MDMA lecture at uni today...half decent!!

There was an optional lectue on today by a researcher who studies MDMA, its effects on people, rats etc. About 50 people turned up, from my pillin buddies to research professors there to learn.
Anyways..it was actually decent, why?
1) He mentioned the whole media hype thing and how its false.
2) Ana Woods death had more to do with fluids than with mdma itself
3) He mention happy valley death was due to PMA.
4) also how business men take it on saturday mornings with their coffee to chill out!!!
This was his intro.
Scientific results followed. He conducted studies on rats and found that mdma does what we all know It increased the running rate of the rats, increased social interactions and decreased anxiety. ie. they peaked off their faces. But 2 days later all this went the other way ie. comin down.
He had proper scans of the seretogenic regions of the brains of monkeys. Monkeys were giving like 1 gram mdma per day for five days straight. After 2 days nearly all the serotgenic parts were bearnt off. 7 years later about half returned.
Basically, the main worrying part for me was the fact that this also occurs in humans from a few other studies. It can lead to depression, and memory loss due to loss of serotonin...but hey who the fuck has 1 gram of mdma/day for 5 days straight? prolly one of you out there
Finally, after the doctors/prof's asked him all these technical questions i asked him if he himself popped...he said "well...all i can say is that some of my close friends have had it". hahaha what a load of shit, he's surrounded by pure mdma..all day everyday. hmmm... lets have 200mg today in the name of science. i wouldn't be surprised if he was a bluelighter!!

Which uni bro? (might have to enrol - also what course subjects u doing - me interested)

i'm at unsw...doing med. the lecturer was from sydney uni, but came for a lucture open to anyone who wanted to come. was quite interesting.

Good question, bet he smiled. "Dam , busted"
Nice post

what was the lecturers name
was it the same guy that published that paper about two months ago on mdma toxicity?

Dr. E
was the dude giving out "samples"
hee hee, if he was i'm switching to that uni!!!
peace
rc1n
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It's been a long time, I shouldnt have left you without some dope pills to chomp through.... (erik B + rc1n..)

after 2 day the seretonin receptors or whatever they are were burnt off -
Sheeeit! That's a worry -maybe that's why we never get the feeling back of our first e. I'm also thinkin a serious binge for a day or two which some of us would have indulged in could possibly do some serious damage. Are you more easily depressed? moody? have a shorter attention span these days?
I beginning to wonder whether some of us are changing and are turning a blind eye or just can't see it, or perhaps it's just me? Maybe I'm just overly-paranoid - perhaps that's another side-effect Aaargh help!

Well that's definately a worrying question XSI11V, i know that my short term memory is sh*t, i'm depressed, irritable and have a pretty short attention span for about a week after i go out and these symptoms only really start to get better by the middle to the end of the second week of not taking anything. Its been that way for about a year or so now. But i am guessing these things have already been discussed somewhere before and i am just going over old ground.
Just a question, is this guy going to give any other lectures at unsw or another venue? Also did he give any websites or other references for his work and lectures - a transcript/handout of his speech?
[This message has been edited by delroy (edited 07 September 2000).]

Those tests where they give animals extremely large doses of a drug and then say how much damage it did to them really piss me off! Some can be backed up by similar tests on humans, but I havn't seen that kind of testing done with MDMA. (1 g/day for 5 days? Where do I sign up? )
Now here's a thought... There are some drugs/medicines which when given in the right dose, can perform wonders and even save a life, yet higher doses of the same drug/medicine can kill. What I'm saying here is that massive overdoses of drugs only shows the damage those kind of doses do, and it can't be compared to the much smaller doses we usually take.
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Common Sense isn't all that common

Excellent point, tars. Nothing is so good for you that you can't ever have enough of it (even water!) & few things are so bad for you that you should never, ever have them. A little bit of everything, not too much of anything - a pretty good guideline for most things in life, i'd say.
However, i don't think that giving the monkeys 1g a day is too much to show valid results - and they are frightening results imo. I'm sure we all know or know of (crazy) people who munch pill after pill after pill whenever they go out & probably wouldn't have a full gram but they'd be well on their way. If we are anything like the monkeys (& if you take that many pills, well..), just 2 big nights would surely be enough to cause extensive damage.
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to the crazy person, the normal one is insane

rc1n...nah no samples handed out, but i'd be glad to be a human experiment . One thing i didn't ask is that are reseacrchers allowed to make their own mdma..i'm, sure they do.
XSI11V, i cant say i'm more easy depressed or moody, only that i think my short term memory is suffering a little. And yeah..its hard to go back to your first peak, the best i've done is after staying off for about 2-3months.
delroy...he gave the lecture as a one-off for this set of experiments he did. their were no handous or transcripts. as for his name, i forgot, (see previous paragraph). i'll ask and post up, but he was from the department of neuroanatomy from sydney uni.
and i fully agree with the point of how the experiments may not be indicative because they were done using huge quantities. but the guy mentioned how they did tests on "regular" users (humans) and found similal results.
if any more info comes...i'll put it up. cheers every1!

That lecturer's name wasn't Ian something was it? Ian McLachlan or something...Scottish guy? He did some research on MDMA recently, was on tv talking about it, ABC news or the 7.30 report or something. But this lecture was probably a one-off thing.
And that thing with the monkeys... their serotonin levels would have been wasted very early in the test if they had been given that much, probably after 1 or 2 days. So if they continued to be fed 1g of MDMA per day for 3 days after that, my opinion is that there would have been plenty of damage done to the serotonin receptors by dopamine. But if one was to do i dunno, 200mg or under in 1 day, then none after that, it should do much less damage. Especially if drugs like 5HTP are used to keep the serotonin levels up.
SpankY

ahh spankY your brilliant..it was Ian Mclachlan. youngish scottish guy. nice dude.
your point about the excess mdma given is true. however one thing about 5-htp. too much of it can lead to your brain stopping its own natural production, which can also have long term effects. not good.
[This message has been edited by Dr.E (edited 11 September 2000).]