There are also similar therapeutic effects from taking mushrooms (psilocybin) or LSD. In these studies and others with MDMA, it appears that the effect lasts over a year.
For any of you HNers out there hesitant to utilizing any of these of substances in your life, remember that they help change your perspective and allow you to look at problems from new angles. I will leave you with a Steve Jobs quote on the topic:
“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”
> remember that they help change your perspective and allow you to look at problems from new angles
For anyone who thinks this is airy-fairy crap, I can provide a very real example. I've been taking MDMA regularly for the last 6 months (~2 doses x 2 instances per month) and recently, after coming home while peaking I admitted to my partner of 9 years how I'd been abused as a child by particular relatives. I'd never told anyone up until that point, and it was what had been driving my alcoholism since my early 20's (now early 30's). As I recalled some of the details to her, what would have normally made me break down instead made me reflect on those events. I moved those memories from a traumatic area to a (for lack of a better phrase) "done and dusted" area. I made peace with those people and made peace with myself. Since then my desire to drink to excess has waned, and what was a constant anxiety is quickly fading.
For anyone who has a dark side, I recommend you try MDMA - especially in the company of someone you love or trust.
I wouldn't want to tell you what to do with your own body, but I hope you realize that at this usage frequency you are abusing this drug. The current thinking is that such frequent use does not give your brain nearly enough time to recover and can lead to serious negative life-long consequences, such as depression. Another consequence worth looking up, if you didn't hear about it previously, is so-called "loss of magic."
> I wouldn't want to tell you what to do with your own body, but I hope you realize that at this usage frequency you are abusing this drug.
I disagree. Twice a month (two pills /in one night/ ~ two weeks apart) and doing it in a social situation isn't indicative of abuse or dependency. It's indicative of recreational use.
> The current thinking is that such frequent use does not give your brain nearly enough time to recover and can lead to serious negative life-long consequences, such as depression.
You are correct regarding depression - at least on a temporary basis. However the latest and most comprehensive study funded by NIDA has shown no marked residual cognitive effects in ecstasy users. See my other comment for more details including a link to the study: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4541273
> if you didn't hear about it previously, is so-called "loss of magic."
I hadn't heard of it but I looked it up. My experience to date, having tried different [MDMA] pills, is that you have mixed results. The most recent ones I've taken have been the best in terms of shortest activation time, "peak" and lack of come-down. It's likely correlated to the total MDMA content of the pill. YMMV.
I'm happy that your experiences has helped with your drinking but your usage frequency is quite high even if 'recreational'. At the very least since you're using different [MDMA] pills please be safe and use a test kit or only use pure ones since there are a lot of people out there selling unclean presses containing speed and meth that can seriously damage you at your current usage rate.
I'm sorry to hear about what happened to you, but I'm glad you are making progress in getting over it. Based on your dosage, I do not think you have a lot to worry about, just don't become dependent on it. Here is a pubmed study regarding higher frequency than you report (although I do not know your dose)
"MATERIALS AND METHOD:
We prospectively studied, as part of the NeXT (Netherlands XTC toxicity) study, sustained effects of a low dose of ecstasy on brain function in 25 subjects before and after their first episode of ecstasy use (mean 2.0 +/- 1.4 ecstasy pills, on average 11.1 +/- 12.9 weeks since last ecstasy use), compared to 24 persistent ecstasy-naive controls, also measured twice and matched with the novice users on age, gender, IQ, and cannabis use. Cognitive brain function was measured in the domains of working memory, selective attention, and associative memory using fMRI.
RESULTS:
No significant effects were found of a low dose of ecstasy on working memory, selective attention, or associative memory neither at the behavioral level nor at the neurophysiological level.
CONCLUSIONS:
This study yielded no firm evidence for sustained effects of a low dose of ecstasy on human cognitive brain function. The present findings are relevant for the development of prevention and harm reduction strategies. Furthermore, the study is relevant to the discussion concerning potential therapeutic use of ecstasy.
"
A word of warning on those amounts: while the effects you are seeing now are mostly positive, there are possibly longer term negative, maybe irreversible, effects. For instance, it took my brain months to get rid of random psychedelic flashes occurring, ie seeing/hearing things that are not there. Funny at first, gets really annoying after a while. Also a couple of weeks after quitting regular usage I felt rather down and depressed, obviously due to the mess MDMA creates in the serotonin/dopamin system. For other effects: there are quite a lot of studies on them, and none of them are particularly good news. I'm not denying MDMA can give you nice insights and learns you how to cope with certain problems, I experienced that myself multiple times, but definitely stay away from sustained usage of more than a couple of months.
But then again, those side-effects are no worse than an average SSRI anti-depressant, so for those struggling with abuse, anxiety, stress disorders etc this may turn out to be a viable treatment option.
I'll take the down votes for my post, and note that I'm not advocating you do them often, but there is something to be said about their positive effects if used sparingly and therapeutically.
Apologies for the throwaway, but I'd like to support your point. I'm generally quite reluctant with drugs and alcohol, however I recently experienced Truffles (the successor to mushrooms after the ban) in Amsterdam.
In combination with meditation I found the experience quite manageable, and unique in terms of the concepts I could explore and the insights into existing situations in my life.
I can see how recreational use can be quite damaging, but with the right intent and goals, deliberate application of psychedelics for troubleshooting and problem solving is something I'd happily explore again if it were more acceptable where I live.
I think it is important to do it in the right mindset and with the right intentions. Most people associate MDMA with partying, and while that may be one use, I don't think it is necessarily the best. I don't even understand how people go party on mushrooms. I think the best is to be somewhere safe and quiet, outdoors hopefully on a sunny day with someone you trust or by yourself and just to sit and think and write if you can.
A certain amount of training beforehand doesn't hurt either. I'd been meditating for quite a while, and I'm no expert but I had a level of trust about what I could handle in terms of experience.
After the first couple of hours of my trip I introduced a lot of metal music and horror films to see exactly where it would go. There was nothing pleasant about that experience but I felt together enough to still observe it without being lost in it. However I couldn't consider deeply enough how horrifying it would be if you didn't have some sort of anchor inside of the experience.
I've had ecstasy once, 8 years ago. It was blissful, really.
I've also had psilocybin on 5 occasions. The first and second were particularly scary, because I held so tightly to my "normal" self. I then learned to completely abandon myself to the drug, and I've come out of the last three experiences with an unusually great outlook on life.
And as the Greek already knew, pleasure resides in moderation. To anyone wanting to try psychedelic drugs, my opinion is the same as matznerd's.
( http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/23/magic-mushroom... )
For any of you HNers out there hesitant to utilizing any of these of substances in your life, remember that they help change your perspective and allow you to look at problems from new angles. I will leave you with a Steve Jobs quote on the topic:
“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”