I literally think that MDMA saved my life. I was absolutely _broken_ when I came out of high school -- bullied at home and at school just relentlessly for 12 years. Completely unable to relate to other human beings, afraid of being touched, never had a girl friend or any kind of real friendship.
Going to rave and having people -- strangers! -- just hug me, and listen to me, and I'd listen to them and we could just talk to each other like normal people without this undercurrent of constant anxiety and fear of rejection. It was a miracle to me. And I mean that in both the banal sense and the religious sense. It wasn't just the interpersonal aspects of it, but like -- having these feelings of joy and happiness and seeing the beauty of the world wash over me in almost an overwhelming way despite the fact that absolutely _nothing_ had really changed about the world made me understand how much of my own unhappiness was internal, that i could _choose_ to see the world in a better light all the time -- not just when I was on drugs, but at any time, it was just a matter of perspective, and something that you have some level of control over.
I went from being someone who was almost completely isolated and withdrawn to learning how to DJ, to DJing at the _very same club_ that opened the world to me. I had a girlfriend within a few months, I had dozens of friends, I had a better paying job within a year, largely through connections I made at the club. I honestly think I'd have just turned into a homeless alcoholic or something without that experience. I have a hard time even imagining where I'd have ended up. I barely recognize the person that walked into that club the first night.
It's a tragedy that this drug isn't available to more people. I overdid it. A lot of people over did it, but 20 years later I don't regret any of it for a moment, even the bad nights.
I skipped a few grades in school and became a social outcast. I was hazed out of one school entirely and sort of gave up on understanding people for a while. My first experience on MDMA was like a physical light switch was flicked on inside of my body. I went from only wearing black/white/gray clothes to being the one known to wear loud colors and really putting myself out there visually and socially. I ended up feeling the need to move away from my home town because I felt "too popular." I couldn't go for a run without someone stopping on the side of the street to offer me a ride to wherever. This sort of behavior continued into music festivals where I learned to manage and lead large scale groups of ~strangers in tough environments/confusing mindsets.
I thought these skills wouldn't prove valuable in the work world, but, to my elation and surprise, it was the opposite. A lot of engineers are really smart but a bit weaker on the political and social side of things. I undoubtedly nuked a few brain cells acquiring all these experiences, but hey I can still code just fine and now I love getting in there, talking to people about their feelings and communicating about how I am feeling, and do so with a belief that others are interested in hearing/seeing me.
The key overall is always to not abuse and that should be adressed by education, not just mindlessly prohibit everything (even tho it's not too bad to forbid stuff somethimes).
> The key overall is always to not abuse and that should be adressed by education
Who is to say what's "abuse" really.
Why would taking MDMA in a therapist chair be "medicine" and taking it and dancing all night long be "abuse"? Because that's how they're going to try and control it. I'm not even sure which would be healthier for you or more effective. Like, obviously there's a point where it's too much, but if you let the "medical establishment" define it, it'll definitely be defined as any point in which people might actually be having fun.
I found MDMA similarly eye-opening, dealing with depression and anxiety. It was the first time I truly felt free of anxiety, like it just vanished and I could feel somewhat normal. This was many many years ago, and since then I use these experiences as a sort of guiding star. It's good to take some every now and then to realign and recalibrate with this feeling.
Growing up in a poor neighborhood I had friends who were going to parties at like 13/14. MDMA, speed, LSD.
Still good friends with some of them and they are mostly ashamed of that period, and you can see severe permanent effects of abuse on some (again we knew each other since childhood).
I tried what I could get my hands on because I was curious, and I would go out with this crowd occasionally. It's far from roses and rainbows - getting emotionally unstable people riled up - I've seen/heard scary shit.
You can draw parallels to alcohol - drinking can be great for socialisation - and alcohol can ruin people, so I guess you could say it's unfair that one is illegal.
But I don't share the sentiment either way - "I wish alcohol/drugs were available to more people" is not something I'd like to see in practice.
Alcohol is not life changing like MDMA. Has alcohol ever received any kind of therapeutic recognition, or emergency use authorization to treat PTSD like MDMA? This is a poor analogy IMO.
empath-nivana's life was saved through illicit MDMA usage. They didn't shoot up a school or music concert,
didn't send out mysogynistic screeds to women online, didn't abuse or kill a sex worker, didn't commit suicide, or any other number of awful things going on in the world committed by emotionally blunted individuals. I wish the emotional revitalization that comes from MDMA, the healing, being able to step away from the trauma, the openness, the vulnerability - I wish that on everybody.
