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Keith Allen and Lionel Shriver to take MDMA on live televised drug trial

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http://www.factmag.com/2012/09/19/keith-allen-and-lionel-shriver-to-take-mdma-in-live-televised-drug-trial-on-channel-4/

Channel 4 are to host the UK’s first ever live televised drug trial.

As The Guardian report, 26 volunteers have been recruited for the show. The subjects were either given MDMA or a placebo; after an hour, readings were taken with an fMRI machine. Subjects also had their brain activity tracked when asked to recall happy or upsetting memories. Among the subjects are former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, We Need To Talk About Kevin author Lional Shriver and goon-of-all-trades Keith Allen.

Study leader Professor David Nutt claimed that Channel 4′s intervention has provided funds and resources which have been impossible to source from more official channels: “We have failed to get money for research from conventional sources, which is why the Channel 4 intervention is fantastic. Nearly half a million people are believed to take ecstasy or MDMA every year in the UK, but there has been very little research into what it does in the brain. These experiments will give us a much clearer picture of the fundamental effects of MDMA on the resting brain than anyone has been able to get before.”

Concerns have, understandably, been raised about the possibility of the show glamorising or trivialising use of the drug. Rebutting the claims on BBC Radio 4′s The Life Scientific, Nutt has stressed that the study will be a “serious documentary on the science of MDMA’”. MDMA has been touted by some as having possible applications as a psychotherapeutic tool, particularly in relation to PTSD – claims the documentary hopes to put to the test.

It’s not the first time Professor Nutt has found himself in the public eye in relation to clubbing drugs. In 2009 he was engaged in a high-profile spat with then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith after quoting statistics that horse riding was more dangerous than taking ecstasy. He was removed from his post as chairman of the UK government’s Advisory Council On The Misuse of Drugs the same year after publishing a paper indexing drugs on the basis of the harm they caused; tobacco and alcohol were placed higher than ecstacy and cannabis.

Drugs Live: The Ecstacy Trial will air on September 26 on Channel 4, presented by Jon Snow and Dr Christian Jessen.

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Haha I wonder if this will show the people mid MDMA high, or also show them after they've crashed and are grumpy as fuck.

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Is there a pharmacological supplier ov pure MDMA?

Seriously. I mean if it's categorised by the DEA as having "no medicinal value" are any groups legally allowed to manufacture & sell it?

Also i don't know how common the "crashed" & "grumpy as fuck" thing really is.

In 20 years ov being around users i never really saw any evidence ov it.

Most ov the people seemed to have a rather smooth comedown, usually assisted by MJ.

The only real complaints were aching muscles from dancing all night, aching jaw muscles from grinding & mouth sores from chewing & sucking on lips.

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Also i don't know how common the "crashed" & "grumpy as fuck" thing really is.

 

I used be a complete nasty monster a couple of days after rolling, apparently. So much so that it has been strongly recommended by loved ones that I avoid doing such things in future.

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Haha I wonder if this will show the people mid MDMA high, or also show them after they've crashed and are grumpy as fuck.

 

Terrible Tuesdays was what my friends used to call it - take a pill Saturday night and by Tuesday your serotonin depletion really lets itself be known. :blink:

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Last November I received an email which caught my attention.

My publicist at Profile Books had added at the top in green caps, ‘MOST BIZARRE QUERY EVER’.

An independent television production company was asking if I would please take ecstasy on camera.

The experiment in which I’d be filmed participating was legal.

article-2207269-1526EC18000005DC-589_634x431.jpg

Experiment: Lionel Shriver is given a pill

At Hammersmith Hospital in London, doctors would put participants through psychological tests and chart neurological responses via MRI scanning, on MDMA (pure ecstasy) and a placebo.

Conducted by Professor David Nutt, whose claim that taking ecstasy is less hazardous than riding a horse led to his dismissal from a Government advisory post, the study hoped to demonstrate the drug’s original therapeutic uses.

Still, ecstasy has a reputation as a truth serum, and the prospect of unqualified candour on TV is terrifying.

I had nightmarish premonitions of Lionel Shriver gushing about how she ‘luuuvs’ everybody on YouTube.

So why on earth did I say yes?

Especially after my husband nightly abjured: ‘Don’t do it.’

Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial doesn’t air on Channel 4 until Wednesday, and I may yet discover that my husband was right.

Yet I’d defend my reasoning.

article-2207269-151746BE000005DC-283_634x356.jpg

Laid back: Actor Keith Allen also took part

In latter years, I’d been too set in my ways; I fancied shaking myself up, albeit legally under the watchful eyes of doctors.

