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> Ecstasy trials for combat stress

I'm running away to Canada.

Dr Mithoefer said the MDMA helped people discuss traumatic situations without triggering anxiety.

The REAL question is did they stand up with two glow sticks, move their hands in weird, rythmic motions, and say "ohhhh look at the lights", while asking for a hug?

hehe, actualy, I don't see the problem with it. Its a last resort for people who haven't been able to be helped by other means. Plus, I'm sure its in a milder form and well supervised. Ecstacy was originaly created to help couples who had comunication isses after all.

The problem with X is not that its harmful in its own when its pure. Its that people over hidrate or don't drink enough. And then there is the bad stuff out there as well. So in a suprvised setting with people who know what they are doing it might just help. You never know.

Tastyvixen wrote:hehe, actualy, I don't see the problem with it. Its a last resort for people who haven't been able to be helped by other means. Plus, I'm sure its in a milder form and well supervised. Ecstacy was originaly created to help couples who had comunication isses after all.

The problem with X is not that its harmful in its own when its pure. Its that people over hidrate or don't drink enough. And then there is the bad stuff out there as well. So in a suprvised setting with people who know what they are doing it might just help. You never know.

http://www.nida.nih.gov/Infofax/ecstasy.html

Just to play devil's advocate...since I work in this field and have a very different opinion about it.

Just out of curiosity, because I work in Research, and I lived in an area of Canada where marijuana was legal to grow and smoke in your own home, I browsed what that website had to say, and quite a bit of the research is out of date or has since been debunked. I'll find links to the published research, since a close friend of mine did THC related research for 6 years. The research (cited by the website referenced) I know has been discredited in this field for improper data collection:

Rodriguez de Fonseca F, et al: Activation of cortocotropin-releasing factor in the limbic system during cannabinoid withdrawal. Science 276(5321):2050-2064, 1997.

Diana M, Melis M, Muntoni AL, et al: Mesolimbic dopaminergic decline after cannabinoid withdrawal. Proc Natl Acad Sci 95:10269-10273, 1998.

I'm fascinated by the "war on drugs" in the United States, because any sort of invasion of personal liberties based on what you consume or do *in your own home by yourself* seems very... un-American. I choose not to do most drugs because I understand the effects they have on my body, and I have done research on it. However, as long as someone isn't harming anyone else, if they want to smoke whatever, whenever, I really don't care. As long as 2 of the more dangerous drugs in this country remain legal, I don't think the government has any right to regulate what is and isn't okay for you to do in the confines of your own home. Alcohol and Tobacco kill more people every year than Cocaine and Heroin. How can anyone accept such illogical governmental regulation?

(Sorry, it's 5 am here and I'm really tired, didn't mean to go off rambling there...)

Hmm. They're considering giving mind-altering substances to the troops in order to help them deal with the stress of combat? If I remember correctly, weren't cigarettes basicly given away during one of the world wars? Does this sound any different? Instead of the tobacco industry, we will be battling the ecstasy industry. If Troops get it in the army, you can be sure there'll be a commercial demand for it when they return to civilian life.

Foxy, it's pretty simple about the war on drugs in America. Americans like to have war on things. Since we really can't fight any solid enemy (like we did wth Russia in the Cold War, or Germany and Japan in WW2), we need to fight something else. The decision was ideas. The war on drugs will never work because there's too much of a demand on the materials. Now we have the war on Terror. All ideas to battle with, and a faceless enemy for each one.

I hope you love Big Brother, too.

Mae, I'm not familiar with "The Guardian". So my question is this: Are you sure that the report is true?

The reason I ask that while I realize that a lot of what goes on in this country is very f-ed up, I'm having a hard time with the closing sentence in the article:

Several studies in the US are planned or are under way to investigate whether MDMA, LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can treat conditions ranging from obsessive compulsive disorder to anxiety in terminal cancer patients.

Now granted, I've never been dying of cancer, so I don't know what that's like. But from what I understand, it's not the most pleasant experience one can endure. With all that going on, I would think that a little anxiety would be, to say the least, normal. I would also have to think that the fact that you become compulsive in your last days would be the least of anyone's concerns. So I'm just thinking that putting someone on a permanent trip to the afterlife because they're nervous about death is a tad extreme. Frankly, if it was my loved one, I say give him something to make his final days pleasant. But, making him think that the walls are melting or the medical tubing is snakes is probably not the way to go.

