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cognitive difficulties permanent?

Rzrsharp said:
Well to the original poster, I know what you're going through. I'm stumbling through sentences and sometimes have to take a pause, apologize or laugh it off (depending on if it's my friend or someone more important that I'm speaking with) and then continue my sentences. This can be embarassing, especially if you work in a professional or office setting.

I also have more trouble with working memory and remember what someone has just said to me. No, I don't have a learning disability, this has just started since I've started rolling...

...Unfortunately, I like rolling too much so I will simply space out my sessions more and have committed to doing it less frequently.
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Whats your rolling story? How often and how much in the frst few months years etc?

Also what other drugs do you or have you used?
 
Pills were good quality, others with more experience took them and seemed fine--even praising there apparent purity. Never have and am currently not on any scripts.

9 pills, while it seems small, has clinically significant effects in nearly all studies on ecstasy users. This idea of no "noticeable cognitive issues" doesn't seem so intuitive to me, as the noticeability of cognitive issues is entirely dependent on the cognitive task involved. As I mentioned before, complex cognitive tasks seem to present complications for me.

It seems what's left is to eat well, exercise often, and engage in mental stimulation. I agree that constant worry won't provide any answers, though my initial curiosities regarded abstinent users and therapy centered around the possible compensatory/restorative contribution of therapy-induced neurogenesis, and more broadly, neuroplasticity. It would appear that this forum's experiences do not evidence these repair mechanisms...

Still I'd rather not "live with it", if indeed as I suspect the dysfunction is not imagined, and will actively seek to encourage repair strategies through a variety of neurorehabilitative measures. Will provide updates much later on regardless of success.
 
jayjay77 said:
Pills were good quality, others with more experience took them and seemed fine--even praising there apparent purity. Never have and am currently not on any scripts.

9 pills, while it seems small, has clinically significant effects in nearly all studies on ecstasy users. This idea of no "noticeable cognitive issues" doesn't seem so intuitive to me, as the noticeability of cognitive issues is entirely dependent on the cognitive task involved. As I mentioned before, complex cognitive tasks seem to present complications for me.

It seems what's left is to eat well, exercise often, and engage in mental stimulation. I agree that constant worry won't provide any answers, though my initial curiosities regarded abstinent users and therapy centered around the possible compensatory/restorative contribution of therapy-induced neurogenesis, and more broadly, neuroplasticity. It would appear that this forum's experiences do not evidence these repair mechanisms...

Still I'd rather not "live with it", if indeed as I suspect the dysfunction is not imagined, and will actively seek to encourage repair strategies through a variety of neurorehabilitative measures. Will provide updates much later on regardless of success.
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Personally I think you are way too articulate to be worrying about brain damage unless it took you two hours to write that post. Read some of the posts from the members who are clearly e-tarded. Maybe they were that way before, but the majority of them write postings that have more typos and errors than I would have made in kindergarden. I suggest you just abstain from the drug in the future, hit the gym, and take care of yourself.

There is no fix for the users who have serious problems from ecstasy use - look for some of the posts by people dealing with long-term depression. If there was some medical procedure or nootropic that could fix the problem, one of them would have found it by now.

Keep in mind that just because you "felt" smarter doesn't mean you actually were... You might just have harder objectives and projects to deal with now.
 
I can't with certainty determine the exact nature of my perceived difficulties, and even if I could I imagine I would be far better off concentrating on remediation rather than deficit.

As for heavier users experiencing pervasive cognitive deficits--recently read a study on the efficacy of Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in treating mdma-related depression and cognition (Electroconvulsive therapy in the treatment of depression in a former ecstasy user; Freudenmann, 2006). As this kind of treatment may seem extreme and out of the reach, nevertheless effective treatments continue to be explored. In this particular case, the subject was referred to ECT only after failure of various attempts at administration of SSRI's.
 
The chronology (problems six month later) doesn't fit a diagnosis of neurological injury from the MDMA, nor do I believe your level of usage was heavy enough to have potentially harmed your brain.

By far the highest-probability conclusion is that your current issues do not reflect neurological injury from MDMA use.

