"helpful if you learned something about MDMA...get a clue...run your mouth...ignorant people such as yourself who believe everything the media tells them.."
I may be mistaken on one or more points, but this kind of response hardly makes your points any stronger. Why is it that drug discussions always seem to be laden with personal attacks?
Supplysider,
I will apologize for the personal attacks. I’d just been reading through a slew of your posts which I consider to be extremely unfair and unjustified attacks on MDMA presented as facts, and I was getting increasing annoyed, culminating in a somewhat heated response. Though I do feel you are uneducated on this matter, I agree that there were more polite ways to address this.
Why the initial anger? As a result of years’ worth of propaganda, lies, and exaggerations as spewed forth by the government and the media, MDMA has become the most misunderstood drug of our time. Almost “Reefer Madness” style, it’s been accused of being responsible for everything under the sun - addiction, brain damage, deaths, etc. You yourself place it next to PCP and crystal meth in terms of harm - two drugs that few will debate are two of the most devasting popular recreational drugs in existance. More realistically, on the recreational drugs scale, MDMA belongs somewhere a bit above marijuana, in terms of the total damage it causes to the self and to society. I say this because :
1) damage to the body and mind is minimal and science suggests any damage incurred is almost always reversible
2) it is not mentally nor physically addictive
3) practically no one abuses it (though many have tried)
4) very little (if any) treatment is required for its use
5) its effects are not associated with violence towards others
6) you do not hear of users robbing, mugging, burglarizing and committing similar crimes to get money for this drug
7) it almost never causes death on its own. If MDMA is involved in a death, it is almost always because a) the ecstasy pill was mixed with one or more dangerous adulterants b) the user combined alcohol or certain medications with the MDMA c) the user had a pre-existing heart condition d) the user drank far too much water or far too little. Nevertheless, all the above situations are very rare. Sometimes pills sold as “ecstasy” that cause death contain no MDMA at all, but other substances entirely, most notoriously PMA (look it up). Even so, all “ecstasy” related deaths are so rare that the local paper will to this day still often write an article about it most every time it occurs, further fueling the anti-ecstasy hysteria; unfortunately, these same papers fail to report what the pills actually contained. Average Joe would rather hear that “ecstasy” killed some 16 year old girl, than that PMA did, or an ecstasy pill adulterated with DXM did. Virtually all these deaths could be avoided if MDMA were legal and professionally manufactured, and if people were adequately educated on it’s actual risks.
And like marijuana, MDMA is a drug of incredible medical value, capable of helping so many people, but whose value in medicine is in danger of being squashed because of the public’s misconceptions of the drug and strong biases against it, despite the overwhelming evidence in its favor. It may interest you to know that MDMA did NOT start off as a “club drug”; it was used successfully in psychotherapy sessions to help people cope with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and help prepare people suffering with terminal illness come to terms with their eventual death. It was also used for more minor issues such as marriage counselling. MAPS (www.maps.org) is an organization dedicated to trying to make MDMA an FDA-approved prescription drug for use in therapy sessions; when you read through the Ecstasy & Neurotoxicity article I provided, you’ll see how Dr. Ricaurte jumped in with a BS study ensure that MAPS’ progress was impeded. And of course, MDMA’s use in therapy will be met with much resistance; Big Pharma certainly doesn’t want to produce MDMA. Because MDMA isn’t something that can be taken every day (like meth for instance - look it up under the prescription drug name Desoxyn), and because MDMA would only have be administered on 5-6 occassions per patient in a clinical setting, pharmaceutical moguls don’t stand to make much money from it. And they DO stand to lose billions of dollars because sales of antidepressants - which ARE taken every day, unlike MDMA - would take a nosedive because so many people with PTSD just wouldn’t need to take them anymore, after having had the MDMA experience.
Here’s a recent link on MDMA and PTSD for you:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/20/AR2007112001777_pf.html
Might I add, PTSD is a pertinent health issue as ever with the amount of damaged young men and women coming back from the Middle East.
As you might assume, I’ve done a number of recreational drugs, including MDMA. I’ve had some good times on drugs, and some bad times. But MDMA is the only drug I can say has changed my life, without a doubt, for the better. When I was 20, I was suddenly hit with a myriad of problems that I just couldn’t deal with, I became extremely overwhelmed and gave up on myself and my life. When given the chance to try MDMA at this time, I thought, “I don’t have much to lose at this point, I might as well try it.” It may sound cliche, but for that next 3 hours, it almost felt like this healing blue light spreading all over my mind and body, the future looked bright and beautiful instead of dark and hopeless, and every part of my being was filled with the knowledge of something I never really understood or appreciated before: that life is a precious gift, one that is never, ever worth giving up - and certainly not over what I was going through. It was incredible and humbling and it was one of the most powerful experineces I’ve ever hard, I honestly feel so blessed - there are no words. I don’t know where my life would be without it - I don’t even want to consider that. The day after my first MDMA experience was the same day I started getting my life back on track.
So many times I run into people who are extremely depressed, feel at the end of their rope, or have gone through something terrible - and a big part of me just wants to reach out to them and say “try this, it will change your life, and you will never look at the world the same way again.” I don’t though, because I’m not a doctor and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for even the smallest possible risk in making things worse for an unstable person. I try to remain optimistic about the future of MDMA in medicine though; marijuana was unjustly demonized some decades ago, now people are finally starting to open their eyes about truth of the drug, as myths have been dispelled. Hopefully, in time, the same will be true for MDMA as well.
Lastly, I highly recommend Peter Jennings’ (RIP) fascinating and informative “Ecstasy Rising”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjvNCijeYlI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnmRj43ikUk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUNgw-WaLUc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfxh8oXa64M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7OpgfdhZMo