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How bad is ecstacy?

:D

The usual Calebprime recollection: at least half right, maybe wrong in one fact out of five stated. I remember an exchange with someone in a thread about sleep-deprivation. I said that my one or two experiences with an amphetamine were unpleasant: by the end of the day I was tired of hearing the unmodulated babble of my inner voices, but there was no let-up. Then someone responded, reminding me not to generalize...now I'm curious. I think it's fun to check my memory against the facts...
 
Sorry, my memory is partly wrong and I've screwed up the quote feature:

Calebprime:
Sleep Deprivation:
There was some guy who did bike marathons who had some stories about starting to hallucinate--he had intense alien abduction experiences, even thought that the people minding him were aliens. His name?

Jeff Corey's response:
Michael Schermer


Calebprime:
Tried amphetamines maybe twice and they made me feel absolutely awful. No variation in my energies or consciousness. Just an unrelenting verbal babble that wouldn't subside and began to become...nonsensical.

Hard for me to understand the attraction of meth. I mean, how can the high be worth the crash? Plus you *know* you're frying your brain.

Dogdoctor:
...
Also in regards to meth use, orally it has quite different effects from smoking it.

It was DogDoctor, not Jeff Corey. So I conflated the two memories.
Typical that I would pay attention to what I was thinking and not who was saying what...
 
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noblecaboose said:
I've sampled a cornucopia of drugs, some I've liked, some I don't care for. I have always said I would do any drug except a.) anything I had to inject or b.) ecstasy.
Why not ecstasy?
Because everyone I knew in high school did it and it made them act like total morons. While they were on it, they acted stupid and the more they did it, the more it began to affect them when they weren't on it. E-tards, we used to call them. I lost several friends to E, not physically, but mentally. One friend lost his driver's license because he started having seizures while driving. About half a dozen dropped out of school. Another half dozen got sent away to rehab camps.
I finally tried ecstasy a couple of years ago, I was at a concert, some cute guy in a kilt offered, and I thought, "Well, I might as well try it. Once." It was either a dud or I just don't have the personality for it. It did nothing for me at all except make me a little bit giggly and aware of the softness of my own hands, but I can get that without drugs.

End verdict for my personal experience (and this goes for all drugs): Meh. It's fine, just be safe and don't overdo it.
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I've found the real thing is poundcake.
 
noblecaboose said:
I think it just revealed to you the truth: Cadbury's chocolate really is absolutely disgusting. That stuff tastes like cheese and stale cake frosting.:p
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The height of disgusting is Hershey. The British actually have commercial grade chocolate down to a science, try Galaxy Minstrels or Ripple, the taste is arguably the most 'crave inducing' of any including Godiva, I've had.
 
glennmr78 said:
Ecstacy killed one of my students.
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Sorry to hear that.

What did the toxicology report say? Was it ecstacy, a contaminant, or did the report state it was a contribution to death? All are equally bad, and I'm not claiming the death didn't result from the taking of the pill (for all intents and purposes, all contribute to the risk of ill consequences), yet for the sake of clarity of argument, I'm wondering if the finding was that ecstacy was directly responsible for the death.

Athon
 
Professor Yaffle said:
There was a study that linked MDMA with a risk of developing Parkinson's. However it had to be retracted when it was discovered that the researchers had accidentally given methamphetamine instead of MDMA.

i do recall some research suggesting that MDMA might be a promising treatment for dyskinesias in parkinson's though. Not sure if anything came of it though as it was a few years back.
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There was a small phd study done at Edge Hill university which was published in the British Journal of Psychology, and subsequently picked up by a lot of the national press, with somewhat hysterical headlines as is the media's want....

nevertheless, the findings certainly encourage further research

Ten admitted to taking at least one ecstasy pill a month, 10 were former users and 10 had never taken the drug.

One of the tests they were put through involved speaking aloud a randomly chosen consonant when a bleep was heard.

Pressure was applied by increasing the frequency of the bleeps from four to two seconds, and then to one.

Both current and previous ecstasy users found the task difficult and performed significantly worse than the non-users.

