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Is "losing the magic" purely placebo?

Ive noticed that my "magic" completely depends on my environment and the people I am with. So yes, in my experience, I'd say the strength of my roll is partially placebo.
 
Sure did make sense m8...... I can relate my own experiences to that as well really, as I was 16 when i had my E honeymoon period, and as you rightly say at that age you have nothing to worry about at all.

Now Ive matured a lot, I live alone and i'm a 'thinker' type person; read into things a lot, which is a bastard when you just want to go have a good time lol.

Your right having a few pints helps first, it puts you at ease, having a few drinks and then dropping and going for a dance can really help me, takes my mind off the pill.

I try not to drink too much though as i've heard this can spoil your roll....
 
Ive noticed that my "magic" completely depends on my environment and the people I am with. So yes, in my experience, I'd say the strength of my roll is partially placebo.
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-Mellow Dee

It's not as simple as people being told they'll lose the magic and then they just do because they expect to.

It is, however, all about the amount of serotonin in your brain at the time of dropping and the strength of your serotonin /dopamine receptors. These can get fried after too much stimulation and every person's brain is different, so this can happen at different times for different people.

If your brain has only replenished 60% of its serotonin, you won't have the kind of roll you had when it was at 100%. And that's a fact.

Furthermore while you are extremely depressed, e can still get you happy because of the serotonin that has not been released by your brain. In fact there is the potential of having more serotonin left than someone who has had a really good previous few days, having fun and enjoying themselves, as they have used their stores of happy brain cells. Not to say that you should be sad before you have e!

If you start getting hyped as you head into a club, it can help you enjoy yourself, but I have never been more excited about a night out than I was on my birthday! And yet I didn't get the peak I usually got. The magic has come back since increasing my dose.

Simply it's a chemical, it interacts with your brain in a chemical manner, and that SHOULD NOT be ignored just because there are also placebo affects for some people with their drug use.
 
If tolerance isn't an issue it's just an issue of becoming used to it. You have learnt MDMA, and how it works. You can consciously go btween the peak and soberness basically. You know sitting back in a certain position, flickering your eyes and inducing eye wobbles listening to techno nodding your head will put you into that peak. But you can just concentrate and not be in that zone anymore. You've learnt all personal physical and mental tricks to "blow-up" and its too controllable now.. The drug is still as intense as it used to be (if tolerance and abuse iasn't a current issue) its just you are too used to it. There are of course other things like set, settying, how you feel at the moment, no troubles on your mind, relationships etc.

I'm sure you know skat kat but taking MDMA, in any dosage, does not completely flood all of your serotonin. It frees a lot of available excess serotonin, but your brain/body is not even getting rid of 5-10% of your serotonin. My guess is closer to 5%. It's a very important neurotransmitter, without you are dead.
 
Skat Kat said:
-Mellow Dee

It's not as simple as people being told they'll lose the magic and then they just do because they expect to.

It is, however, all about the amount of serotonin in your brain at the time of dropping and the strength of your serotonin /dopamine receptors. These can get fried after too much stimulation and every person's brain is different, so this can happen at different times for different people.
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I'm not sure human brains are so different that one person can lose the magic after 5 trips while another can have 500 and feel fine. I think differences like that are probably explained by placebo.
 
I've found myself having a fantastic time on MDMA and then I start thinking "Wait a minute, don't people say the magic goes?" and sure enough the effects start tapering off and I start feeling disappointed :\

If no fucker had ever told me "The magic disappears" I'm pretty sure I'd never have noticed any difference.
 
I dont think the strength of your "roll" depends entirely on chemical reactions in your brain. If this was true, why then can I be "peaking" and then have a particular event (losing my husband, getting a phone call from my mother in law, etc. etc.) happen and be brought down to feeling completely sober? Its almost as if I have complete control over where my mind is taking me.

Ive "rolled" many times - and each time has been different, depending on who I am around and my environment. The same pill, the same amount of time spaced between rolls yet different locations has provided unique experiences every time. For example, I will roll "harder" at home vs. Disneyland because I am more comfortable in my environment. Purely placebo.
 
Oh! Also! I have 2 children. Children need vaccinations as Im sure you all know. They need shots about every 4-12 weeks when they are new to this world. So Ive done a lot of research on the effects of different immunizations, how long they have all been around, and what kind of studies have been performed on various vaccines.

So anyway, about 2 years ago my doctor suggests to me that it is time for the Varicella (chicken pox) vaccine. So I go home and start reading about it. It was one of my concerns that my son might break out with the disease after receiving the vaccination. I remember reading an article (I forget exactly where, probably cdc.gov) about how there was a study conducted to test the varicella vaccine. For example, say there was 1000 people. Each of these 1000 people had agreed to receive a shot. BUT, they (and the doctors performing the study) were not allowed to know what was in the shot. It could be one of two things: The chicken pox vaccine or a simple saline solution. Half of these people would be injected with the actual vaccine, but the other half would receive a placebo (term used for a fake injection).

At the end of the study, just as many people who received the placebo as who received the actual vaccine broke out in the chicken pox rash (the little red dots) and developed a fever of 102* or higher. The people receiving the placebo had convinced themselves that they had received the varicella vaccine in such a way that they actually exhibited physical symptoms of the disease :O Amazing, huh?

Im not positive if I remembed all of the fact correctly (its been a couple years since reading the article) so feel free to look it up, and correct me if need be.
 
Good topic :)

I think it could be partly placebo, but not totally. As we discussed in the other thread, your mind set will be very important. If you expect bad things, you're more likely to experience them. So a placebo effect could apply here.

However - if it was totally placebo, where did the idea of loss of magic come from in the first place? We all remember how great our first few times were - why would any of us invent loss of magic?

It could have come from the media - but if you look at what they were saying about E early on - it was all "you will hallucinate, you will be stupified and could be sexually assaulted" - nothing about depression.

Secondly, many people resist and deny what others tell them about depression/loss of magic. My own experience: about the 5th time I took E, I talked to someone at a club who was taking his first pill for 6 months. Him "I used to do it a lot, but I had to stop, just got depressed and paranoid all the time". My reaction "bullshit, won't happen to me".

It is possible, I guess, that I subconsciously took that on board. But early on, my conscious mind was totally resisting any idea that MDMA could ever lose its magic. If the loss of magic was only placebo, I would never have lost the magic. I would always have experienced good rolls.

[As an aside/analogy: I took some mCPP recently. I was convinced that I would get a great effect from it - I'd read up on what a good trip felt like and I was sure it would happen to me - I knew I enjoyed other piperazines, and I was in a good mood. I got basically nothing from it. I later found out that about 20% of people get very little from mCPP, and I now think I'm one of those people. My positive thinking wasn't enough to overcome that).
 
Just to clarify: I dont think it is COMPLETELY placebo. If that was the case, you could roll without even taking a pill. I just think your mind set plays a significant role :D
 
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