I wish people were well-adjusted and have fulfilling and happy lives. If it takes broadly available MDMA to get there, then so be it.
Interesting how experiences can be so different. I have experienced the, technically, happiest moments of my life while on MDMA, but ultimately it changed nothing. Like pretty much any drug, it's temporary, fake, extreme happiness at the cost of your brain permanently melting from using it too much.
I took nothing away from it but increased insight into how unnaturally happy one can be (on drugs) and how incredibly dull, depressing and soul crushing the average work day is.
Would I recommend others trying it? Yes, sure, it's fantastic -you gonna experience happiness on it you CAN NOT get without drugs, that's an interesting experience.
i found that it showed me the path to that happy place, and now that i know the route, i can find my way back from time to time. Of course without mdma i can't stay there for long, but when i do visit its sublime and doesn't involve the multi week depression afterwards
How much of this is MDMA and how much of this is just having a welcoming scene where people emphasize physical touch and friendly interaction? How much of this is just living in a society that otherwise doesn’t allow for that in other ways?
It's a combination of the scene and the MDMA opening me up to the experience. I would have been _freaked the fuck out_ by random people hugging me without it.
But your point is why I am skeptical of the value of MDMA as like a one-on-one therapeutic tool. For me, it was not just that I was having the best night of my life, but that I was surrounded by people who were also having the best night of their lives. You could just look around and make eye contact with a random person and you both _knew_.
And that community didn't just _happen_. It was the product of lots of people curating that community -- the djs, the promoters, the dancers, etc. You can't just throw drugs into any random pool of people and expect that kind of magic to happen. There was an artistry to it.
> how much of this is just having a welcoming scene where people emphasize physical touch and friendly interaction?
Most of it, I would bet. From experience, I can say a night out on MDMA can be almost as lonely/alienating as one on ethanol. Still super interesting and fun, but nothing as enlightening as the positive anecdotes above.
Example: if you're physically attractive, but socially stunted, an MDMA night will give you a taste of The Other Side. If your situation is the other way around, guess what - physically unattractive people are still very much unwelcome on a dance floor, and people will still make that clear to you.
This shit is tricky, which is why we need more experienced users in society who can guide newcomers through it.
I'm pretty libertarian when it comes to recreational drugs, but I do worry that we're not exploring the mechanism of these drugs properly when there is polarization to either those seeking prohibition of recreational drugs or those seeking the pleasure from the same drugs. I'm of the opinion that if a root cause of your issues, and mine, could be established an optimized treatment could be determined that maximizes the beneficial outcome and minimizes the detrimental. My root cause is ADHD / dopamine dysregulation and I respond well to medication like Low Dose Naltrexone and Low Dose Modafinil. I think for people with my kind of issues we'd benefit much more from those than from MDMA even if they are much less fun medications to take. It's unfortunate that doctors do a terrible job here so the libertarian part of me is very thankful for the black/grey markets and I benefit from the self experimentation of others, at the same time I think it's incumbent on me to let others know about alternatives to MDMA that I think are worth exploring.
There are some pretty prominent voices like Dr Gabor Mate who think that ADHD stems from stressful family life/structure and/or traumas growing up.
I myself was diagnosed with ADHD, and psychedelics healed me and my past to the point where I no longer needed prescribed stimulants, so it’s possible that MDMA could help.
In some ways this sounds very similar to my situation (in other ways very different) and it took more than one drug to fix, including prescription antidepressants which took away the appalling, appalling nightmare depression[1] but ultimately it was MDMA that kind of pushed my brain off its rails and onto a new and vastly better track. I'll never have a normal life nor will my siblings but at least it's somewhat tolerable now.
[1] (thanks parents! You pair of evil cunts. At least one of you knew exactly what you were doing, and the other one just watched as it happened in front of you and did nothing)
There are some ways to mitigate this, although they're not always possible depending on the setting:
* Get a good sleep, ideally at about the same time as usual. If you normally sleep 11pm-7am then obviously a 4am-8am sleep is obviously going to have an effect on your mood. The closer you can get to your normal routine, the better. This might mean taking it pretty early, which doesn't necessarily make sense in a club setting.
* Take magnesium before/during the high to prevent gurning (if this is a problem). A sore jaw makes everything worse the next day.
* Take 5-HTP as soon as you wake up.
* Either sleep in the same house as the people you dropped with, or get back together as soon as possible in the morning. This is essential to processing the experience in a positive, social way.
