Over use can damage serotonin receptors
i think this is kind of misleading. receptors are proteins on the cell membrane and are constantly broken down and replaced. if you had damaged receptors (which occurs all the time, even without any substances), they will be degraded by the cell and replaced by new ones.
what really happens is that the brain senses a difference to what it considers normal and what happens on mdma, and it tries to counteract this change by various means (altering receptor density, phosphorylating receptors, altering the electrochemical potential of the membrane, altering the density of the serotonin transporter, ...). this is the same principle that happens everytime you take any centrally active substance. it's basically no different than the short term tolerance for psychedelics, which disappears after a few days, but we don't speak of "receptor damage" there.
the point is, with mdma this takes a longer time, but it has been found to be completely reversible in the best studies done on that subject (within 3-8 weeks after one night out), hence the recommendation not to take it more often than every 2 months.
Those are all from brain damage
brain damage from mdma is far from proven. actually with every new study that pops up, it looks more unlikely.
since the original neurotoxicity studies, we know a lot more. originally they used around 5x the equivalent amount per kilogram in rats (and this 4x in close succession, basically causing serotonin syndrome and nearly killing the animals in the process) to induce neurotoxicity to account for the animals' faster metabolism. now we know that equivalent amounts of mdma lead to equivalent plasma levels of mdma, so the rats indeed received 5x the effective dose a human would have taken. in addition to that studies have shown, that if you inject mdma directly into the brain, then it's not neurotoxic, so it must be some sort of metabolite of mdma that produces the toxicity. incidentally, the rats - having a higher metabolism - produce considerably more of these metabolites than we humans do.
of course we cannot be completely sure (and i surely wouldn't take any bets concerning huge amounts), but considering the available evidence, i'll bite my head off if the doses recommended here cause any brain damage.
Brain Zaps is the term for one of the effects of Seratonin Syndrome - basically it feels like a shot of electricity shooting through your brain.
Heres a link to Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSRI_di...ation_syndrome
what does the SSRI disconuation syndrome have to do with serotonin syndrome?
it rather seems to be the result of too low serotonin than too much.
i've had them only once, after i did a stupid amount. so i suspect it occurs when you depleted your serotonin storage too much?
