Does Ecstasy damage nerve cells in the brain?
Brendon Boot, Dr Iain McGregor (University of Sydney) and Prof. Wayne Hall (National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre) recently analysed the evidence from more than 500 research papers and sought to answer this question. The conclusion reached was that there is enough evidence to strongly suggest that Ecstasy can produce nerve cell damage in at least some Ecstasy users. The most convincing aspect of the research in the field is the consistency of the findings from all the different areas of animal and human research. The animal studies, and the human neurological studies, psychological studies, case reports and the population based surveys all point to the same conclusion: long term, high dose use of Ecstasy damages nerve cells. Does an occasional tablet cause damage? Nobody can answer that question, simply because the experiments have not been done yet. A safe drug? It is worrying to note that in the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre’s survey of 329 Australian Ecstasy users, t