* Don't have anything scheduled involving work or family for at least a couple of days afterwards, ideally a week.
It's not really the next morning, there was usually a "glow" that lasted for a couple of days. It was mostly midweek that the depression sunk in, and really that only happened to me after I had been going to raves regularly for a year.
Mostly for me it was a matter of understanding what the cause of that was. But yes, over time it was what stopped from me from continuing to take it, but all the benefit I really got out of it, therapeutically, happened in the first 2 or 3 times I took it, before I ever had the mid-week crash. Everything after that was just for fun.
How much sleep are you getting afterwards? If it's laced with any type of amphetamine, probably not very much, and from my personal experience, the sleep dep feels like the main problem and not the after-effects of the substance itself.
I read about NAC (N-Acetyl L-Cysteine) in various forums and it seems to be a relatively safe antioxidant that does wonders for MDMA after effects and "losing the magic". YMMV but I highly recommend.
It's too bad as a society we can't embrace psychedelics (yet). Yes, it's super fun and there is potential for abuse.
But we are *missing* out on so much learning... of ourselves, how to improve things in society, on how to heal, and be better humans to each other. Anyone who has experience with psychs knows what I'm trying to say.
I think people become more kind and caring after these kinds of experiences.
It'd be nice to see western culture adapt it's own version "shaman" culture that emphasizes deep exploration of ones self. We're getting closer to this very slowly (more people doing therapy, more interest in wellness, early glimpses of in-person psychedelic "healthcare").
My impression is that healing from a deeply traumatic episode is much easier when you feel security, openness, and self-love. MDMA provides a big boost to all of these, and therapists were finding it extremely useful in the ~~1960's~~ [edit] 1970's, so it's not surprising that it's finding its way back to serious consideration after years of being pushed to the underground.
BTW the article is a little US-centric; in the UK it's usually called Mandy or MD ("emdee") rather than Molly.
Author of the book that the review article is about here: The book does get deep into the British scene and the pivotal role it's played over the years in terms of culture, science and prohibition. UK is definitely a crucial part of MDMA's story!
> it's finding its way back to serious consideration after years of being pushed to the underground
It was used in a therapy-like way for all those (underground) years, not strictly for dancing/clubs/house parties. People had informal couples therapy, or trauma therapy where painful memories surfaced and they could be dealt with in a safe space free of inhibitions. Only now it's more formal and the doctors are involved.
It was surprising how often I'd be talking to a _complete stranger_ at a nightclub and we'd just start sharing childhood traumatic experiences in between trying to id tracks.
Agreed. Small correction - it wasn't known to be used in any therapeutic capacity until the late 70s after Alexander Shulgin first synthesized it and exposed it to broader academic circles.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think a clarification is warranted. MDMA was first synthesized in 1912, trialled for non-psychotherapy uses then and again in 1950s, and Shulgin synthesized it in 1965.
From Wikipedia:
> MDMA was first synthesized in 1912 by Merck chemist Anton Köllisch. At the time, Merck was interested in developing substances that stopped abnormal bleeding.
> Alexander Shulgin reported he synthesized MDMA in 1965 […], but did not test the psychoactivity of the compound at this time.
> Shulgin occasionally used MDMA for relaxation, […] and gave the drug to friends, researchers, and others who he thought could benefit from it.[…]. When [Leo Zeff, a psychotherapist who had been known to use psychedelic substances in his practice] tried the drug in 1977, Zeff was impressed with the effects of MDMA and came out of his semi-retirement to promote its use in therapy.
I read this book written by one of the psychologists who was doing early research into psychedelic therapy when I was a kid called "Thanatos To Eros, 35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration" and it was really interesting. It's still available on maps.org (Although they kind of muntzed the formatting) [1] but the takeaway is that besides MDMA there's a whole range of other substances with a variety of therapeutic merits to explore. MDMA may hit a sort of sweet-spot quality for more people to tolerate it without adverse reaction kind of sweet spot, however I think the substance Stolaroff was most interested in for enhancement of insight was actually very small doses of 2c-e (you can ctrl+f for it in the link), which I think is something we might end up seeing in more scientific investigations as interest grows.
Having done both MDMA and 2C-E (mid 00s were pretty good in that sense), in various amounts, I'm not sure I'd agree (or disagree, really).
