I had massive problems speaking with people. I ended up going to a rave with some friends, took some molly, had an amazing time talking to people and then realized that if I could do that with a drug then I could probably do it without a drug. (I haven’t done e in over a decade).
I still had some issues with public speaking so during my mba I forced myself to give every presentation possible. This largely solved that problem.
Note that mdma can kill you, especially if taken without experience. This is not an endorsement of drug taking.
Same here. As a shy guy in my 20s I went to a small club on 300mg of Ecstasy, and over 5 hours I introduced myself to pretty much everybody in the place, asked a random girl to dance and went backstage to chat in another language with the band. I just felt I was a human among other humans. At home among friends.
I must've been pretty clearly high as a kite, but the lesson I learned that night is that people generally are approachable, not that scary and we just want to have a good time. The negative side effects was thinking I had fallen in mad love with a complete stranger, and the extreme dehydration that caused me to drink about 5L of water over as many hours.
I haven't taken MDMA since, I plan to try it again later in my life when I'm content with my place in the world (no more than once a season, as Shulgin recommended), but it was certainly an eye opening experience I will treasure forever. This relaxed and optimistic view of the world and other people has been with me since that very night.
With the correct set and setting, MDMA is something everyone should experience once in their lives.
For anyone thinking of doing this, maybe I'm just being old and cautious, but 300mg is a lot to take in one go if you're new to it.
You'll get the full experience on 100. You can always take more, but never untake what you've had. My brother had a rough first time because he dropped with someone who was a bit of a warrior.
MDMA is a great drug, but best when used responsibly. I avoid alcohol with it these days too, makes for a much cleaner night and a better morning.
Good call, I was aware it was a strong dose, but it was my 3rd roll at that point.
I agree with starting with 100–150mg, and my suggestion for harm reduction is to take 5-HTP for a few days after a trip to restore some of the depleted serotonin. The post-MDMA funk is real.
Also, never redose and never chase the dragon. You will never relive your first MDMA experience, so make it count and enjoy it.
I can echo your positive experience but the effect this has on people around you should also be taken into account. On MDMA you're going to want to talk to everybody about everything and that can lead to awkward situations once you've come down. Not only that but upon noticing your gigantic pupils some people might be a bit freaked out or feel like they're trapped in a conversation with you.
TLDR do it around people who aren't going to mind that you're obviously on MDMA
Certainly, but one aspect of my shyness was being preoccupied over what people would think of me, and sometimes it's good to be oblivious you have dilated pupils and you look on drugs. Sometimes it's good not to overthink and just do and see no harm comes of it.
But of course socialising sober is and feels better, though it does not come as easy.
I had a similar situation. The only time I took half a pill out of curiosity, and I suddenly opened up with everyone around. It was during a time that I was quite grumpy and would often drink heavily, and didn't know how to deal with my feelings.
I felt this odd urge to express myself towards everyone around me and was being very wholesome about it. I was aware that this was odd behavior for me, but I liked it and it felt like I was "letting go".
I noticed what I was feeling and how I was expressing myself and that it was ok. That was enough validation for me to keep on without taking mdma.
This happened just the once. I haven't felt the need to try it out more since then.
Note to readers, before you try it you should know the difference between ecstacy, molly/mandy and MDMA. The drug you want is MDMA. Do your research[0] and this drug will be safer than climbing a mountain or something (and way safer than alcohol). Very few people have actually died from this drug but you should understand why they died.
Safer in terms of the risk of death, sure, but there seem to be other risks involved.[0] That paper doesn't necessarily disagree with anything in the page you linked, and it's pretty old now. I just want to emphasise that it's not a simple decision to make.
It seems that heavy usage over time would do damage. That seems fairly obvious, to be honest. What would be surprising is if a single dose had long lasting negative effects.
You have to also consider that people like me are essentially broken. Being completely unable to socialise with people puts you on a path of loneliness and misery. Maybe curbing some of my brain's "abilities" is exactly what I needed. I've often noticed that stupid people are happier.
I didn't become stupid, though. If I became stupider then it doesn't matter because that is completely offset by being more able to apply my skills properly. There's no point being a genius if you can't communicate with people.
I developed my social skills in a similar fashion.
I was incredibly closed off as a teenager and shy. Almost to the point of crippling social anxiety. I remember feeling anxiety even interacting with the cashier at McDonald's.
