Talk:MDMA/Archive 1

message: Alkivar: this item you keep adding in is totally false, and your casual citations in edits of "FDA statements" are baseless.  The FDA has not made any such statements.  
First: hyponatremia is hyper-hydration, not dehydration.  Opposites.
Second: in the unbelievably rare instances of hyponatremia in patients who have used MDMA, it is due to a patient overhydrating themselves - ingesting fatal amounts of water; not by direct action of the drug.
: I disagree.  The drug stimulates the part of the hypothalamus that controls the thirst drive.  It is a direct result of the drug that you want to drink like a fish.  Much like it is the direct result of your immune system making you feel cold and make you want to get a blanket to raise your body temperature giving yourself a fever.
Third: even if the first two parts of your premise held true, it would be logically inconsistent; it would not be a "chronic side effect".  Hyponatremia cases are acute, not chronic.  It is a result of bad judgment made by a user in a single experience - not as a result of chronic use.
This is akin to saying that totalling a Ferrari is a side effect to chronic alcohol usage.  In one in a million instances, it will happen if some moron gets drunk and takes a Ferrari onto Ocean Drive, but no serious medical scholar considers totaled Ferraris to be a side effect of chronic alcohol usage.  It is intellectually puddle-deep.
And finally: hyponatremia cannot exist as a chronic condition. A human generally cannot sustain hyponatremia for more than a few hours without severe brain and organ damage. 
So please provide verifiable evidence for this false statement, which I know you will not find anywhere, or stop adding it back in. Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.172.70.31 (talk • contribs) .
:Mostly agreed, hyponatremia is not a direct physiologic consequence of MDMA ingestion. However if documented deaths exist from hyponatremia while under the influence of MDMA it warrants mention in this article, properly cited and contextualized, of course. It should be noted that DWI (and related injuries or death) is, in fact, considered a significant risk of alcohol use/abuse/addiction, despite it being a quite indirect effect of the substance. --Bk0 (Talk) 03:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  agree, and would say hyponatremia is well-treated in the article already.  but to suggest that it, or its opposite (dehydration) are side effects relating to chronic use is not supported by the facts. --Anthony Citrano 04:25, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alkivar: Hyponatremia as side effect 

message: I'm minded to remove this again. Apart from some objections to the advice I think its best to point people at the relevant drug information or even advocacy based sites rather than the fluctuating medium of Wikipedia. Anyone got any good reasons why it should stay? - Alex 26 Jul 2003
:The information on the effects of the drug are relevant for inclusion in an encyclopedia. While the framing may be inappropriate or the information might should be subsumed elsewhere in the article, that information must remain in the article. Disregarding the fact that well-formed articles are rather stable, what does the "fluctuating medium" of Wikipedia have to do with it? This is no reason why this information should be removed from the article, any more than information in other subjects of scientific study should be removed. - Centrx 01:31, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I feel the "safety" information should be included, although it should be rephrased more neutrally in terms of potential effects, e.g., what might occur if certain steps are (or are not) taken when using the drug according to some.  It should not read as a "How-To" guide. - Korpios 05:02, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saftey advice? 

message: should this even be here at all with such specificity and unconfirmedness
There is no doubt who the supplier was. Only their alleged mistake is unconfirmed.
:I meant the entire section. I don't think a narrative is appropriate. These aren't news stories, rather facts. If this information would not be appropriate here (disregarding accuracy) twenty years in the future, then it should not be here at all. - Centrx 20:02, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: RTI 

