• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio | thegreenhand

  • Neuroscience & Pharmacology Discussion Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Recent Journal Articles Chemistry Mega-Thread
    FREE Chemistry Databases! Self-Education Guide

MDMA Neurotoxicity

http://thedea.org/neurotoxicity.html is an okay read for starting to understand MDMA and the brain but if I were you I wouldn't read too much into it. I think if anything causes damage its going to be all the stress from your anxiety so the number one thing you can do to improve your long term health would be to address the anxiety, also once again as far as aging goes I recommend cardio. That sucks the retreat didn't work out too well, was it really naturopathic and stuff? Anyways, I think you should get some counseling, try to find a psychologist to help you with your anxiety.

MDMA doesn't cause very much damage or permanent effects at your level of usage (and the axons do regenerate after a couple months and SERT levels return to normal even concerning chronic high dose abuse), but I do think that typically when people are using drugs they are self medicating a pre existing problem, so then they end up blaming their problems on the drug use when there are other causes of their problems afoot.
 
Thanks for the replies guys, it's a bit help. If I ever get the urge to search again I'll just refer back to this post.

Thanks Cotcha, so I'm guessing you've read into it quite a bit? I've read thedea.org one, but yeah I won't be researching it again, it just triggers the anxiety. To be honest the anxiety HAS improved a bit, which is good. The retreat was real 'out there' kinda stuff. There was some good stuff in there, but most of it was to do with 'energy healing' etc, and relieving painful memories trying to find a 'root cause' which I think is a bit silly personally. The people were really nice though and the food was bloody good! I will disregard Ricaurte's findings, although the thing that troubled me was that Erowid said all his studies (apart from the meth one) were sound.

I've probably used MDMA about 15 times all up, although I haven't really counted. I don't even know if what I took was MDMA half the time haha, and the pills in Australia are actually really weak compared to the US and Europe/UK. I've probably actually done speed more.

I remember seeing a German study where they compared SERT levels with non users and really high users who were abstinent, and after abstinence the SERT levels were consistent with the controls. Are there many more studies like that?
 
I abused the shit out of E back when I was 14-15, hundreds of pills, 10+ pill binges, up for a week straight lots, many many times up for 4-5 days straight, lots of bath salts and various amphetamines were in the E. Looking back on it all I have to say the sleep deprivation is what kills you. Not necessarily the drug itself. Sleep deprivation is very harmful and I think a lot of the deficits that we see in users are related to their sleep issues and not their normal cognition, though they rarely achieve normal cognition levels for long because their sleep is all over the place.

I think you should think about medicating your anxiety with a 5-HT2A antagonist like Mirtazapine, it's a great class of drugs for sleep. Not that I think we should drug all of our problems, but it's hard to make much progress if you're not sleeping well. I do think relieving memories and finding root causes is actually a really good idea but you have to go about doing it the right way..

Anyways, sorry it's late and potato, if you have any questions fire away but stay strong guys <3 shut off that voice in your head ;)
 
No worries Cotcha, how are you doing these days after that binge, pretty happy still?

I'm trying to keep away from BL at the moment haha, I think being on here asking all these questions just reinforces my fear a bit. I'm trying to 'heal' myself through meditation and acceptance/mindfulness. Also my sleep is back to normal. I slept for like nine hours last night!
 
I guess I'm doing okay moodwise considering my physical health (spine and stuff) isn't too good and I don't sleep much, I'm not depressed or anything at least (surprisingly). If anything I'm toward the schizophrenia spectrum. I'm pretty thankful to be alive these days, though much like you I really regret what I've done in the past. I've struggled with this myself, the problem is that the regret takes away from our future :( I think a big turning point for me was accepting that we have to play the hand that we are dealt the best we can. It can help when you are doing really bad depression wise to think of all the other people that are doing much worse than we are. For example, if you are worried you messed up your health in your old age and think you will get Alzheimer's at 80, think of all the people that didn't make it past 20.

That's good to hear that you're sleeping, let the healing continue :) sleep is so incredibly important for regenerating your brain. How's the exercising going? Exercising and meditation are very likely the two most important keys to my (and your) well being.
 