I was 19 when I went to a rave and took MDMA for the first time and it completely opened me up. I became incredibly social in that moment, talking to strangers, having a good time, and opening up emotionally. That enabled me to take more baby steps in social interactions and develop socially.
Magic mushrooms also seemed to allow me to open up. Both drugs have had positive lasting effects on me. I had stopped taking them in my early 20s, but have started experimenting with magic mushrooms again as someone in their late 30s. The shrooms renewed my openness to others.
MDMA and the party/festival scene in general definitely changed me for the better in this sense. I hold those experiences in high regard, and strongly believe that substances can shift your perspective and create real change in your life for the better, if done responsibly.
I will also note that every substance comes with risk, and the best way to reduce that risk is to learn and know as much as you can about the substance and how it affects you. A lot of the general education around drugs is simply "don't do it", but there are plenty of reliable non-biased resources out there. A couple off the top of my head are:
This was my first thought too, though not the only part of the puzzle for me. There was actually a study put out by MAPS recently where they found that MDMA can be effective in treating social anxiety for people on the autism spectrum.
Same. Can't wait for this stuff to be studied and legalized at least for meditional use over the next 20 years (if we're being realistic on timelines for this)
Decriminalized, probably. But I really don’t want to live in a world where heroin is advertised and marketed without restriction. At least not until we figure out how to make humans less fucking stupid when it comes to things that can addict us for life.
I mean, can you imagine if McDonalds marketing budget was spent pushing meth instead?
You say this like McDonalds food isn't already habit forming
Heroin and other opiates need to be available over the counter at a store. This is the only way to remove the black market and the fentanyl tainted supply. If you just decriminalize, people still won't be able to get it and will have to go through a black market.
The market doesn't need to be a free for all, we can choose to make advertising the compounds illegal but still make them available.
If you don't fully legalize, the problem never actually gets solved. Pretty much all drug problems are created by prohibition itself. Full stop.
re "Pretty much all drug problems are created by prohibition itself"
Isn't the US opiod crisis (not heroin specifically) massively driven by the fact that it is fairly easy to get lavish subscription on legal pain killers?
I mean I give it to you that suburbian moms on Vicodin won't roll up to a gas station with a semi-automatic, but they still OD, and that's still a drug problem.
> Isn't the US opiod crisis (not heroin specifically) massively driven by the fact that it is fairly easy to get lavish subscription on legal pain killers?
No. You can get lavish amounts of food and yet not every country is filled with obese people. Maybe life is a little more complicated than a one liner.
> but they still OD, and that's still a drug problem.
People burn themselves with kettles, that's still a kettle problem.
I am not sure I follow. Obesity is much, much more prevalent in countries where food (and unhealthy food) is widely and cheaply available. Governments engage in "prohibition" of specific foods all the time, and I find that mostly commendable.
> People burn themselves with kettles, that's still a kettle problem.
> So, what?
Soo I demand that my government thinks about this problem and regulates it, which indeed it does. I would guess that an average Western country has north of fifty regulations directly related to burn hazards of household appliances.
So yes, these are indeed very good examples of government regulation preventing hurt, pain and death.
The reason that crime such as robbery is associated with drug users is drugs are too expensive and the fact that gangs control the drug trade and also commit many of these violent crimes. Making things more available should drop prices if policies are implemented well.
The US opioid crisis has been caused by a multitude of factors, including endemic poverty in some communities combined with physicians being told by producers that the compounds they were prescribing were not addictive (that was a load of shit delivered to increase profits, obviously a bad thing and we need to train physicians better on basic pharmacology). On top of that, now that restrictions have been increased on prescribing people have shifted back to the black market where nothing is regulated and you might get fentanyl hotspots in your heroin which is definitely one of the big reasons for overdoses today. Overdoses were slightly lower when pill mills were operating because people knew exactly how much of what was in the pills they get from Walgreen's or whatever.
The issues I'm referring to are the ones that have been present for much longer. These issues include things such as lack of employment due to drug users having a record, discrimination against users in general stemming from the stigma and association with violent crime (even though 90%+ of users are nonviolent), stigma in treating addiction and mental illnesses, overdoses which almost always stem from a change in how the in regular d suppliers cut their products and change potency (people get used to a certain concentration of active and if that changes they may easily use too much), and the lack of drug education due to the "just say no" ideology which essentially lied to multiple generations about the dangers and mechanisms of psychoactive compounds.
