Long term LSD abuse

[6apbhmm]

People just use some common sense..
anything that drastically changes your perception of the world MUST be bad for you when abused heavily! I don't need a study for that, just see loads of people finding excuses for whatever shit they love to take.

I used to do lots of meph, not because I was ill or anything, but because I was bloody stupid.

 

[Folley]

Blows everything you've heard about serotonin and depression out the window doesn't it.

No, I learned this months ago. Where are you getting this information? DEA.com? No, they wouldnt spread misinformation that bad...

they inject RETARDED amounts of MDMA into chimps, to see that there ARE in fact signs of damage. If you take one oral dose, your not going to notice any negative effects. If you inject 40 doses in 4 days, then you can easily see which areas of the brain are being affected.

But it's been quite a while since LSD and MDMA have been in widespread use.

Stop talking. Thats fucking retarded. MDMA is in the HEIGHT of its use. More and more people are taking MDMA everyday. Raves have recently gone mainstream, and MDMA is the drug of choice at raves. It is the #2 abused drug in America today, and it is also the WORST drug for you, as far as its effects on the brain.

MDMA is worse than meth. Yes, I said it. Dopamine regenerates in a week, serotonin takes years to fully heal.





So one study says that MDMA causes no damage, and your just going to accept it as fact that you can do as much as you want, all day every day with no problems at all?

Don't just accept things at face value

 

[Fossil_Diver]

One could argue that all drugs are potentially unsafe because the only difference between a medicine and a poison is the dosage.

 

[Folley]

^ Take DXM for instance.


Most drugs are safe in moderation, MDMA is one that is incredibly harmful when abused though.


Lets get back on topic though...

 

[Ismene]

If you inject 40 doses in 4 days, then you can easily see which areas of the brain are being affected.

But can you understand that taking it orally doesn't reach anywhere near the same concentrations as injecting it directly? If you inject water directly into the brain you die - does that mean drinking a glass of water causes brain damage? Think about it.

Does anyone take it by injecting it directly into their brain? Then why base your "research" on this?

More and more people are taking MDMA everyday

Evidence? Or did you just pull this out of your arse?

Have people been taking MDMA for the last 30 years? Yes or No? Why hasn't there been a subsequent explosion in brain damaged people?

It is the #2 abused drug in America today

Stop reading the LAPD website man. "Abused". Jeez.

and it is also the WORST drug for you, as far as its effects on the brain.

Where did you pull this from? Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support your claims?

So one study says that MDMA causes no damage

Did you read that article? You didn't did you. Go back and read it then get back to us.

MDMA is one that is incredibly harmful when abused though.

Evidence? How do you define "abused"? Seeing as you've used the term "The 2nd most abused drug in America". And where are all these people showing "incredible harm"? Why does Professor Nutt say the exact opposite of what you claim?

Lets get back on topic though...

I agree. I direct everyone to the link I posted for sensible information.

 

[webbykevin]

But can you understand that taking it orally doesn't reach anywhere near the same concentrations as injecting it directly? If you inject water directly into the brain you die - does that mean drinking a glass of water causes brain damage? Think about it.

Does anyone take it by injecting it directly into their brain? Then why base your "research" on this?

More and more people are taking MDMA everyday

Evidence? Or did you just pull this out of your arse?

Have people been taking MDMA for the last 30 years? Yes or No? Why hasn't there been a subsequent explosion in brain damaged people?

It is the #2 abused drug in America today

Stop reading the LAPD website man. "Abused". Jeez.

and it is also the WORST drug for you, as far as its effects on the brain.

Where did you pull this from? Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support your claims?

So one study says that MDMA causes no damage

Did you read that article? You didn't did you. Go back and read it then get back to us.

MDMA is one that is incredibly harmful when abused though.

Evidence? How do you define "abused"? Seeing as you've used the term "The 2nd most abused drug in America". And where are all these people showing "incredible harm"? Why does Professor Nutt say the exact opposite of what you claim?

Lets get back on topic though...

I agree. I direct everyone to the link I posted for sensible information.

I agree with everything you said, great post man.

 

[Ismene]

Interesting article on the injection into the brain research here webby: (six grams injected directly into the brain over 4 days! Jesus christ!)

http://neurobonkers.com/2011/03/15/science-strikes-back/

Another odd thing about the Johns Hopkins study was that the monkeys were injected three times with intervals of three hours. Ricuarte, the author of the study himself conducted a study in 1988 that demonstrated that injecting doubles the toxicity of MDMA however this was not discussed in this study and the title of the study actually states “a common recreational dose”. It was also a strange conclusion for the scientists to suggest that ecstacy causes Parkinson’s without addressing their staggering finding that two of their ten monkeys dropped dead before they could be given their third dose. It’s as if they think that at raves its perfectly normal for one in five ecstasy users to inject themselves with ecstasy and then promptly drop dead.

