in the US in the mid-1990s3 and purity plummeted in Europe around 2009,11 but increased in 2010,8,11 while purity of powder and crystal ecstasy reportedly remained high in Europe (at 75–97%) in 2008–2013.11 However, the presence of synthetic cathinones (“bath salts”) and other novel psychoactive substances (NPS) increased within both pills and powders from 2008–2013.11 Spain in particular had a high prevalence of synthetic cathinones such as mephedrone and methylone detected in powder ecstasy.9 Despite extensive research in Europe, purity of ecstasy in the US over the last decade has not been formally researched."
See PMA wikipedia page* for some documented examples of this sort of thing. The MDMA precursor safrole is aggressively controlled so a strong incentive exists to substitute other substances/analogs. I would regard black market MDMA with some skepticism these days.
13 people in New Zealand were put in hospital this summer [1] by MDMA laced with N-Ethylpentylone. It was also discovered after pill testing at a festival in Australia. In January several people in Melbourne were hospitalised one weekend after taking laced MDMA.
I couldn't say how often MDMA is laced, and in what quantities, but it's definitely out there.
> Generally when you hear about people being hospitalised or dying after taking ecstasy, it's due to the other shit in the pills.
Sometimes that's the case. This is one set of problems.
At the moment in the UK though, one of the major problems is massively dosed pills. 250-300mg+ in a single tablet. At these doses people get into danger.
That's an issue too. That poor girl who died at Mutiny took over half a gram of pure MDMA, that's just an insane amount to drop in one go, especially for an 18 year old girl.
Agreed! Been a long time since I experimented with drugs, but when I used to, pure MDMA was really great. Just puts you in a super positive frame of mind, and makes you feel incredibly close and connected to whoever you’re doing it with. Not surprised at all that there’s a lot of therapeutic potential there.
Yes but it’s also pretty common to get into this regularly and soon after what you get one evening you have to give back some weeks later unless you then take all sorts of other drugs to compensate for that. I’ve seen the therapeutic effects up close and they are powerful but they are sadly short lived and hard to manage.
All advice I've seen regarding the substance is to not take it more than once every 3 months. I think people just need to realize it really isn't a party drug you can take every or every other weekend. Not only will tolerance build very rapidly, but you're exposing your brain to excessive oxidative stress and overheating, and are likely causing serotonergic neurotoxicity (even if you take it with all the recommended supplements).
It needs to be treated like a rare, therapeutic, and special vacation, not something you take whenever you want to have fun.
The MAPS studies tell a different story here, only a couple sessions and over a year later a large majority of the subjects were still symptom free or greatly reduced
My personal studies tell Otherwise... and those studies probably doesnt consider how easy it is to self medicate and get the oppersite effect. It Works Well but its a temp fix and its hard to handle yourself Especially if you are Young abd part of a culture that uses this recretional.
They are personal ;) luckily I now don’t take everything I read for truth and had the guts to look at the risk/benefit in person. Few who ever did studies had any real exposure to what they write about or have the insight to get near the relevant data to make a proper study. First hand experience beats that anyday and having seen more than most I can not recommend any recreational drugs perhaps more that once but keeping it to that is insanely difficult so I’d say you have to be in a specific pet if your life to even try. By I regard Changa as medicine that few would ever use recreational but it’s also not for everyone.
Yeah, all drugs can have big negative impacts on people’s lives if not taken in moderation. This is true of legal recreational drugs like alcohol, and pharmaceuticals like opioid painkillers. But most people use these drugs responsibly.
I think if MDMA really does work great for PTSD in therapeutic settings, it’d be a worthwhile treatment, even though some percentage of patients would abuse it.
from what I understand, in a medical setting, those treated with MDMA are not / have not been regular users.
New recreational users very often do not get a prolonged comedown / tuesday blues / suicide wednesday. Which is more indicative of heavier user, multiple doses, staying up all night, taking over drugs (including alcohol).
In a controlled setting, with a correct one time dose, in a clinical environment, not running around like a loon, sleeping and eating well, in one off sessions, the mid week comedown can be mitagated away
As senorjazz mentioned, I wonder how much of the really bad recoveries are due to taking too much, mixing it with other drugs, staying up super late, etc?
I only did it a handful of times, a long time ago, but if I took a reasonable amount and just had a chill night on the beach with friends, the recovery wasn’t so bad. One day of feeling tired/down, but similar intensity to a moderate hangover.
MDMA, when I used it, was always combined with dancing or walking or physical activity. I also always had a coming down which had a bottom peak a few days after (the infamous Tuesday dip). With psilocybin I had not much of a coming down, at worst a headache the day after. With MDMA though, the coming down additionally had my mood being down as well. I become agitated and inward, very much in contrast to the peak and moderate upper effect (there are some movies which portrait this, such as the movie Human Traffic [1]). Then again, this is anecdotal, and I am very sensitive to drugs in general, especially the contrasts (alcohol, beer makes me often tired, MDMA, SSRIs, amphetamine). The reason for that might very well be related to ASD, I do not know for sure though. I just know that I do have ASD. But because I have ASD, my anecdotal experience isn't typical in this case. However the Tuesday dip is widely known among MDMA users.
so known so people use additional things to avoid it. personally i'm also very affected by the comedown. whatever makes everything feel great comes as just a big price in the other direction. this is also the reason that perhaps stuff like depression might make it feel even worse.. and only solution would seem is to do it again more regular.
i didn't experience this. the next day, i was mostly just tired from not having slept. then again, it was a one-off thing. might be harder for regular users.