That's good man, sorry to hear about your physical health though. I've been doing alot of walking, not so much running (really need to quit smoking haha, it becomes so apparent when I am running). Anxiety levels have dropped since three weeks ago and I'm not really depressed, although I'm still anxious - it's mainly based around my what if thoughts etc. I'm sleeping again, socializing again, enjoying music, interested in girls again etc. I'm learning to become more mindful, and learning to develop a 'fuck it' attitude towards my symptoms. This is what seemed to get me back to my natural default setting last time! Although I'm still very sensitive to information at the moment, even reading my old posts sends an electrical flash of fear through me. It will probably take a while to move past this, but that's cool, I'm not looking for a quick fix anymore.

I actually realized too that the anxiety could come from my weed smoking days. When I was 15 up until when I was 23 (I'm 26 now) I was smoking weed on and off for years (I had month long/year long breaks though). Never was a daily smoker, but yeah I had a chat with my cousin and her husband tonight who also partied alot like me (I was surprised actually, she's taken wayyy more than I have haha) and she's fine. But her husband told me that THC can prevent the brain from making new pathways when the brain is developing in teenage years. Not sure if this is true or not, but I've heard similar things although never looked into it. Funnily enough this doesn't actually scare me haha. But then again my anxiety didn't really get severe until I was 24. Who knows what caused it, I'm starting to think it's irrelevant. Although in a moment of fear the old mind still likes to dig in the past and present the 'what ifs', because it can be a real bastard :)

I'm starting to realize there are no answers though and I've given up the google search because everything you read is just so contradictory. One study says this is damaging, one says it isn't, you can find studies on almost everything in life that has some sort of apparent adverse effect. Some experts now even think that serotonin is the issue when it comes to mental health. It's one brick wall after the next haha.

Really starting to get back into meditation, mindfulness and reading. I'm re reading a book called 'At Last a Life' and 'At Last a Life and Beyond' by Paul David, which is a really good book in relation to anxiety. Also reading a bit of Eckhart Tolle, and listening to some Jon Kabat Zinn meditations.

It's interesting, because I know SO many people who use/used drugs like MDMA, speed, mushies, LSD, everything except for the real heavy shit like heroin, and have done way more than me. No one I have ever met has had mental health issues as a result. Maybe it's because our pills are so shit on this side of the world haha. Where abouts are you from by the way man? Just curious!
 
Holy shit you smoke and you're worried about your old age because of MDMA? Hehehehe... Best of luck if you ever try to quit. THC actually does decrease IQ if smoked heavily during the adolescent years, I'm a pretty big medical marijuana person but I have to admit it has its downsides. A study showed that the increase in brain cell growth from cardio helped animals do fear extinction a lot better, where they forget a painful stimuli (essentially because they had new memories to think about and not the crappy old ones).

If THC does decrease the amount of brain cells that wire together then I could definitely see thc having the opposite effect of cardio, and could lead to anxiety. I'm from Washington state by the way and the university of Washington psychiatry won't even see people for anxiety if they've been smoking weed!

I need to get back into meditation and reading, it's nice to read "out loud in your head" so to speak, I think it helps give the voice in our head a task and keep us out of anxiety generating mischief.

Personally I know so many people who've done all sorts of drugs and they are all fine too, even heavy ecstasy users, like every weekend for a couple years type stuff. I don't get it. There must be something unique about us that makes us more vulnerable to the psychological effects... Although I took lots of bunk pills too so I think it's that that's messed with my brain. I still can't sleep is my main problem, I think that's a common one though for MDxx. So it's weird that you might be back to normal in that regard... I think it might mean the sleep problems aren't from any real damage but are from "anxiety", and the anxiety can come and go, or hopefully just go if we are mindful enough ;)

I really hope you can try out some cardio for a couple months one of these years!
 
Yeah cigarettes, I don't smoke weed anymore - last time was about three months ago in Amsterdam! But yeah I usually smoke it about twice a year now.

I personally think the sleep problems for me were anxiety, and the slight benzo withdrawal/SSRI side effects maybe. I just woke up from another 8 hour sleep. I'm glad I can sleep well again, for a few weeks I was literally getting 3-4 hours a night.

I'm guessing you haven't looked into the whole neuroscience/THC side of things? I'm guessing it applies more to people who smoked daily as teenagers, as I was very on and off. When I was 18-19 I was using it on and off having about 10 smoke ups a week, so maybe that is a contributing factor. But then again the anxiety went away for a year so I dunno! Haha.
 
Also do you know much about the effects of LSD and mental health? I've had it on five different occasions, but only mainly only quarter tabs or half tabs. The most I ever did was three quarter tabs over the space of a night. This was double dipped so it was more like taking 1 and a half tabs.