When it comes to alcohol, there are socially learned ways of managing use of the drug (ethanol) in a responsible fashion. Only some small communities have learned how to use other drugs responsibly due to the stigma preventing spread of information.
We also don't have a lot of information on the intersection of these psychoactive compounds and mental illness. Its possible that there are people who have malfunction regulation of endogenous opioids (endorphins) or their receptors which a partial agonist could be used for therapy. There is literally not a single doctor who would prescribe an opiate agonist for mental health issues because the research on things like that is all but banned due to the DEA dragging their feet and refusing to give people licensing to study the compounds (MAPS has had to sue the DEA over this issue). Combine this with funding issues, where only studies looking at downsides of psychoactive get funded and now we have an extremely skewed/biased view.
There are even more issues than I've presented here, but these are the ones at the forefront of my mind when I consider the issues of drug use today. Almost all of these issues have their root in the prohibition of these substances. It would be far easier to not only study and understand drugs without prohibition, but people would also overdose less due to having a reliable, regulated, and affordable supply. The primary issue that feeds into this which isn't due to prohibition itself is poverty, and that's a whole 'nother thing.
> But none of those drugs will result in the long-term change that you’re looking for
I mean, it literally did, and I stated as such.
Obviously the drug itself was not enough. The scenario and the realization afterword also mattered. But without mdma my life would likely have been very different.
Also, unlike cocaine etc. mdma isn’t addictive - taking more and more of it just results in you feeling shittier for longer.
I can't tell if this is sarcastic. Marijuana is both a "schedule 1 controlled substance" (which is a federal classification) and fully legal in 18 states. The term "schedule 1" doesn't say much about danger, which is not to say that there aren't dangerous drugs on the schedule 1 list.
This isn’t a very good argument. Table salt is literally Sodium and Chlorine, both of which are extremely toxic to humans but that’s irrelevant to anyone who understands that molecules have different effects than other molecules that share part of the same name.
Again though, mdma can kill you even if it’s completely pure. This is especially true if you take MAOIs or drink not enough/too much water or take any other meds that mess with serotonin. Please research things carefully.
The core molecule is amphetamine. Everything else is a binder that determines how long and how many passes it takes for your system. Adderall and methamphetamine only differ by a methyl group which makes it break down slower.
Sorry, no. MDMA is not the same as meth. The molecules are similar, sure, but they are different substances with different effects. Trying to equate the two is pretty disingenuous.
US drug scheduling is incredibly political and does not reflect how harmful a drug is.
As an example, cocaine is a schedule 2 drug but magic mushrooms, which has the lowest potential for harm (even lower than caffeine), is a schedule 1 drug.
Ecstasy is meth dude, it ruins a lot of peoples lives. I’ve seen it happen so maybe you’re personally responsible but there’s a lot of freaking people that aren’t. You can destroy their lies if they try your advice and it doesn’t work out
Ecstasy(MDMA) was like magic for the first time. It certainly should be taken only on special occasions but having molly with your loved one is beautiful experience.
> Do you think MDMA just breaks down completely devoid of methamphetamine as a metabolite?
AFAICT, that is correct; why do you think it doesn't? Name-based intuition?
Every reference, paper, etc., I can find of MDMA metabolites does not identify N-methylamphetamine (“methamphetamine”) as a metabolite of MDMA, and every identified metabolite retains the two oxygens of the methylenedioxy unit (whether it retains the whole unit or not) that distinguishes MDMA from methamphetamine.
Meth will most likely ruin your life and you will want more and more.
MDMA is simply not very fun if you try taking it over and over again. It stops working and you just feel shitty for longer and longer periods without any feeling of getting high.
The problem is that a lot of molly that is sold today is full of things other than mdma. Meth is one of those things. You should absolutely use a test kit if you plan on taking anything.
> But none of those drugs will result in the long-term change that you’re looking for.
Grandparent states: “and then realized that if I could do that with a drug then I could probably do it without a drug. (I haven’t done e in over a decade).”
I don’t think taking MDMA is a prerequisite to realizing that you can become a different person.
If one is to take drugs for that purpose, LCD or mushrooms would be much better - insofar as safely realizing that your day to day cognition is not as static as you might assume.
I think you're ending up splitting hairs here, starting out by initially (apparently) saying drugs should be avoided, but then coming around to the position that LSD or mushrooms would be much better than MDMA, even though plenty of others would warn people off LSD and mushrooms in just the same way as you've done with MDMA.