It's not a common adulterant, so your skepticism is warranted, but using the advanced search at EcstasyData, I'm seeing about 6% of pills/substances they've tested that had both MDMA and ketamine in them.
Lol I'm with you. MDA, meth, uppers etc are far more likely adulterants in the US it seems, though perhaps K was more popular adulterant in the 90s [1].
It was sort of hailed as a possible antibiotics of the mind before the war on drugs started and basically all research was halted.
I think it's likely that that's what caused the bad rep more so than how the dealers mixed it. All drugs that were used in a recreational way was deemed as bad.
The prohibition of ecstasy makes me furious given the
has caused how many millions to suffer needlessly for generations? And this in addition to the sheer obliviousness of starting the war on Drugs after Prohibition showed what happens when you try to do so.
A weak point. Alcohol can not be taken away, it has been tried.
Had we not had alcohol in the first place, we'd likely have other things a-ok'd, and alcohol would be treated by its merits compared to other recreational substances. By all reason it would be illegal far before many other substances.
Personally I am conflicted: on one hand we can see that the more we let people to have certain drugs, the less functional they are as human beings. On the other hand, if above point was really important, it would make sense to try to let people have the least harmful of these substances, so that, on average, the damage caused by their consumption is lower.
A growing part of me thinks that drug policies aren't as much about preventing harms as it seems to be about "playing games". We could do better all around the world. But things move slowly, so slowly. Stigmas hold, people fall to the soothing lull of prejudice and simplistic arguments.
Ecstasy != mdma. It’s pretty easy to spot clean mdma visually or tasting or you can just recrystalize it yourself. It’s imoossible to figure out what is in ecstasy.. and is always a combo of above drugs and more. Clean mdma is more common these days than ecstasy in most of Europe atleast.
This is not really true. Several things look quite a lot like MDMA, and one of the problems with Ecstasy tablets in Europe at the moment is that they contain too much MDMA for a single dose.
If you know this stuff you also know the taste and looks of the crystal and why eg it got the color it does. There is no easy way of knowing what is inside a tablet but the “pure” crystallized products are easy to recognize mdma especially. And it would have to be a damn big tablet to contain too much mdma... by bet is on what else is inside.
> There is no easy way of knowing what is inside a tablet
Chemical tests.
> but the “pure” crystallized products are easy to recognize mdma especially
Lots of the extended amphetamine family (including the various -drones) share very similar tastes, and crystallise very similarly. If you wash MDMA that contains these other substances you'll end up recrystallising those as well.
> And it would have to be a damn big tablet to contain too much mdma... by bet is on what else is inside.
Then your bet is factually wrong and likely dangerous.
Test your stuff. Know what you're getting, start low, and don't listen to people who 'know what the real stuff looks like'
I don’t disagree to starting low but definitely listen to people who knows where the good stuff is. Trusting your network is more realistic than having tested everything you get. In the perfect world I’d run around with a lab in my pocket sure....
The only foolproof-ish way of knowing what is inside a tablet is tests done by some rather precise, expensive equipment that separates elements into their component parts (chromatography), and then analyzes the mass of the separated components (spectrometry) and compares them to a database of known components. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is also an option.
It is unlikely most people will have access to equipment with the precision necessary at home. There is an organization out there (https://www.ecstasydata.org/) that does anonymous GCMS tablet tests of MDMA in particular for $40 (and other substances for a higher price).
The typical tests out there for most people are reagent tests -- chemicals known to react with a desired substance to turn a certain color. Reagent tests are not foolproof -- the main thing you know is that if you do not get the desired color, you most likely don't have the correct product. It is possible to fool a reagent test. They are better than nothing for sure.
Taste, color, and crystallization are not really reliable ways of identifying the product.
Again you Seem to have little knowledge about the subject when you keep mentioning tablets.. mdma usally comes in crystal form and has a distinct taste. Ecstasy is a whole other thing usally containg amfetamine, ketamin and many other things.
No it’s true that anything can be poisoned even your beer leaving it on a table. Usally your supplier and the people in the culture will know what is good and where to get it... it’s only a concern I would have getting stuff from random people.
Your advice is terrible, I'm sorry, it's just awful. Your advising the use of drugs as 'safe' which present various dangers, you're advising eyeballing MDMA to know what's right, and now you're basically saying to trust your supplier.
This is all very poor advice.
Get chemical test kits, use drug testing services where they are available, be cautious.
And if you read my comments again I actually advice against most drugs. I’m arguing against comparing mdma with ecstasy pills which is pretty much impossible for the dealer or any to figure out what is inside but in regard to mdma crystals is much easier to reason about a clean product when you take others experience around you and looks and taste knowing it... but yes there is always a risk like leaving a beer unattended. This could be different but In my part of the world we can usally trust what we are provided.
> I’m arguing against comparing mdma with ecstasy pills
Which is pretty terrible itself, powders and crystals can be just as adulterated as pills. Relying on sight and taste to tell what you've got is very unreliable.