The Johns Hopkins dosage though high compared to recreational doses, isn’t however particularly out of the ordinary for animal MDMA research. The study cites a key study by the US National Institute for Drug Addiction (NIDA) that injected monkeys with twice the dose they used, noon and night for 4 consecutive days (based on their calculation of mg per kilo, the equivalent for a 75kg human would be six grams of pure MDMA over four days, taken at breakfast and bed time. Most MDMA users probably wouldn’t see that much MDMA in their lifetimes). This dosage and timespan is so nuts that the fact that all of the monkeys in the study didn’t drop dead immediately should suggest ecstasy is a pretty safe drug. Instead the NIDA study is one of the assortment of studies used to support the claim that ecstasy causes brain damage. Of course ecstasy causes damage to animals if you inject hideous amounts of it on a twice daily basis for days on end. Neither studies bother explaining why they are injecting the monkeys rather than using the normal method of oral administration.

 

[Folley]

But can you understand that taking it orally doesn't reach anywhere near the same concentrations as injecting it directly? If you inject water directly into the brain you die - does that mean drinking a glass of water causes brain damage? Think about it.

If you drink enough water you will die too.

Does anyone take it by injecting it directly into their brain? Then why base your "research" on this?

Because if you take one dose, you will notice zero damage. This gives them an idea of which regions of the brain are being affected, so they can know what supplements help prevent harm and damage to the axons. Without that research, we would know absolutely nothing.

More and more people are taking MDMA everyday

Evidence? Or did you just pull this out of your arse?

And how do you expect me to prove that? Its obvious that the rave scene has taken off lately, which means more people exposed to ecstasy.

Have people been taking MDMA for the last 30 years? Yes or No? Why hasn't there been a subsequent explosion in brain damaged people?

Honestly, no. Some people have, but it wasnt until the 80s that ecstasy actually started coming out in pills for the masses, and then it was very small scale. Raves brought out that scene, and it had a big boom in the 90s, but died down again a lot. Recently with wubstep, more and more people are going to raves and becoming interested in ecstasy, it has a reputation of being safe because of the things people like you say.
That leads to all the little ravers going to events and stuffing themselves with as many pills as possible, while going around and telling everyone how safe it is for them.

It is the #2 abused drug in America today

Stop reading the LAPD website man. "Abused". Jeez.

There is a difference between use and abuse.

and it is also the WORST drug for you, as far as its effects on the brain.

Where did you pull this from? Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support your claims?

Well obviously things like cyanide are worse for you, but as far as commonly used recreational drug, it causes the most damage to your brain. Meth may do more damage, but thats because of they way people use it, redosing for days straight, also known as abuse.

So permanant down regulation of serotonin receptors, one of, if not the most important system in your body, is OK? Come on now. Your not that stupid.

You really want evidence? Im not going to waste my time now, because I do this enough in ED; take a look in like any of the threads you can find something.

So one study says that MDMA causes no damage

Did you read that article? You didn't did you. Go back and read it then get back to us.I agree. I direct everyone to the link I posted for sensible information.


You posted a news link, not the actual study. This is something we were already aware of, responsible users of ecstasy can have little to no damage. But people who roll every week do incredible damage to their serotonin systems, likened to the damage caused by SSRI use over periods of years.

 

[webbykevin]

The crazy fuckers, no wonder 99% of the main stream opinions about drugs (Illegals and Pharmas) are so ignorant, confused and just plain wrong.

These people have zero ethics or integrity and they wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and kicked them in the ass.

I think I'm pretty much over making any attempt to engage with them in any form of discussion, until they find some decent values within themselves anything they have to say on ANY topic is just hollow, empty, fear based, infantile nonsense and i cant even be bothered to argue with them anymore.

The best thing I did in the last few years was stop paying any attention to main stream media, No TV, No commercial radio, No newspapers. It's amazing how fantastic and wonderful the world actually looks when you remove all those layers of subconscious bullshit from the view.