Threshold dosages had noticeable impacts in vision or mindset, but I didn't feel anything particularly introspective/exploratory. That wasn't until higher dosages, and only then I felt like it was a rollercoaster, in the sense of intense but very well psychologically attached to the rails. But then again, in those dosages I could hear the echo of my own voice with 15s delay, and just going to the toilet was an adventure full of unexpected events, so I'm not sure how a therapist can guide that either.
MDMA on the other hand softens everything from the smaller doses to the heavy ones, at least until the amphetamine edge starts to take hold.
What I remember reading about small doses of 2c-e (Maybe in this book, maybe somewhere else - My interests have shifted a ton over the years to other things) is that the insight enhancement is something that actually ends up happening in the aftermath of the primary effects of the drug. Day after and things start hitting differently kind of effect, that you have to go into with intention in a way.
2C-E gave me the most intense open eye visuals. Posters turned into cartoons. The linoleum in my bathroom looked like swirling chocolate milk. Tracers from my fingers. Breathing walls. Intense motion sickness. But psychologically, I almost felt sober. I don't remember the dose. I used it a handful of times in 2010/2011.
I did 2CE a few time in the 2000s, and it was the harshest teacher. On 2CE I had incredible hallucination in ritch technicolor but if there is anything remotly looking like a problem to be addressed in my life, I would mentally suffer until I made a plan to adress it. There was no way to ignore or rationalize away the problem, like I usually did.
I took various drugs as a teenager but I fell in love with mdma - specifically building a very strong, close nit friendship group with my girlfriend and 2 friends (and another group occasionally).
It helped my girlfriend (now wife) move through some childhood trauma as well as eating disorders too.
Wasn’t so much into clubs - had a few parties in woods which were mind blowing (fire jugglers in fields was a highlight).
Downsides were more that I didn’t put as much time or care into side projects whilst at university- and having to deal with dodgy people to get hold of it.
Zero reasons why it is illegal (class A, no less), but alcohol is fully accepted.
MDMA can be incredibly therapeutic when used judiciously and responsibly. It is a remarkable anti-depressant which works very quickly, it can really open you up to exploring difficult issues in your life. It's not without its risks, and it's by no means a panacea. But still, worthy of further study and investigation.
A common side effect I've seen with people who use it too often is that it can cause unreasonable expectations of happiness for some people who have difficulty coping with happy moments passing.
I'm highly sceptical of the suggestion that if we just all take MDMA the increasingly fractured world will somehow re-unite. I think reading Karl Popper's open society and its enemies will be much more productive, as that will help you understand the reason for the division.
It's as my old pappy used to say, you can't fix problems with more MDMA that wasn't created by a lack of MDMA.
> if we just all take MDMA the increasingly fractured world will somehow re-unite.
Seems like a strawman. No one (except for maybe that one spunyun wook at the festival whose life and identity revolves around entheogens and entactogens) is seriously suggesting we all just have to take some Soma and sing kumbaya. These are useful tools, which need to be applied in the right context (not specifically clinical, maybe Burning Man is the right context) to be efficacious.
> It's as my old pappy used to say, you can't fix problems with more MDMA that wasn't created by a lack of MDMA.
Again, weird strawman. That's like saying you can't fix asthma with albuterol/budesonide because it wasn't created by an albuterol or budesonide deficiency. Dents in a car aren't caused by a lack of dent-pullers. Quite often the solution is not the exact inverse of the cause. Lateral problem solving is key.
I agree with that perspective. I did some mdma when young but because I was fairly happy back then it never had any healing effect for me. I believe that it could be powerful for some people sometimes and I never had any sort of substance dependency.
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Going to rave and having people -- strangers! -- just hug me, and listen to me, and I'd listen to them and we could just talk to each other like normal people without this undercurrent of constant anxiety and fear of rejection. It was a miracle to me. And I mean that in both the banal sense and the religious sense. It wasn't just the interpersonal aspects of it, but like -- having these feelings of joy and happiness and seeing the beauty of the world wash over me in almost an overwhelming way despite the fact that absolutely _nothing_ had really changed about the world made me understand how much of my own unhappiness was internal, that i could _choose_ to see the world in a better light all the time -- not just when I was on drugs, but at any time, it was just a matter of perspective, and something that you have some level of control over.
I went from being someone who was almost completely isolated and withdrawn to learning how to DJ, to DJing at the _very same club_ that opened the world to me. I had a girlfriend within a few months, I had dozens of friends, I had a better paying job within a year, largely through connections I made at the club. I honestly think I'd have just turned into a homeless alcoholic or something without that experience. I have a hard time even imagining where I'd have ended up. I barely recognize the person that walked into that club the first night.
