6 ms·

This is the first time I see LSD and Ecstasy put together in a harmless group together with marijuana. Am I brainwashed or are you wrong? I mean, I've smoked do

by CWIZO 16y ago

This is the first time I see LSD and Ecstasy put together in a harmless group together with marijuana. Am I brainwashed or are you wrong? I mean, I've smoked dope and nothing bad ever happened. But a friend of mine took ecstasy once and blew his kidneys (he's waiting for a donor now).

binarymax 16y ago
The problem with this is that if you are to buy illegal drugs such as exstacy, you cannot verify its purity. This is another argument for legalization - quality control. I am saddened by what your friend is going through. There is no way to know what he was actually sold. The scientists are rating the actual drug. What you get on the street is a coin toss.
- dailyrorschach 16y ago
  I'm not a user, but have friends who do. If you do as well, encourage them to play safe, and test the material: http://dancesafe.org/health-and-safety/adulterant-screening-kit-instructions http://dancesafe.org/health-and-safety/adulterant-screening-...
  - bigfudge 16y ago
    this is a good idea, but it makes it attractive to buy larger amounts of a known safe pill... which makes you much more vulnerable to a dealer rap if you get caught. Just another example of the insanity of our current policy.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  You cannot obviously test for the presence of adulterants, but you can easily test in your own home for the relative presence of different common drugs in pills: http://www.eztest.com/ http://www.eztest.com/
Nitramp 16y ago
I'm not sure I would say Marijuana is a completely safe and harmless drug. The effects of the use are a lot less drastic than with other drugs, but regular and heavy users, in particular if they are young, are known get sluggish to the point where it becomes a huge problem for them. Some also develop mental illnesses. That is probably a lot less drastic than the effects of e.g. getting completely drunk every day. But one of the problems is that there is no public evidence based knowledge about the effects of drugs like Marijuana. People either believe it's completely harmless, or they think it's the devil. There is also no good social canon on the use of such drugs. Getting drunk every day has obvious social stigma in all circles, but smoking hash every day can be accepted behaviour in certain circles. That is actually the nice thing about this study, they try to correct this and give facts.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  I thought a glass of red wine a day was recommended by doctors and this advice was widely followed by the middle class?
  - Alex3917 16y ago
    It's generally not recommended by doctors, though it's though to be good for your physical health.
  - Nitramp 16y ago
    There is a difference between a glass of wine a day and getting drunk. What's interesting there is that a glass of wine a day (which might be healthy, though such claims get regularly debunked) is socially accepted. I think our societies just have better knowledge of acceptable use of drugs that we're more familiar with, as a whole.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  known get sluggish to the point where it becomes a huge problem for them... Some also develop mental illnesses. Citations, please. A phrase to remember when citing anecdotes about mentally ill people taking Drug X is self-medication. This is a technical term in counseling psychology; it refers to a very common phenomenon where a person who is suffering a mental health issue -- which can be anything from a mild acute depression to full-blown schizophrenia -- figures out, by trial and error, that taking a certain drug seems to alleviate their symptoms, or make those symptoms more tolerable. This often causes the patient to end up with two health problems, which can be difficult to sort out from each other and which generally must be treated together. So even if you uncover evidence that mental illness and taking drugs are correlated, you can't simply assume that the drugs cause the mental illness. It could just as easily be the other way around.