message: It might be worth noting Israel's a big player in the supply. "According to a report issued in 2003 by the U.S. State Department, Israel is at the center of international trafficking in Ecstasy...the most commonly heard estimate is that Israeli criminals control no less than 75 percent of the Ecstasy market in the U.S." (Ha'aretz) 142.177.120.204 18:03, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Their numbers/estimates are VERY wrong. If Israeli criminals controlled 75 percent of the market I would have encountered at least one in the 12 years i've been going to/promoting/throwing raves. Speaking from first hand knowledge the majority of the supply comes from Europe (mostly from the netherlands, germany, and spain) and passes thru canada before reaching the street in the USA. For a while pills were coming via FedEx! which inevitably led to a major bust. As I recall close to 3 million tabs were caught in just one bust in Boston in 2001, point of origin was The Netherlands, as a result prices of E in New England jumped up to almost double. If one bust could double the price overnight then its obviously more than just a 25% share of the market especially considering this is just in one region. Alkivar 18:37, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: oppose moving it to MDMA. move to Methylene Dioxymethamphetamine (did i spell that right heh). Point the MDMA redirect to the full name. then turn the Ecstasy (drug) into an article on whats sold as "ecstacy" on the street. I havent had the time to request the move. Alkivar 01:20, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Supply

message: I had made a few edits to the MDMA article which have been reverted.
The reverter (Cacycle) claims that the edits were either factually wrong or annoying.  I agree that element links are annoying, and I didn't add any (at least not intentionally).
It's clear that Cacycle has a vast understanding of psychoactive substances - much greater than my own.
However, I feel that the article in its current form has some misleading claims and fairly serious omissions.  As far as I know, everything I added was factually correct.  I'm particularly suprised at the deletion of the refrence to powder MDMA (or "molly").  Why should the article not contain a refrence to this?
I also take issue with the fact that the refrence to the Johns Hopkins study doesn't mention its retraction until the third paragraph.  Also, the actual pharmacokinetics of MDMA are not very clearly explained, and from what I understand, the release of additional Serotonin is a very small and perhaps insignificant part of MDMA's psychoactive effect.
I'd like clarification on which parts of these edits were "factually incorrect."
: Hi RadicalHarmony,
# MDMA does act by being taken up into the cell and blocking / reversing vesicular transporters. MDMA is not changed in this process. It is degraded, but the metabolites are not active.
# For an encyclopedic article it is not that important how you and your friends from a certain small region of the world call powdered MDMA (BTW, the "east coast" of which country?). Please also cite your references for the prevalence, the purity, or the reliability of powdered MDMA - your personal experiences might not be valid in general.
# You have obviously confused the study at the University of Manchester (that shows that MDMA can be beneficial in L-DOPA treated Parkinson's Disease patients) with the retracted study at John Hopkins' by Ricaurte.
# Sorry for the "annoying" part, this change was actually made by Ugen64 shortly before you edited the article.
* The changes made by 68.174.248.159 were either wrong (mechanism of action), redundant (MAPS), or without sources (and without previous reading of this talk page) (risks section).
: Cacycle 20:54, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry about that, I reverted to the wrong version. I had meant to correct some of your changes and leave the rest in my revert, OOPS ;) as for the LDOPA trial in the UK, they've since said that they have not been able to reproduce their results, which leads them to question its validity.  ALKIVAR™ 03:37, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: Alkivar: The mechanism of action was definitely wrong, see above - this was the main reason for disputing. The "molly" parts could have been retained (for goods sake) - but I didn't have the time to re-edit them in after your brutal revert :-) Do you have a link to the problems to reproduce the Parkinson study? Cacycle 09:32, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: I'll track down the link for you, I read it in a printed journal.  ALKIVAR™ 17:55, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edits 

message: I have removed the following edit:
* leading to 2600 overdose deaths between 1994 and 1998 (Deaths source: Kaplan & Sadock, A Comprehensive Textbook on Psychiatry, 8th edition, 2005 p.1199).
This would belong to the Effects or risks section. But even then this simple sentences does not make sense. We need more information: How and where were the cases counted? What was causing the deaths? Was it enough to have ecstasy in the blood or in the pocket? Did they count suicides, accidents, and deaths resulting from other risky behaviour? In what relation stands this number to the number of uses and how would that relate to other commonly accepted risks? And so on. Unfortunately I don't have that textbook so that I cannot check that chapter and its primary sources. Cacycle 15:06, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The US FDA is only able to conclusively link 9 fatalities to MDMA in the US since 1989 (according to my phone call). Thats not to say that there are not other fatalities from MDMA, but that the results were inconclusive as to whether it was other drugs or alcohol etc... that were responsible.  ALKIVAR™ 02:05, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: Certainly a little statement about relative harm in perspective would add something. -SV|t|add 17:26, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overdose deaths 

