- Joined
- Nov 3, 2005
- Messages
- 263
There was a thread on Reddit recently where someone was mentioning that they felt that ecstasy tablets had a different effect and duration of action in the 90s/early 00's. Obviously, there are a number of commonly observed phenomena that could contribute to this. For instance, folks who would recall that 'the drugs were better 20 years ago' have many years of potential usage experience, the tolerance to go with it, and a body that's 20 years older. You also have the potential that the MDMA present in the 90s/00s was a different isomer expression than the MDMA people use today. This is one of the common hypotheses around why some feel that the effects of meth have changed in the last few years, possibly resulting from the change in methamphetamine manufacture from pseudoephedrine as the primary starting ingredient to phenylactone.
The reddit post, in particular, made me think a bit about other factors that could be components of the perceived difference in effect from MDMA use years ago vs. today. I'm someone who thinks about stuff like this through the lens of context. Contextual differences are well established as potential factors that can beneficially or adversely impact a psychedelic experience. Tripping in a beautiful place, with close friend, and little chance of interacting with a stranger is much different than tripping somewhere that feels less beautiful, safe, or trusting. We often recite the mantra of "Dose/(mind)Set/Setting". The expanded recommendations on this includes the notion of personal context. What is going on in my life right now? Is my job going well? Is my housing situation stable? Is my partner growing distant? Personal experiences such as these would absolutely have an impact on the individual psychedelic effect in both subtle and overt ways.
Something we often struggle to examine is the more abstract and upstream effects from factors at a macosystemic level; how cultural factors could have a widespread impact on the perception of, or even psychopharmacological response to, a drug's effect. The seed of this notion is something I've contemplated since starting to experiment with drugs my senior year of high school in 1999. I could not tell you the name of the book that I read this in, but I strongly recall reading about how the incidence of 'Bad Trips' really only started *after* LSD was made illegal in 1967. Once it became an illicit drug, the suggestion of it being bad/dangerous/risky subtly crept into the minds of people using it, likely having some kind of effect on the experience, up to an including paranoia stemming from the now illicit nature of the activity one is indulging in.
I took MDMA in the late 90s, and early 2000s. It isn't a drug I use with a great deal of frequency, and I wouldn't be the right person to note specific differences in effects, regardless of whether it's related to isomeric variance or age-related factors, or something else entirely. That said, I do notice that there are many discussions focusing on issues like this, and it makes me think about what could be happening here. I recently began thinking about my experiences as a raver at the turn of the century, what was going on in my life at that time, even who I was as a part of a larger society, and as a member of an emergent underground subculture in the rave scene. I remember how different 'the internet' was at that time. I love browsing the old threads in the Best Of section, voices and perspectives, frozen in time from decades ago. Also voices and perspectives that hadn't yet experienced the widespread use of forums and other social sites (facebook/reddit/twitter etc), with the resulting burnout many people experience due to social media use. In fact, the internet was pretty damned new. It was something that was often seen as the path to an egalitarian and utopian new era of interconnected communities and the free sharing of ideas. People seem to almost have treated online spaces as an extension or echo of their physical self, whereas we are now a society that often struggles with over-saturation of online presence, and diminished access to social relationships rooted in physical community.
I was a member of the high school graduating class of 2000. We were told that being a 'millennial' was a good thing, that we would be the folks to set the tone in how our future manifested. That we were the first generation to enter into the information age, and that the future was to be quite bright. When we raved back then, it was very future oriented. We hadn't yet experienced the trauma of 9/11, he longest period of warfare in US history (Iraq and Afghanistan) the financial crisis of 2008, the explosion in frequency of gun violence, school shootings, and deaths through both intentional suicide and unintentional overdose, the rise of binary political discourse and the toxicity that bleeds into the wallpaper of our lives, MAGA, Q, CoVID, and a looming second crisis. Widespread use of oxycodone was in it's nascency, fentanyl was still just a lollipop, and heroin was chic. Rewinding just over 20 years, and we were future oriented, and excited about the possibilities of what was laying ahead.
Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote the book 'Prozac Nation' and it was released in 1994. She was identifying the evolution of pharmaceuticals for the 'everyday aches and pains' of the mind, as well as for use in treating major, chronic, psychiatric conditions. We once approached psychiatric treatment through long-term residential hospitals which, when well funded and well managed, could provide people with a safe and secure space to work towards recovery. Over time, profits over patients became the focus, and it was believed to be much cheaper and more profitable to discharge people back into their communities and with provision of medications to stabilize mood and mute psychotic disorders. It was a politically popular move, both as a way to reduce government involvement and spending, and as a way to support the rights of people seen as being discriminated against due to their cognitive or psychiatric challenges. Thorazine was released for use in the mid- 50s with an intentional use for treating psychosis. As a result, the closure of state psychiatric hospital commenced, and the outpatient psychiatry became increasingly common.
