I don't see how one famously misguided study makes MDMA a safer drug to use..?
No one is saying that. Serotonin101 just said that the idea of MDMA causing severe brain damage comes from bogus studies on MDMA that were government propaganda, but that MDMA
can lower serotonin levels. And I was just saying that MDMA is certainly not THE number one most damaging drug, especially with single use, in response to F1n1shed, who had said:
Um the answer is quite obvious if you have done even a little reading or experience with either. MDMA is the top choice, for how quickly it can damage your brain compared to other drugs. So MDMA is answer number one
Which I did/do not agree with.
There have been many studies that say MDMA is safe... but they all are talking about with ONE use at a reasonable dose in a completely safe environment. By the very nature that MDMA works by, this is not very damaging. But when you keep taking more and more MDMA without giving your brain the time it needs to recover the lost serotonin you can only get to lower and lower 5-HT levels and can only do more damage as time progresses.
That is pretty much what I said. No one's saying MDMA can't lower serotonin levels, and that chronic high-dose use can't leave people depressed etc, I just disagree that moderate occasional use causes "brain damage" in the technical sense and wanted to point out that plenty of drugs lower serotonin, including many legally prescribed drugs.
I mean, which would you rather binge on for a week... alcohol, meth, or MDMA? The first two would fuck you up sure, but people still do it all the time and can get away with it. MDMA? Not so much...
Hmm... everyone is so different. And what kind of quantities and frequency are we talking about here? It's impossible to really compare them. I've felt WAY worse after a week of drinking or a week of meth personally,
but I was probably using less MDMA in comparison to the meth.
Even if the studies by ricuarte were actually meth, that doesn't mean mdma cant do the same with your serotonin man. They work similarly, Meth causes a surge of dopamine to be released where MDMA causes a big surge of serotonin to be released. They both also release nor epinephrine and other neuro transmitters but those are the primary ones. I've seen the damage it can do personally man and i would take no more than 3 doses in a night and space it out. You guys are full of your selves , i literally became dumber in many different areas of study. Not to mention emotionally dumber full of depression, anxiety ,regret etc. Not to mention the dissociation and depersonalization it left me with. If large doses of meth destroy dopamine neurons, large or even medium doses of mdma damage serotonin neurons which are more delicate. Just put 1 and 1 together, i rest my case.
I don''t think you're properly reading my posts.
^ Exactly. Not to mention alpha-methyldopamine is a metabolite of MDMA and has been shown to directly destroy serotonin receptors.
Do you have a link for a study showing this? As I said in my earlier post: "I have not seen any research that supports the idea that MDMA actually kills brain cells, or is damaging in moderate infrequent use. If anyone has links to some research that is not funded by the US govt that says otherwise please feel free to correct me".
I want to reiterate what I said in my earlier post, that the problem with this thread is that different people are going by different definitions of "brain damage". Some are going strictly by the medical definition of brain damage, which is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells (in significant numbers). Some are referring to neurotoxicity. And some are just going more loosely by
any adverse impact on one's mental health. Drugs can make changes to the brain that are not considered to be "brain damage" or "neurotoxicity", but can be just as detrimental to one's life. Not trying to discredit that, personally I think that detriment to one's life/mental health
is what actually matters, but referring to any subjective deleterious changes/alterations of brain chemistry or the way one feels as "brain damage" is so vague. And everyone is going to say whatever drug caused them the most problems, which is likely to be whatever drug they personally used
in high doses for a long period of time, for example I'd say methadone if we are just going by personal experience on how drugs make us feel long-term.
