Concerning ecstasy...

[David Bean]

[s]mylittlepony wrote on 13:26, 17th Jan 2005:
statistics show that you are more likely to die being hit by a meteor than by taking an E, so i don't think there's a lot to worry about.
everyone should take ecstasy. it's amazing!!


All right, I'm going to call that bluff. Please, cite your statistics. How many people have died from being hit by meteors and taking ecstacy respectively? What was the domain? What is the source of your information? How many of the meteor victims were conducting some activity that necessarily raised the risk of meteor-induced death? And do those under a risk of death by meteor run some thus-far indefinite risk of longrun meteorisation?

Until you can answer those simple questions I shall suspect that you are talking, as the French say, 'merde'.

[Edited to correct spelling, since I've just rediscovered this post. I think I may have been abusing alcohol at the time...]

[hr]
"Fiat justicia ruat coelum (let justice be done though the heavens may fall)" - Judge James Horton (family motto)

[Kreep]

I got hit by a meteor. Had no effect at all. But i was travellin in the other direction at the time so that might a had somein to do with it i suppose. The secret to not gettin hit is to duck i reckon.

[Prophet Tenebrae]

I quite agree with David, it's rather pointless to say things like "you're more likely to get [unlikely death scenario] than get killed by [controlled substance]"

It's really a rather flippant dismissal, as
surely makes the erroneous assumption that the worse thing that can happen to you from taking drugs is death. Quite frankly, the chance of suffering from the multitude of mental health problems that a lot of these drugs cause is quite enough to put me off.

And furthermore - yes, alcohol results in violence, liver failure etc. but at the end of the day chances are you know what you're getting yourself in for. You're not going into some dark alley and buying something more cement dust and weedkiller than actual product. Alcohol has been tried and tested for 5000+ years now - I'd say we have a fair handle on how it affects people mentally and physically.

Whereas cananbis, E and all these various other drugs - there's not really that much in the way of studies into the long term effects of the usage of any of these drugs. So to conclude, even if it more likely that you'll get hit by a meteorite than killed by taking controlled substances, doesn't mean you won't get fucked up.

[gareth]

ive done e five times. ive never had a bad trip, in fact i had the greatest time of my life on it. ive never been depressed afterwards; it has honestly made me a much happier person overall. if you dont overdo it, it's pretty harmless. the only problem is not overdoing it...

[Prophet Tenebrae]

Can we get back to you in 20 years time? We'll just divide up the mental healthwards evently and report back.

[Smith]

Yeah well I'd take it and if it killed me, I'd pretty much die while fucked, so I wouldn't remember or give a shit anyway

[steerpike]

[s]Smith wrote on 05:53, 21st Jan 2005:
Yeah well I'd take it and if it killed me, I'd pretty much die while fucked, so I wouldn't remember or give a shit anyway





Whoa, i reckon you really need to go take a tour of some of the mental hospitals - that ought to frighten you out of your mind into ever taking anything harder than caffeine. they're full of unlucky bastards who've screwed up their brains on mind-fuck substances.

trust me, you do NOT want to end up in some of the mental wards that ive seen a relative of mine go through. unpleasant might be an understatement here - depresing, eerie, and at times nightmarish. it's made worse when there's someone in there who is important to you - you watch them living in a controlled existance in a semi-prison like environment, there's nothing you can do about it, you're helpless. Are you really so selfish in your recreational activities that you would risk inflicting extreme ammounts of anguish on your nearest and dearest? (Having said all that, im only speaking for one case which is personal to me, and which has deeply impacted my decision to keep an arms length between myself and some of the more dangerous drugs out there. )

and even if you 'die while fucked', you're not doing youself any favours, as

a) you'll have killed yourself;
b) you'll become imortalised in the tabloids as some complete prick who, despite all warnings, took E;
c) your family: just might be a bit upset;
d)- dying of E has to be the most pathetic yet preventable ways to die.

But at the end of the day, it's your life, you should be smart enough to work out what all the risks are.