And I’m keen on any study or documentary that challenges the Western world’s disastrous drug policies, since I have long advocated the legalisation, regulation, and (best of all) taxation of recreational drugs.

I – along with fellow participants including the actor Keith Allen – would be dosed and scanned twice, without knowing which time I’d get the placebo. Round one: I take a battery of mood tests.

The doctors explain that in the MRI I’ll be shown adjectives on a screen, and I should click a button indicating whether this adjective applies sometimes to me, or sometimes to footballer Wayne Rooney.

After popping a capsule, I exercise ‘hyper-vigilance’ (hey, Shrive, you feel funny? Any weird thoughts? What, you’re deciding what to fix for dinner?). Then I twig: this is the placebo.

I’m more relaxed for the second scan, and looking forward to getting high as a kite for medical science.

I take the mood tests again, scoring myself as highly ‘affable’.

I pop the pill, and after half an hour I enter the penumbra (the interface between light and shadow) of MDMA onset.

I strongly discourage any ravers from taking ecstasy in an MRI.

Don’t waste a drug that enlivens sound, tactile sensitivity and colour on the equivalent of a sensory deprivation tank.

This time, labelling some footballer ‘efficient’ or not seems conspicuously absurd.

article-2207269-1526EB3D000005DC-29_634x418.jpg

Pills: Ecstasy is made using the drug methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA

Time passes quickly.

With gleeful perversity, when asked whether the word ‘good’ applies to me, I click ‘NO’.

Prompted to recall my best and worst memories, I dutifully dredge up what I can, but most of the experiences are old, their rehearsal mild.

That’s the adjective I reach for on exiting the MRI: ‘It’s totally mild!’ The dosage is cautious.

I’ve got more off my head from a bad batch of sushi.

When I take the mood tests again, I check the extremes of ‘resentful’ and ‘annoyed’.

During the post-MRI interview with a doctor, when I’m presumably as out of my tree as I’m going to get, he asks how I feel about the future.

I say I’m worried about impending fiscal catastrophe, especially in Europe.

I may never live it down: give Shriver E and what does she go on about?

The euro.

Once back home, I labour through one bowl of popcorn (ecstasy suppresses appetite).

Warned I’d feel gloomy, I arise the next morning to put in a productive workday.

I feel fine.

Debates about illegal drugs are booby-trapped.

If you’ve never taken any, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

If you admit to having taken them, your brain is probably fried, and any argument you advance for decriminalisation is tainted with self-interest.

My underwhelming experience of MDMA in confined, clinical circumstances was a poor test of this drug’s merits.

I’m not running for office, so I’ll come clean: I’ve taken it before, a handful of times a long time ago.

As my soliloquy on the euro attested, the mind on ecstasy is clear, and it remains so at higher (and more enjoyable) dosages.

If anything, you’re more lucid, with the fear-driven self-editing function switched off. You remain physically co-ordinated and in control.

Most of all, the drug reduces anxiety over saying what you really feel, and is a promising tool for people with trouble communicating, like soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder or couples on the brink of divorce.

E is the easy case.

Yes, ecstasy results in a few deaths (27 in the UK annually), but these are dwarfed by deaths from alcohol (40,000 in the UK annually).

Otherwise, MDMA brings out the best in people. It makes you warm, open and grateful to be alive.

Decriminalising heroin, cocaine or crystal meth and the like is a harder sell.

More people die from overdoses of these drugs; lives are ruined from addiction.

Nevertheless, some of those deaths occur because of contaminated product on the street.

Fatalities from Mexican cartel shoot-outs notwithstanding, drug use is a victimless crime – or rather, with criminalisation, the real victims are us.

We squander costly, finite law enforcement on frisking for marijuana when those officers should be keeping us from getting robbed – not just by burglars, but our own banks.

We overcrowd prisons with drug offenders; a quarter of America’s convicts are incarcerated for drugs.

We deliver an industry worth, according to the UN, about one per cent of the world’s GDP into the hands of murderous dirtbags when we could be taxing it to the hilt.

The ‘war on drugs’ is a war on weakness, on escapism, on curiosity.

It does nothing to staunch demand.

Maybe you’ve no idea why people would want to alter their consciousness, though in that case you never take a drink.

Me, I can see the benefits of feeling peculiar from time to time, for enlightenment or entertainment.