swombat 16y ago
You're largely brainwashed. I know a fair number of people who have taken and/or continue to take Ecstasy, LSD, Mushrooms and even Cocaine, some of them on a very regular basis. None of them have ever "blown their kidneys" or, in fact, had any severe negative reaction. As non-anecdotal evidence, about a million people take ecstasy every weekend in the UK - that's not the same million people each time, so that amounts to millions of active users in the UK. If Ecstasy was so dangerous, you would see it on newspaper headlines every day. Possible causes of your friend's unfortunate disaster include: 1) It wasn't MDMA/MDA (typical Ecstasy components), as binarymax suggested. Until drugs are legal, who the hell knows what you're actually taking. Could be anything, including washing powder. Unlikely to be actually poisonous stuff, since dealers like repeat customers too, but really, it could be anything. 2) Your friend took an exceptional amount, was not used to intoxicating substances, and had very fragile kidneys. Perhaps his kidneys were about to give up anyway, and Ecstasy just pushed him over the edge. Maybe a good drunken night would have done the same thing. 3) It was just a coincidence. I suspect a combination of 1 and 2... probably it wasn't Ecstasy, and your friend was already in danger of blowing his kidneys anyway.
- Groxx 16y ago
  I actually did a research paper on rave culture a few years back. Pretty eye-opening; a fairly significant amount more people had died from drinking too much Red Bull than from taking ecstasy, even including where it was laced with cyanide / something equally bad to consume. It's literally one of the safest street drugs around. ---- Some fun numbers from http://thedea.org/technicalFAQ.html http://thedea.org/technicalFAQ.html: >"MDMA-present" drug deaths occur at a rate of aproximately 2-3 users per 100,000 users/year. ... cigarettes ... on the order of 400 deaths per 100,000 users/year With only "a handful" US-annually where it was the only drug, out of less than a hundred. Think alcohol can claim that?
  - NickPollard 16y ago
    That's some pretty interesting research, although that's looking at per user rather than per-use - I'm guessing that there's a difference if you adjusted for number of hits (I'm assuming the average smoker smokes a lot more cigarettes than the average ecstasy user pops pills).
watt 16y ago
By that logic, I can quote you thousands of people who die or "blow their kidneys" thinking they are drinking ethanol (vodka), but instead get methanol, ethylene glycol, or similar poisonous additives in their conterfeit alcohol. (That's exactly the same problem actually - buying black-market alcohol. Which is still pretty big in Russia and neighbouring countries.)
- evilduck 16y ago
  Not railing totally on your comment, because the idea is on track, but black market booze is silly. Alcohol is just ridiculously easy to create. If you have a source of sugar, or starches and source of amalyse enzymes (your saliva has them if you're desperate) and yeast (open air is sufficient), you have alcohol. It takes a moderately equipped kitchen and a little bit of storage room and ingenuity, but it's an amazingly simple task. Anyone with internet access should be able to sidestep this problem altogether. Manufacturing MDMA or Meth at least requires acquiring lab equipment and some fairly dangerous chemicals, plus some knowledge of chemistry, which is understandably above the abilities of some people. But any idiot can make booze.
pmichaud 16y ago
MDMA is one of the safest drugs you can take. There are long term effects of taking high dosages regularly (to do with mood regulation), but a person using what they have verified to be actually MDMA in responsible doses faces the grave danger of loving everyone and everything for about 4 hours.

