……….below is a brief statement I have written in response to those who perpetrate the relentless propaganda about MDMA, but I would appreciate any *brief* corrections or additions that you might have to offer:
MDMA (ecstasy) stimulates dopamine release at low doses and serotonin release at high doses.
Neurotoxic effects are often exaggerated, and can be blocked by administering a SSRI shortly after taking MDMA.
The doses required to achieve neurotoxicity in many of the animal studies is often at least five times the doses used by humans on a milligram per kilogram basis.
Studies of past MDMA users which have demonstrated some slight memory impairments have always included poly-substance abusers so it is never clear whether MDMA was by itself responsible for the deficit.
The neurotoxicity findings are definitely cause for concern-abusing lots of MDMA all the time doesn’t sound like a very good idea, but these findings certainly don’t demonstrate that MDMA has an unacceptable level of toxicity to prohibit its use in psychotherapy, or even to pose a significant risk to occasional users.
Ecstasy has been around in popular use for twenty years, and in fact, there has not been an epidemic of depression or any other serotonin-related health problems among past MDMA users.
The Ricaurte Lab, which produced many of these findings and takes in a lot of government “drug war” money to demonize MDMA, recentlyhad to retract an article they published in Science. In this non-human primate study, they claimed that one dose of MDMA could cause permanent Parkinson’s-like symptoms by damaging dopamine-releasing neurons. In their retraction, they claimed that their MDMA bottle actually contained methamphetamine, and blamed the drug company. The drug company responded that this sort of mix-up simply never happens. Many respected scientists called this a major scandal and called for an investigation.
In fact, recently, an article published at nature.com reported how ecstasy was an effective therapy for Parkinson’s disease in mice: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050801/full/050801-3.html . MDMA was the
most effective among 60 different compounds tried.However, many users do report a mild to moderate rebound depression for a few days after MDMA use, which can be reduced by either taking tryptophan supplements before the trip or an SSRI near the peak of the trip. Interestingly, depressed patients on SSRIs have a reduced effect of ecstasy, presumably because their serotonin receptors are already down regulated.
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