Great artivle kennas. Particularly love the quote:
I know of a lot of people who enjoy MDMA and know it doesnt harm society in anyway (except by supporting organised crime) so don't view it as bad or illegal. How can somehting with no recorded fatalities (pure MDMA) be considered worse than alcohol or other illegal drugs?
If drugs policy was based on scientific evidence then you would have a much more open debate
I think if we were starting from scratch, we'd make alcohol illegal and MDMA legal (prescription only). It's much safer and less costly to society. But you can still come to grief with MDMA. When the brain and nervous system is flooded with serotonin, the body can overheat to the point of causing organ shut down and death. I know that doesn't happen frequently, but it's a drug and people respond very differently. Then how do you sell it when it's potentially lethal?
MDMA was used very successfully by a couple of psychiatrists in the US in the 80's (in session only - couples therapy). Maybe that's the way it should be used now - to fix broken relationships.
You can see this drug shouldn't be publicly available outside of prescription.
(from wikipedia)
Upon overdose, the potentially serious serotonin syndrome, stimulant psychosis, and/or hypertensive crisis, among other dangerous adverse reactions, may come to prominence, the symptoms of which can include the following:
Psychological
Disorientation and/or confusion
Anxiety, paranoia, and/or panic attacks
Hypervigilance or increased sensitivity to perceptual stimuli, accompanied by significantly increased threat detection
Hypomania or full-blown mania
Derealization and/or depersonalization
Hallucinations and/or delusions[34]
Thought disorder or disorganized thinking
Cognitive and memory impairment potentially to the point of retrograde or anterograde amnesia[35]
Acute delirium
Physiological
Myoclonus or involuntary and intense muscle twitching
Hyperreflexia or overresponsive or overreactive reflexes[36]
Tachypnoea or rapid breathing and/or dyspnea or shortness of breath
Palpitations or abnormal awareness of the beating of the heart
Angina pectoris or severe chest pain, as well as pulmonary hypertension (PH)[37]
Cardiac arrhythmia or abnormal electrical activity of the heart
Circulatory shock or cardiogenic shock
Vasculitis or destruction of blood vessels[38]
Cardiotoxicity or damage to the heart[39]
Cardiac dysfunction, arrest, myocardial infarction, and/or heart failure[40][41][42]
Hemorrhage and/or stroke[43][44]
Severe hyperthermia, potentially resulting in organ failure[45][46]
Syncope or fainting or loss of consciousness
Organ failure (as mentioned above)
Possible brain damage
Coma or death