After all, fiction is a hallucinogen of sorts, making you see things that aren’t really there.

Legalise drugs worldwide, and consumption might not go up much.

Losing its frisson of naughtiness, drug taking might even go down.

A hard core is going to get hopelessly, ceaselessly high on whatever, regardless of the law.

Why not let them throw their lives away without breaking into our houses or wasting our taxes?

There’s no rational justification for why folks who take the odd hit of E on the weekend should risk reputation and liberty, while their counterparts who vomit at bus stops are sobered up at our expense in A&E.

Most people refrain from taking recreational drugs not because it’s illegal, but because they don’t want to.

I wonder if that might now be true of me.

Oh, I got a bit different on that MDMA, despite the gentle dose.

But I can opine about the fate of the euro on weak tea.

 

 

 

Edited by nabraxas
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Is there a pharmacological supplier ov pure MDMA?

Seriously. I mean if it's categorised by the DEA as having "no medicinal value" are any groups legally allowed to manufacture & sell it?

 

Yes, there is.

Schedule I drugs are those with "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" - doesn't mean that you can't apply to do research to find medical uses. Also, that's just one country - I'm sure there must be some where it's not restricted that heavily, and this study is in the UK.

I scanned the methods sections of a few studies where MDMA was used - the ones who listed their source named Lipomed Laboratories in Switzerland.

Edited by Anodyne

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edit: fuck wrong thread completely.

umm..

nabraxas if you have DMT: The Spirit Molecule Rick Strassman has a pretty good write up on how hard it is to get pure DMT to test on people legally, but he was able to get a permit for a chemist he knew that had never done it before, from what I remember the hardest thing was to get it food safe.

2nd edit: So potentially any chemist could get a permit to make and produce MDMA, it would just take years of jumping through hoops as well as potential upgrades to facilities and security to become approved.

Edited by Distracted

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edit: fuck wrong thread completely.

umm..

 

Hahaha too funny. :bong:

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that lipmed website is fricken awesome :worship:

MBD-193-HC d,l-MBDB.HCl 103818-37-7 MBD-571-HC d,l-MBDB-D5.HCl MDA-79-HC d,l-MDA.HCl 6292-91-7 MDA-139-HC d,l-MDA-D2.HCl MDA-927-HC d,l-MDA-D5.HCl AMP-832-HC d,l-MDDMA.HCl 131206-60-5 MDE-191-HC d,l-MDEA.HCl 74341-78-9 MDE-734-HC d,l-MDEA-D5.HCl MDM-94-HC d,l-MDMA.HCl 64057-70-1 MDM-140-HC d,l-MDMA-D3.HCl MDM-324-HC d,l-MDMA-D5.HCl MMC-1252-HC Mephedrone.HCl 1189726-22-4 MMC-1271-HC Mephedrone-D3.HCl MES-203-HC Mescaline.HCl 832-92-8 AMP-732-HC d-Methamphetamine.HCl 51-57-0 AMP-946-HC l-Methamphetamine.HCl 826-10-8 AMP-301-HC d,l-Methamphetamine.HCl 4298-16-2 AMP-623-HC d,l-Methamphetamine-D5.HCl 60124-88-1 MCA-835-HC d,l-Methcathinone.HCl (Ephedrone.HCl) 49656-78-2 MTH-1290-HC Methedrone.HCl (bk-PMMA.HCl) 879665-92-6 MEE-1455-HC d,l-4-Methyl-N-ethyl-norephedrine.HCl AMP-1372-HC d,l-4-Methylamphetamine.HCl 64-11-9 (FB) PYR-1340-HC 3,4-Methylendioxypyrovalerone.HCl (MDPV.HCl) 24622-62-6 MTE-1406-HC d,l-4-Methylephedrine.HCl MEC-1299-HC d,l-4-Methylethcathinone.HCl (4-MEC.HCl)

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Study leader Professor David Nutt claimed that Channel 4′s intervention has provided funds and resources which have been impossible to source from more official channels: “We have failed to get money for research from conventional sources, which is why the Channel 4 intervention is fantastic.”

I wonder if they tried crowd funding?

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a lot of it was the same old bullshit... but there was some good stuff too.

it really pisses me off how there's always the blurring between street "ecstasy" and mdma, calling them both ecstasy, talking about the negative effects of mdma when really they are referring to street ecstasy with no comprehension of why a distinction needs to be made... still living in the dark ages after all this time.

over all i still think this was a step in the right direction, though a smaller one than i'd hoped for.

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