Also the last time I rolled I also had 1/3 of an acid trip with it, along with weed and alcohol. Four days after this is when shit went south. Hopefully that didn't change my brain chemistry permanently haha.
 
Oh okay gotcha. Still cigarettes are cancer central lol. I haven't looked into THC as much as I have MDMA, though the cannabis receptor is confusing to me. Most brain cells have a cannabis receptor. But its definitely the people who smoked daily for a couple years who are going to be affected by it, I don't think you would have any lasting changes, just a little bit of short term changes, sort of like the memory problems that always go away after a month of abstinence. LSD tends to be a little hard on the mind if you're doing repeated trips but if you got something like HPPD or other effects similar to that I think you would've noticed pretty quick, although four days after your trip seems suspicious. Seems to time up exactly with a post-roll serotonin dip anyways, which is very typically a dip in the ability of the brain to make serotonin that can last weeks, its not a dip in the amount of brain cells you have just to be clear.

I'm sure the weed and alcohol both contributed to a long term comedown as well. But LSD could've added more psychological strain that was still hanging in the air a while later. LSD isn't really that neurotoxic itself or anything though so don't worry about that, and one paper basically said that MDMA + LSD really wasn't that bad. It was only ever so slightly worse than MDMA by itself. But it could've psychologically pushed things over the edge. I personally love mushrooms and pretty much tell everyone to try them hahaha, many people find it very medicinal and healing, same with LSD. They both help shut down a kind of bad serotonin called 5-HT2A, more specifically they activate it at first and then the days/weeks afterwards you can enjoy a dip in the anxiety/depression related 5-HT2A. Anyways, don't worry too much about the psychedelics, they might be mentally taxing but they don't harm your brain much at all. I haven't done ANY drugs (100% sober I swear) for almost 1 year now and I'm considering doing mushrooms a couple times medicinally, so yeah don't worry about it :) And stay away from Google ;)
 
This is true haha. I've told myself this is my last packet! Cigarettes are wayyyy to expensive here anyways.

I never had a bad trip on LSD and never had adverse effects. I only had one 'oh shit' moment, probably because I dropped the LSD at midnight and I was still pretty wired at 10am in the morning and couldn't sleep haha. That sucked because everyone else was asleep and I just wanted to be sober again. There's no way that adverse effects would present themselves years later though right?

I was very responsible with my LSD usage anyways. I would trip once a year at most, apart from once where it was a month in between - but the second trip a month later was a quarter tab which has absolutely zero effect on me so I probably wouldn't count that one!

I was never worried about the weed thing and I'm still not really. It's just interesting and I wonder if it did cause some of my anxiety. I was smoking it when I was 15, but this was once a week kinda thing and I stopped for two years, then occasionally did it when I was 17. When I was 18-23 I was smoking it on and off, usually for a few weeks everyday, then not at all for a few months, then occasionally etc etc. It was a real on and off affair. I don't really regret it to be honest, me and my mates used to have some really intense laughing fits on it when we were in the early days of smoking it.

My cousin just showed me a dance magazine from 1998 about the effects of MDMA, LSD etc, saying it can cause permanent mental illness in some people (she wasn't trying to scare me though haha), and referenced the whole squirrel monkeys thing. I wonder if these studies are still relevant considering it's from so long ago?

My mate really wants me to do mushrooms with him, he reckon it changed his life. I'm not really game at the moment though.

Also what do you think of Prof David Nutt's work on MDMA? He claims that it isn't neurotoxic at all and has done a massive study on it. They are also using MDMA now for PSTD and anxiety disorders in some parts of the world. Is the general consciousness of MDMA neurotoxicity now leaning towards the 'not as bad as we originally thought' spectrum, or is it still very inconclusive?
 
I think the studies that prove some level of neurotoxicity to axons are accurate but what they fail to mention is dosage is the difference between something being a medicine or a poison. I think the neurotoxicity they are talking about takes much higher dosages and would really be found in abusers, people who have taken hundreds of pills, many of pills at a time, and have missed many days of sleep and taken more pills on the comedown, trip every weekend and all that jazz. I don't think you're in that boat ;) Psychological effects can certainly pop up and some of us seem to be more vulnerable to these but these effects aren't directly related to a long lasting brain chemistry change that you can't do anything about, they are something you have conscious control over.

