It is both poetic and fascinating. It's not an easy read but I recommend it.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28930020-the-rose-of-par...
Same with weed, it seems most people I know either quit smoking completely, or do nothing but smoke weed. I'm in my mid 30s.
Where the responsible casual adult drug users at???
What a fun, and joyful substance.
I took it as an adult: while partying, with my wife, at festivals.
Responsibly (test it first!). Not too much. Just a couple times a year.
I love it and has made my life better. But I'm glad I waited to "do drugs" until I was older and my brain and personality were a bit more settled.
My favorite thing about MDMA is that, while the experiences you have while on it are of course an "altered state of mind," those experiences are still your experiences.
I did, in fact, experience seeing my wife dancing freely and openly under scintillating lights and thinking: "wow."
I did in fact experience seeing two of my best friends talking with each other in a quiet corner of the festival and realizing "I love these people. They are special."
And because those experiences are real, they unlock a "register" which is now available even when stone cold sober.
A few weeks ago I was totally sober, in the middle of the day, when I saw two friends of mine (brothers) walking together having a discussion. And in my "MDMA" register I thought: "how special brotherhood is."
I'm certain not everyone who takes MDMA has experiences this good. I've been in spectacular settings and my age has afforded me the luxury of taking it with a good mindset.
But it's pretty fucking cool.
MDMA fans will argue this on the internet, but MDMA use (even without polydrug abuse) is associated with cognitive deficits in memory and learning. There’s a lot of experimental evidence showing it has damaging effects on neurons.
The damage done by a drug like this wouldn’t necessarily be obvious or even at the level to pass the threshold of significance in a scientific study after one or a couple doses. However, there isn’t much debate even among drug users that taking MDMA frequently produces some profoundly debilitating effects on long-term users.
I think everyone should be aware that it’s very likely that each MDMA dose is incurring some level of damage that is either long-term or potentially permanent. A couple sessions at moderate doses might not produce strictly significant effects but it’s amazing how quickly people go from “a couple times per year on special occasions” to having 20-30 exposures over a decade or two, which starts putting them beyond even the inclusion criteria for most light use studies that were performed.
EDIT: Also note that using DIY testing supplies on your pills is great practice and necessary in the age of fentanyl, but it’s not definitive. The only real way to test is to ship some of your pills off to one of the groups that tests for free and wait months for the results. Pills can contain multiple substances. There is a problem right now where one of the “research chemical” manufacturers has produced a large batch of a compound that is normally used for lesioning (damaging) serotonin neurons in lab studies. It has recreational effects, though, so it’s being sold as a drug. There’s concern that vendors will start mixing it into pressed pills to cut them with an active substance.
I think this is overstating the risk in supervised clinical usage, depending on what you mean by "some level of damage." It's possible that a single alcoholic beverage may induce some level of damage, but that is irrelevant for most drinkers. A more realistic comparison might be the risk associated with surgical anesthesia, which is significant, but that doesn't mean surgery should be necessarily avoided. There are always risk/benefit tradeoffs, and the MAPS research has focused primarily on MDMA use after other therapies have failed.
The MAPS Investigator's Brochure[0] acknowledges that, while preclinical studies in animals have shown serotonergic neurotoxicity at high or repeated doses, there is as yet no consistent evidence of neurotoxicity in controlled clinical settings with limited dosing. The report characterizes high-, medium-, and low-level risks. No high-level risks were identified, and medium-level risks are mainly cardiovascular and psychological.
[0] https://maps.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/MDMA-IB-15th-Edi...
In some of those studies you might be referring (e.g. DOI: 10.2174/1874473711306010008) say that MDMA users score worse in memory, but better in depression and anxiety, and equal on cognitive or mood. Of course what makes the headlines is that MDMA is bad for memory, no mention to the positive effects. And of course, the narrative would be that if you take MDMA a couple of times per year, soon you won't even remember your own name.
There are a lot of people bought into the idea that ~1 drink a day is beneficial due to the flawed studies like you pointed out.