[upallnight]

Smith wrote on 05:53, 21st Jan 2005:
Yeah well I'd take it and if it killed me, I'd pretty much die while fucked, so I wouldn't remember or give a shit anyway



woah, thats a pretty selfish attitude not to mention a completely flippant commment!!

what about family? friends? partner? the people you care about and who care about you would be totally devestated but you wouldn't care cause you'd be "fucked" i can't believe that people think like this. one of my relatives who i love very much is also in a "facility" and its such a horrible, horrible thing to go through but i know i'd feel worse if she was dead.

when i was at school, leah betts' dad came to our school and gave us a talk on e but also drugs in general and it was so moving, i mean he lost his daughter on her 18th birthday. i'd never knowingly take any drugs stronger than alcohol and i'd be devestated if someone spiked my drink to "help me have a good time" as in one of the above posts.

sorry, its early and this is one of my bugbears. rant over.

[Midget]

Alcohol has been tried and tested for 5000+ years now - I'd say we have a fair handle on how it affects people mentally and physically.

Whereas cananbis, E and all these various other drugs - there's not really that much in the way of studies into the long term effects of the usage of any of these drugs.

Prophet you are talking utter bollocks, utter utter bollocks (sorry it took bme so long to reply, cannabis does seem to effect time perception hee hee). Cannabis has only just appeared, whereas alchol has been around ages.

Yes alcohol has been around for ages but so have other drugs and I think its a fair bet that cannabis has been being used by humans for longer. Why? well cannabis is naturally occuring, people in India and the Himalayas using it before there was any inkling of civilisation in the west and unlike alcohol you don't have to create it.

All this shit of standing up for alcohol, its shit, it should be banned far more than most other so-called drugs, its manufactured (I should know I make my own wine) alcohol is virtually never naturally occuring, we use yeast and sugar and juice and stuff, at the right temperature 18-23 degrees to be precise -its a process all right, its man-made. Cannibis grows on plants you can eat it off the plants and enjoy its effects.

We don't know the long term effects of cannabis? Long term, humans have been taking cannabis for god knows how long, of course we know the long term bloody effects, pretty much fuck all.

There actually books in our own beloved University library on the long term effects of "Ganja in Jamaica" you may have to recall the book though as it is at present on my desk.

[hr]IMAGE:img9.imgspot.com/u/04/241/18/160019.jpg

[Sabre13]

As far as I can see the major problems with ecstacy is misinformation and scaremongering. If you want a good round up on the effects of various drugs then go to www.talktofrank.co.uk or www.erowid.org

Having taken E myself I can say id never recommend it as such to a friend. Id happily give an objective opinion about the drug but I cant say as id be particularly happy by a friend of mine starting to take it. Short term you feel happy but as has been said the pay off is your natural seratonin producers have to play catchup. A few E's wont do much to your general happiness but prolonged use is going to see your natural seratonin production more and more redundant/useless to the point where your feeling shit for days after simply because your bodys so bad at naturally producing the stuff that balances your moods that theres nothing you can do. A lot of the problems concerned with ecstacy (over drinking water; underdrinking; mineral defficiencys; even to an extent depression) can be moderated by knowing what your doing. Eating the right stuff the day after or even forcing stuff down towards the end of the evening, being with friends who know the warning signs and who aren't afraid to tell you youve had too much are all vital. Never ever take it on your own, and spiking someone is to be honest pretty disgusting - the first time your on it its weird and somewhat hard to deal with, now imagine how it would be if you didnt consciously know youd done it...

Anyone who takes E has to accept the first time the fact that you might be allergic and any time you dont get one off a trusted source your going to have a similar fear - you pretty much have to accept this. Being naive about the mental repercussions doesnt really help, E opens up new pathways in your brain and drives it pretty hard. Anyone whose used E regularly over a long period of time will either tell you about the fact their mental faculties have decreased or will have forgotten to tell you

[ARTooD2]

Although i was shitting maself the first time i took a sweetie...nothing bad happened to me and im sure this would be the same for most people...saying that...there is far better/safer drugs to try....not that im advocationg that sort of behavior mind

[hr]

'What did you say, my boy? It's all over? That's what you said... but it isn't at all. It's far from being all over...'

