7 ms·

MDMA can be a shockingly mind-altering drug for some people, and usually in what they self-report as a good way. I've heard many personal accounts of single-do

by api 6y ago

MDMA can be a shockingly mind-altering drug for some people, and usually in what they self-report as a good way. I've heard many personal accounts of single-dose MDMA transformations of an intensely powerful and lasting nature. One friend once compared it to the mystical idea of "walk-ins," souls that take over the bodies of people who have lost the will to live. This person said they walked into a club as one person, took MDMA, and walked out feeling as if a different soul now inhabited their body with an entirely different personality and emotional structure. The change was permanent. Luckily it was almost entirely positive. The "new person" was more sociable, compassionate, outgoing, and optimistic. The person who told me this story used MDMA only a few more times, and none of these subsequent uses produced anywhere near the same experience. It sounded like some kind of one-shot neurological rewiring. The stuff I've heard about MDMA is far more dramatic and lasting than the transformative psychedelic stories about LSD, psilocybin, etc. that I've heard and read. BTW I said the transformation is usually positive because while I haven't closely known anyone with a horror story I have seen a few from a distance. MDMA is not strongly physically addictive, but it can be psychologically so. The negative cases I've seen seem to involve the development of a psychological dependence causing heavy use. MDMA can be neurotoxic if taken repeatedly and heavily, and heavy long-term use can be very damaging. It's a drug that I think could be beneficial if used with care but can be very dangerous to abuse. The radical transformation stories make me really wish it were studied more. We should really try to understand what the hell is going on there.

ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
The idea of incarnation comes up a lot with these experiences from what I've read. I had a similar experience with ketamine a month ago. At first I became detached from the situation I was in (severe accident) and was able to evaluate it analytically. Then I became even more detached (and I stopped getting meaningful signals from my senses) and I understood I was a being and my current self was one incarnation of that being. Then I saw all the choices I had made in my life and how they contributed to who this incarnation was and it gave me great insights and relief about my current life. Sadly when I came to I lost a lot of the clarity. I think I'm still the same person I was mostly, the only striking difference is that I laugh a lot more and my laugh has changed. Also the idea of my own death has become comforting and soothing even though I don't really believe in reincarnation.
- smokelegend 6y ago
  Congrats kid you went into a k-hole. As mind blowing as you think that was, IMHO its nothing like the experience of candy-flipping...(MDMA+LSD) Remember all things in moderation, I have lived to tell the tale, although I can't remember what tale I'm supposed to tell.
  - 4ggr0 6y ago
    Man, drugs are fascinating, aren't they? It feels like every time I tried a new drug, it helped me understand myself more. Don't understand me wrong, I don't take a lot of drugs. My experience is limited to one night on MDMA in Ibiza, one night on shrooms in Amsterdam and a whole lot of nights on weed. I seem to suddenly understand everything about myself and the world when I smoke weed. It really puts me into the "Everything is connected and everything repeats itself"-mood, which I've heard from LSD trips. That all that's happening is supposed to happen, doesn't matter if it's objectively or subjectively bad or good right at that moment. MDMA made me insanely happy about myself and my surroundings for an hour. It was like feeling pure joy and happiness for an hour straight. Although I took it in Ibiza, I spent the night listening to music on the couch in the AirBNB I had rented. I read that a lof of people feel depressive and blue for a couple of days after taking MDMA. For me, it was different - I felt content and insanely relaxed for a couple of days, but in a very good way. Still 100% in touch with the world, just happy. But that effect went away in an instant which I've really felt. Went from smiling and being happy back to normal. Not sad or depressed, just normal. I have a huge admiration and respect for psychoactive drugs. I would never consider taking Heroin, Crystal Meth etc., but I would really like to try LSD and other substances. It also seems like THC helps me live with ADHD better than any official, legal pill. All that being said, I don't really know how to handle drugs in the long run. I'm in my early twenties, so maybe it's normal to have a feeling of being lost and not knowing what I should really be doing with my life. I live in a nice apartment, earn good money, ride a beautiful motorbike and have a wonderful girlfriend. But except for my girlfriend, none of these things make me truly happy. If I don't smoke weed for a long time, I seem to loose myself. But the same can be said for when I start smoking too much, too frequently. I don't even know what I'm trying to say, but reading your comment made me think about that topic :)
  - 6y ago
garmaine 6y ago
> MDMA can be a shockingly mind-altering drug for some people, and usually in what they self-report as a good way. The problem is self-reporting as a good change means nothing here. What you really want to know is if the original person, knowing the full transformation, would prefer the outcome. You don't get that because the person making the self-report is the person that already underwent the change. For example, if I had a pill that made you a serial killer, but nevertheless very good at it, enjoying it, and totally lacking empathy for your victims, you'd probably self-report as being happier too. But the you of today would be horrified. If I held conservative Catholic views, that's probably what MDMA would seem like. I'd be happy with who I am with strong moral values, but there'd be this scary pill out there that could make me give all that up, destroying what meaning my life had previously. It's not much consolation that I'd later self-report it as a positive change. Lobotomies used to be justified based on self-reported outcomes. Is there anything objectively different here?
- theonemind 6y ago
  I think they can probably evaluate that. The general pattern is a loosening of rigid characteristics driven by belief. What that means is depends on what you believed. If you mostly just believed the world is a terrible place, that's quite a relief. Subjectively, we know that it often feels better, perhaps the way no longer straining or exerting a muscle does...I think it lifts compulsions made of psychological knots rather than from physical causes, but it doesn't distinguish between a compulsion that drove you to physical fitness or alcoholism. So if they find the probable external changes to get that better inner state abhorrent enough, then they should avoid that drug. This works for the lobotomy example as well, if they have their memories in tact from before. You can assume there's a decent chance you'd feel better if others with similar problems felt better, and you have to weigh that against fairly objective external changes which you might find abhorrent, fairly obvious in the case of a lobotomy. Perhaps medical ethics should make a point that the type of changes you could experience should be outlined, but there's a general pattern that I think can be defined and understood enough for informed consent to be given or withheld. Like most medical treatments, it would get defined in terms of risks and probabilities rather than certainties. You risk coming out with weakened religious beliefs, etc.
