I bet it's still not good for you

[andrewducker]

Apparently Ecstacy doesn't give you Parkinsons after all, this story says.

Researchers horrified to find they had used a mislabeled bottle in an experiment retracted their findings on Friday, saying they had failed to show the drug Ecstasy can cause a certain pattern of brain damage.

Their original report, published in September 2002, said they had found Parkinson's disease-like damage in the brains of monkeys injected with Ecstasy. or MDMA.

"The authors recently discovered that the drug used to treat all but one animal in that report came from a bottle that contained methamphetamine instead of the intended drug, MDMA ('Ecstasy')," the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which published the study in its journal Science, said in a statement...

Of course, it still fucks up your seratonin levels, and I'm remarkable attached to mine...

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Given the way that the US government has come down on Ecstasy, I'm wondering if the switch was really accidental. I also doubt that it's worse than alcohol wrt general bad affects on you. Almost all recreational chemicals are bad for you, the key is only using those that do not do permanent damage (IOW avoid using speed or crack).

[andrewducker]

Alcohol has worse effects in the long term in some ways (liver damage, addiction, etc.) and not so bad in others (seratonin receptor damage leaves people more depressed and able to cope with life).

Which is worse overall isn't really something you can add up, but I don't really fancy either myself.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Ah, I didn't know it did actual damage to the receptors, as opposed to simply doing short and medium term alterations of seratonin levels. The first is (to me) fairly minor, the second is a very serious problem.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

AFAIK, alcohol doesn't cause much by way of irreversible brain damage (unless you fall over pissed of course, or have a stroke, whioch is does increase the risk of by raising blood pressure). It's not classically physically addictive either (psychologically, of course, pretty much anything can be addictive).

The liver (and other internal organ) damage is not invevitable, not even in very heavy drinkers, though it is common, researchers are still not sure why some folks get it and some folks don't. Unless you go really too far, most effects can be reversed. I suspect that that is true of many drugs.

What are the length of followup studies on people who give up, say, Ecstasy. It'd be interesting to see what they are like 1,5,10 years after giving up. Also interesting to see what other drugs, if any, they have not given up, and indeed their eating habits....