Is mdma more neurotoxic than amphetamine?

[Synapse999]

Actual neurotoxicity for these drugs, (mainly in regards to amph) is a variable dependant on different factors and is hardly conclusive to be able to give a standard "number". or what not.

Everything from dose, first time use... to the main factors of temperature (fever etc.) and tolerence.

As known, with dextroamphetamine etc. the brain adjusts, reducing the ability for it to cause neurotoxity for prescribed/frequent user's.

But does not include that person taking 300mg (or some dose much larger then normal) and going clubbing for the night drinking beers without water. the brain starts to miscommunicate a bit ;p

topics in this place always refinding themselves.... i posted a thread... and there was tons of research links and studies on the subject going around.
guess it'll all cycle back up again in dejavu as we do here ! heh

As far as the link above - you would need to read the full text.
Like i said, the long and short of anything is a "yes" answer.
If you strap a cellphone to your head and walk around, studies show...
yes... it may raise the risk of cancer!

 

[/navarone/]

It all depends on the sources u get the info from.

On a public health website ull find only articles about weed being so bad bla bla bla, it will fuck up your life bla bla and of course they ignore the positive effects or uses of weed.
On a stoner website ull only find articles about how great weed is for ur body and mind, on how it can be used as a medicine and plenty of other reasons to make weed legal, bla bla bla.

Between the 2 its hard to choose cuz they r both exagerations derived from the intentions and point of view of who wrote it.

Finding a completely objective and honest article on drugs which doesnt ignore any of the bad and good sides turns out to be pretty hard especially for the more ignorant people who are more likely to belive in these informations without even thinking over it.
Companies and authorities know that better than anyone else.....

"C'est la vie!"

 

[IAMTHOUGHTS]

If you're gonna come in here, and say that the government creates fraudulent research in order to keep illicit drugs illegal, in order to secure some clandestine profit, you're paranoid to the point active avoidance of logic.

While it may be possible that you might be asked to change the focus of your research, if your working in-house at NIDA, and you start showing things like "all drugs are good".. if you recieve a grant from NIDA or NIH they wouldn't really care what you showed, so long as it made sense, didn't show anything crazy and got published in J neurosci or nature or something like that.

These bodies fund research on drug abuse because they believe that it is a public health issue, and they are absolutely right to. If drug abuse was to be stopped, that would be a good thing. They are hired by a prohibitionist government, which was elected by a prohibitionist nation. It is there job to be prohibitionists. But that doesn't mean that go out of their way to show drugs are bad. There's more than enough evidence that drugs are bad allready. NIDA funded AC Scallet for nearly a decade and he concluded that cannabis is probably not neurotoxic.

If the government worked like that they would stop funding people who showed that alcohol and smoking were bad for you, cause the government makes more than enough money of alcohol and tobacco taxes to cover health sector costs caused by them.

your rightfor saying that they dont HaVE TO go out of there way, BUT they still do somtimes. youve read the articles and the exaggerations... some of the propoganda still tends to come from that direction wether its nessisary or not

 

[BilZ0r]

^ Got any examples of that?

 

[Blacksoulman]

^ Got any examples of that?

Examples: my post above and

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/5230006.stm

Phil Willis, who chairs the committee, said the current classifications were "riddled with anomalies" and "clearly not fit for purpose".

He went on: "It's time to bring in a more systematic and scientific approach to drug classification - how can we get the message across to young people if what we are saying is not based on evidence?"

 

[theWorldWithin]

I think it is important to point out that neurotoxicity and cognitive impairment are not the same thing. Clearly neurotoxicity has a correspondence to impairment but there is a difference. Perhaps someone with more education than me can clarify this point further, because I think alot of readers are viewing these two terms as meaning the same thing or at least viewing neurotoxicity as the sole factor in cognitive impairment (not the case, HPPD for example is not a neurotoxic phenomenon but causes undisputable impairment).

To me there is no doubt that a person who doses 120mg MDMA daily for a month will show more long term impairment than the person who doses 120mg Amphetamine daily for a month. Is this a false assumption? In viewing people who abuse both drugs in recreational amounts MDMA users seem to be more impaired but that is obviously not a controlled study, just personal observation.

 

[Psychedelics_r_best]

I got sort of a noob quick question. MDMA stands for MethylenDioxyMethAmphetamine right?

 

[johanneschimpo]

^ lol yes. Well, methylene

 

[topgunner19]

Why Did Mdma Get Banned In 1985??the Real Reason Is??

point to Bilzor,, the problem with government, is they have to appear to be looking out for our best interest,,what do you think was the real reason MDMA was banned in 1985??? maybe a conspiracy by drug companies?? really though a few wacked out people who saw this drug coming on, thought man it feels good, so why not do 10 or 20 pills? then people started showing up in ER rooms,, was the medical trauma neorotoxic effects and some deaths caused by a toxic amount or overdose, or heat stress, or like side effects?? nobody including the government wants to spend the money to find the real truth, because really who is out there lobbying the feds to get the results???