The fucking fun police can get fucked, The slimy politicians can get fucked, Profit driven health care can get fucked, Rupert Murdoch can get fucked, The religious fuckwits can get fucked, I am building my own damn boat and I am treating the narrow canyons of culture with the contempt it deserves. The view from the top of my personal mountain is beautiful and i don't need some wanker with a clip board and research grant from Monsanto or Glaxo Smith Kline to tell me otherwise.

 

[ProducedRaw]

Nah, that was 10 years ago. The latest and biggest research project ever done says ecstasy doesn't cause brain damage:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/feb/19/ecstasy-harm-brain-new-study

The definition of "brain damage" is debatable.

From the article:

But the taking of ecstasy has also been linked to damage to the central nervous system and research in recent years has suggested that long-term changes to emotional states and behaviour have been triggered by consumption of the drug.

Also consider that these tests were measuring cognitive performance, which is far more strongly correlated with acetylcholine, dopamine and noradrenaline than with serotonin. I would say that a better experiement would be one which measures not just the cognitive aspects but also the social consequences as well as long term anxiety and depression levels. In my experience, these are the areas which MDMA tends to affect strongly and the changes are very long lasting. Considering that we are highly social animals - I would argue that changes to our social functioning are more dangerous than cognitive deficits. There are plenty of people who are stupid but can feed themselves well enough and lots of incredibly bright people who can't do shit with their lives because nobody will help them because they don't know how to communicate fluidly. It's not what you know, it's who you know. It's not what you do, it's who you do it with.

In fact, it would be nice if we could come up with some standard tests for these things, like a multidimensional map of changes to one's psyche and body as a result of taking drug X at time intervals A, B and C. E.g. one dimension could be cognitive function, another could be average daily anxiety level (broken down into social, general, etc), depression level, liver, heart and lung function and time intervals in several ranges such as in the hours following abstinance, week, month, year, decade and multiple decades. Our current drug research is immature, sketchy and needs to be standardised.

 

[Transcendence]

The IS such thing as an acid casualty. It's called Brian Jones.

 

[Ismene]

The IS such thing as an acid casualty. It's called Brian Jones.

Brian wasn't that keen on acid, he preferred mandrax.

 

[Ismene]

The crazy fuckers, no wonder 99% of the main stream opinions about drugs (Illegals and Pharmas) are so ignorant, confused and just plain wrong.

These people have zero ethics or integrity and they wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and kicked them in the ass.

I think I'm pretty much over making any attempt to engage with them in any form of discussion, until they find some decent values within themselves anything they have to say on ANY topic is just hollow, empty, fear based, infantile nonsense and i cant even be bothered to argue with them anymore.

Incredible that so-called adults can produce "research" of such pathetic quality. And the fact that people swallow it at face value is even more disturbing.

 

[Ismene]

[/I]
If you drink enough water you will die too.

But the point is you can use water without causing yourself brain damage, even tho in the lab you can devise an experiment to demonstrate the neurotoxicity of water.

Did you read the article I posted about the problems of comparing direct injection into the brain and oral doses? Didn't it give you second thoughts about it? 6 grams direct into your brain in 4 days? That's comparable to an oral dose?

Its obvious that the rave scene has taken off lately

How old are you Folley? The rave scene peaked in the UK around 1990. Since then it's died off in a big way. The quality of E has been so low for the last decade that it's use has dropped off considerably. That's why legal highs like mephedrone took off in such a big way 4 or 5 years ago.

it causes the most damage to your brain

You keep saying this. What you need to do now is produce evidence to support your claim.

So permanant down regulation of serotonin receptors

Where did you get this from? Do you even know what it means? What's the difference between an ordinary person and someone with your alleged "permanent down regulation of serotonin receptors"? What does "permanent" mean? You take E and you're receptors are "permanently down regulated" for the rest of your life? Bullshit.

But people who roll every week do incredible damage to their serotonin systems, likened to the damage caused by SSRI use over periods of years.

Can you back this up? Or is it something a teenage mate told you walking to school one day?

 

[Ismene]

The definition of "brain damage" is debatable.

True, but so is "neurotoxicty". People ingest countless neurotoxins just walking along a busy street filled with cars.


In my experience, these are the areas which MDMA tends to affect strongly and the changes are very long lasting

But you would think all those people caning it in the 80's would now be reporting symptoms. You introduce tobacco to a virgin population and within 30 years you will see health problems. Where are all the people with brain damage from E?

 

[Okami]

But you would think all those people caning it in the 80's would now be reporting symptoms. You introduce tobacco to a virgin population and within 30 years you will see health problems. Where are all the people with brain damage from E?