message: I've made some large revisions regarding the mechanism of neurotoxicity. It's now pretty well accepted that dopamine is not the causal agent of MDMA-induced neurotoxicity and as such, I've removed it from the page. If anyone wants to add a note about dopamine->H2O2 oxidation as a now-somewhat-defunct idea, I think that would be good. Dopamine's currently-accepted role is in inducing the hyperpyrexia that potentiates (but is not required for) neurotoxicity.
--Matro 02:03, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updates 

message: :I filled in parts of the right-hand table with information from the article. I don't know why no one else bothered to; if there was a reason, please revert or correct the table. Oh, yeah, what is that table called? 05:56, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am removing neuroleptic malignant syndrome from the list of potential side-effects.  There is no study of which I am aware that links MDMA to the development of this disorder.  Any evidence I've seen so far has been from case-studies or anecdotal reports.  If someone believes it should be included, would you please include a reference? --Adrade 09:44, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Right-hand Table 

message: See http://www.maps.org/dea-mdma/pdf/0165.PDF for the WHO report recommending Schedule I status. Remember me 19:35, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: International regulation

message: Clawson (talk · contribs) removed a recipe for ecstasy inserted by an anon. I'm not sure if the "cookbook" argument should be used here. With similar recipes circulating online, it may be reasonable to include at least basic elements of synthesis here. Safrol is hard to obtain at any rate, with government restrictions getting tighter. JFW | T@lk 20:39, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed it because it's not a synthesis; it's a recipe. If we're going to put a proper chemical synthesis in the article, fine, but we're absolutely NOT going to tell people how to cook their own E at home. That's foolish.—chris.lawson (talk) 20:45, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recipe 

message: This article says that MDMA has a chiral centre. Is the stereochemistry important? If it is, what difference does it make? Mission9801 13:18, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chirality 

message: Slightly off topic, but still relevant i feel was an anti-drugs campaign in the UK a few years ago. The government had a big poster campaign with unhappy looking people and a big list of dangers printed along the bottom. Having nothing better to do while waiting for a train, I stared at it for a while and thought about those dangers. Basically, they were all dangers associated with the use of unregulated and uncontrolled (and therefore contaminated) drugs, or of legal sanctions applied supposedly to protect people. The least damaging thing on the list was the actual effect of the drugs. The main risks were all consequences of the governments own policy.  What did you want a comment on the page about? Sandpiper 03:01, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: RfC

message: I'm curious about where the nickname "yaotou" comes from. It's Mandarin for "to shake one's head" (摇头), but it could also mean something like "drug-head" (or a variety of unrelated things). —alxndr (t)
im not sure, but i would assume from the way people move on e. at raves specfically, moving in time to the music. the music and the dancing at raves is very repetitive, and ecstasy, being the most common rave drug, would be associated with that. just looked it up for a second, and it said it came from chinese raves, so it makes sense to me. --Tan.the.man
definition in Chinese --132.162.244.18 03:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "yaotou" meaning? 

message: "This effect has been experimentally verified in the brains of rats, where the serotonin terminals of animals who are given extremely high doses of MDMA over a prolonged period of time (usually one to two orders of magnitude greater than a typical human dose) become withered and useless."
:Thess experiments are typically done with extreme doses.  The neurons regenerate though.
I found specifically this quote which is ambiguous in the amount that they mean. The "extremely high doses" should be given a number and the "prolonged period of time" should be given a length of time. As it stand I think these go againt NPOV, and leave the reader wondering (or perhaps worsly, not wondering) how long, and at what dose.
I think this goes for many other qualitative quantities given on this page. For example, almost everywhere you see the word dose, there should be a range, or some approximate amount given for people to measure "high" or "great" or "large" by.  Fresheneesz 07:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely agree.  All drug articles need dosage measures considering the impact of quantity on effect.  Brilliant article, by the way.  Try not to cave into the "legality is morality" brigade.  Panlane --82.38.227.22 21:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think this violates npov, but numbers would certainly be more informative and clearer thatn just saying "extremely high doses" and etc.   --Heah talk 22:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Specific numbers SHOULD be included

