[Wild Fragaria]

How often do you guys go clubbing or listening to super loud music?  (I will leave the "how often do you guys use ecstasy?" question alone)   


Nature News Published online: 16 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060213-5 

Loud noise appears to fuel the effects of the club-drug ecstasy in the brain. The results add to the debate about the risks of long-term brain damage from the drug.

Ecstasy is the common name for 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). The drug, popular at raves and nightclubs, triggers a flood of the feel-good chemical serotonin in the brain, causing feelings of euphoria, energy and well-being.

Michelangelo Iannone at the Institute of Neurological Science in Catanzaro, Italy, and his colleagues tested whether loud noise intensified ecstasy's effects in rat brains.

After injecting the animals with either a low or high dose of MDMA, they played them a buzz of white noise at the maximum volume allowed in Italian nightclubs. They measured the rats' brain activity using electrodes inserted into the animals' skulls.

The deafening noise can transform a seemingly innocuous dose of the drug into a potent one, they found. The low dose of MDMA had little effect on the animals' brains - but when paired with the noise, it boosted the activity of certain brain cells. "This may make the difference between the drug being toxic and not," says Jenny Morton at the University of Cambridge, UK, who has studied the effects of music on drugs.

In addition, the researchers showed that a high dose of ecstasy combined with noise altered the animals' brain activity for five days. Animals that were drugged but remained in peace and quiet were back to normal after only a day, they report in BMC Neuroscience1.
The results suggest that pounding techno music could heighten ecstasy's effects in the human brain - perhaps explaining the drug's popularity amongst club-goers. "You may get a stronger hit," says Andrew Parrott who studies recreational drugs at the University of Wales, Swansea.

The result adds to earlier studies suggesting that other features of a disco, such as heat and crowding, also heighten the effects of ecstasy in animals. These conditions, like music, might further rouse brain cells that are already over-stimulated.

The report echoes a 2001 study in mice by Morton, which showed that club music exacerbates the brain damage caused by the drug methamphetamine, known as speed. "If [Iannone's team] had used loud, pulsing noise, their effects would probably have been stronger," Morton says.

Iannone's study fuels a dispute about whether MDMA takes a serious toll on its users' brains. The drug is sometimes argued to be relatively harmless; most of the clubbers who have died after taking it did so because of overheating or drinking too much water.

The bigger debate is whether the drug causes long-term brain damage. Studies in animals suggest that MDMA erodes nerve endings, raising concern that it may do the same to people, perhaps increasing their susceptibility to depression, mood problems or other conditions.

The long-term consequences of ecstasy use are difficult to prove, because its users often take other drugs or alcohol, and the effects of ecstasy can be hard to tease out from these other factors.

Because of this controversy, it is important to know that loud noise could ramp up the effects of MDMA, Morton says. "It would be tragic to find that taking ecstasy in clubs as a teenager significantly increased the risk of mental illness in later life," she says.

[vyper]

This required research? Ravers have been telling us this for years.

[Ford Prefect]

Really loud music is dangerous to anyone, because it makes me shoot people.

[Wild Fragaria]

Oh yeah, everything needs to be researched before you can make a statement.

[Flipside]

I've only ever taken one Ecstasy tablet in my life, about 14 years ago now, I have fond memories of that night and nothing to do with the tablet.....anyway, I digress... One of the joys of being 30+ is that I can mention really stupid things I did over a decade a go and still smile

Doesn't surprise me, Music activates several emotional areas of the brain, particuarly when it is heavy-beat music, since the whole body system starts to try and synch itself with that beat. You add dancing and the 'warmth' of being around 100s of people who are also on Ecstasy, it has an incredibly profound effect.

[vyper]

I'll stick to vodka redbull ta.

[Flipside]

Good call, I did take one, it was an experience, I wouldn't recommend them though, there are risks involved that can be totally unpredictable.

[aldo_14]

I have a vision of rats making box shapes with their paws whilst listening to Prodigy.

[vyper]

Little fish, big fish, cardboard bo..... HOLY **** A CAT!

[an0n]

How is this even research?

Ecstacy ENHANCES your ****. If there's nothing there to enhance, obviously there's less effect.

[Descenterace]

I'm soooooo glad I stuck to cider X number of weeks ago... 

So dangerous drugs have been proven (again) to be dangerous. Wow. Firstly, is this really going to discourage the people who usually take them? Secondly. pretty much any drug is dangerous in sufficient quantity and under the wrong circumstances.

[GodisanAtheist]

The big deal is ingesting extacy and listining to loud music somehow disrupts the body's ability to break the chemical down. The longer it stays in the system, the more damage it does.

This is unusual. Anyone who has smoked weed and listened to (good) music will tell you that everything sounds better, feels better, tastes better etc... nothing can influence how long weed stays in your body, that process is completely dependant on how fast your liver and kidneys filter it our (CRANBERRY JUICE PEOPLE).

[Martinus]

I have a vision of rats making box shapes with their paws whilst listening to Prodigy.

Stop sniffing that marker you degenerate.


I was talking to a friend who was a fan of various 'recreational substances', he told me about a site called The Trip Report (which I keep meaning to visit). On the site there was an entry from a guy took pure MDMA and recorded his experience, he lived somewhere reasonably rural and noted that he could not look outside because the mountains were so beautiful they were unbearable to look upon.

[Flipside]

Heh, ancient Egyptians used to take Cocaine, which goes a long way to explaining the Sphinx.

Thing is, when you are young, you WILL try to experience as much as possible, that's, in a way, what being young is for, to practice making your mistakes and making sure you don't repeat them when you are less resilient. So no, I don't think young people who take drugs are stupid or anything, merely young. I was part of the drug culture at 18ish, but I grew out of it. That's normal and natural.

Kudos to you who avoid drugs though, a lot of it is based on peer pressure, so it depends on your environment, and it takes a strong will, particuarly in a teenager, to say no when all your mates are doing it.