Things as subtle as reduced sleep quality can have a remarkable impact on mental function. Try some 'healthy changes' such as not drinking anything with caffeine in it after mid-day and getting plenty of exercise.
 
abuse , you loose .

After a few MDMA uses (that were spaced out) you will be fine .

Its people who take it every week , or even more than once every month
 
I'm mostly worried about one particularly risky episode--twice in 1 week, 1/2 pill to 1 pill each time spaced 3 days apart--as all of the rest of the pills were spaced out. I agree much with the "healthy changes" though...I've formed detrimental habits much apart from any drug use (not to say that drug use is inherently detrimental).
 
xD

Ohhhh MazDan, we're hanging out, and the drinks are on me.


Anyways...
I'm mostly worried about one particularly risky episode--twice in 1 week, 1/2 pill to 1 pill each time spaced 3 days apart
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That sounds almost as bad as this one particular risky episode, in which I accidentally drank milk that had expired the previous day.

It's been six months since the incident, and I am just now becoming aware of the gastrointestinal issues that I'm certain it caused.


Look- nobody on here is going to tell you that MDMA is safe. However, the chances that you caused permanent damage after taking 9 pills is just... what's a figure of speech that describes a probability that is below 'slim to none'?
 
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I understand that everyone is very skeptical of lasting impairments from light use, but I think more needs to be said for the other side of things. I used to speak impeccably well--good memory for words and an ability to quickly sort through the words. I now find I simply have more trouble/expend more effort/feel less "involved" or "engaged" or "conscious" in my word usage. I also do not remember word phrases as distinctly as I used to, e.g., slogans, catch-phrases, company names, people's names. I think my attention is fine, also my concentration (though interfered with by my anxiety/dep). All in all, it just seems like I need to put in more effort to come out with the same result, and often do not even come out with this. Instead of instantly recalling a word with little effort and direct attention, I have to really concentrate. Anyone else bothered in this way?

I think some of this can appropriately be attributed to a rise in anxiety/depression as of late (previous 6 months), but I do also earnestly think that mdma has something to do it--and this really disturbs me. I know that anxiety/depression will undoubtedly exacerbate any deficit, and I am currently working on those issues.

I've seen other forums that have described similar hardship in similar patterns of use and I just want to know my outcome so I can be at peace with the issue and work to make this my circumstances livable and happy again.

Exercise has been helping with mood and cognitive function, recently started taking fish oil. less grave and suicidal thoughts in all, but cognitive "hassle" still apparent.
 
You've probably just thought about it obsessively for so long that you have convinced yourself that the MDMA has damaged your brain. However, evidence suggests you are fine.
 
and I just want to know my outcome so I can be at peace with the issue and work to make this my circumstances livable and happy again.
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Your outcome is up to you. You're depressed, not brain damaged. Some people stay depressed until the day they die (almost always prematurely.) Some people get effective help (or manage to find their own way out.)

I don't think you appreciate just how devastating depression can be on cognitive function. I'm not talking 'oh I feel sad'. I'm talking about a functional nuking, to the point where you can start to hallucinate and become irrational. Depression can be a big, scary, fucked-up deal.

So, the bad news is that you do indeed have a very serious problem that will likely take a lot of time and work to resolve. The (modest) good news is that it's incredibly (I mean, INCREDIBLY) unlikely that you've damaged your brain by using drugs.

Keep exercising, stay sober, and look for a good therapist. A long time ago, I suffered from pretty serious depression, and asking for help was the best decision I ever made. If I hadn't done so, I probably wouldn't be here today.

Good luck. Don't lose hope.
 
Lazyscience said:
You've probably just thought about it obsessively for so long that you have convinced yourself that the MDMA has damaged your brain. However, evidence suggests you are fine.
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From my own reading, evidence in actuality suggests otherwise (Schilt 2007, 2008--Netherlands Toxicity Study NEXT). Low dose use resulted in measurable brain changes and persisting deficits in cognitive functioning after an average 3 months abstinence period. Subjects were evaluated both before and after first exposure to ecstasy (only prospective study on mdma); mean average of 3 pills ingested over 20 week period.

you have evidence otherwise?

