Come Down With Me

A fantastic TV show has been on for the last couple of nights in the UK called “Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial” on Channel 4 about MDMA, which is the good stuff in ecstasy. They are performing MRIs on people under the influence of the drug, in a double-blind trial, to discover how it works on the human brain, as well as performing a variety of other tests on the 25 subjects. These subjects included a writer, an editor of The New Scientist, a politician, a priest, an ex-SAS soldier, and Keith Allen. The aim of the show was to open up the public to the idea that this drug could be used as a cure for certain mental health conditions. It was a wonderfully frank and public look at one of the most talked about recreational drugs on the planet.

Whether you agree or disagree with people taking MDMA for fun, we should explore the effects of such a mood altering drug for a number of reasons. The main reason is the obvious benefits such a drug could have on the treatment of a variety of mental illnesses including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. To simply dismiss a drug’s usefulness for such serious and common diseases as above, on the grounds of an arbitrary law enforced by every human civilisation seems very archaic.

Think about some of other medications, and how regularly they are prescribed considering the vast harm they cause. Chemotherapy is an example. It kills you. It is literally poison and the reason it works is that is destroys your cells, including your cancerous ones, and when your body starts healing, it is hoped that your body will fight the cancer and manage to beat it in this weakened state. Chemotherapy is used very regularly and with good reasons; it saves lives. And it is legal.

Is cancer more dangerous than post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? In most cases, yes. Cancer will kill you while PTSD may just ruin your life and mental health. Is MDMA safer than chemo? According to the limited scientific data available, yes, but we simply don’t know enough about MDMA to be sure of the side effects. Hence research is needed… And now!

Mental health isn't valued as highly as physical health by the general public. I think this is because we are led to believe that those suffering from mental illness are somehow weaker and we respond less sympathetically to them. They are not weaker. They are just unfortunate, similar to someone who develops breast cancer. They are unlucky.

Another issue with that some illegal drugs, such as DMT and MDMA, are never researched on because of patents, believe it or not. The patents are old and have expired. Therefore these massive companies have no interest in seeing if these drugs can be useful aids in helping us fight certain mental illnesses. Why? Because if a company spends their money finding it out, any rival pharmaceutical company can use their research and release the drug without spending all that precious R&D money. It is within the best interests of the company to create a new chemical they can patent that can help, even if it less effective than MDMA. That and the fact that researching a drug that is outlawed internationally costs a LOT of money.

Why is MDMA outlawed internationally? Scientific studies suggest it is less dangerous than horse-riding (according to the ex-advisor to the UK government on the misuse of drugs, who also helped with this Channel 4 programme) and less dangerous than aspirin (according to a top UK police chief). Are these highly respected members of society wrong? Maybe, but the truth is we simply don’t know because the research isn't there. The only thing we do know is that the media machine made it abundantly clear that you should not say something so positive about an illegal drug and expect to keep your job.

We have parents of teenagers that have died from ecstasy screaming that it kills, against thousands of regular users who swear by it. The fact is that many people have died from MDMA because of poor communication by the media. It is stressed that you must drink a lot of water and this has caused people to die from drinking too much water (Leah Betts being the most infamous example). Drug takers must research the drug before taking it! It is time we put aside our biased sunglasses that are based on either personal experience with the drug, or a screaming negative-focused media. It is time we let the scientists do what they do best and test their hypotheses. They need to do this to help the thousands of people that could benefit from its use.

And they also need to do it to relay the idea that mood altering drugs aren't necessary bad, m'kay. People are different. We have ups, downs, good weeks, bad weeks, productive periods, and lethargic periods. People also enjoy different pursuits. Some like tennis, some like getting incredibly drunk, some like a good book, some like one night stands. This variety in behaviour and activities is what has made us such a successful and intelligent species. Why do the global authoritarians believe that taking a drug that alters the chemical balance in your mind is a bad thing? Who thinks that alcohol should be banned? Alcohol would appear to affect more of the brain than MDMA, according to the latest studies.