I think the conclusion of the community is it can be bad if you abuse it but not that bad if you're responsible and spread out your use and use lightly. But remember people don't do drugs because their life is all fine and dandy as is, in my experience they are usually self medicating a problem, and drugs are their solution. I think the underlying problem is the real issue at hand here.

Mushrooms can be mentally taxing but I am definitely considering taking them early in the day, much like your LSD trip I hate being kept awake by psychedelics. I would think about taking your friend up on your offer one of these days, especially if things don't improve much for you but going very lightly, maybe half an eighth if even that? I think the goal (besides experiences and epiphanys) is to down regulate a kind of bad serotonin that normally chronic ssri use helps down regulate. Mushrooms just do it a lot faster if you do them a couple times and don't have all the other bad effects.
 
Ok then, thanks for the insight. I have read studies too that say even a few pills can cause some sort of irreversible brain damage. Like I said, I've probably done MDMA about 15 times, maybe even less but I can't quite remember. Never tested either, so maybe we will say 'ecstasy'.

I think the problem is more with my thoughts. My anxiety levels have dropped quite a lot, I'm more in a dysphoria kinda state now, not necessarily depressed, just kinda flat.
 
I think there is a natural cycle to mood swings related to receptor regulation, when you are in anxiety mode your receptors are insensitive because they're seeing so much activity, when your anxiety drops the receptor activity drops but it takes them a while to up regulate so you are left feeling a less jazzy for a bit. This is a good turning point! Your receptors are still down regulated and insensitive as a compensation for the high strung anxiety mode but now that you lack the activity of a high anxiety mind your brain can begin to up regulate the receptors and things can normalize and achieve some homeostasis.

At this point I should definitely emphasize the benefits of regular cardio and exercise, they are great natural anti depressants and mood stabilizers, they also make your brain regenerate and grow new brain cells. Cardio fights off most forms of aging.
 
Awesome. Actually everytime I've gone through a setback I've always gone through this stage, so maybe you're right!

In relation to cardio, does the neurogenesis also occur in the serotonin system? Alot of MDMA studies say 'damage is permanent', but was this before neurogenesis was discovered so to speak?
 
The increase in neurogenesis from cardio does occur in serotonin specifically in the dentate gyrus, a very important place for serotonin projections in the brain :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_physical_exercise is a fabulous read, I highly recommend skimming through it if you need motivation to workout or quit smoking and workout ;) It will surly throw some positive light into all this gloom should you read about all the wonderful things exercise can do for the brain.

"damage" is an ugly word but I would say the damage can be reversed if one lives healthily enough. Of course this is concerning high level abuse related damage. There are conditions under which new brain cells will flourish, this is with the release of brain building hormones such as BDNF, things that increase BDNF (mainly exercise, regular cardio 30 minutes a day is fabulous for increasing BDNF) could counteract the damage to axons. Especially if one could get their fitness level to where they could run for a half hour or an hour every day. Which you can definitely do if you give it time and work at it. Some strength training might be necessary to build the leg muscles at some point. Someone who is recovering from an adverse reaction just told me exercise really helped him.

I really believe in cardio. As nerdy as that sounds.
 
Cool man, I really need to start doing more cardio!

Another thing I actually remembered is that when I was 17 I took party pills a few times. Party pills here back in 2007 were generally a combination of BZP and TFMPP. I heard that these produce a similar effect to MDMA, but are like a weaker version of speed/mdma?. Do you think that these would have a neurotoxic effect too? I took them three times. The first time I took them I ended up doing four pills in a night, and from what I remember they can range from 100mg-250mg per pill - fuck haha. I had massive comedowns but they resolved quickly and I had no issues after the comedown.
 
1. Many people have anxiety and other vague, sometimes debilitating psychological symptoms at some point in their lives, often with no discernible cause.
2. Many of these people take "MDMA" at least once in their lives and go on to have more anxiety or other psychological symptoms again or are triggered by their "MDMA" sesssion(s).
3. Many of these people then blame the "MDMA" unfairly.
4. It is normal to have some anxiety.
5. Pure MDMA when taken responsibly or even abused a bit is damn near harmless. At least it was in the 1990s when I personally went through hundreds of pills.
6. Scouring the interwebs for "MDMA Long Term Comedown" threads is counterproductive and encourages hypochondria.
7. According to recent information released by the DEA, 87% of "MDMA" pills sold today in the U.S. contain ZERO percent MDMA.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top