• MDMA &
    Empathogenic
    Drugs

    Welcome Guest!

Tolerance or Familiarity.

MazDan

MazDan

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Feb 26, 2003
Messages
16,745
Location
Sydney Australia
Recently in another thread there was some quick discussion regards the possibility that maybe losing the magic is not tolerance related at all but familiarity.

Consider this............ Think of your favourite movie and the impact it made on you the first time you watched it. Each subsequent time it made a lesser and lesser impact. haha, you havent built a tolerance for the movie............you just know whats going to happen.................you have built familiarity.


Now if this idea is right then could it help to work out how long you need to wait before you regain the magic?..............ie about the same ammo8unt of time as it takes to completely forget a movie............... a movie you have watched many times.






What are your thoughts.............. Tolerance or familiarity? Tell us why.
 
I don't know man but I would really like to know the answer. When I first dropped, I did it at my first rave, so that was a new experience in itself, so was the overwhelming experience a combination of both and should you expect the same feeling dropping in a different environment? Either pills are not the same quality these days (which I am sure is part of the reason) or something else is up like a change in brain chemistry or as you put it, familiarity.
 
I think it's both and it depends on how often you do it. If u do it every week or a couple of times a week i really think u grow a tolerance to it. But if u keep it to once a month or less i think it's more familiarity than tolerance. But there is still tolerance involved because i only do it once a month, and yes i roll, but i do not feel that rush and BUM u r rolling with one pill, like the first times. But i really think the main thing now is the quality of pills. I always think i grew a tolerance to it when i dont feel it that much until i get a good strong, clean pill and i realize weaker pills were the reason i wasnt rolling so good before.
 
i think it's both, really. but i've always said to my bf (bc we usually only roll with each other) that changing the scenery or music we listen to is a good idea bc its refreshing and new. that, or i really like if we have a first timer with us, bc it brings a different perspective on rolls which we've become so familiar with.
interesting idea, though.
 
i don't think that it's familiarity, cause if it was then why doesn't it happen with every other drug? a while ago someone mentioned that it could be a possible sign of brain damage, which i quiet agree on. if there was a way this could be backed up though..
 
well some people like cars, most threw out there whole lifes, they will go to car events that hostes the same thing eveytime, watch cars run down 1/4mile for hours solid and could do it again the next day or even watch cars getting dyno'ed.

you can be still familiarised (is that a word hehe) and still be mega stoked at the same time.

mdma is ment to make your "fuck yeh woohoo gland" go fuck yeh woohoo all the time , so when you have it and your thinking "meh" thats way tolerance, you dont have a choice in that.

seeing a movie over and over again is up to you if you stop enjoying it.


if that makes any sense, im pretty stoned.
 
I've always thought the same thing.

If it were tolerance, taking more would help.. that, however, doesn't happen.

And i also agree that takin a really long break will bring back the magic.. aslong as you genuinely don't remember the experience.. however, for most of us im sure, we will never forget the magic :(

What are your thoughts MazDan?
 
Last edited:
Lotta Cooties said:
i don't think that it's familiarity, cause if it was then why doesn't it happen with every other drug? a while ago someone mentioned that it could be a possible sign of brain damage, which i quiet agree on. if there was a way this could be backed up though..
Click to expand...

I disagree with everything you have said.

"i don't think that it's familiarity, cause if it was then why doesn't it happen with every other drug?" .. it does? MDMA's experience is quite a bit different to other drugs so there will be less of a change with them. Speed first few times = different to next hundred.. same with cannabis and just about every other drug i have done to get over the : "wow new drug" feeling. PROBABLY because of familiarity.

"a while ago someone mentioned that it could be a possible sign of brain damage, which i quiet agree on. if there was a way this could be backed up though.." Not saying MDMA is perfectly safe and not neurotoxic, because i don't believe in that atall.. but people lose the "magic" without taking toxic amounts every month..

Again, i really do believe that familiarity has a MAJOR part to play in the "magic" of MDMA.
 
Plausible. When I forget how it feels I always feel like the first time. Well, almost like the first time. 90%... Without the "wow" factor.
 
i think both play a factor but imo, tolerance weighs a little more. It really depends though, on how often you take it (once a month or once every few months?) how many pills you take, and the quality of the pills. Also, like some people said here already, if you kinda "forgot" what it feels like, whether it is because you've been on a long break or some other reason, then it'll be an amazing experience.

Also, with the "familiarity" aspect, I think it depends a bit on the "set and setting" factor...maybe (as someone has said above who I agree with) changing it up a couple times would keep the same level of fun, instead of doing it at the same house, with the same people every weekend? Otherwise it just becomes habitual rather than something special to look forward to, and you'll know what to expect.

Personally, I haven't dropped in 5 months, which is the longest break I've ever had in my 1+ year of usage...and I really did forget what exactly it feels like..though I can imagine it. There is a small rave coming up in 2 weeks and I got some really clean pills, so I'm assuming that I'll have a gravy time.

