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What You Might and Might Not Know About Ecstasy:
Street and Slang Terms: Adam, Bean, E, Roll, X, XTC .
What Is It: MDMA or Ecstasy is a man made drug with amphetamine like and hallucinogenic properties.
What Does It Look Like:
Comes in a tablet form that
is often branded
many commercial brands.
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How It Is Used: Taken in pill form and used as a mood enhancer.
Effects (Short Term): Short-term effects include psychological difficulties, including confusion, depression, sleep problems, drug craving, severe anxiety, and paranoia – during and sometimes weeks after taking MDMA, physical symptoms such as muscle tension, involuntary teeth clenching, nausea, blurred vision, rapid eye movement, faintness, and chills or sweating.
Effects (Long Term): Recent research findings link MDMA to long-term damage to those parts of the brain critical to thought and memory. Chronic use of MDMA was found, first in laboratory animals and more recently in humans, to produce long-lasting, perhaps permanent, damage to the neurons that release serotonin, and consequent memory impairment.
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Other Facts:
Ecstasy is a synthetic drug that, according its proponents, produces a relaxed, euphoric state. Sensations are enhanced, music sounds better, and feelings of understanding people, getting along in groups, and general well-being are claimed to occur. Most users report that it makes them feel happy and social.
So, no problem, right? Wrong. Recently, a researcher at the University of Toronto School of Medicine in Canada found severe neurological damage in a 26-year old man who'd been using Ecstasy over a nine-year period. In fact, when the researchers examined his brain, they found reduced levels of serotonin, the brain chemical controlling moods, sleep, pain, sexual activity and violent behavior, less than 50 to 80% of what non-users have.
Although people using Ecstasy think it will make them feel good, they often have little knowledge about the drug they are using, including whether the drug has been changed or mixed with something even more harmful.
Because it is often created in illegal labs, Ecstasy can be mixed with PCP, methamphetamine, acid or DXM, dextromethorphan, a legal drug found in over-the-counter cough suppressants. Large doses of DXM can cause stomach pain, cramping, dizziness, vomiting and seizures.
Ecstasy users are likely to consider the drug to not be a big deal. After all, how harmful could something called Ecstasy be?
Ecstasy can cause depression, anxiety and paranoia, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). It also may increase the heart rate and raise the body's blood pressure and cause faintness, chills, or sweating. Some studies have shown that Ecstasy can cause long-term brain damage and memory impairment.
Ecstasy is not just being used by ravers and club kids, like many people think. It has recently begun to appear all over the country and outside of clubs. It can be extremely dangerous in high doses and can cause a marked increase in body temperature leading to muscle breakdown. According to NIDA, kidney and cardiovascular system failure have been reported in some fatal cases at raves.
Details of the University of Toronto study can be found at the Journal of Neurology's Web site: http://www.neurology.org.
For more information on Ecstasy's effects, visit www.clubdrugs.org.
What is its federal
classification?
MDMA is a
Schedule I drug