message: "It would be these gigs (and "sound") at The Haçienda that would give birth to rave culture in which ecstasy is so widely associated" is POV. It's surely not possible to say that Madchester and the rave scene were the sole "parents" of rave? What about house music (US style), 60s raves, music festivals, the invention of the sampler and the TB303? "Predated" or "paralleled" (sp.?) might be better, I'll see what I can do. --kingboyk 01:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV (minor) 

message: These two scans are actually from an episode of the Oprah Show.  ()  The scans were provided by the attending physician of a young female 'ecstasy' user; one is of the girl in question, the other apparently came from the doctor's library of 'normal' scans.   Although these scans may merit discussion on their own, they are NOT in any way related to Ricaurte's work or the Parkinsonism scandal.      --Nathan/TheDEA.org 
:Thanks for the correct info.  i'm honestly not sure that they should be here anyways.  --He:ah? 23:42, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The biggest problem is we cannot establish that the girl's brainscan does not show use of chemicals OTHER than MDMA, she may also have been a Crystal Meth/Cocaine user for all we know. Those two chemicals would also detrimentally affect a PET scan, as we cannot verify what she used, we certainly cannot baseline compare it, unless we also baseline compare it to a known cocaine user, a known meth user... etc. The damage seen is not necessarily MDMA correlative.  ALKIVAR™ 02:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of brain scans associated with Ricaurte Parkinsonism research 

message: Isn't that 3d picture wrong? There should be 2 hydrogens attached to the carbon on the left. The name's "METHYLENEdioxymethamphetamine", and carbon should form 4 bonds here, right? Is there a special circumstance I've never heard of? 72.40.101.236 04:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there probably *are* 2 hydrogens attached to the carbon. But because of the orientation of the molecule, one of the hydrogens is hidden behind the other. If this is the case, maybe the molecule should be rotated a little, but I'm not sure if it is that important. Aenar 14:17, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  Ben 15:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent, thank you. Didn't think of a hidden atom. 72.40.101.236 01:13, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  3d molecular structure picture 

message: Should this not be included somewhere throughout the article? or even on the side panel.
"The single-dose LD50 in humans can only be guessed at, but may be on the order of 10-20 mg/kg (oral.) One recent press report claims a ten year-old girl died after taking at least five 'ecstasy' tablets. Assuming the girl weighed about 40 kg (88 pounds) and the pills contained about 70 mg of MDMA each (and no other drugs), she died from a dose of roughly 9 mg/kg."
:Have you got a source for that? If so please provide it. 9mg/kg does seem on the low side. Was it a toxic reaction to MDMA or were there other complicating factors. --Dumbo1 17:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  LD50 

message: I have just edited a couple of the sections. I particularly was troubled with the Supply_and_administration section. It is literally dotted with specific claims about adulterated MDMA tablets containing this and that chemical and there isn't one singular citation for any of it. I cannot see how this can remain as is. Either citations must be produced or it must go. __meco 20:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Myriads of uncited references 

message: With the above mentioned discrepancy this article cannot be considered a good article. __meco 20:55, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Methylenedioxymethamphetamine delisted from Good articles page 

message: First of all, if Methylenedioxymentamphetamine is illegal in the united states, how would you know so much about it and actually obtain a picture of it? Thats a little "fishy". I dont see how you could of gotten those pictures except on a google or something, which would be an innaccurate source. The only ligitament excuse i forsee is that police confiscated it and in an article about their quest to confiscate it they display that picture. But that scenario itself seems highly unprobable. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.190.16.172 (talk • contribs) .
:Oh no. You caught us.
::LOL! Seriously in the Uk the police and the media print pictures of drugs. The police have displays of drugs which they use to help people identify illegal drugs. On the information point, a lot of published research has been published. Just because something is illegal does not mean that there is no information about it. --Dumbo1 17:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: How Did you get this information?