- 6y ago
sonotathrowaway 6y ago
Organizations like MAPS (Rick Doblin) are pioneering the use of psychedelics and other drugs (mdma) to aid in psychotherapy for vets with PTSD, with some extremely impressive results. Ibogaine is also a fascinating drug to look into. It’s frequently used as a treatment for heroin and other severe addictions. The trip is multiple hours long, and described as life-altering - many people describe vivid recollections of the worst moments of their lives, but stripped of the painful emotions associated with them. But the drug essentially interrupts the addiction cycle and requires those pathways inside your brain, with some pretty impressive rates of remission.
doopy1 6y ago
Not MDMA, but MDA. I had a magical time, but felt depressed for about 3 months after.
- robotresearcher 6y ago
  Canada's military industrial complex can cause these adverse reactions. https://mdacorporation.com/corporate/ https://mdacorporation.com/corporate/
qwerty456127 6y ago
> because while I haven't closely known anyone with a horror story I knew a girl whose story was fairly unpleasant. However, given her trip report (its multi-day length, with paranoia and hallucinations in particular) I believe that was not pure MDMA, it probably contained Bromo-DragonFly (one of the most dangerous and longest-acting psychedelics) or something like that.
- api 6y ago
  That is definitely not MDMA. Max MDMA duration is 8-10 hours and that's on the high side. It does not typically cause paranoia or hallucinations. Sounds like PCP plus meth, DOB plus meth, or some other nasty combo. Making cheap nasty "disco biscuits" out of meth plus random thing is apparently pretty common. The meth could account for some of the paranoia and strung out feelings. Gotta love prohibition and how it encourages the production of "bath tub hooch."
  - pak9rabid 6y ago
    Yeah that definitely sounds like something meth-based to me.
Someone 6y ago
More sociable and outgoing people talk more with people. Because of that, if halve the users become more outgoing and halve the users less so, for a net improvement of zero, what you’ll hear still can usually be in what they self-report as a good way. As an extreme thought experiment, if 99% of users become depressed reclusive hermits directly after use and the others feel hugely improved, all self-reports you hear will be positive.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  This assumes that didn't know the person before they took it though. If you did then you'd likely hear their self-report even if they became a depressed recluse.
- pas 6y ago
  If MDMA would result in shut-ins then it wouldn't be such a big business, no? (Though we have to control for how many new users entering the market, how many shut-ins it has already produced, etc. But looking at very rough data about MDMA use and depression prevalence per country, there's doesn't seem to be any correlation. For example Netherlands is at a constant 4% since 1990, but use went up from ~2.3% to 8.4% from 1997 to 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/632401/ecstasy-usage-in-the-netherlands/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/632401/ecstasy-usage-in-... and https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health#depression https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health#depression )
raducu 6y ago
> MDMA can be neurotoxic if taken repeatedly and heavily I remember back in the days on a certain research chemicals subreddit where people were raving about the "borax combo" -- a mix of 4 or 5 substances that were indistinguishable from MDMA and had no crash like MDMA and the ingredients themselves were not known to be neurotoxic. I think they just looked at the MDMA receptor affinity and just combined substances that would roughly match that receptor affinity. Also as far as I know, MDMA is only neurotoxic because of it being processed by the liver and MDMA injected in pig or rat brain was not supposed to be neurotoxic.
- api 6y ago
  AFAIK the mechanism is serotonin depletion. Spaced doses of a sane amount is not neurotoxic, but if you take too much or worse take it very frequently serotonin can be depleted and... I forget the chemical mechanism, but bad things happen. I'm sure it's not hard to find with a search. The worst thing to do from what I've read is take more MDMA right after a dose wears off to try to prolong the high. That's where you get into neurotoxicity.
  - pak9rabid 6y ago
    From what I understand, once serotonin is depleted enough in the synapse, the serotonin reuptake transporterss begin to bind to dopamine (instead of serotonin), and that by itself is toxic to that part of the neuron. To make matters worse, the neuron then converts the uptaken dopamine into hydrogen peroxide, which is VERY toxic to that part of the neuron (the axon terminal), which then causes it to fizzle away. I recall a way around that (other than by just not taking MDMA at all, obviously) is to take an SSRI (like Prozac) at some point after rolling, which would bind to the reuptake transporters, preventing dopamine from doing so.

