Word: serotonin
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There are long-term dangers too. By forcing serotonin out, MDMA resculpts the brain cells that release the chemical. The changes to these cells could be permanent. Johns Hopkins neurotoxicologist George Ricaurte has shown that serotonin levels are significantly lower in animals that have been given about the same amount of MDMA as you would find in just one ecstasy pill...
...long-standing debate about MDMA's dangers, which will take much more research to resolve. The theory is that MDMA's perils spring from the same neurochemical reaction that causes its pleasures. After MDMA enters the bloodstream, it aims with laser-like precision at the brain cells that release serotonin, a chemical that is the body's primary regulator of mood. MDMA causes these cells to disgorge their contents and flood the brain with serotonin...
...forcibly catapulting serotonin levels could be risky. Of course, millions of Americans manipulate serotonin when they take Prozac. But ecstasy actually shoves serotonin from its storage sites, according to Dr. John Morgan, a professor of pharmacology at the City University of New York (CUNY). Prozac just prevents the serotonin that's already been naturally secreted from being taken back up into brain cells...
Normally, serotonin levels are exquisitely maintained, which is crucial because the chemical helps manage not only mood but also body temperature. In fact, overheating is MDMA's worst short-term danger. Flushing the system with serotonin, particularly when users take several pills over the course of one night, can short-circuit the body's ability to control its temperature. Dancing in close quarters doesn't help, and because some novice users don't know to drink water, e users' temperatures can climb as high as 110[degrees]. At such extremes, the blood starts to coagulate. In the past two decades...
...medicate or not to medicate? The dilemma can be traced back to 1987, when the FDA approved Prozac as the first of a new class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Prozac had none of the more serious side effects and risks of the earlier antidepressants and worked faster to control depressive symptoms. Prozac and the other SSRIs (they now include Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox and Celexa) had one other advantage over the older, tricyclic antidepressants: children responded to them. One of the few recent studies on the subject showed that among depressed children ages...