MDMA TV: Turn on, tune in, do the research

kingme

kingme

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 2, 2010
Messages
4,877
Location
Europe
MDMA TV: Turn on, tune in, do the research

20 September 2012 by Graham Lawton
Magazine issue 2883. Subscribe and save
For similar stories, visit the Editorials , Mental Health and Drugs and Alcohol Topic Guides
Taking ecstasy on TV may revitalise the stale debate over drugs policy

THE recreational drug ecstasy is one of the most tightly controlled substances on Earth, widely prohibited and classified in the "most harmful" category. So you might expect that scientists have a pretty good idea of what it does to a human brain. But you would be wrong. Although they have studied the brains of long-term ecstasy users, nobody has ever taken healthy volunteers, given them pure MDMA and watched what happens to their brains

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528833.200-mdma-tv-turn-on-tune-in-do-the-research.html
 
well, i thought it would be more of a heads upfor UK people interested in seeing a supposedly interesting doc on TV :)
 
wont be wasting my time watch as i will be to busy testing my own theories on chemicals and there anti depressant qualities and i know something if they studied me they would learn a shit load more than from this bunch of has beens wannabes and nobody's
 
New British TV program films people taking ecstasy

IMAGINE watching a TV show where a group of people take MDMA hooked up to several medical devices monitoring their physical and mental response.

That’s the premise of a controversial new documentary on British Channel Four.

"Drugs Live" is a two-part documentary that aired in the UK this week that aimed to show what happens when 25 volunteers are given the drug ecstasy in hospital conditions.

Presenters Jon Snow and Dr Christian Jessen described the show as an “experiment” that would “attempt to tell the truth about the effects of recreational drug.”

It forms part of a bigger study led by Professor David Nutt, the UK’s former chief drugs adviser, who was sacked after claiming that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

Here’s how it works:

Each participant took the agreed amount of 83mg of MDMA, the active ingredient in the drug ecstasy, while being filmed on television.

New Scientist deputy editor Graham Lawton, one of the participants, described the experience to The Daily Mail:

“I’ve been up since 6am. I’ve had a breath test for alcohol, a urine test for drugs and a psychological test for mental health. Then I’m handed a red pill and a glass of water. I swallow it, and I’m told to relax.

“Which is easier said than done when you don’t know if you’ve just taken vitamin C or 83 milligrams of pure MDMA.

“Half an hour later, I’m inside a brain scanner, my head clamped in place and a visor over my face. It’s noisy and claustrophobic but I’m reassured by the panic button in my hand and a voice from the control room.

“And then I start to feel it. A tingle of energy, like pins and needles, starts in the pit of my stomach and rises slowly, not unpleasant but not exactly pleasurable either.

"It builds in intensity, then breaks into a wave of bliss. When it happens again, I’m in no doubt. I’m coming up.

“Over the next hour I ride ferocious surges of serotonin that balloon me higher and higher, while trying to focus on a series of tasks. At times I feel amazing, at others panicky. Keeping my head still is very, very hard. But I ride it out.

“When I’m pulled out 90 minutes later, the drug effects have reached a plateau. My mind is clear, my movement feels smooth and, aside from some jaw clenching, I feel content and sociable. And surprisingly psychedelic: a purple door is throbbing before my eyes. I wake up the following day feeling pretty good.”

Not surprisingly, the program elicited a pretty varied range of responses. Some of the best reactions were captured on Twitter, where viewers were encouraged to Tweet their responses using the hashtag #drugslive.

Here’s a taste of what they said:

- @caitlinmoran Ecstacy makes you wear hats #drugslive

- @bennicky "8000 people die from alcohol a year, 20 die from MDMA"

- @DannyGraft ban something cos people could lose their temper? have to ban jobs, sports and girlfriends while you're at it pal #drugslive

- @steveymaguire This show is basically saying eccies are good for the taking #drugslive

- @MikeDuce If you don't agree with drugs, don't take them. It's a scientific experiment like any other. Don't let society think for you #drugslive

While it’s clear the show made for interesting viewing, the real question in this story is what impact it will have on the massive drug issue in the United Kingdom – if not the world. According to this piece from The Guardian earlier this year 230 million people took a form of illicit drugs this year, with Australia topping the list of ecstasy users.

With a poll (Do you think a TV show like this is worthwhile?) at -

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/nat...ruth-about-drugs/story-fndor8bb-1226482439980
 
Channel 4's 'Drugs Live' Condemned By Senior UK Government Official

The UK Government's chief drug advisor has condemned television Channel 4 for its live experiment on the effects of taking the drug MDMA, which took place over the previous two nights on British television. Almost 2 million people tuned into the first night of the program, which saw people from a variety of backgrounds try the euphoria-inducing substance; the popularity in the show has led to Professor Les Iversen, who is chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, to question its value.