I just am not seeing how it is so "incredibly unlikely" that I endured any amount of brain injury resulting in cognitive dysfunction--not to understate the immensity of depression on cognition.
 
This thread seems to keep going back to everyone telling the OP that they probably didn't suffer from any cognitive deficiency, and I'm gonna have to agree.. Don't take this as an offensive post, because it is not, by any means.

What was the extent of cognitive deficit from that study? 3 pills over 20 weeks? I know most BL'ers have ingested at least 3 pills in one night. I think that's a major reason why everybody is telling you the same thing - you've come onto a forum where a lot of the people have abused the substance in one way or another. Some of us have obviously suffered from it, but others have not. From simply reading your posts, jayjay77, it seems that you're completely convinced that you actually have suffered from cognitive deficits from your MDMA use. Let me say this: 9 pills over a year's length is pretty moderate use for most of the people on BL.

Has your lifestyle changed at all since MDMA use? Are you SURE that it's MDMA that's causing your lapses in vocabulary? What about the pot? Are you still challenging your mind as you did in grad school? I for one, found myself to be much "dumber" when I was using a lot of drugs, but that wasn't only because of the drugs, it was because of the fact that I didn't exercise my mind as much as I would have.

ps, are you on anti-depression meds? Or are you strictly against that? I think that you are under-estimating what depression can cause - I have a close friend who wasn't on anything to treat her depression, and she was completely dysfunctional. Now that she's on them, whether it's really helping, or whether it's a peace-of-mind placebo, she's gotten a lot better.

just my $.02
 
Have only the read the first and last few posts in this thread, but I would strongly suggest that if you do have problems, they are infinitely more likely to be caused by weed than by the odd does of MDMA.

I used to abuse both pretty hard and 10 years on, I certainly attribute some of your described symptoms to my dope days. Unless your period of drug use is in your 30s or 40s when you have stopped developing mentally / physically then you can't really be sure that what you are experiencing aren't a natural consequence of your growth.
 
From my own reading, evidence in actuality suggests otherwise (Schilt 2007, 2008--Netherlands Toxicity Study NEXT). Low dose use resulted in measurable brain changes and persisting deficits in cognitive functioning after an average 3 months abstinence period.
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Their findings were that the ecstasy users were only 80% as good as controls at one specific task that involved memorizing words. I suggest you look at Cole 2005: http://www.maps.org/sys/w3pb.pl?mode=search&c_pkey=22728&displayformat=allinfo&type=citation

They found something rather interesting: When they gave word memorization tests to ecstasy users who had been told that ecstasy caused memory problems, those users didn't perform as well as non-users. BUT, when they told a group of ecstasy users before the tests that ecstasy DID NOT harm memory, that group actually did better than the non- drug users.

It's become a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. People's assumption (such as yours) that their past ecstasy use will have impaired their memory causes anxiety/stress that actually does impair their memory. Cool, huh?

But, let's just say for a moment that the work you cite can be trusted at face value. A 20% reduction in ability to memorize word lists. Is that really what you're hanging your hat on as an explanation for why you have recurring thoughts of killing yourself?

The NeXT studies also found small reductions in blood flow in the brains of ecstasy users. However, this is a well-known effect of transitory neuroadaptive changes in receptor density following exposure to MDMA. There is no reason to assume neurological injury on the basis of these findings.

And again, the chronology just doesn't work. Neurotoxicity (if it occurred) is an acute event, like breaking your leg. As numerous animal experiments have shown, it doesn't have a six month grace period before it takes effect.

I've seen horrible things caused by MDMA. Death, addition, mental illness, suffering of all sorts. I'm not some nutter that thinks this drug is all harmless sunshine and light, because it isn't. But the evidence simply does not support your conclusion that you've fried your brain with this drug.

