It takes a big long explanation to really understand... so Ill try and cut it down.
MDMA releases serotonin, which triggers the release of dopamine and other endorphins. The main cause of MDMA damage, is dopamine entering the sert receptors. After you roll, your sert is at an all time low, and when you take more MDMA your brain cant release any more sert, so it trys to find other ways to work. Much more dopamine is released with later doses, so more dopa does to sert receptors, which means increased damage
make sense?
This is actually a fairly inaccurate concept -- recent research suggests that oxidative stress, or adverse reactions to free electrons, at the molecular level is more likely the cause of any MDMA induced neurotoxicity. To be a bit more basic, there's at least one metabolite or by-product of consumption of MDMA that causes neurotoxicity. More research needs to be done on that front; no one is quite sure what that metabolite or by-product is (dopamine is a suspect, so your statement isn't totally inaccurate).
The reason MDMA stops working when it does is also not because your brain runs out of serotonin, either. MDMA does deplete some of the brain (and spine)'s 5-HT (serotonin), but on the level of ~10% (don't quote me on this, I can't seem to find the journal article where I read it, I'll look it up later). The real reason is probably 5-HT receptor downregulation -- your brain "pulls" the 5-HT receptors out of the bloodstream in response to high concentrations of SERT. This is just wild speculation, but I bet MDMA would still stop working after 2 (or whatever) hours even if you had an unlimited supply of 5-HT.
The good news here is that there are at least two studies showing that acute neurotoxicity of MDMA can be almost completely prevented by A) Avoiding raising your body temperature and B) Dosing with both a lipophilic antioxidant (eg: ascorbic acid, or vitamin C) and a lipophobic antioxidant (eg: vitamin E). Again, this comes with a caveat -- these studies were done on rats, and we still haven't determined a proper way to scale doses between rats and humans. Don't think antioxidants will allow you to roll week in and week out either! The MDMA "hangover" and subsequent period of tolerance/diminished effect is pretty much unavoidable as we can't really reduce 5-HT receptor downregulation -- the only thing that can fix that is time. Some studies suggest a month should be enough, but anecdotal evidence suggests that there are still some lingering effects after that: the longer you wait, the better!
Wow, I wasn't expecting to type so much, or go so wildly off topic. I apologize.
PS: If anyone wants the journal articles I talk about here, or just interesting reading on MDMA in general, tell me! Research is kinda what I do for a living.