Our brains are just massive bags of chemicals reacting with the environment around us anyway. The food we eat, the coffee we drink, the amount of sleep we get, the traffic on the way home – all these things alter our mood. This change in mood, change in perception, is beneficial. It allows us to see things differently, to think differently, to experience differently. Variety is the spice of life, a common cause of creativity, and this is a good thing. So why can’t a capable person, able to make decisions based on the evidence available, be allowed to take certain specific substances that alter their perception? They know the risks involved, which are lower than driving or alcohol. So why can’t fully functioning adults buy this substance legally, where it can be taxed and regulated?

I do think that people under 18 should not take these mood altering drugs though. The mind is developing and flooding it with an artificial chemical will have unknown and possibly dangerous consequences. The data isn't there to suggest it is terrible but from my experience of seeing people take drugs from a young age, I would think it is not advisable.

The line of thought that suggests that street MDMA is cut with poisonous chemicals and therefore banning the substance somehow stops the problem is a circular argument. First of all rat poison, or whatever toxic chemical these evil drug dealers apparently use to cut a drug, will be far more expensive than caffeine, or aspirin, or a variety of other substances. Why would they cut it with poison? They are running a business, an illegal business at that. Do you think hurting your clients is a good business strategy? It summons the police to you for one, and ruins your client base! Furthermore, this is an exact reason to legalise. If it was regulated by the government you wouldn't have these problems. People are going to take drugs, no matter how many times someone tells us lies about the effects. This line of argument is moot and should be squashed away in a box of terrible ideas for eternity.

Relying on the mass media for information is a dangerous game. If you only got your worldly knowledge from news networks and tabloids, you'd be seriously distressed about everything. They don't print good news about anything, let alone taking an illegal drug. If I only believed what I read in the news then I would think every teacher is a sex offender, every footballer is a racist c***, immigration is out of control, and the country is seriously in trouble. My point is that reporting news is really about reporting negative news, because it is more interesting and sells more papers.

The issues with recreational use of MDMA are the same as alcohol. You have to:

1. Know you limits.

2. Know when you are using it too frequently.

3. Stop if you start to have negative effects.
4. Use in a comfortable setting.
5. Be informed about how it will affect you. (www.erowid.org)

These rules are difficult to follow because of the rituals and cycles of behaviour people get in to with crowds of friends. But if you use any drug to excess, it will cause you problems. The problem is that so little is known about addiction, and the best way to break people from addictions, that illegality is viewed as the best solution. Pushing the problem to the other side of the law only moves the problem. It doesn't stop it and it certainly doesn't solve it. It is time we accepted that people will use and we need to learn the best way to educate, to regulate, and to treat addiction.

To finish, I would like to point out some annoyances I had with the Channel 4 TV show. I didn't like some of the leaps they made from the tiny survey. At one point, one of the experts suggested that because only 1 out of the 25 test subjects had negative effects from MDMA that perhaps only 4% of the population would be affected negatively in this manner. A much bigger test group is needed before such a wild hypothesis can be made – otherwise it is just speculation. However, this was a live show and unfortunately such exaggerations can be spoken in the moment, so I'll let it go...

What I won't let go is the terrible camera angles that they insisted on using. During an interesting discussion, they suddenly cut to a black & white camera that was panning across the studio. Terrible directing there. The content is interesting enough, the speakers are very clear - let's listen to them without the distracting angle changes please. My viewing enjoyment suffered... Maybe some MDMA would help??

The "live" aspect of the show also made it cut-away from people too soon and Jon Snow would interrupt experts mid-sentence. I feel like an edited version would have been better, however I wonder whether an edited version would've been allowed on TV...

There is a large scope for some very interesting and enlightening experiments involving MDMA and other drugs. I hope to see and read about a lot more studies. For instance, most ecstasy users will take other drugs while on MDMA and also be in a completely different environment to the test subjects who were inside an MRI scanner and hospital building. These other influences need to be looked into and studied to see how they alter the MDMAmazing experience.

One day in the future we may look back at this time of our history as the prohibition years, like America with alcohol in the early 20th century. We may say that forcing this massive economy underground into the hands of criminals caused considerably more harm than legalisation has. We may say that the best cure for PTSD is MDMA. We may even say that MDMA is a beautiful chemical that when used in moderation in the right setting can improve one's life and break down boundaries between people. I wonder whether this will happen in my lifetime... I seriously doubt it.

P.S. A cult hero / new meme has been born in the form of Shabs...

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