Another test asked participants to compare rows of letters. Half the rows were the same, and in half just one of the letters was different. The volunteers had to say how many rows were the same and how many were different – and again, non-users did better.
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The actual paper is here

[google scholar is ace :) ]
 
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So drugs aren't meant to improve linguistic and comparative performance. Who cares?
 
athon said:
Sorry to hear that.

What did the toxicology report say? Was it ecstacy, a contaminant, or did the report state it was a contribution to death? All are equally bad, and I'm not claiming the death didn't result from the taking of the pill (for all intents and purposes, all contribute to the risk of ill consequences), yet for the sake of clarity of argument, I'm wondering if the finding was that ecstacy was directly responsible for the death.

Athon
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Hi Athon,

The cause of death was due to multiple organ failures resulting from the overdose of ecstacy. The student's body temperature greatly increased as a direct effect from the drug and the student went into a coma...and never came out. The student could possibly survived if taken to the hospital...however, the person that supplied the drugs didn't want to get into trouble. Just typing this makes me really angry at the %$&# that supplied the drugs.

glenn
 
glennmr78 said:
Hi Athon,

The cause of death was due to multiple organ failures resulting from the overdose of ecstacy. The student's body temperature greatly increased as a direct effect from the drug and the student went into a coma...and never came out. The student could possibly survived if taken to the hospital...however, the person that supplied the drugs didn't want to get into trouble. Just typing this makes me really angry at the %$&# that supplied the drugs.

glenn
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What that person did was despicable. None of my usual ambivalence here.


I wanted to do a little comparison--off the top of my head--of the likely effects of overdose of common illegal drugs, in their usual mode of administration. Correct me if I'm wrong, anybody, for what this is worth.
No particular order.

Marijuana. Get very sleepy, slightly dizzy, "frontal", sleep it off. Mild woozy after-effect.

Alcohol. Get very uncoordinated, vomit. Pass out. Hangover

LSD, if no tolerance: A bad trip, panic, etc. Dead-heads speak of cognitive impairment lasting months, with eventual recovery. Many anecdotes.
I've also known some people who were never the same. With tolerance, other people seem to be ok. Unpredictable.

DMT, STP: I'm with Dancing David. Don't even try either. Many anecdotes of never feeling the same. This from psychedelic enthusiasts like Ken Kesey and his crowd. (I trust the Dead-heads when they are talking about the downside of drugs.)

Ecstasy: Overheating, seizures, death if not treated.

Cocaine: Heart attack, seizures, ditto.

Heroin: Respiratory failure, death.
Fentanyl: Especially dangerous if mixed in with heroin.

PCP: cases of violent psychosis. why even try this or
Ketamine?

Anecdote: The quirky dolphin researcher John Lilly became the inspiration for the movie Altered States (the only good Ken Russell movie). He combined sensory deprivation in flotation tanks with drugs. He seemed wooish but ok for some years. Then he began to use ketamine heavily. He began to act psychotic, even trying to contact President Ford to warn him of the impending Cosmic conspiracy, or something. Eventually, though, he came back to something like reality.

here's a pretty good site: http://ecstasy.org/info/kket5.html
quote:

"John Lilly rapidly became non-psychotic after being cut off from his drug supply, and was never in hospital for long except when he had serious physical injuries. 'Ketamine intoxication with paranoia' may be a better description for his episodes than 'drug-induced psychosis', which is one where the psychosis starts during intoxication and is still present when the urine is clear of metabolites. It should only recur on re-exposure to the drug and not at any other time, and must have a different course and outcome from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic-depression) and related conditions (Poole & Brabbins 1996)"


Here's a weird site, but the account of Lilly seems about right, and it's an interesting read: http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/UFOs/Gorightly.htm
 
Depends on at what level you call it an overdose. For example, the effects of a severe overdose of alcohol can be much more serious that the scenario you describe, and can be fatal.

http://www.intoxikon.com/Pubs/Rutgers_Alcohol%20Overdose.pdf


How Alcohol Kills

Death from alcohol overdose can occur through several physiological mechanisms. When the concentration of alcohol in the brain becomes high enough to depress the brain areas responsible for the control of consciousness and respiration, for example, the drinker lapses into a coma, stops breathing, and dies within minutes. As a central nervous system depressant, alcohol can kill just as easily as barbiturates, heroin or other depressants, because when organs that are necessary for life support fail, so does the patient. Even superficial examination of the term in-toxic-ation, should alert the consumer that alcohol is a toxin, and can be toxic (deadly). The consumption of even small quantities of nonbeverage types of alcohol, such as methanol or rubbing alcohol, can be fatal (see Brick2003).
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right you are, sir.