Now that's just my opinion, and doesn't mean that we're not actually thinking of doing this in this crazy mixed up country we live in. But I tend to doubt it. I at least tend to doubt it on any serious, eminent, this might actually happen, kind of level. I don't tend to doubt that there's not scientiest out there just wacked enough to want to try it, but I seriously wonder where The Guardian got that information. They note a number of government and news sources in the bottom of the site, but no actual supportive documents are listed.

And Foxy, please tell me where there is a country where all of the laws of the land are logical.

Normica. It's my imaginary country. It's that special place I go to when stress becomes too much. I just think about the beautiful shores of Normica.

Oh, and if you had a choice: Endure incredible physical torture and pain while going out of your mind, or ignoring the pain and talking to bugs bunny, which would you choose?

What's up Doc?

If I have a terminal illness and I have to go out the way I choose, give me about 30 tabs of acid and my Tick cartoon marathon on tape. I'll go out, but I'll have answered all of the most profound questions in the universe before I go.

Considering the types of invasive chemicals prescribed by doctors every day in this country to depressed people in attempts to make them feel better, I think we really do need to start focusing on what we can do to help people who are terminally ill, in pain and dying, or suffering from debilitative mental disorders. It's the least we can do to help them feel better while they are with us, if we can't cure them.

Zephem wrote:Oh, and if you had a choice: Endure incredible physical torture and pain while going out of your mind, or ignoring the pain and talking to bugs bunny, which would you choose?

What's up Doc?

Can you guarantee me that I'm going to have a happy, funny, wacky, zany trip? Or is my torment going to be made even worse by chemical induced hallucinations?

There's no way of being able to determine what's going to happen once the drug is injested. There's not even a really good chance of it being a happy experience. There is, however, a really good chance of it only enhancing my torment.

No, thanks.

Hopefully I have signed my DNR and please shoot me up with massive doses of whatever happy pain meds you have handy so I can sleep it all away. Thanks.

FoxyJama wrote:Just out of curiosity, because I work in Research, and I lived in an area of Canada where marijuana was legal to grow and smoke in your own home, I browsed what that website had to say, and quite a bit of the research is out of date or has since been debunked. I'll find links to the published research, since a close friend of mine did THC related research for 6 years. The research (cited by the website referenced) I know has been discredited in this field for improper data collection:

Rodriguez de Fonseca F, et al: Activation of cortocotropin-releasing factor in the limbic system during cannabinoid withdrawal. Science 276(5321):2050-2064, 1997.

Diana M, Melis M, Muntoni AL, et al: Mesolimbic dopaminergic decline after cannabinoid withdrawal. Proc Natl Acad Sci 95:10269-10273, 1998.

I'm fascinated by the "war on drugs" in the United States, because any sort of invasion of personal liberties based on what you consume or do *in your own home by yourself* seems very... un-American. I choose not to do most drugs because I understand the effects they have on my body, and I have done research on it. However, as long as someone isn't harming anyone else, if they want to smoke whatever, whenever, I really don't care. As long as 2 of the more dangerous drugs in this country remain legal, I don't think the government has any right to regulate what is and isn't okay for you to do in the confines of your own home. Alcohol and Tobacco kill more people every year than Cocaine and Heroin. How can anyone accept such illogical governmental regulation?

(Sorry, it's 5 am here and I'm really tired, didn't mean to go off rambling there...)

Sorry, I didn't spend a lot of time digging for the most recent website. It's quite easy to find websites, or research, that can be debunked on just about either side of an issue.

I'll stick with what I've seen with my own eyes. I believe ecstasy can cause some serious psychological and physiological damage to users. Period.

I really don't care what people choose to do to their own bodies. Just because I happen to work on the front lines of drug abuse in our country doesn't mean I'm "anti personal rights." Far from it. I am, however, anti-ignorance when it comes to what drugs are truly capable of doing to one's body...or, what the issue itself has done to America's society as a whole for that matter.

A lot of us will have had experience with narcotics, ecstasy among them. Can anyone honesty say they have been made a better, more well adjusted person as a result of taking chemicals?

Can anyone honestly say they know of anyone that has become a better person because they took a few pills?

I definately can't. I'm not saying these people don't exist, but experience has taught me otherwise. In the main, the people that I knew in my late teens quit narcotics altogether after a few years and definately don't want to start again. The ones that didn't quit definately aren't the people they once were, and two people I used to be very close to actually became very ill.

It's difficult to quantify with a few words, but I guess I have come to believe through observation that chemicals leave people in three groups after a while. Those that aren't affected. Those that become complete dickheads. Those that become disturbed.