But most people who keep up with things know better. My primary care doctor gives a reminder that drinking is not healthy despite what some old headlines claimed (even though I rarely drink).
Even the podcasters seem to have caught on, with many emphasizing that no amount of alcohol is beneficial and even 1 drink per night consumed consistently over time has damaging effects.
There is a lot of backlash when podcasters get too close to these subjects. I remember when Huberman touched on the topic of marijuana and Reddit was up in arms. Huberman isn’t great at scientific accuracy (to say the least) but he was directionally correct. Many people didn’t want to hear it, though.
People like to think their drug of choice is the safe one. They cherry pick a few studies that agree and choose to dismiss anything that doesn’t.
Unfortunately, neither is oxygen.
Now you will say that we need oxygen and can survive without alcohol. But then again, we do not have a Faustian bargain of choosing to abstain of all the fun things in life and living for 200 years.
The elephant in the room is that no matter how healthy a life style you live, we presently have no way to reverse a rapid decline in quality of life around 85-90 culminating in complete collapse ages 100-110.
And those are absolute best case scenarios!
My illusion of being in control of your destiny was shuttered when Jack LaLanne - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_LaLanne died at 95.
You can have a great quality of life until mid 80s by leading a moderately healthy lifestyle provided you do not get cancer.
After that we are a loss on how to prolong our lives.
I would almost welcome if Larry Ellison would prove us wrong in 10-15 years at least there would be theoretical hope. We'll see about Peter Thiel as well, but I will not be alive to see his experiments.
But the larger problem is that the slabs of thinking meat that we inhabit are the most complex system in the known universe, and it is usually impossible to understand the effects of a single chemical. I wrote about this here a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42326209
I don't necessarily doubt that there's some level of brain damage going on, but the extent is poorly understood and likely over exaggerated.
These studies get emphasized by MDMA proponents because they find them easiest to argue against.
Many of the arguments are based on flawed logic, like taking rat mg/kg numbers and translating directly to human mg/kg numbers. This isn't how drugs are scaled to animal doses (see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4804402/ if you want to understand) so it leads to a lot of claims that studies are giving insane doses when they may not be.
Honestly this game isn't my favorite because someone always comes along to point out why various studies aren't 100% perfect in humans with a large sample size and then tries to suggest that therefore it should all be ignored. If they can't attack the study, they attack the motivations of the authors or insert claims like how the sample group may have been taking other drugs. If that fails, they try to claim that the drug users may have had those deficits to begin with, which led to the drug use. It goes on and on.
Here's one random study where abstinent users had decreased memory scores. The decrease scaled relative to how much of the drug they recalled using: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9855498/ (Opponents will point out one of the authors is hated in the drug community due to past controversy and therefore they won't trust the study)
Here's another one where ex-users showed verbal memory deficits, among other things: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16510479/
It's honestly not hard to find studies like this, but what you won't find is big placebo-controlled gold standard trials with enough dosing to achieve statistical significance. That's because it's not ethical to do so, and therefore it won't happen.
I'd imagine such a study would be quite difficult because so many things could affect your results: sleep, diet, age, alcohol, covid, etc.
I know nothing about this but I feel like the technology exists to scan your brain before and after to see neuron damage. I just want to know if a single use causes permanent brain damage and to what extent.
PCA yes that is concerning but I would be extremely surprised if it ended up in the MDMA supply chain. MDMA is made cheaply at quantities several magnitudes higher than research chemicals. it's much more likely PCA will be sold as a cut for others RC's -- especially as a part of those dreadful cathinone soups labelled "3-mmc" these days
There is absolutely no scientific backing to support such an absolute claim.
The animal studies using SSRIs worked because they dosed the SSRIs before the MDMA. By occupying the serotonin transporter the MDMA is prevented from entering the neurons, which prevents the damage.
Taking an SSRI afterward might do something for the very tail end of the dose, but that's after most of the action and therefore most of the damage. You can't get all of the recreational effects, then block the transporter afterward and expect the same protection.