[bramble]

I would never ever do anything stronger than weed. Im just not willing to risk my life, or fucking up my life in that way. You can be happy and have a great time if you have the right attitude on life - you really dont need illegal drugs to get that high - they only dumb down the natural high in the end anyway.
My mum is a probation officer and ive heard too many of the horror stories concerning illegal drugs to ever contemplate taking them (except the aforementioned weed )


[hr]
I'll set the world on fire
And in the burning light
I will write my first love song
And i will feel its warmth

[Guest]

I totally agree with sabre. I have taken E and in fact i was taking way too much. I wont even mention the amount I took each time. Although I had a fantastic time when I did take them cause it does make you feel great when in times you are feeling down, since I have stopped I do believe my recreational use at the time has effected my behaviour today. E is great for the moment and i was crapping it the first time i took them but I would not never reccommend it to anyone. I do believe it affects you later on.

[Insight]

Although cannabis is not deinitely life threatening, it's still not that hot. After all, Ecstasy is not definetely life threatening. Consider the thousands who must take it weekly, the death counts doesn't seem that

There's an extensive history of drug abuse (of varying forms) within my extended family. Those who we potheads, as far as I can tell, have ended up just a fucked up as the pill-oppers. Paranoia, delusions, depression - and it's not anything to do with previous mental illness, we're free of that *knocks on wood etc*. There's research into it just now. Using the "I'd never do anything stronger than weed" line, is about as daft as a heavy smoker saying they'll never do weed: drinking increases your chances of developing oral cancer; drinking & smoking makes your chances hike up again; to drink, smoke tobacco AND weed makes it almost ludicrous. I mean, indulge in any of it, and you're apparently signing up for an early grave, what does it matter if one is more likely to kill you and how. More to the point, at what point do the long term effects become unacceptable? In pure logic, anything which stands to affect your ability to reach full potential lifespan should be avoid. Get out the cotton wool and macrobacterial diet book.

I have tried a few drugs, not ecstasy, but I'm quite of the opinion that one should try anything once, to quote something/one loosely "the point of life is not to arrive at the final destination, nicely preened, but to skid in sideways at 50mph, cigarette in one hand, glass of wine in the other screaming 'wooooooo, what a ride!'

[Koala Boy]

[s]mylittlepony wrote on 13:26, 17th Jan 2005:
statistics show that you are more likely to die being hit by a meteor than by taking an E, so i don't think there's a lot to worry about.
everyone should take ecstasy. it's amazing!!


Possibly, more people have died from meteors than from taking ectasy. But everyone on the planet throughout history has been exposed to meteor risk (unless you lived in a cave all of the time, even then a meteor might hit and collapse it.

So the only valid comparison is if you compare the number of ecstasy deaths among only ectasy users to the number of meteor deaths among everyone ever, so divide the fraction of people who have ever died from ecstay by the number of people who ever used ecstasy, giving you much shorter odds.

Then you'll have a better idea how dangerous it is, and I imagine it will be far, far more dangerous than freak meteor accidents.

Or you could just look at someone on E, and come to the conclusion that it makes you an idiot. Whether it permaneantly makes you a moron with repeated use, as I believe cannabis does, I don't know. Then again, drinking alcohol makes you temporarily stupid as well, and I'm not about to stop doing that. So my argument falls down there. Oh well.

[hr]
He sleeps 19 hours a day, and eats 5 hours a day. He allows you to pet him, not so much because he likes it, but because he's too lazy to do anything about it.
IMAGE:images.google.co.uk/images?q=tbn:Shzgv4TMVXgJ:www.filelibrary.com:8080/cgi-bin/freedownload/Multi-Platform/l/90/koala.gif

[Midget]

Koala has a good point, most drugs do make you look a complete and utter dick to those who aren't taking, those who are 'sober'.

This is certainly the case, I think it must be on very rare occasions when someone becomes less of a twat by taking a drug, piss-heads piss you off by being overly friendly or aggressive, e people become friendly also and retarded, cannabis just retarded non-communitative, and I imagine harder drugs are worse.

The only only exception I could come up with is caffeine. And the fact that some people are such twats a drug can only make them better more interesting people, alcohol does help some really repressed boring people to get a life, don't you find?

The question is though should we bother about what other people think?
Are they in a better position to decide because they are sober?
Are they merely jealous that we are experiencing some more enjoyable state of mind?

I dunno. But I do totally agree that when you are sober nothing is more annoying than trying to talk or indeed do anything with someone who is mongoed, mashed, inebriated or in any other way intoxicated.