by api 6y ago

ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago

The idea of incarnation comes up a lot with these experiences from what I've read. I had a similar experience with ketamine a month ago. At first I became detached from the situation I was in (severe accident) and was able to evaluate it analytically. Then I became even more detached (and I stopped getting meaningful signals from my senses) and I understood I was a being and my current self was one incarnation of that being. Then I saw all the choices I had made in my life and how they contributed to who this incarnation was and it gave me great insights and relief about my current life. Sadly when I came to I lost a lot of the clarity. I think I'm still the same person I was mostly, the only striking difference is that I laugh a lot more and my laugh has changed. Also the idea of my own death has become comforting and soothing even though I don't really believe in reincarnation.

smokelegend 6y ago
Congrats kid you went into a k-hole. As mind blowing as you think that was, IMHO its nothing like the experience of candy-flipping...(MDMA+LSD) Remember all things in moderation, I have lived to tell the tale, although I can't remember what tale I'm supposed to tell.
- 4ggr0 6y ago
  Man, drugs are fascinating, aren't they? It feels like every time I tried a new drug, it helped me understand myself more. Don't understand me wrong, I don't take a lot of drugs. My experience is limited to one night on MDMA in Ibiza, one night on shrooms in Amsterdam and a whole lot of nights on weed. I seem to suddenly understand everything about myself and the world when I smoke weed. It really puts me into the "Everything is connected and everything repeats itself"-mood, which I've heard from LSD trips. That all that's happening is supposed to happen, doesn't matter if it's objectively or subjectively bad or good right at that moment. MDMA made me insanely happy about myself and my surroundings for an hour. It was like feeling pure joy and happiness for an hour straight. Although I took it in Ibiza, I spent the night listening to music on the couch in the AirBNB I had rented. I read that a lof of people feel depressive and blue for a couple of days after taking MDMA. For me, it was different - I felt content and insanely relaxed for a couple of days, but in a very good way. Still 100% in touch with the world, just happy. But that effect went away in an instant which I've really felt. Went from smiling and being happy back to normal. Not sad or depressed, just normal. I have a huge admiration and respect for psychoactive drugs. I would never consider taking Heroin, Crystal Meth etc., but I would really like to try LSD and other substances. It also seems like THC helps me live with ADHD better than any official, legal pill. All that being said, I don't really know how to handle drugs in the long run. I'm in my early twenties, so maybe it's normal to have a feeling of being lost and not knowing what I should really be doing with my life. I live in a nice apartment, earn good money, ride a beautiful motorbike and have a wonderful girlfriend. But except for my girlfriend, none of these things make me truly happy. If I don't smoke weed for a long time, I seem to loose myself. But the same can be said for when I start smoking too much, too frequently. I don't even know what I'm trying to say, but reading your comment made me think about that topic :)
- 6y ago

garmaine 6y ago

> MDMA can be a shockingly mind-altering drug for some people, and usually in what they self-report as a good way. The problem is self-reporting as a good change means nothing here. What you really want to know is if the original person, knowing the full transformation, would prefer the outcome. You don't get that because the person making the self-report is the person that already underwent the change. For example, if I had a pill that made you a serial killer, but nevertheless very good at it, enjoying it, and totally lacking empathy for your victims, you'd probably self-report as being happier too. But the you of today would be horrified. If I held conservative Catholic views, that's probably what MDMA would seem like. I'd be happy with who I am with strong moral values, but there'd be this scary pill out there that could make me give all that up, destroying what meaning my life had previously. It's not much consolation that I'd later self-report it as a positive change. Lobotomies used to be justified based on self-reported outcomes. Is there anything objectively different here?

theonemind 6y ago
I think they can probably evaluate that. The general pattern is a loosening of rigid characteristics driven by belief. What that means is depends on what you believed. If you mostly just believed the world is a terrible place, that's quite a relief. Subjectively, we know that it often feels better, perhaps the way no longer straining or exerting a muscle does...I think it lifts compulsions made of psychological knots rather than from physical causes, but it doesn't distinguish between a compulsion that drove you to physical fitness or alcoholism. So if they find the probable external changes to get that better inner state abhorrent enough, then they should avoid that drug. This works for the lobotomy example as well, if they have their memories in tact from before. You can assume there's a decent chance you'd feel better if others with similar problems felt better, and you have to weigh that against fairly objective external changes which you might find abhorrent, fairly obvious in the case of a lobotomy. Perhaps medical ethics should make a point that the type of changes you could experience should be outlined, but there's a general pattern that I think can be defined and understood enough for informed consent to be given or withheld. Like most medical treatments, it would get defined in terms of risks and probabilities rather than certainties. You risk coming out with weakened religious beliefs, etc.
6y ago

sonotathrowaway 6y ago

Organizations like MAPS (Rick Doblin) are pioneering the use of psychedelics and other drugs (mdma) to aid in psychotherapy for vets with PTSD, with some extremely impressive results. Ibogaine is also a fascinating drug to look into. It’s frequently used as a treatment for heroin and other severe addictions. The trip is multiple hours long, and described as life-altering - many people describe vivid recollections of the worst moments of their lives, but stripped of the painful emotions associated with them. But the drug essentially interrupts the addiction cycle and requires those pathways inside your brain, with some pretty impressive rates of remission.