Like Veldron - I will believe what I've seen, and not what some arbitrary study finds under laboratory conditions.

Can anyone honestly say they know of anyone that has become a better person because they took a few pills?

Actually, yes. I have more than one friend on anti-psychotics, and the drugs allow them to function in normal society in a way that they were not able to before. While I believe anti-depressants are wildly over-prescribed by doctors in this country, I do have friends that would be dead without them. One friend in particular is heavily medicated to curb violent antisocial tendencies in order to provide for his family and his young daughter, something he couldn't have done 2 years ago.

I will believe what I've seen, and not what some arbitrary study finds under laboratory conditions.

By definition, however, laboratory conditions can not be arbitrary. Studies and results are important (aside from being my career of choice that feeds me and my family), it helps us understand more about the cause and effect of the world around us. Without studies in controlled conditions, people would be blaming ice cream consumption for increased motor vehicle accidents (because both show marked increases in the summertime). Personal observation is wonderful, and the cornerstone of creating scientific hypotheses, but it is also flawed by outside influence, media contamination, opinion, and personal experience.

FoxyJama wrote:

Can anyone honestly say they know of anyone that has become a better person because they took a few pills?

Actually, yes. I have more than one friend on anti-psychotics, and the drugs allow them to function in normal society in a way that they were not able to before.

I was talking in reference to recreational drugs here, not prescribed medicine. Yes, I do see them in a different light, and I have a catalogue of opinions on drugs used to treat mental illness. I won't go into it in this thread, but if you'd like to discuss medications with me feel free to send me a PM or a just say hi if I see you in Reets.
But I will say - Yes, I agree entirely that anti depressants are over prescribed. I'm going to assume you are in north america somewhere Foxy, while I don't know the situation there, I can definately say here in my native uk anti depressants are widespread.

A bit of my own background - while I'm now a languages student, several years ago I was infact a chemist in training. I am familiar with scientific method, and I did once work a short time in a research department. When I called laboratory conditions arbitrary I meant arbitrary when compared to the conditions under which people take ecstasy on a saturday night. Nightclubs arent really controlled conditions.

I still have a great deal of confidence, and dare I say, faith, in scienticfic approaches. However, I understand that studies take a great deal of time, and are always subject to interference themselves. At times, this interference can be as straight forward as who paid for the study in the first place.

FoxyJama wrote:Actually, yes. I have more than one friend on anti-psychotics, and the drugs allow them to function in normal society in a way that they were not able to before.

When i quit drinking cold turkey for the first time... my blood pressure went through the roof and i would get so frustrated i would pound hard objects into my head while on the phone. seriously, i would be shaking furious all day and couldnt handle dealing with people in any way. My mood would crap out and hit the floor by the time i got home.
Doc put me on clonazepam (xanax's sister) and zyprexa (another antipsychotic) well, didnt have problems sleeping. and i was cooled down.
However, zyprexa can cause weight gain and diabetes ( i started craving sweets, and i hate sweets.)
and clonazepam can be addictive.

Turned out, without the alchohol present, i was faced with 1: not having a chemical to keep me at arms length from my worries and anxiety, and 2: I was suddenly faced with the realization that Im bipolar. I had been medicating myself with alchohol *not a night without it* and my friends never mentioned their knowledge of this problem. They all knew i was bipolar, saw all the signs and kept quiet when my mood went from manic/hyperactive to pissed the fuck off and ruminating over stupid shit. this cycles at least three times a day.

the meds kept the headaches at bay and stiff joints in my hands from clenching them and shaking with fury when the phone rang or my room mate required my attention.
I weened myself off the clonazepam and zyprexa and saw a shrink. when i hit a depression suddenly that i couldnt kick *totally out of nowhere* he moved me onto lamictal for bipolar and the next day i was suddenly stable.

later we took me off two other antipsychotics and now im on just the bipolar meds and one ADD medication.

but GRRRR!! the medicating with alchohol made me a compulsive drinker.
so im drinking again. but elevated mood.



yeah this shit works... omg... but here's the kicker, i was on neurontin, which is now known in a few instances to cause suicide, and lamictal while in the starting phases of treatment has caused life threatening rashes in some patients. The minute you get a rash you are instructed to discontinue the meds and get the heck over to a hospital for an inspection.

its working for me though. not on neurontin or clonazepam or antipsychotics anymore, and im level again, or atleast more than i was.