Party Vibe

Everyone’s brain is different, I’m not a neurochemist, I could speculate on long term changes in your brain which would be interesting but not very helpful or even necessarily accurate. What I’m willing to venture though is that your serotonin levels aren’t near what they once were and as you get older the brain likely makes it less quickly which kind of creates the somewhat vicious feedback loop where you keep taking more and things keep getting worse. Also the alcohol is likely heavily at play with things getting weirder over time.

It is possible that you ‘broke’ your brain as far as its response to MDMA at some point with the mention of very heavy doses, although this isn’t guaranteed.

Advice to make it fun again, nothing ground breaking but I have a few ideas. Take a lengthy break from MDMA and while doing so try to eat clean, exercise and supplement with 5-HTP. How long a break is up to you but it seems like you’re burned out and pretty heavily enmeshed in the party scene and it is negatively impacting your well being and mental health while you do drugs. Then when you feel ready to go back to MDMA try to make it a low key event or night in with your girlfriend and take a reasonable dose. It is possible that crowds and play into you acting weird although there are always people acting weird at raves so that isn’t too much of a concern to me because it happens.

I used to candyflip almost every weekend and it definitely took its toll on me and I can verifiably say that it had a negative impact on me and it took a long time to come to grips with the idea that raving maybe wasn’t my bag anymore. I know you’re not at that point and I’m not trying to tell you to quit MDMA at all. You have a lot of self awareness to try to remedy the problem before it gets any worse, some people the heavy drug use takes more of a toll than others, and while it has taken less of a toll on you than it took on me, it still has likely altered some neural connections in a deleterious way. Taking a break and trying to feed the brain some building blocks for the neurotransmitters that MDMA works on is the best advice I’ve got but the cliche is that “neurons that fire together wire together” meaning that the recent bad experiences have likely altered things to an extent. I like the concept of neuroplasticity and brain training but don’t have any experience with protocols for drug use and reward pathways although it might be something worth looking into although much work is nascent in that field and there is a lot of crap to sift though. Basically I’m saying that I’m fairly confident there is a way to rewire your brain to do MDMA again happily and normally but I don’t think the science or layman’s work is there yet as far as how to do that.

Good luck, if you have any questions please ask, I know being told to take a break from a substance you’ve been doing for 7 or 8 years is probably not what you really want to hear but it is what I’ve got as well as supplementing building blocks for serotonin which is a fragile neurotransmitter. Others on this site have been thorough the rave ringer as well and have their own perspectives, activity on the site is low at the moment so it make take a few days but you’ll get others besides me to reply.

tryptameanie wrote:

Shulgin talked about this, he gave an answer in hi ask Dr Shulgin column where someone had ask about the “magic” diminishing after maybe 100 doses. It’s a very real thing I know from personal experience. MDMA does not give the stunning euphoria and the rest of it that it once gave. If I’d known this when I first took it I’d have saved it for special occasions.

Here’s the column from the man himself….

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/ccle1/shulgin/adsarchive/tolerance.htm

My sense is it becomes like a serotonin activating methamphetamine after many doses which isn’t a desirable reaction.

Agreed, we don’t know where OP is in the life cycle of MDMA use but probably past 50 uses and the heroic doses do more damage IMO. I think if you do some of the brain care stuff early with 5-HTP it may prolong the time until you hit diminishing returns. OP asked for advice and I gave what tips I have although I doubt it will do a whole lot.

I wonder what in the structure and binding cause the loss of magic. Also the other amphetamines I’ve done I don’t recall any of them being “magic”, something about MDMA being a serotonin releasing agent and having built up serotonin causes it to be special. Amazing compound but everyone runs into the problem eventually it seems.

Has anyone done enough MDA to decide if it loses its magic as well? I would assume it might anyways with cross tolerance.

I could get it pretty regularly for a time and could get a mixture of the two for a while but didn’t go to excess with it and it is definitely way less common than MDMA. My inclination is that would maintain the magic for more uses than MDMA if you only did MDA but no one would do that, I’ve read that it actually harms serotonin receptors more than MDMA although it always felt kinder on the brain the next day than MDMA, not sure what that contradiction is about.

Met an expat on the plane back to Costa Rica who talked glowingly about MDA compared to MDMA and then told me that someone from my town popularized it in the ’70s. I’ve gotten MMMDA before and that was pretty similar to MDMA.