It's tricky talking about drugs that are illegal and that can be harmful, but can also be highly beneficial and safe when taken under the right conditions. Let's try to avoid blanket condemnations and moralising; HN is meant to be a place for more nuanced discussions than that.
MDMA has for several decades been widely reported, anecdotally, to bring about profound, lasting, changes in people's emotional states, and to set them on long-term journeys of personal growth. And in recent years many governments around the world have green-lit medical trials into its benefits for various kinds of emotional/psychiatric conditions, though of course few people have access to these trials.
So, let's not be so dismissive of someone being open enough to share their personal experience.
I’ve taken both lsd and mushrooms (the latter were perfectly legal in the UK and were openly sold in London high street stores). Both were interesting but neither helped in the same way.
There's active research suggesting that taking MDMA re-opens "critical period" learning where you lay down reward circuitry relating to the value of social interaction. It's potentially a way to have a do-over of important developmental social experiences. Apparently more than a party drug!
> But none of those drugs will result in the long-term change that you’re looking for.
Sorry to be blunt, but this is clearly the morally infused cliché of "healthy people do not take drugs because drugs are bad mkay.". Cliché which seem to automatically give people the status of the most responsible person in the room for some reason.
Well I'd like to give a rebuttal. Saying no to drugs is saying no to the risk of taking the drug, that is true. But it is _also_ saying no to the potential benefit.
If, for the sake of argument, someone took that risk at 20, but had some incredible epiphany and radically changed their life for the better during the 30 years following the experiment, you can't say in good faith that it was _bad_. You _have_ to take into account that a better quality of life was exchanged for that risk. And in my opinion, refusing to see that is not automatically the responsible position, even if it is always portrayed as such.
I’m in my early forties. I have bipolar disorder bad enough that I’ve seen the inside of a locked psychiatric unit more than once. (I’m also an ex-FAANG staff engineer with multiple degrees and have helped make things worth many billions of dollars if you need a second label to offset the first).
If mdma hadn’t helped me connect with people and get over my social anxiety, I would have killed myself by now and you simply would not be reading these words.
I am more aware of the costs of drug misuse than 99.98% of the people reading this but, still, I don’t think I’d be alive today without first fixing the problem of being so terribly unable to talk to people.
Surely not, drugs are bad or so i've been told and I _never_ question what people have told me. Especially when I trust them because if I trust them then they are right by definition because I only trust people who are right.
And if you read that without noticing the sarcasm then just stay away from drugs.
Downvoting because if you're including MDMA/Ecstasy in the same group with these other substances you mentioned then you have no idea what you're talking about. At all.
Just a motherfucking second right there. I can vouch that for a minority of the population properly prescribed "strong" stimulants make a night-and-day difference in social ability. For me, it meant reading "cues" which I flat out could not do practically ever, became second nature. And I learned social skills that served me even after the beautiful molecules were out of my system.
So in my particular case, these stimulants stretch out time. Literally. Like I think they improve the refractory period of my neurons, von Neumann talks about that in his book The Computer and the Brain, call it what you want, but I'll sit there thinking it's been over three hours since I sat down when it's only been an hour and fifty minutes. Guess what? You get twice as much time to figure out what to say and do in every single situation! Like the difference between chat rooms and telephone, almost. And there's much more to it than just the time dilation.
Pretty cheap lottery ticket if you ask me, just go to a real psych and ask, OK ask like this:
I am an awkward guy, and I want to screen whether I have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, because if I do happen to have that hand tied behind my back, I would like to untie it. Just tell me conclusively whether I have ADD--which is unlikely, but worth the odds--or not. It's just I've heard it's such a slam-dunk to treat this, from people who openly talk about their ADD, that I want to get to the bottom of this, conclusively.
Agreed most heartily. I have sampled a whole range of stimulants from the mundane to the dangerous with good results. And other drugs too. Opium is fabulous. Psychedelics are deeply educational. I only wish I was introduced earlier.
I had massive problems speaking with people. I ended up going to a rave with some friends, took some molly, had an amazing time talking to people and then realized that if I could do that with a drug then I could probably do it without a drug. (I haven’t done e in over a decade).
I still had some issues with public speaking so during my mba I forced myself to give every presentation possible. This largely solved that problem.
Note that mdma can kill you, especially if taken without experience. This is not an endorsement of drug taking.