Gah that's not the way it works!? Not everything that is damaging necessarily has a 30 year incubation period and moreover not everything is noticeable to a person for them to first and foremost go to a doctor and secondly to link back to drugs that they did to 30 tears ago. If it lets say makes you significantly more prone to depression, you may very well not get depressed until your wife leaves you, a friend dies, you get fired, all of which can happen at any period in time. If it changes your personality/causes mood swings. You could very well move to a different city at the same time that those effects take place so that the people that know you best aren't around to notice. It may effect long term memory, which is a thing you'll only start to notice and think is a medical condition if its serious and is making you forget your own birthday, rather than a birthday of your mum for example and at which point if you took E when you were 25 and its 30 years later a doctor will diagnose you with something more likely for your age, rather than an ecstasy tablet you haven't mentioned to them that you took all that time ago.

For trends like that to be noticed each person that's done it needs to tell their doctor they have, which they don't, it also needs to be taken by large amounts of the population, which it isn't. The way the health effects of tobacco were noticed were because so many people smoked, and even in the 60s when it was more or less established that it was bad for you, tobacco companies kept finding evidence to show that it wasn't.

No matter how many studies you read, you still don't know what could happen even if they all say its safe (which they don't). It is better to err on the side of caution.

 

[Nephtys]

I don't know why someone started speculating wether mdma causes braindamage or not...
MDMA causes immediate long-term changes in the brain (some of these changes are certainly damage).
Anyway mdma does downregulate the serotonin receptors, some receptors will never fully recover, others will die, others heal...
Many won't people won't notice any of these changes, but they DO happen.
There's a reason why everyone is just that little bit more impulsive after that one mdma usage. (I've got sources for all of this, but I'm to lazy to post them atm )

 

[Ismene]

Not everything that is damaging necessarily has a 30 year incubation period

But the point is that hospitals arn't filled with Ecstasy zombies are they. They havn't been at any time in the last 30 years and they arn't now. So that would suggest Ecstasy is pretty damn safe.

at which point if you took E when you were 25 and its 30 years later

Well yeah, I wouldn't worry about an E you took 30 years ago. If you havn't noticed anything in 30 years then it's a good bet it didn't give you brain damage.

it also needs to be taken by large amounts of the population, which it isn't

I think the last estimate I read was half a million to a million people using it every weekend in the UK alone. Apply that to the other countries where it's used and you're getting a pretty big population of users. You'd think someone, somewhere would be in hospital as a living example of an Ecstasy zombie by now.

It is better to err on the side of caution.

True, but erring on the side of the caution doesn't mean you should automatically believe politically motivated E research. I'm just suggesting use your own judgement - if someone is injecting 6 grams of E directly into a brain within 4 days and then claiming that's exactly the same as a person taking an oral dose once every 3 months, you need to question them.

 

[Ismene]

MDMA causes immediate long-term changes in the brain (some of these changes are certainly damage).

The research hasn't been done to confirm this. You're relying on politically motivated research that is worthless.

Anyway mdma does downregulate the serotonin receptors

So what?

others will die, others heal...

Brain cells are dying constantly every second that you're alive. Don't worry about it.

Many won't people won't notice any of these changes, but they DO happen

Your brain undergoes an awful lot of changes over the course of a lifetime. We don't notice many of them. Don't worry about it.

There's a reason why everyone is just that little bit more impulsive after that one mdma usage

What do you mean by more impulsive? I'm not impulsive after using E, I'm tired.

 

[Nephtys]

Anyway mdma does downregulate the serotonin receptors
So what?

Blue monday, suicide tuesday?
Downregulation of your receptors means they shrink, as a consequence it's physically impossible to feel as good as before until they return to normal

Brain cells are dying constantly every second that you're alive. Don't worry about it.

True story... We've got way too much brain cells XD But I find it disturbing that mdma changes a lot in peoples brain chemistry... There're many people who just feel 'different', isn't it strange even that amount of brain cells can't cover it?

What do you mean by more impulsive? I'm not impulsive after using E, I'm tired

With impulsive behavior, you won't think as rationally about your actions...

I once did all the research, mdma one time causes some changes in your brain, but eventually it will heal

Finally, the systemic administration of MDMA produced a 30% decrease in the concentration of ATP in the striatum and hippocampus. These results support the conclusion that MDMA produces a dysregulation of energy metabolism which contributes to the mechanism of MDMA-induced 5-HT neurotoxicity.