Word: serotonin
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...Ecstasy (or MDMA) can produce significant increases in heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature. Because its stimulant effects enable users to dance for extended periods, it can also lead to dehydration, hypertension and heart or kidney failure. Ecstasy use can also lead to long-lasting damage to critical serotonin-containing brain cells. You missed an important educational opportunity. Your article erred heavily on the side of glorifying a substance that experts agree is dangerous, particularly to those involved in the club drug scene. ALAN I. LESHNER, DIRECTOR National Institute on Drug Abuse National Institutes of Health Bethesda...
...used ecstasy two weeks before, and he compared their results with those of a control group of people who said they had never taken e. The ecstasy users fared worse on the tests. Computer images that give detailed snapshots of brain activity also showed that e users have fewer serotonin receptors in their brains than nonusers, even two weeks after their last exposure. On the strength of these studies as well as a large number of animal studies, Ricaurte has hypothesized that the damage is irreversible...
...changes may carry no functional consequences. "None of the subjects that Ricaurte studied had any evidence of brain or psychological dysfunction," says CUNY's Morgan. "His findings should not be dismissed, but they may simply mean that we have a whole lot of plasticity--that we can do without serotonin and be O.K. We have a lot of unanswered questions...
Ecstasy's aftermath can also include a depressive hangover, a down day that users sometimes call Terrible Tuesdays. "You know the black mood is chemical, related to the serotonin," says "Adrienne," 26, a fashion-company executive who has used ecstasy almost weekly for the past five years. "But the world still seems bleak." Some users, especially kids trying to avoid the pressures of growing up, begin to use ecstasy too often--every day in rare cases. In one extreme case, "Cara," an 18-year-old Miami woman who attends Narcotics Anonymous, says she lost 50 lbs. after constantly taking ecstasy...
Psychiatry, penology and religion are all, to varying degrees, predicated on the belief that people have the capacity for fundamental change, whether through selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, rehabilitation or redemption. But we as a culture seem to have an equally vested interest in seeing that our public figures remain the same. Bill Gates represents the prerogative of wealth. Mark McGwire, physical power. Stephen Hawking, pure, disembodied genius. We need a stable iconic currency. What if Dick Clark, the poster child for immutability, suddenly began to degenerate like the portrait of Dorian Gray? We'd be appalled. And none...