SSRIs are also potentially dangerous with MDMA due to the possibility of serotonin syndrome.
There have been numerous recipes floated around in drug circles for combating the neurotoxicity but they’re extrapolations and hypotheses, not firmly supported concepts.
Also, isn't mixing SSRIs and MDMA a huge no-no, given the potential for a serotonin storm/serotonin syndrome?
And as we know alcohol is carcinogenic and there is no known safe dose, but people still drink.
In school, I knew a very smart person who got into drugs, especially MDMA. They later got clean, but when they got brain imaging done for some reason, a doctor who looked at it said they could tell the patient had done a lot of MDMA. Reportedly, the damage was visible on the imaging, and it was characteristic.
I'm sorry that my friend had to learn the hard way, and I'm glad that I was always too scared of drugs to try any myself.
a couple times a year is 20 exposures over a decade. were you trying to demonstrate an escalation? did you mean 20 over a year?
Also, a weird coindidence, during the heaviest usage phases, those were also my highest grades during college.
Do I regret using it so much? Not really. That was probably the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. I have very good memories , some of the best I've ever experienced. Often I think back I wish I could go back and do it again. Being an adult and getting old simply just sucks.
That's not cool, man. How would you feel if someone looked at your wife that way?
Whether beer or weed, I'm usually having it after the kids are in bed and I'm just chilling before my bedtime.
As for other drugs, I don't bother simply because I'm not interested in getting involved in the illicit drug scene. I don't have time for that.
It’s a lot easier to get drugs without connections than it used to be. A couple hundred bucks of Monero, the tor browser, and a DanceSafe testing kit with fentanyl strips is all you need.
> Where the responsible casual adult drug users at???
Quietly getting high and not broadcasting their drug use. There are a lot more than you think. I was recently surprised to find out that one of my childhood friend’s parents, who I had considered to be the most straight laced and/or puritanical family in the community, regularly drink magic mushroom tea that the church sound guy buys for them off the dark web. Once you include prescription medication, the number of people high on something on any given day approaches 100%. People be trippin balls, yo.
100% of people are not on prescription drugs. Most prescription drugs do not have euphoric or “high” producing effects.
Even among drugs with recreational effects, people who take them as directed at therapeutic doses will not be “high” when using them regularly. The person who has taken the same dose of Adderall daily for ADHD for a decade isn’t buzzing and getting things done like someone taking their first 10 doses they borrowed from a friend. The chronic pain patient on a stable dose of a opioid is certainly not feeling a buzz, just temporary relief from their pain. The recreational effects are short lived.
We need to stop this false equivalence between people taking medication and people being “high”.
In my defense, I haven’t had my coffee with Bailey’s yet (cough :).
If one decides that legal consequences are no matter, and if one disregards the consequences of any effects on others, then another option is to find or grow one's own. Indeed, in some but not all jurisdictions, magic-mushroom spores (for microscopy purposes only, of course) are perfectly legal to possess and even mail. For non-plants and non-fungi, the analog, I suppose, would be to thoroughly master practical chemistry and synthesize whatever one wants for oneself in a home laboratory.
None of this is legal advice, of course. Don't break the law. And carefully examine and consider past, present, and future life choices.
P.S.: I see many other comments mentioning that weed or other drugs are "legal" in certain states. Don't be duped: many of the substances they refer to are still illegal federally. Federal law is distinct from state law. The federal government's policy (if any) of not enforcing certain laws does not mean it can't or it won't. Again, none of this is legal advice.
The majority of alcohol drinkers fit this description: Occasional, casual use in very moderate doses.
However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve been surprised at how many people I know grew to fit your description: They either diverge toward consuming a lot less of a drug or abstaining completely, or they get trapped into an escalation where they do it too much, too often, or at too high of a dose.
Even the people who I considered the most discipline and responsible users grew up to have a period of problematic use that they didn’t see coming.
