You might know what a comedown feels like; a clammy haze of upset. A Tuesday evening spent wandering from place to place around your home, hunched over your phone, refreshing social media over with a nail-bitten thumb over and over in case something there might cheer you up. Tears. All the desire to gorge on food but none of the appetite. As grim as that is, the mental health risks of MDMA are rising, an expert has said, in time with its purity.
Ecstasy pills have long been cut and mixed with different powders, including horse tranquiliser (ketamine) or rat poison. But now, when people are taking MDMA instead of pills, the strength of a dose is rising.
‘The danger is much greater now than it was in the late 1990s. The risk now of young people using stronger ecstasy is higher in terms of being able to regulate emotion and your ability to think clearly’ Professor Philip Murphy, who has been researching MDMA for 20 years, told Newsbeat.
Professor Fiona Measham, who is part of the governmental Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), founded Loop, an organisation that tests drugs at festivals and clubs, said: ‘The price is low, the purity is high and, by and large for many, the benefits outweigh the costs, so people keep taking them.
‘Unfortunately there are tragic instances of people going to hospital and maybe even ding, but that doesn’t seem to deter most people who have taken drugs from taking them again.’
In England, the number of hospital admissions for mental and behavioral issues associated with taking stimulants (like MDMA and cocaine) has risen by 215% in 10 years.
So what’s the solution? The experts, who say much of the worry about stimulants is to do with MDMA, haven’t quite got one yet, but maybe learning more about what we put in our bodies is a fantastic place to start?
For more information, check out the results of the Global Drug Survey, and if you like, contribute your own experiences.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.