The more direct measurements of brain injury in users simply aren't there, either. Take a look at this chart:

DVRchart_newer.gif


It's a measurement of a particular protein that's found on serotonin axons (the parts in the brain that MDMA neurotoxicity would destroy.) There's a small reduction in current users (which is expected; the brain makes fewer of these proteins as a reaction to the drug exposure), but former users are back to normal (something that couldn't happen if there had been a significant structural loss of axons.)

Oh, and that group of ecstasy users? They averaged about 800 tablets. Not exactly light users.

So, when I say that you're wrong, I'm not pulling that assessment out of my ass; it's an opinion based on a high level of expertise and familiarity with a vast body of research in the field. I do know what I'm talking about. :)

So try to relax a little. As I've said before, it's incredibly unlikely that you're brain damaged. Screwed up in other ways by other means, yes, but nothing that therapy, soul-searching, and perhaps medication can't help. That's good news, I would say.
 
Wow. That is an awesome post DEA. Thanks.

Jay Jay, I hope you dont think that everyone is against you because I can assure you thats not the case...........in fact if anything its totally opposite because people here care enough to want you to truly find what, if anything, is causing your probs so you can get help.

As DEA suggested, people do come in here with what appears more than likely is an mdma caused problem. There is no doubt the drug can cause problems but not likely from your useage.
 
TheDEA.org said:
Their findings were that the ecstasy users were only 80% as good as controls at one specific task that involved memorizing words. I suggest you look at Cole 2005: http://www.maps.org/sys/w3pb.pl?mode=search&c_pkey=22728&displayformat=allinfo&type=citation

They found something rather interesting: When they gave word memorization tests to ecstasy users who had been told that ecstasy caused memory problems, those users didn't perform as well as non-users. BUT, when they told a group of ecstasy users before the tests that ecstasy DID NOT harm memory, that group actually did better than the non- drug users.

It's become a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. People's assumption (such as yours) that their past ecstasy use will have impaired their memory causes anxiety/stress that actually does impair their memory. Cool, huh?

But, let's just say for a moment that the work you cite can be trusted at face value. A 20% reduction in ability to memorize word lists. Is that really what you're hanging your hat on as an explanation for why you have recurring thoughts of killing yourself?

The NeXT studies also found small reductions in blood flow in the brains of ecstasy users. However, this is a well-known effect of transitory neuroadaptive changes in receptor density following exposure to MDMA. There is no reason to assume neurological injury on the basis of these findings.

And again, the chronology just doesn't work. Neurotoxicity (if it occurred) is an acute event, like breaking your leg. As numerous animal experiments have shown, it doesn't have a six month grace period before it takes effect.

I've seen horrible things caused by MDMA. Death, addition, mental illness, suffering of all sorts. I'm not some nutter that thinks this drug is all harmless sunshine and light, because it isn't. But the evidence simply does not support your conclusion that you've fried your brain with this drug.

The more direct measurements of brain injury in users simply aren't there, either.

It's a measurement of a particular protein that's found on serotonin axons (the parts in the brain that MDMA neurotoxicity would destroy.) There's a small reduction in current users (which is expected; the brain makes fewer of these proteins as a reaction to the drug exposure), but former users are back to normal (something that couldn't happen if there had been a significant structural loss of axons.)

Oh, and that group of ecstasy users? They averaged about 800 tablets. Not exactly light users.

So, when I say that you're wrong, I'm not pulling that assessment out of my ass; it's an opinion based on a high level of expertise and familiarity with a vast body of research in the field. I do know what I'm talking about. :)

So try to relax a little. As I've said before, it's incredibly unlikely that you're brain damaged. Screwed up in other ways by other means, yes, but nothing that therapy, soul-searching, and perhaps medication can't help. That's good news, I would say.
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1) Stereotype threat does factor into reported cognitive deficits, but probably does not account for the totality of the deficiency--perhaps not even the bulk

2) In the Schilt study, researchers noted that they did not believe that anxiety from priming significantly factored into their results, as users were impaired in only one of several tests of memory and cognition

3) I think there is some confusion...I don't think that a 20% reduction in verbal memory capacity has caused the recurring suicidal ideations; rather it has made life more difficult and even hopeless at times, as the nature of my work depends on verbal memory and verbalization.