It's a tragedy that this drug isn't available to more people. I overdid it. A lot of people over did it, but 20 years later I don't regret any of it for a moment, even the bad nights.
I skipped a few grades in school and became a social outcast. I was hazed out of one school entirely and sort of gave up on understanding people for a while. My first experience on MDMA was like a physical light switch was flicked on inside of my body. I went from only wearing black/white/gray clothes to being the one known to wear loud colors and really putting myself out there visually and socially. I ended up feeling the need to move away from my home town because I felt "too popular." I couldn't go for a run without someone stopping on the side of the street to offer me a ride to wherever. This sort of behavior continued into music festivals where I learned to manage and lead large scale groups of ~strangers in tough environments/confusing mindsets.
I thought these skills wouldn't prove valuable in the work world, but, to my elation and surprise, it was the opposite. A lot of engineers are really smart but a bit weaker on the political and social side of things. I undoubtedly nuked a few brain cells acquiring all these experiences, but hey I can still code just fine and now I love getting in there, talking to people about their feelings and communicating about how I am feeling, and do so with a belief that others are interested in hearing/seeing me.
10/10 would do it all over again.
The key overall is always to not abuse and that should be adressed by education, not just mindlessly prohibit everything (even tho it's not too bad to forbid stuff somethimes).
Who is to say what's "abuse" really.
Why would taking MDMA in a therapist chair be "medicine" and taking it and dancing all night long be "abuse"? Because that's how they're going to try and control it. I'm not even sure which would be healthier for you or more effective. Like, obviously there's a point where it's too much, but if you let the "medical establishment" define it, it'll definitely be defined as any point in which people might actually be having fun.
Despite the intense good feeling while you are on it, the understanding that I am basically OK persists afterwards.
Deleted Comment
Growing up in a poor neighborhood I had friends who were going to parties at like 13/14. MDMA, speed, LSD.
Still good friends with some of them and they are mostly ashamed of that period, and you can see severe permanent effects of abuse on some (again we knew each other since childhood).
I tried what I could get my hands on because I was curious, and I would go out with this crowd occasionally. It's far from roses and rainbows - getting emotionally unstable people riled up - I've seen/heard scary shit.
You can draw parallels to alcohol - drinking can be great for socialisation - and alcohol can ruin people, so I guess you could say it's unfair that one is illegal.
But I don't share the sentiment either way - "I wish alcohol/drugs were available to more people" is not something I'd like to see in practice.
I wish people were well-adjusted and have fulfilling and happy lives. If it takes broadly available MDMA to get there, then so be it.
Fossil fuels, etc.
> But I don't share the sentiment either way - "I wish alcohol/drugs were available to more people" is not something I'd like to see in practice.
Fits the fossil fuels (and modern culture?) analogy nicely!
I took nothing away from it but increased insight into how unnaturally happy one can be (on drugs) and how incredibly dull, depressing and soul crushing the average work day is.
Would I recommend others trying it? Yes, sure, it's fantastic -you gonna experience happiness on it you CAN NOT get without drugs, that's an interesting experience.
But your point is why I am skeptical of the value of MDMA as like a one-on-one therapeutic tool. For me, it was not just that I was having the best night of my life, but that I was surrounded by people who were also having the best night of their lives. You could just look around and make eye contact with a random person and you both _knew_.
And that community didn't just _happen_. It was the product of lots of people curating that community -- the djs, the promoters, the dancers, etc. You can't just throw drugs into any random pool of people and expect that kind of magic to happen. There was an artistry to it.
Deleted Comment
Most of it, I would bet. From experience, I can say a night out on MDMA can be almost as lonely/alienating as one on ethanol. Still super interesting and fun, but nothing as enlightening as the positive anecdotes above.
Example: if you're physically attractive, but socially stunted, an MDMA night will give you a taste of The Other Side. If your situation is the other way around, guess what - physically unattractive people are still very much unwelcome on a dance floor, and people will still make that clear to you.
This shit is tricky, which is why we need more experienced users in society who can guide newcomers through it.
I myself was diagnosed with ADHD, and psychedelics healed me and my past to the point where I no longer needed prescribed stimulants, so it’s possible that MDMA could help.
[1] (thanks parents! You pair of evil cunts. At least one of you knew exactly what you were doing, and the other one just watched as it happened in front of you and did nothing)
I find those really depressing and they can completely outweighs the benefit of the night for me.
