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There are two major misconceptions around MDMA, both funded by flawed government studies. The first misconception is that MDMA causes "holes in your brain" but

by jmtame 15y ago

There are two major misconceptions around MDMA, both funded by flawed government studies. The first misconception is that MDMA causes "holes in your brain" but this study was debunked. The original claim was based on the notion that MDMA "destroys up to 80% of your serotonin neurotransmitters irreversibly." This was shown to not be true for two reasons: a much larger study (the largest study ever conducted on MDMA use) showed that it's only possible for MDMA to affect up to 5% of your serotonin levels, and it's reversible after a period of weeks or months of nonuse. The second major misconception is that MDMA causes Parkinson's. The original study was retracted because the drug manufacturer mislabeled the MDMA bottle as Methamphetamine, a completely different drug. They gave the Methamphetamine to monkeys instead of MDMA. I would recommend checking this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjvNCijeYlI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjvNCijeYlI Skip to part 3 if you're wanting to get to the scientific studies.

Retric 15y ago
I gave a little more detail here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850923 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850923 But, while the holes in the brain and Parkinson's where not accurate there is significant evidence that MDMA causes issues and it's not old enough for a lot of long term issues to show up. PS: My mother has a PHD in neurology with a focus on brain development and MDMA is the drug she was most frightened of. Not that that actually means much in the grand scheme of things, but she has done a lot more literature review of MDMA than I or I suspect anyone on HN has done.
- jmtame 15y ago
  Nobody knows what happens to long term chronic users of MDMA. But we do know that the propaganda that was spread by US government funded studies has been debunked. Scare tactics should be treated with strong skepticism. Before club users got their hands on it and it got banned in 1985 (against a federal judge's recommendation nonetheless), MDMA was a perfectly acceptable drug used by monks, priests and therapists for couples therapy. Edit: can you please link up the studies you're referring to?
- nowarninglabel 15y ago
  Fear is not equal to facts. I'm sure your mother is a fine scientist, but just because she is afraid of something doesn't equate to facts. Link to a published study of hers? I doubt such exists though. I'd gladly accept a scientific consensus, if one existed, saying that MDMA was harmful, however there is no such consensus. All you are doing is spreading FUD.
chimeracoder 15y ago
> the drug manufacturer mislabeled the MDMA bottle as Methamphetamine, a much more damaging drug It's not even so much that (comparing two drugs like that doesn't really make sense). It's that the dosage administered was far more than what would be comparable for methamphetamine. 6 mg/kg of one drug is not necessarily comparable to 6 mg/kg of another drug... 300 mg of methamphetamine for a ~110 lb. person over 9 hours is absurd - the maximum prescribed dose of Adderall (d-amphetamine) is generally 40-60mg per day, and that's only for individuals with high tolerance (or very severe problems such as narcolepsy). These are oral dosages, mind you, whereas the study used subcutaneous injection, which amplifies the effect of the drug further. Then account for the fact that methamphetamine crosses the blood-brain barrier more easily than its cousin that lacks the methyl group, and you start to wonder why only one of the five monkeys died. Even before they realized the drug mixup, the Ricaurte, et. al. study is so flawed that it's almost laughable that it was published in the first place. Your study is intended to simulate the environment of a club/rave? 20% of your subjects died after what you considered to be a moderate dose, and you didn't think that was cause to question your methods? Raves may not be the healthiest places in the world, but if real life were anything close to what those data suggest, the morning after a concert or rave you would find the floor literally covered in dead bodies. I won't even get into the absurd conclusions that they draw from their measurements themselves, since this is HN, not a neuroscience forum, but suffice to say that any college freshman in an introductory neuroscience class should have known better. It's as if they copied and pasted the analysis from another study and inserted their own data into it - that's how nonsensical it is. The retraction for Ricaurte, et. al.: http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ls39/peer_review/Ricaurte_retract.html http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ls39/peer_review/Ricaurte_retra... (The original study is linked from the retraction page; I'd emphasize again that the study itself had enough other flaws in it that it should never have been published in the first place, even if the drug mixup had never been discovered).
- jmtame 15y ago
  I edited my comment to be more neutral towards Methamphetamine; I wasn't aware of the significant dosing differences and that's important. The real problem is the way the studies were conducted. They didn't test hair samples to verify whether the participants used MDMA, much less control the environment it was taken in. The largest study I referred to that was done by Harvard Medical was done on people who had never tried the drug before, were not at raves taking drugs which could not be verified for purity (amongst other problems like dehydration and hyperthermia), and they verified their study through hair samples.