When I was going to raves in the late 90s, dropping MDMA with friends, almost none of us had taken Prozac, or Adderall (released in 1996), nor had we taken most of the various SSRIs, SNRIs, or psychostimulants that would become increasingly common in the years to come. We were a generation with naive serotonin and dopamine systems, taking a drug that plays on both systems. We were a generation that was future oriented, taking pills primarily at raves, in a time of hopefulness. I wonder how much the contextual shift impacts the modern MDMA experience, or what the impact of the widespread use of antidepressants and stimulants has on psychoactive drug experiences.
The reddit post, in particular, made me think a bit about other factors that could be components of the perceived difference in effect from MDMA use years ago vs. today. I'm someone who thinks about stuff like this through the lens of context. Contextual differences are well established as potential factors that can beneficially or adversely impact a psychedelic experience. Tripping in a beautiful place, with close friend, and little chance of interacting with a stranger is much different than tripping somewhere that feels less beautiful, safe, or trusting. We often recite the mantra of "Dose/(mind)Set/Setting". The expanded recommendations on this includes the notion of personal context. What is going on in my life right now? Is my job going well? Is my housing situation stable? Is my partner growing distant? Personal experiences such as these would absolutely have an impact on the individual psychedelic effect in both subtle and overt ways.
Something we often struggle to examine is the more abstract and upstream effects from factors at a macosystemic level; how cultural factors could have a widespread impact on the perception of, or even psychopharmacological response to, a drug's effect. The seed of this notion is something I've contemplated since starting to experiment with drugs my senior year of high school in 1999. I could not tell you the name of the book that I read this in, but I strongly recall reading about how the incidence of 'Bad Trips' really only started *after* LSD was made illegal in 1967. Once it became an illicit drug, the suggestion of it being bad/dangerous/risky subtly crept into the minds of people using it, likely having some kind of effect on the experience, up to an including paranoia stemming from the now illicit nature of the activity one is indulging in.
I took MDMA in the late 90s, and early 2000s. It isn't a drug I use with a great deal of frequency, and I wouldn't be the right person to note specific differences in effects, regardless of whether it's related to isomeric variance or age-related factors, or something else entirely. That said, I do notice that there are many discussions focusing on issues like this, and it makes me think about what could be happening here. I recently began thinking about my experiences as a raver at the turn of the century, what was going on in my life at that time, even who I was as a part of a larger society, and as a member of an emergent underground subculture in the rave scene. I remember how different 'the internet' was at that time. I love browsing the old threads in the Best Of section, voices and perspectives, frozen in time from decades ago. Also voices and perspectives that hadn't yet experienced the widespread use of forums and other social sites (facebook/reddit/twitter etc), with the resulting burnout many people experience due to social media use. In fact, the internet was pretty damned new. It was something that was often seen as the path to an egalitarian and utopian new era of interconnected communities and the free sharing of ideas. People seem to almost have treated online spaces as an extension or echo of their physical self, whereas we are now a society that often struggles with over-saturation of online presence, and diminished access to social relationships rooted in physical community.
I was a member of the high school graduating class of 2000. We were told that being a 'millennial' was a good thing, that we would be the folks to set the tone in how our future manifested. That we were the first generation to enter into the information age, and that the future was to be quite bright. When we raved back then, it was very future oriented. We hadn't yet experienced the trauma of 9/11, he longest period of warfare in US history (Iraq and Afghanistan) the financial crisis of 2008, the explosion in frequency of gun violence, school shootings, and deaths through both intentional suicide and unintentional overdose, the rise of binary political discourse and the toxicity that bleeds into the wallpaper of our lives, MAGA, Q, CoVID, and a looming second crisis. Widespread use of oxycodone was in it's nascency, fentanyl was still just a lollipop, and heroin was chic. Rewinding just over 20 years, and we were future oriented, and excited about the possibilities of what was laying ahead.
Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote the book 'Prozac Nation' and it was released in 1994. She was identifying the evolution of pharmaceuticals for the 'everyday aches and pains' of the mind, as well as for use in treating major, chronic, psychiatric conditions. We once approached psychiatric treatment through long-term residential hospitals which, when well funded and well managed, could provide people with a safe and secure space to work towards recovery. Over time, profits over patients became the focus, and it was believed to be much cheaper and more profitable to discharge people back into their communities and with provision of medications to stabilize mood and mute psychotic disorders. It was a politically popular move, both as a way to reduce government involvement and spending, and as a way to support the rights of people seen as being discriminated against due to their cognitive or psychiatric challenges. Thorazine was released for use in the mid- 50s with an intentional use for treating psychosis. As a result, the closure of state psychiatric hospital commenced, and the outpatient psychiatry became increasingly common.
When I was going to raves in the late 90s, dropping MDMA with friends, almost none of us had taken Prozac, or Adderall (released in 1996), nor had we taken most of the various SSRIs, SNRIs, or psychostimulants that would become increasingly common in the years to come. We were a generation with naive serotonin and dopamine systems, taking a drug that plays on both systems. We were a generation that was future oriented, taking pills primarily at raves, in a time of hopefulness. I wonder how much the contextual shift impacts the modern MDMA experience, or what the impact of the widespread use of antidepressants and stimulants has on psychoactive drug experiences.