doopy1 6y ago

Not MDMA, but MDA. I had a magical time, but felt depressed for about 3 months after.

robotresearcher 6y ago
Canada's military industrial complex can cause these adverse reactions. https://mdacorporation.com/corporate/ https://mdacorporation.com/corporate/

qwerty456127 6y ago

> because while I haven't closely known anyone with a horror story I knew a girl whose story was fairly unpleasant. However, given her trip report (its multi-day length, with paranoia and hallucinations in particular) I believe that was not pure MDMA, it probably contained Bromo-DragonFly (one of the most dangerous and longest-acting psychedelics) or something like that.

api 6y ago
That is definitely not MDMA. Max MDMA duration is 8-10 hours and that's on the high side. It does not typically cause paranoia or hallucinations. Sounds like PCP plus meth, DOB plus meth, or some other nasty combo. Making cheap nasty "disco biscuits" out of meth plus random thing is apparently pretty common. The meth could account for some of the paranoia and strung out feelings. Gotta love prohibition and how it encourages the production of "bath tub hooch."
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  Yeah that definitely sounds like something meth-based to me.

Someone 6y ago

More sociable and outgoing people talk more with people. Because of that, if halve the users become more outgoing and halve the users less so, for a net improvement of zero, what you’ll hear still can usually be in what they self-report as a good way. As an extreme thought experiment, if 99% of users become depressed reclusive hermits directly after use and the others feel hugely improved, all self-reports you hear will be positive.

nicoburns 6y ago
This assumes that didn't know the person before they took it though. If you did then you'd likely hear their self-report even if they became a depressed recluse.
pas 6y ago
If MDMA would result in shut-ins then it wouldn't be such a big business, no? (Though we have to control for how many new users entering the market, how many shut-ins it has already produced, etc. But looking at very rough data about MDMA use and depression prevalence per country, there's doesn't seem to be any correlation. For example Netherlands is at a constant 4% since 1990, but use went up from ~2.3% to 8.4% from 1997 to 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/632401/ecstasy-usage-in-the-netherlands/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/632401/ecstasy-usage-in-... and https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health#depression https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health#depression )

raducu 6y ago

> MDMA can be neurotoxic if taken repeatedly and heavily I remember back in the days on a certain research chemicals subreddit where people were raving about the "borax combo" -- a mix of 4 or 5 substances that were indistinguishable from MDMA and had no crash like MDMA and the ingredients themselves were not known to be neurotoxic. I think they just looked at the MDMA receptor affinity and just combined substances that would roughly match that receptor affinity. Also as far as I know, MDMA is only neurotoxic because of it being processed by the liver and MDMA injected in pig or rat brain was not supposed to be neurotoxic.

api 6y ago
AFAIK the mechanism is serotonin depletion. Spaced doses of a sane amount is not neurotoxic, but if you take too much or worse take it very frequently serotonin can be depleted and... I forget the chemical mechanism, but bad things happen. I'm sure it's not hard to find with a search. The worst thing to do from what I've read is take more MDMA right after a dose wears off to try to prolong the high. That's where you get into neurotoxicity.
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  From what I understand, once serotonin is depleted enough in the synapse, the serotonin reuptake transporterss begin to bind to dopamine (instead of serotonin), and that by itself is toxic to that part of the neuron. To make matters worse, the neuron then converts the uptaken dopamine into hydrogen peroxide, which is VERY toxic to that part of the neuron (the axon terminal), which then causes it to fizzle away. I recall a way around that (other than by just not taking MDMA at all, obviously) is to take an SSRI (like Prozac) at some point after rolling, which would bind to the reuptake transporters, preventing dopamine from doing so.