In a letter to the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph, he wrote: "While I am strongly in favour of scientific research on both legal and illegal drugs, I have to question whether this project has any real "research" value." He added: "Viewers were repeatedly told this was ground-breaking research that had never been done before.

However, a search of the scientific literature reveals that there have been no fewer than 68 human studies of ecstasy using brain-imaging techniques. Twelve of there were published in the past 12 months - and they include reports of effects of ecstasy on the hippocampus and forebrain, as described in the programme."

Iversen went on to warn: "The dressing up of the Channel 4 project as 'research' is flimsy, and there is a danger that such programmes may glamorise drug-taking as a form of entertainment."

http://www.contactmusic.com/news/ch...mned-by-senior-uk-government-official_3304841
 
Drugs: Trips down memory lane

Jon Snow was undone by a slice of flan laced with LSD, but he's not the only establishment casualty of acid

Among the subjects invited to sample MDMA ecstasy for Channel 4's Drugs Live programme this week were an acclaimed novelist and a priest. The experiment recalled the early days of LSD, when respectable members of the establishment took the psychedelic drug for the purposes of public research. And it gave one of its presenters, Jon Snow (top right), a vivid flashback.

Snow claimed, in a blog written before the programme was broadcast, that he once ingested the hallucinogenic inadvertently, aged 22 or thereabouts, by eating two slices of an LSD-laced strawberry flan at a party in Oxford. He then attempted to drive home to London, but was forced to yield the wheel to a non-tripping passenger, after he became convinced that the Mini they were in was too large to fit beneath a motorway bridge.

Earlier this month, Strictly star Bruno Tonioli revealed a similar experience when he had a drink spiked in a Munich nightclub in the 1970s: "I thought I was Roger Daltrey," he told The Sun.

And Sir Sean Connery warned an author not to take LSD because he had experienced a bad trip when he tried the drug himself, it has been claimed.

Writer Edna O'Brien revealed in a new memoir that the star advised her against the drug. She claimed that Connery told her how his trip with psychiatrist RD Laing had a "freight of terrors".

Disgraced former Tory MP Jonathan Aitken was similarly critical of the drug when he "reviewed" it for the Evening Standard in 1965. "This drug needs police, the Home Office and a dictator to stamp it out," Aitken opined. Yet the art critic Brian Sewell, recalling the period more recently in the same paper, wrote that his LSD visions had "made the paintings of Salvador Dali in his prime seem the poor, pale, pedestrian inventions of a plodding mind".

Other high-profile individuals besides The Beatles have been similarly effusive in their recollections. Cary Grant took LSD regularly during the 1950s, as part of his psychotherapy. The DNA pioneer Francis Crick was reportedly a fan of its mind-altering properties, and even allegedly "perceived" the double-helix structure of his discovery while tripping.

Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, who wrote of his own experimentation with hallucinogens in his stories The Doors Of Perception and Heaven and Hell. The Apple founder Steve Jobs described his LSD use – he took the drug up to 15 times during the early 1970s – as "a positive life-changing experience".

Roger Sterling, the fictional scion of the Sterling advertising dynasty in Mad Men, was also converted to the pleasures of LSD in the most recent series of the 1960s-set drama.

But Snow might be more reassured by the news that Dan Rather, the esteemed former US news anchor, has also confessed obliquely to drug use – all in the name of journalism, naturally. In a 1980 interview with Ladies' Home Journal, he said that "as a reporter – and I don't want to say that's the only context – I've tried everything. I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD… my curiosity has carried me into a lot of interesting areas".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/drugs-trips-down-memory-lane-8182647.html
 
really? wow a whole whopping 83mg makes me think ive got a tolerance in having to take more than 200mg to get where i want. Yes id say 80 or so mg would cause effects, but not that i would want with mdma. Would probably just kinda piss me off..
 
83mg on someone that is totally MDMA naieve(sp) will be a hell of a different experience than you. Remember, YMMV.
 
@bennicky "8000 people die from alcohol a year, 20 die from MDMA"

Well are they confirmed Pure mdma deaths?
OR are they contaminated adulterated pill/powder/crystal consumption? (Think PMMA, PMA)

Mdma i think has the strongest argument for the fact that the WAR ON DRUGS IS NOT WORKING!!!!


At the same time though, too many people abuse mdma. Taking big doses, taking it every weekend.
Most of the time the problem with drugs is addiction, doseage, duration and frequency of use.
 
but the govt still has to have a reason to pay the law enforcement.....if they stopped the war on drugs, what would they do and how would they perform their jobs? i been tryna figure that one out
 
There's still lots of crime besides so called drug crime to focus on, violence, murders, rapes, robberies, scams, threats, extortions, driving and things associated with it etc.

I think the go is to stop arresting end users with any type of drugs up to a certain level to start with, then they (LE) will still have bigger fish to fry and not waste the courts time or their own time (in paperwork etc) with small amounts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top