Tell me what you guys think!
 
I am not very experienced with ecstasy, but from my use of other things I would say both.
Tolerance is a big part of it, the fact is that your body builds a tolerance to almost anything you put in it.
Familiarity, although it affects it, it is probably not going to be as drastic. You are putting a mind-altering substance into your body. Chemicals are working together to give you this high. Which would actually lead me to think that familiarity has nothing to do with it at all. You can't fight what your bodies chemicals are doing very well. The thing that makes me think otherwise is that you use these things and you know what you're expecting, and it's still going to happen regardless of how you're thinking. But if your thought is that it's going to be weaker, even though you will be getting the high from it, maybe you won't notice it as much in your head because you've psyched yourself out. Like the mind-over-matter thing. So maybe it's not familiarity so much as the expectation that your high is not going to be as good.

There you have my two-cents and now you're probably confused.
 
If the effects diminishing over time were the result of familiarity then increasing the dose would not have any effect. But we all know that people who have been abusing MDMA for a long time can still roll if the start off with 2 or 3 pills. If the cause of a weaker roll was due to familiarity then taking a higher does would produce the same weak roll no matter how much you took.

Familiarity can be blamed, in my opinion, for why your first time is usually remembered as the best time but in no way can it be compared with tolerance, over the long run, as the culprit for the loss of the magic.

People lose the magic because they build tolerance not because they are familiar with the drug. If familiarity was the cause, wouldn't people lose the magic after the first few times rolling rather than several months into heavy use? I would say that after the fifth time you would be relatively used to all aspects of MDMA. Going by the familiarity logic that would mean that by your tenth roll there would be very little effects at all. I know that most people have the magic for much longer then ten times rolling. At least me and all of my friends did.
 
I think familiarity plays a part in the importance of spacing out rolls. When I haven't rolled for a few months I can remember the feeling I had from a distance, but I can't really imagine exactly what it was like, so when I do roll again it is still exciting and new. But then again I have only rolled like 8 or 9 times so the whole thing is actually pretty new to me.

I think maybe it's not so much "familiarity" that can make you lose the magic but regularity. I think if you have rolled say 50 times in your life, you would definitely be familiar with it, but if you made sure to space them out each one would still feel fresh and exciting. With drugs I have done a lot on a regular basis, it just isn't exciting to me anymore because it feels like a routine.
 
I remember reading somewhere that serotonin levels decrease as we get older. Perhaps that could also be a contributing factor?

I recently rolled for the first time in 3 years, in a very different setting and it wasn't as magical as I would have liked (reportedly good pills too). So I don't really give the famililarity theory much credit.
 
It's probably a little bit of both - but if I had to take a side, I'd say familiarity.

miasma said:
I recently rolled for the first time in 3 years, in a very different setting and it wasn't as magical as I would have liked (reportedly good pills too). So I don't really give the familiarity theory much credit.
Click to expand...
You seem to be contradicting yourself here... that would support familiarity as a valid theory.
 
i dont understand this concept of familiarity. why would it be that mdma wont produce a tolerance? and if so then is it really a tolerance issue when it comes to smokin buds? i know for a fact those who have smokeed for a long time now have to smoke way more to get high than when they first started. is it because of tolerance or "familiarity".

i also know for a fact that "the magic" is still there you just have to dose higher. leading me to belive just like any other drug it is very possible to have a tolerance to mdma. rather than familiarity it could be boredom doing the same thing over and over so many times gets fucking boring.

i tripped three times a week for about a month straight on 2c-b. but the end i was bored with the visuals i wanted some thing more intense. it wasnt that i didnt tripp off it any more i still tripped. BUT with higher doses all the fun came back rite quick. the same for mdmd
 
Last edited:
MazDan, I think you're kind of blurring the line between tolerance and familiarity in the your post. From what I understand (and correct me if I'm wrong), you're differentiating between the tolerance of a certain feeling and the gaining of familiarity of this feeling. In a sense, they're the same thing, right?

I guess my question is:

Are we defining "tolerance" as a physical aspect, or a psychological one?
 
If I'm taking what Mazdan is saying correctly then

Tolerance = your body is slowly becoming immune to the effects of mdma

Familiarity = The 1st time you did it you didn't know what to expect. Over time you know what to expect and your body becomes familliar to the experience of the mdma and thus the experience seems to be not as intense.
 
What are people classing as losing the magic though? lack of empathy in the high? I can say with weekly heavy use i still get that and all the full effects of the MDMA, it just seems to be the norm though rather than something too amazing since i'm used to it, so i go with familiarity.

Obviously tolerance plays its part, 125mg probably wouldn't do much for me at this point. But i'm a firm believer a high enough dose still gets you to the right point even if it is not recommended to be doing those doses. This even counts for 2 days in a row, while apparently you dont have enough serotonin to get properly high.... yet i've done it a couple of times the day after with a high dose and got all the full effects.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top