Actually, one slightly more subtle point that I'd like to make:

People think in terms of the familiar.

Most people have some experience with getting drunk.

They can feel it happen as they do it, so they have a chance not to drink too much.

Also, in most cases, unless someone drinks very rapidly they pass out before they die.

However, and this is my point: This sort of experience can NOT be carried over to taking other drugs.

LSD is a good example. Many novices swallow a hit of blotter, wait half an hour, and say "Nothing's happening, I better take some more." They take some more, and sometimes it gets them in serious trouble. If they really overdo it, they quite possibly might experience some lasting ill-effects.

I myself made the same idiotic mistake when I smoked Salvia. Expecting a gradual onset, I was surprised to feel no effect at all.

I over did it.

Without much warning, I fell into a rather unpleasant trance state--like falling into the retrieval ball in the TV show The Prisoner. Then for about 40 seconds, I was having an imaginary dialog with entities out of some Stephen King novel. I actually heard them say "Welcome," and when I started to panic, they said "Leaving so soon?". They seemed a little hostile and more intelligent than me. (Sounds like the JREF, but this was before I came here.) In retrospect, it was like a waking dream. I was still standing there, when I came to, sweating and a little nauseated. Me, a beginner's mistake! How, um, situationally ironic.
 
I think we all more or less agree about alcohol

Dancing David, when you've got a chance, I'd be interested to hear anecdotes about STP and DMT. I've read alot, but I've never known anyone who tried them. Just somewhat ominous stories.

no rush, though.
 
Well, from what i have heard, MDMA doesn't seem to be such a bad thing after all, when used in a controlled manner - i think it was also used in Psychotherapies somewhere too.

Anyway, the biggest problem with ecstacy seems to be that its never MDMA when bought on the black market, but some other, cheaper derivate (there are only a few labs who can synthesize it properly)and most probably mixed with other substances, like strychnine (rat poison, anyone?) or some other designer drugs, so you never know... So, yes, its very dangerous, stay away, hear me, kids?
 
People should be allowed to do Ecstasy if they want. It's true that it can be dangerous if used incorrectly however most cases of 'deaths' from Ecstasy are due to impurities added to the drug and not the drug itself. Drug dealers frequently add other material when producing Ecstasy to increase production and many of those other materials are very harmful. This is one of the main reasons people die from it. The same goes for many illegal drugs.
 
Personal experience: (often scoffed at in this forum but I´ll write it anyway...)

Taken E about... 10 times perhaps more, and know many people who took E more often, even some who took it regularly every weekend for months and months, (even years, one guy who was in pretty a bad shape, permanent cold sweat, clenched jaw etc.).

I´ve read about studies and neural damages after prolonged usage sounds quite like what I expected. But I´m surprised about that chart leaving it at 14th place in dangerousness compared with other drugs. I´d say it´s much more dangerous that pot or alcohol, for example, for the way it messes with people´s minds. It really f**cks up your mind after a while.

But the effects are amazing. If I were terminally ill or very old I´d take it quite happily.
 
calebprime said:
I think we all more or less agree about alcohol

Dancing David, when you've got a chance, I'd be interested to hear anecdotes about STP and DMT. I've read alot, but I've never known anyone who tried them. Just somewhat ominous stories.

no rush, though.
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All I know is anecdotal, the only people I ever know who had flashbacks are the ones who did DMT and STP. They were not commonly available in 1975, all of friends who were users and older than me said to stay away from them. They said that they really messed you up, even if they were short in duration.

In book the Electric Koolaid Acid Test the busdriver is permanantly psychotic, and he is the one who used DMT, besides juggling a sledge hammer.

So purely urban legends from the older people I knew. I never did them, I met people who did it, and they said they were 'not good drugs to do'.

So no real information. Sorry.
 
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