* Get a good sleep, ideally at about the same time as usual. If you normally sleep 11pm-7am then obviously a 4am-8am sleep is obviously going to have an effect on your mood. The closer you can get to your normal routine, the better. This might mean taking it pretty early, which doesn't necessarily make sense in a club setting.
* Take magnesium before/during the high to prevent gurning (if this is a problem). A sore jaw makes everything worse the next day.
* Take 5-HTP as soon as you wake up.
* Either sleep in the same house as the people you dropped with, or get back together as soon as possible in the morning. This is essential to processing the experience in a positive, social way.
* Don't have anything scheduled involving work or family for at least a couple of days afterwards, ideally a week.
Mostly for me it was a matter of understanding what the cause of that was. But yes, over time it was what stopped from me from continuing to take it, but all the benefit I really got out of it, therapeutically, happened in the first 2 or 3 times I took it, before I ever had the mid-week crash. Everything after that was just for fun.
Deleted Comment
But we are *missing* out on so much learning... of ourselves, how to improve things in society, on how to heal, and be better humans to each other. Anyone who has experience with psychs knows what I'm trying to say.
I think people become more kind and caring after these kinds of experiences.
It'd be nice to see western culture adapt it's own version "shaman" culture that emphasizes deep exploration of ones self. We're getting closer to this very slowly (more people doing therapy, more interest in wellness, early glimpses of in-person psychedelic "healthcare").
BTW the article is a little US-centric; in the UK it's usually called Mandy or MD ("emdee") rather than Molly.
It was used in a therapy-like way for all those (underground) years, not strictly for dancing/clubs/house parties. People had informal couples therapy, or trauma therapy where painful memories surfaced and they could be dealt with in a safe space free of inhibitions. Only now it's more formal and the doctors are involved.
From Wikipedia:
> MDMA was first synthesized in 1912 by Merck chemist Anton Köllisch. At the time, Merck was interested in developing substances that stopped abnormal bleeding.
> Alexander Shulgin reported he synthesized MDMA in 1965 […], but did not test the psychoactivity of the compound at this time.
> Shulgin occasionally used MDMA for relaxation, […] and gave the drug to friends, researchers, and others who he thought could benefit from it.[…]. When [Leo Zeff, a psychotherapist who had been known to use psychedelic substances in his practice] tried the drug in 1977, Zeff was impressed with the effects of MDMA and came out of his semi-retirement to promote its use in therapy.
Deleted Comment
[1] https://maps.org/2014/11/19/thanatos-to-eros-35-years-of-psy...
Threshold dosages had noticeable impacts in vision or mindset, but I didn't feel anything particularly introspective/exploratory. That wasn't until higher dosages, and only then I felt like it was a rollercoaster, in the sense of intense but very well psychologically attached to the rails. But then again, in those dosages I could hear the echo of my own voice with 15s delay, and just going to the toilet was an adventure full of unexpected events, so I'm not sure how a therapist can guide that either.
MDMA on the other hand softens everything from the smaller doses to the heavy ones, at least until the amphetamine edge starts to take hold.
It helped my girlfriend (now wife) move through some childhood trauma as well as eating disorders too.
Wasn’t so much into clubs - had a few parties in woods which were mind blowing (fire jugglers in fields was a highlight).
Downsides were more that I didn’t put as much time or care into side projects whilst at university- and having to deal with dodgy people to get hold of it.
Zero reasons why it is illegal (class A, no less), but alcohol is fully accepted.
A common side effect I've seen with people who use it too often is that it can cause unreasonable expectations of happiness for some people who have difficulty coping with happy moments passing.
It's as my old pappy used to say, you can't fix problems with more MDMA that wasn't created by a lack of MDMA.
Seems like a strawman. No one (except for maybe that one spunyun wook at the festival whose life and identity revolves around entheogens and entactogens) is seriously suggesting we all just have to take some Soma and sing kumbaya. These are useful tools, which need to be applied in the right context (not specifically clinical, maybe Burning Man is the right context) to be efficacious.
> It's as my old pappy used to say, you can't fix problems with more MDMA that wasn't created by a lack of MDMA.
Again, weird strawman. That's like saying you can't fix asthma with albuterol/budesonide because it wasn't created by an albuterol or budesonide deficiency. Dents in a car aren't caused by a lack of dent-pullers. Quite often the solution is not the exact inverse of the cause. Lateral problem solving is key.