I have a friend who worked in the rehab field for a while. He said if you took a look at their patients without knowing the context you’d never guess their common problem was drugs. People from all walks of life get trapped in abuse patterns.
Some go from stable use to an abuse spiral when triggered by a stressful event: A divorce, breakup, or difficult quarter at work. Some spiral when they enter a new friend group that pushes it and makes access easy. Others spiral out of control when they hit depression or even a period of boredom.
At this point in my life I even know one person who spiraled deeply out of control on classic psychedelics, which many on the internet will claim is impossible or “something else must be going on” because it goes against typical drug use wisdom. Yet it happened and it’s a problem.
Side note: Much has been written about MDMA safety in recent years but the neuroscience people I know state in no uncertain terms that they will never touch that specific drug due to neurotoxicity.
Also the test lab I come into were excited to see me when I came in to test DMT.
But I prefer to do it in private with a close friend, or two. I've done it twice at festivals (MDMA). In both cases, while it was fun, it was also quite chaotic at times.
Countries where you can test your substances [1].
I have no interest right now dealing with the next day effects of drugs lol
A long stretch of sleep is my mdma right now
Find your tribe. It does exist.
I take Modafinil at half the normal dose of 100mg and have been on that same dose steadily for years with little sign of building a tolerance or an addiction.
I personally don't like weed. I am not a fan of smoking/vaping anything (the act of smoking itself) and I've tried edibles/gummies of varying mg and types and just never found a high I enjoyed on it.
I enjoyed LSD when I was young but would probably find it too much now. Mushrooms are great though, but also haven't done that in years. Would also do that once or twice a year.
The amusing thing from the chemist's point of view is that the legal substances sold cheaply over-the-counter - ibuprofen, aspirin, etc. - or even the prescription antibiotics, which are not much more expensive - are not easier or harder to synthesize than the illegal drugs, from LSD to MDMA. Incidentally, a large proportion of what's clandestinely sold as MDMA is just some amphetamine derivative like Adderall, possibly blended with small amounts of fentanyl to create the 'happy glow' effect.
Literally the only reason there's a lot of money in the illegal drug business is that the drugs are illegal. This in turn generates associated profits in the private prison industry, as illegal industries are unregulated and typically use violence to enforce contractual agreements, instead of the courts.
Just legalize and educate - excessive drug and alcohol use destroys your mind and your body in exchange for fleeting pleasures, it's never a good idea.
They are around you all the time, but they don't advertise because it isn't a personality defining hobby for them.
Regarding weed, I feel like it is still more common than not. Working professional that will have a gummy or toke in a social setting or after putting the kids down.
can't really grow up and do drugs responsibly
It's more like a genetic lottery. If you didn't get the right set, there is no such thing as responsible use, only abstinence or destruction.
The challenge for society is how to grapple with this genetic inequity.
Zero tolerance would probably be best for everyone, at the expense of the entertainment of some. It would also be impossible to legally enforce and seems to result in abusive policing and organized crime.
Laissez-faire would fix the above problems, at the expense of those genetically predisposed to addiction, which is a significant percentage of society, and which has been shown to have horrible social side effects in terms of crime, mental health, child abuse, and mortality.
It's a hard problem.
The only thing I'm mildly addicted to is coffee and I roll once every 2 years on mollie.
A few differences:
1. I've been pushed hard to do education. I did and became way more science-minded than anyone in my family.
2. I've seen the effects of drug abuse on my parents/grand parents. I was anti-drugs until 21.
3. I opened up experimenting when I was 27. All my parents/grand parents got hooked between the ages of 13 and 16.
Cocaine addiction risk: moderate. Similar to alcohol. Most people won’t end up otherwise a bonafide addiction but some will. Its use is inherently addictive, most people do not have just “one” bump and then go home.
Molly therapeutic use: still under research, but extremely promising in helping to resolve ptsd and other similar issues. Potentially other uses, too.
Cocaine: used as an anesthetic. It can also be used to reverse the effects of some other drugs in emergency situations (I.e. canceling out a downer, or other situations where you need a burst of energy)