by jmtame 15y ago

Retric 15y ago

I gave a little more detail here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850923 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850923 But, while the holes in the brain and Parkinson's where not accurate there is significant evidence that MDMA causes issues and it's not old enough for a lot of long term issues to show up. PS: My mother has a PHD in neurology with a focus on brain development and MDMA is the drug she was most frightened of. Not that that actually means much in the grand scheme of things, but she has done a lot more literature review of MDMA than I or I suspect anyone on HN has done.

jmtame 15y ago
Nobody knows what happens to long term chronic users of MDMA. But we do know that the propaganda that was spread by US government funded studies has been debunked. Scare tactics should be treated with strong skepticism. Before club users got their hands on it and it got banned in 1985 (against a federal judge's recommendation nonetheless), MDMA was a perfectly acceptable drug used by monks, priests and therapists for couples therapy. Edit: can you please link up the studies you're referring to?
nowarninglabel 15y ago
Fear is not equal to facts. I'm sure your mother is a fine scientist, but just because she is afraid of something doesn't equate to facts. Link to a published study of hers? I doubt such exists though. I'd gladly accept a scientific consensus, if one existed, saying that MDMA was harmful, however there is no such consensus. All you are doing is spreading FUD.

chimeracoder 15y ago

> the drug manufacturer mislabeled the MDMA bottle as Methamphetamine, a much more damaging drug It's not even so much that (comparing two drugs like that doesn't really make sense). It's that the dosage administered was far more than what would be comparable for methamphetamine. 6 mg/kg of one drug is not necessarily comparable to 6 mg/kg of another drug... 300 mg of methamphetamine for a ~110 lb. person over 9 hours is absurd - the maximum prescribed dose of Adderall (d-amphetamine) is generally 40-60mg per day, and that's only for individuals with high tolerance (or very severe problems such as narcolepsy). These are oral dosages, mind you, whereas the study used subcutaneous injection, which amplifies the effect of the drug further. Then account for the fact that methamphetamine crosses the blood-brain barrier more easily than its cousin that lacks the methyl group, and you start to wonder why only one of the five monkeys died. Even before they realized the drug mixup, the Ricaurte, et. al. study is so flawed that it's almost laughable that it was published in the first place. Your study is intended to simulate the environment of a club/rave? 20% of your subjects died after what you considered to be a moderate dose, and you didn't think that was cause to question your methods? Raves may not be the healthiest places in the world, but if real life were anything close to what those data suggest, the morning after a concert or rave you would find the floor literally covered in dead bodies. I won't even get into the absurd conclusions that they draw from their measurements themselves, since this is HN, not a neuroscience forum, but suffice to say that any college freshman in an introductory neuroscience class should have known better. It's as if they copied and pasted the analysis from another study and inserted their own data into it - that's how nonsensical it is. The retraction for Ricaurte, et. al.: http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ls39/peer_review/Ricaurte_retract.html http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ls39/peer_review/Ricaurte_retra... (The original study is linked from the retraction page; I'd emphasize again that the study itself had enough other flaws in it that it should never have been published in the first place, even if the drug mixup had never been discovered).

jmtame 15y ago
I edited my comment to be more neutral towards Methamphetamine; I wasn't aware of the significant dosing differences and that's important. The real problem is the way the studies were conducted. They didn't test hair samples to verify whether the participants used MDMA, much less control the environment it was taken in. The largest study I referred to that was done by Harvard Medical was done on people who had never tried the drug before, were not at raves taking drugs which could not be verified for purity (amongst other problems like dehydration and hyperthermia), and they verified their study through hair samples.