by CWIZO 16y ago

binarymax 16y ago

The problem with this is that if you are to buy illegal drugs such as exstacy, you cannot verify its purity. This is another argument for legalization - quality control. I am saddened by what your friend is going through. There is no way to know what he was actually sold. The scientists are rating the actual drug. What you get on the street is a coin toss.

dailyrorschach 16y ago
I'm not a user, but have friends who do. If you do as well, encourage them to play safe, and test the material: http://dancesafe.org/health-and-safety/adulterant-screening-kit-instructions http://dancesafe.org/health-and-safety/adulterant-screening-...
- bigfudge 16y ago
  this is a good idea, but it makes it attractive to buy larger amounts of a known safe pill... which makes you much more vulnerable to a dealer rap if you get caught. Just another example of the insanity of our current policy.
JonnieCache 16y ago
You cannot obviously test for the presence of adulterants, but you can easily test in your own home for the relative presence of different common drugs in pills: http://www.eztest.com/ http://www.eztest.com/

Nitramp 16y ago

I'm not sure I would say Marijuana is a completely safe and harmless drug. The effects of the use are a lot less drastic than with other drugs, but regular and heavy users, in particular if they are young, are known get sluggish to the point where it becomes a huge problem for them. Some also develop mental illnesses. That is probably a lot less drastic than the effects of e.g. getting completely drunk every day. But one of the problems is that there is no public evidence based knowledge about the effects of drugs like Marijuana. People either believe it's completely harmless, or they think it's the devil. There is also no good social canon on the use of such drugs. Getting drunk every day has obvious social stigma in all circles, but smoking hash every day can be accepted behaviour in certain circles. That is actually the nice thing about this study, they try to correct this and give facts.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
I thought a glass of red wine a day was recommended by doctors and this advice was widely followed by the middle class?
- Alex3917 16y ago
  It's generally not recommended by doctors, though it's though to be good for your physical health.
- Nitramp 16y ago
  There is a difference between a glass of wine a day and getting drunk. What's interesting there is that a glass of wine a day (which might be healthy, though such claims get regularly debunked) is socially accepted. I think our societies just have better knowledge of acceptable use of drugs that we're more familiar with, as a whole.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
known get sluggish to the point where it becomes a huge problem for them... Some also develop mental illnesses. Citations, please. A phrase to remember when citing anecdotes about mentally ill people taking Drug X is self-medication. This is a technical term in counseling psychology; it refers to a very common phenomenon where a person who is suffering a mental health issue -- which can be anything from a mild acute depression to full-blown schizophrenia -- figures out, by trial and error, that taking a certain drug seems to alleviate their symptoms, or make those symptoms more tolerable. This often causes the patient to end up with two health problems, which can be difficult to sort out from each other and which generally must be treated together. So even if you uncover evidence that mental illness and taking drugs are correlated, you can't simply assume that the drugs cause the mental illness. It could just as easily be the other way around.

swombat 16y ago

You're largely brainwashed. I know a fair number of people who have taken and/or continue to take Ecstasy, LSD, Mushrooms and even Cocaine, some of them on a very regular basis. None of them have ever "blown their kidneys" or, in fact, had any severe negative reaction. As non-anecdotal evidence, about a million people take ecstasy every weekend in the UK - that's not the same million people each time, so that amounts to millions of active users in the UK. If Ecstasy was so dangerous, you would see it on newspaper headlines every day. Possible causes of your friend's unfortunate disaster include: 1) It wasn't MDMA/MDA (typical Ecstasy components), as binarymax suggested. Until drugs are legal, who the hell knows what you're actually taking. Could be anything, including washing powder. Unlikely to be actually poisonous stuff, since dealers like repeat customers too, but really, it could be anything. 2) Your friend took an exceptional amount, was not used to intoxicating substances, and had very fragile kidneys. Perhaps his kidneys were about to give up anyway, and Ecstasy just pushed him over the edge. Maybe a good drunken night would have done the same thing. 3) It was just a coincidence. I suspect a combination of 1 and 2... probably it wasn't Ecstasy, and your friend was already in danger of blowing his kidneys anyway.

Groxx 16y ago
I actually did a research paper on rave culture a few years back. Pretty eye-opening; a fairly significant amount more people had died from drinking too much Red Bull than from taking ecstasy, even including where it was laced with cyanide / something equally bad to consume. It's literally one of the safest street drugs around. ---- Some fun numbers from http://thedea.org/technicalFAQ.html http://thedea.org/technicalFAQ.html: >"MDMA-present" drug deaths occur at a rate of aproximately 2-3 users per 100,000 users/year. ... cigarettes ... on the order of 400 deaths per 100,000 users/year With only "a handful" US-annually where it was the only drug, out of less than a hundred. Think alcohol can claim that?
- NickPollard 16y ago
  That's some pretty interesting research, although that's looking at per user rather than per-use - I'm guessing that there's a difference if you adjusted for number of hits (I'm assuming the average smoker smokes a lot more cigarettes than the average ecstasy user pops pills).

watt 16y ago

By that logic, I can quote you thousands of people who die or "blow their kidneys" thinking they are drinking ethanol (vodka), but instead get methanol, ethylene glycol, or similar poisonous additives in their conterfeit alcohol. (That's exactly the same problem actually - buying black-market alcohol. Which is still pretty big in Russia and neighbouring countries.)

evilduck 16y ago
Not railing totally on your comment, because the idea is on track, but black market booze is silly. Alcohol is just ridiculously easy to create. If you have a source of sugar, or starches and source of amalyse enzymes (your saliva has them if you're desperate) and yeast (open air is sufficient), you have alcohol. It takes a moderately equipped kitchen and a little bit of storage room and ingenuity, but it's an amazingly simple task. Anyone with internet access should be able to sidestep this problem altogether. Manufacturing MDMA or Meth at least requires acquiring lab equipment and some fairly dangerous chemicals, plus some knowledge of chemistry, which is understandably above the abilities of some people. But any idiot can make booze.

pmichaud 16y ago

MDMA is one of the safest drugs you can take. There are long term effects of taking high dosages regularly (to do with mood regulation), but a person using what they have verified to be actually MDMA in responsible doses faces the grave danger of loving everyone and everything for about 4 hours.