by Maria Grusauskas on Jan 25, 2012
Local researcher and writer David Jay Brown believes the harmful effects of MDMA are overstated and works with a group of scientists in Santa Cruz to show the positive effects of the drug.
A dark-haired boy writhes against the tiled wall of a high school bathroom. He clutches his chest, gasps for breath and then drops his head into his hands and begins to pull at his hair. A packed crowd of adults watches him in silence, jotting down notes.
The lights come up, and an onslaught of questions follows the first public viewing of Ecstasy: Lives Out of Balance, a documentary for public schools put out by Santa Clara County health officials. The film was made in response to what health officials call an ecstasy epidemic in the South Bay.
The popular “rave” drug is crossing over to at-home use, health officials warn, citing a 2010 survey of 1,850 Santa Clara high school students that found that one in four say they have tried ecstasy, or MDMA.
But some local scientists who study the effects of psychoactive drugs are calling the county’s epidemic claim a new form of Reefer Madness propaganda.
“MDMA is a relatively safe drug, without a lot of risks, that really should be legal for recreational use—and most certainly it should be available for medical use,” says David Jay Brown, a researcher and writer based in Santa Cruz who calls the anti-drug campaigns short on science and long on politics.
While not everyone agrees with that assessment, even those charged with monitoring the trafficking of drugs in Santa Clara County say it’s not time to panic about an ecstasy epidemic.
“I haven’t seen a huge spike in it,” says Jim Sibley, the supervising deputy of the narcotics unit at the district attorney’s office. “We’ve seen ecstasy for a long time—for the better part of 15 years. It comes and goes.”
If anything, Sibley says, it’s the drugs that aren’t MDMA or ecstasy that can do the most damage. MDMA, colloquially referred to as Molly, often comes in through black-market shipments of pills or capsules containing powder, Sibley says, which can lead to the drugs being cut with methamphetamine, ketamine, benzopiprozene (BZP), or dextromethorphan (DXM).
According to county figures, five people have died from taking drugs they thought were ecstasy since 2009.
“The frightening thing, when you look at it, is that so few of them actually contain [MDMA],” Sibley says. Of the tablets seized by law enforcement, Sibley estimates that as few as one in four may actually contain MDMA.
Healing Effects
The Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Research (MAPS) is a California organization that conducts evaluations on the risks and benefits of psychedelics in medicine.
At the moment, it is the only organization in the world funding clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, and the results have been promising.
A recent case study, which was carried out in South Carolina with the approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), shows that a high percentage of women sexually assaulted and abused can overcome post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with the help of MDMA-enhanced therapy.
“We found that 83 percent of participants in that study no longer qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD,” says Brad Burge, a communications director at MAPS. “And those benefits we saw were confirmed with long term follow-up.”
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Ådne Aschehoug Aadnesen Thu, Jan 26, 2012 - 1:30 pm
I would pull my hair and gasp for air too
if i had a packed crowd of adults watch me in silence while jotting down notes,and that without taking any Ecstasy.I think this crowd of adults have totally overlooked the importance of set and setting,using psychoactive medicine.Its obvious we are dealing with a dangerously misinformed packed bunch of prohibitionists.
David Jay Brown Thu, Jan 26, 2012 - 5:35 pm
>But Larry Silveira… [says] [MDMA] is not any safer…It’s like saying, ‘Which is safer, the bite of a tiger or the bite of a lion?’ In my opinion, it is still a high risk, and it can still kill you.”
Larry needs to look at the actual facts, and consider the reality of the situation. Very few people have actually died from MDMA overdoses; it’s not much at all compared to alcohol and tobacco. There are more hospital visits per year for high school cheerleaders than their are for MDMA medical complications—and this would be lessened by legalization, regulation, and education. According to Larry, being a high school cheerleader carries the same risk as doing unknown drugs marked as “XTX” or being bitten by a tiger. For more information see: www.maps.org/news-letters/v16n3-html/cheerleading_ecstasy.html
Niko Gregorio Fri, Jan 27, 2012 - 1:29 am
Bad science, and sensationalist journalism.
This is meant to evoke fear and a reaction from a “concerned public”, rather than actually study the issue at hand. How could you even be sure that what people are having bad reactions to is indeed MDMA when every rave/club/festival stimulating substance is sold as “Ecstasy”.
This is not toxicology, pharmacology, psychopharmacology, psychiatry… it is people intentionally skewing the information, to reach forgone conclusions that the seek.
How about the issue that high school students often provide misinformation and disinformation in groups and encourage each other to do so, when these “drug surveys”, are handed out. They are not complete idiots, and they have little to no respect of the inquisition into their private affairs. They know that their lives and experiences are being manipulated for the agenda of certain interests, be they political or otherwise.
I do not advocate the use of MDMA or any illicit substance, especially outside of clinical/medical scientific studies. How about actually preforming some real science, instead of this non-sense… Who knows, you may actually do some good by providing accurate information, harm reduction has proved useful worldwide. Maybe then this sort of thing could be considered a “public service”. It is a sad state of affairs indeed when this sort of thing passes for information.