4) There is no evidence in support of changes cerebral blood flow after ecstasy use being either transient or permanent, but it is lasting (at least several months).

5) Regarding chronology, as neurological injury is an acute effect, the subtlety of the impairment in question may have gone unnoticed while I was still using marijuana (during those 6 months). Only after a prolonged period of abstinence have I started noticing difficulties.

6) I don't believe I've "fried" my brain, but I have yet to rule out the possibility of having slightly (permanently) incapacitated it.

7) As for SERT being an accurate measurement of axonal integrity/loss, there are numerous difficulties pointed out by researchers as of late. Thomasius for instance noted that although SERT seemed to normalize, "this does not imply a full reversibility of mdma neurotoxicity" (2006). SERT levels do not entail functional recovery, but recovery in synaptic plasticity; thus the brain's electrical current is preserved while the direction of the current may be compromised.

8) Other measures of brain injury, at least as direct as the SERT measurement, detected subtle differences in brain region activation patters as measured by BOLD (blood-oxygen level dependent) signal in recently abstinent users (V Raj, 2010), most notably in exercises of verbal processing through the lexical/semantic route. Another study, using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), measured brain region sizes and reported significant reductions in brain regions thought to mediate verbal memory (Cowan 2003). Studies after this date have suggested that although neurological injury may not be directly evident as measured by current testing strategies, it is quite possible that injury is sustained although not exhibited in measures of performance. The brain's neuroadaptive mechanisms may very well compensate for neurotoxic insult, though if given a sufficiently demanding, these compensatory mechanisms begin to fail thus resulting in evident neuropsychological impairment.

It isn't that I don't believe anything from other's experiences or feel that anyone here is against me--much the opposite actually. I'm just trying to be realistic about the situation, and from my own particularly intensive research I have concluded that even in low doses there are measurable brain differences in ecstasy users (the V Raj study included users from 8 pills to 155--median 50; the Cowan study included users from 3 groups: low 1-9, medium 10-49, heavy 50 or more). Whether these differences are transient in nature is unknown, though the bulk of experiences and longitudinal studies suggests otherwise.

However, I do think that I need help regulating my emotions and I do not attribute severe changes in emotionality to mdma use (though keeping with a holistic neurobiological standpoint, I cannot rule out slight changes in emotional patterns). Although I wish to be more optimistic about the situation, I can't help but conclude--or at the least entertain--that given sufficient intensity of experience (cognitive or emotional), my brain, after mild use, has exhibited permanent changes in function. These changes are a reflection of a deficit in capacity, of a physiological inability to meet demands of sufficiently challenging nature that were once met prior to mdma use. My other drug use has been mild and by all measures I've seen, insignificant.
 
It is my humble opinion that your depression is more likely causing the cognitive effects you are noticing, and perhaps even creating a fear of those effects where they don't actually exist.

Why do I think this? Because it happened to me.

For the record, I am a regular MJ user and experienced ecstasy user with almost exactly 1 year of abstinence behind me.

I can say with certainty that for me, my depression caused far more problems than any drug use.

I write for a living, and there were days when I couldn't even compose an email to my best friend, let alone write for money. I almost ran myself and my partner into the ground financially with my inability to function.

Please, deeply consider how your depression affects your life.
 
curiousgirl said:
It is my humble opinion that your depression is more likely causing the cognitive effects you are noticing, and perhaps even creating a fear of those effects where they don't actually exist.

Why do I think this? Because it happened to me.

For the record, I am a regular MJ user and experienced ecstasy user with almost exactly 1 year of abstinence behind me.

I can say with certainty that for me, my depression caused far more problems than any drug use.

I write for a living, and there were days when I couldn't even compose an email to my best friend, let alone write for money. I almost ran myself and my partner into the ground financially with my inability to function.

Please, deeply consider how your depression affects your life.
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Curious girl, how do you know for certainty that it was not due to mdma use?

Also is there a possibility that your mdma use contributed, triggerred or indeed caused the depression?
 
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