 

[BilZ0r]

Blacksoulman, that is completely different from what we were talking about. I'm talking about scientific articles, the funding that made the possible, and biases in the conclusions because of it.

Why was MDMA made illegal? Because the US government makes all recreational drugs illegal.

 

[yossarian_is_sane!]

As always the problem comes in the interpretation of the results not nessicarily the results themselves.

 

[uacvax]

I think that dosage isn't going to cause as much neurotoxicity I think extended consecutive dosing is more likely to cause it. Especially because tolerance builds up eventually no matter how low the dose you are taking is. I base this from my own experience with increased tolerance, which I equate to neurotoxicity.

 

[fastandbulbous]

Amphetamine is a more potent neurotoxin than MDMA too.

I thought yje neurotoxicity was linked to excessive amounts of dopamine and serotonin in the synaptic cleft - as MDMA increases dopamine and serotonin, but amphetamine is almost exclusively dopaminergic, I'd have thought that MDMA would be the more neurotoxic of the two. After all, that's why the euphoria associated with amphetamine isn't anywhere near as all consuming as it is with MDMA, MDA & methamphetamine.

 

[nuke]

^^ Dopamine and serotonin agonist effect may indirectly contribute to neurotoxicity via temperature increases, but I doubt it's the source.. Amphetamine and MDMA are neurotoxic in different ways, with the former happening solely around DA neurons but the latter moreso around SER neurons. Same with meth, it causes damage to DA and SER systems.

The question is whether damaging one system or the other or both is particularly worry-some, and to what extent the damage occurs. I would guess that amphetamine is more neurotoxic than MDMA simply by virtue of its structure, which probably more easily hydroxylates through p450 and lends to oxidative stress... this is why MDMA is probably less neurotoxic than meth, and why the 3,4-MDO ring usually comes up as one of the least neurotoxic substitutions in studies.

Para-hydroxy-AMP (metabolite of AMP) mediates some serotonin release too through uptake inhibition too, but probably not enough to be active.. It's almost alarming how much research there is into the neurotoxicity of MDMA and less so meth as compared to amphetamine itself. I guess, that's where the money is.

 

[Helios.]

fastandbulbous,
^no, serotonin is depressatory while dopamine and norephinephrine and epinephrine are excitatory.
They hence balance each other out.

Believe it or not, in comparable dosage schedules, amphetamine is far more toxic than mdma, with insomnia and temporary psychosis being its most common manifestations.

 

[vecktor]

fastandbulbous,
^no, serotonin is depressatory while dopamine and norephinephrine and epinephrine are excitatory.
They hence balance each other out.

Believe it or not, in comparable dosage schedules, amphetamine is far more toxic than mdma, with insomnia and temporary psychosis being its most common manifestations.

I don't think the question is whether amphetamine or methamphetamine are more acutely toxic than MDMA. Amphetamine and particularily methamphetamine are definately more acutely toxic. Look up the LD50s. the question is whether they are more or less neurotoxic. ie cause long term changes to neuronal structure and operation.

 

[Helios.]

^not trying to hecktor you vecktor but the question is, verbatim:
"Is mdma more neurotoxic than amphetamine?"

I said no (acutely). You say no (acutely).

Long term mdma use is associated with moderate memory loss.
Long term amphetamine use, I don't know, probably all sorts of stuff such as insomnia. Again, I'm not so sure about the answer to this last one, though I think that meth has made me a different person--mostly for the better (though I now sleep less).

 

[5-HT2]

MDMA toxicity mainly affects serotonergic neurons, amphetamine toxicity almost exclusively affects dopaminergic neurons, and meth neurotoxicity hits both, but with a preference for DA cells. Thus, comparing MDMA and amphetamine is kind of like comparing apples and oranges. A better way to phrase this question would be: is MDMA more neurotoxic to serotonergic neurons than amphetamine is to dopaminergic neurons? Of course, the answer to that question is completely dependent on dose and pattern of usage. If you're the kind of person who takes 5-10 pills or 0.5-1 gram of molly when they roll, but you don't really go on speed binges or take high doses when you take speed, MDMA is probably going to be more neurotoxic. However, if you tend to only do 150-250 mg MDMA in a typical night, but when you do speed, you binge for 2-3 days taking 20-30 mg per hour, without sleeping, then amphetamine would probably be more neurotoxic.

Believe it or not, in comparable dosage schedules, amphetamine is far more toxic than mdma

I'm guessing the above statement refers only to dopamine neurons, not to serotonin neurons.