Ecstasy may cause memory loss

E-llusion

E-llusion

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People who swallow the party drug ecstasy may forget more than just their inhibitions, according to new research.

The popular disco drug affects the memory of people who take it, especially in high pressure situations, says the study by a clinical psychology PhD student, presented at a conference.

The research, conducted over four years, compared the average memory performance of three groups of about 30 participants.

They were ecstasy users who had not used the drug in two weeks, drug users who did not take ecstasy and people who did not use illicit drugs.

"Using standard clinical neuropsychological tests, we identified small deficits in the average memory performance of ecstasy users compared to both of the other groups," said researcher John Brown, from The Australian National University.

But he said another test found relatively large memory deficits that appeared to be caused by problems processing information at the time it was being stored, rather than failure to store information.


Mr Brown said sets of 10 triplets of unrelated words were quickly read to participants with about one second between each triplet. They then had to recall as many triplets as they could.

The results were significant enough to suggest that ecstasy users might experience "functional deficits" in demanding real-life situations.

"The average rate at which ecstasy users learnt new information under difficult conditions was significantly lower than that of marijuana users," Mr Brown said.

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Ecstasy may cause memory loss
Sun Oct 3 2004
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"The research, conducted over four years, compared the average memory performance of three groups of about 30 participants."

Interesting study but TINY group of folks experimented on.
 
Ecstasy may cause memory loss?

OK fine, whatever. That's your hypothesis, right? Good, well I got one that's better:

Alcohol DOES cause memory loss.
End of the story.
 
When I was taking ecstasy, I clearly had memory problems. Fairly severe ones.

It's been nearly two years and my memory hasn't completely recovered..
 
yeh me too but I had them really bad be4 i started taking it anyway so i dont care anyway its no real difference
 
I'd be interested in how they selected the groups... It's well established that ecstasy users are not representative of the normal population; they may have pre-existing memory differences. Where's the group of former ecstasy users that everyone includes in trials?
 
> The popular disco drug affects...

Disco drug.... heh... this article is from 80s or something...
 
I definatly agree because I know my memory is shot and I used to have a great memory. My long term is fine but my short term is what got F"ED Up
 
I used to think, "man, I really fried myself with these harder drugs." Then I took a, like, _48_ hour break from weed (which I imagine the people in the study also smoked... c'mon!) and EVERYTHING came back.
My short term memory, my old personality from before I started to do drugs, my intuitive understanding of mathematics... everything which I thought I had 'lost' to drugs was basically caused by me smoking pot every day and assuming my POT use wasn't causing a SINGLE problem.

All I know is that I've been doing numerous research chemicals, hundreds of doses of DMT and ayahuasca, 50+ pills, 50+ methamphetamine, etc... in the past several years, and the ONLY thing causing ANY lasting impairment is low-level (and I mean LOW) cannabis side-effects.

If I were to smoke only once a day (1g at night for instance), and, like I used to in high school, take a three day break from smoking every month... the ONLY thing drugs would be doing me is good.
 
Key word is "may" while we know that legal drugs such as alcohol will kill your brain cells, or that cigarettes are toxic and extremely addictive yet both remain legal.

I always say, every drug/substance a person uses will have some negative impact on their health depending on the amount and frequency of use, however we justify the usage by having a postive emotional response that outwighs possible health risks.

I don'd need any "studies" or "experts" to know simple facts about possible side effects of MDMA.


;)
 
It's weird, but one of the first times I tried ecstasy; I noticed a slight speak disorder the next day. Some of the words I wanted to say something but some of the words didnt come to my mind. It's was odd enough for me to notice.
 
^^ yeah, that's called being scat. You've just messed around with your brain chemistry, of course there's going to be some after-effects.
 
my memory is shot to shit but i have noticed why turn it round and bring alcohol up for instance or cigarettes, nobody even mentioned out and we all know the bad stuff them 2 legal drugs do. some people might not be affected by taking it loads of times but some people clearly have some problems throught taking it so much and or even alittle bit. not callin anyone got no need to but the more stuff i find out about Ecstasy the better especially the bad effects.
 
I'm a strong advocate that if you're going to put something in your body.. be it drugs, food, drink etc.. you should be well informed..

Do some research.. it's your own well being that is at stake.. so an informed choice is a wise choice..

an uninformed choice could potentially be suicide..
 
it could be the E, but it could be lack of sleep or any number of other things. however, to give this artical some credit, it does say "may".

i think its important that we all consider the correlational nature of this study (even though there was control groups, it wasn't a perfectly controled study). anyhow, correlation does not equal causation.
 
Although the study is interesting, I think the only thing that it accomplishes is to point out that more study is needed. The study needs a larger sampling, drug testing to verify test subject drug exposure claims, and a far more detailed criteria.

They were ecstasy users who had not used the drug in two weeks, drug users who did not take ecstasy and people who did not use illicit drugs.
Click to expand...

The "not used the drug in two weeks" criteria can be misleading, as this indicates that testing [most likely] occurred while many of the subjects were still recovering their serotonin stores. As optimum serotonin level recovery can take up to 6 weeks to complete (unless augmenting the serotonin recovery period with 5-HTP).

So, the current study criteria lacks a comprehensive exposure limit criteria, and assumes that the "not used the drug in two weeks" is a meaningful recovery limit, which is not entirely the case.


A primary finding in the study was that the MDMA using group demonstrated a deficency in memories formed while under conditions of stress. On the surface, this would seem to imply a pathogenic effect caused by the MDMA exposure. But in reality, this may simply be due to the test subjects reduced serotonin levels during the time that testing was administered.

Serotonin is one of the neurochemicals involved in mediating stress reactions. It has also been established that it can take up to 6 weeks for serotonin levels to be fully restored after exposure to MDMA. Again, the study cirteria for the MDMA using group was "not used the drug in two weeks," and indicates that testing was taking place while the test subjects' had reduced serotonin levels.

With a reduction in serotonin stores, the ability to fully manage stress is comprimised. And these results could likely be due to the subjects being tested while they have not fully recovered from their last MDMA exposure.

To put it simply, this result may not have anything to do with a deficency in memory formation. But instead, only demonstrates the level of distraction that stress poses while one's serotonin stores are reduced.


I would like to see this study done again with a larger body of test subject, a hair based drug test used to cross reference and verify the subject's disclosed drug usage, and a greater number of groups which are broken down by "time since last exposure" with a well though out "last exposure" delta.

Granted, hair drug testing is a poor method to use in cases such as employment verification. But where the goal is to verify drug use disclosure in scientific studies, such claims as "I last took MDMA 2 months ago, and I have not smoked marijuana on 6 months" could be cross referenced and verified. "False positives" which contradict the claims of the test subject only serve to eliminate them from the test (and have no real impact on their lives).

Thus, hair testing can aid in verifying the drug exposure time periods claimed by the test subject, and help to eliminate [suspected] poly drug use in cases where is it denied. All of which increases the confidence that can be placed in the study results.
 
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