Long term use of MDMA article in New Scientist
Thought this was an interesting article.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126954.500-ecstasys-legacy-so-fa...
"Others have a different take on it. Andrew Parrot of the University of Swansea, UK, who has been studying the health of ecstasy users since the mid-1990s says: "We see users who have taken bucket-loads and they have very severe problems." These include memory deficits, sleep disturbances, depression, weakened immunity and sexual dysfunction, he says."
"Based on his own studies, he believes that almost everyone who has taken 20 tablets in total, or more, reports niggling problems in daily life. "All fairly minor on their own, but you're ending up with someone who is not as healthy as they ought to be," he says.
Parrot also calls ecstasy a "gateway" drug. "Former users are often heavy users of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. When you move off ecstasy, you look for other drugs. Ecstasy use leads to other, more problematic drugs."
Andy Parrot is a collaborator here at Swinburne. Really nice guy (loves a beer or 2 himself) and a brilliant psychopharmacologist... I thought he had a relatively positive view on ?recreational drug use.. I am a bit surprised at how he has been quoted... But then he is only reporting the data, and as far as I know his stuff is from generalised, self-report inventories, not clinical studies....
BTW:
No shit that long term, heavy drug use disrupts cognitive function and mood. NO SHIT PEOPLE!!!
Balance. it is all about balance.
Ecstacy is a gateway drug? Really?
Firstly I don't believe in such a thing. If you want to play with the stats then its easy to say that alcohol is the ultimate gateway drug. Its probably safe to say that 100% of hardened drug users started with alcohol so these stats are always skewed.
But if we give the benefit of the doubt and say that gateway drugs do exist, then by the time you are taking ecstacy aren't you already there? I mean....what's it a gateway to? Herion? Seems like a slightly flawed argument to me.
Lastly, he quotes an amount as "bucket-loads". Is this a scientific measurement. I can't recall if this was part of the metric or imperial system. Does 10 "bucket-loads" equate to one "fucking shit-load"?
I mean, how much money has been wasted to discover that if you take heaps of e you feel a bit shit after a while? What a fucking waste of resources. I'm sure a questionare outside any melbourne nightclub could have proven that. Meanwhile, this money could have been put into our overloaded drug-treatment programs.