I don't think even the most hardcore pro-drug advocates would claim that using MDMA multiple times per week is ever safe, but is there any evidence that that kind of abuse is remotely common? On average taking ecstasy is safer than riding a horse [1], and if you really just love to get fucked up and don't care about burning a hole in your brain, why not just graduate to straight-up meth?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#%22Equasy%22

I don't know how common that kind of usage is. This was a group of people I hung with back in the 90's.

The dangers of riding a horse are immediately apparent and it's easy to link cause and effect. Additionally the damage from a bad horse ride (unless you hit your head) are more likely to be physical trauma, a broken leg etc.

The (possible) negative effects of a drug on cognition are more subtle and harder to attribute.

Again, I'm not anti drug at all (especially legally speaking).

It's just, what I saw and I feel I should relate it as a bit of a cautionary tale. I am convinced overuse of MDMA has a negative effects on the kind of cognition that allows a person to plan, link cause and effect, think abstractly and that kind of thing. It's not a scientific study, just what I believe from observation.

Here is how I think about it: your cognitive processes are accustomed to certain biochemical biases. You’ve grown and developed your brain in response to stimuli under a certain set of conditions.

One set might be jacked adrenals due to your propensity for epic soundtracks and caffeine or chocolate consumption.

Another set might be alcohol and social feedback.

If you spend a lot of time in these states, your unbiased function diminishes because you are optimizing for a different chemical bias.

If you are not so far gone, or are exceptionally motivated or introspective, you can integrate those experiences, and it might expand your awareness. If you can’t, or don’t, it might increase your function while using but reduce your sober function. This effect will increase as you spend more and more time ‘high’: you are transitioning function within your own constrained cognitive capacity to a different bias.

So you're kinda on the right track. What happens is that we have a specific range of regulation that our neurotransmitters and receptors etc fall into based on our genetics which could be a bit modified through epigenetic means.

That range of regulation is what we drift towards when we start adapting to an exogenous compound (some drug) that is consistently present through repeated dosing.

Considering that information, we do adapt to become "normal functioning" (according to the previously mentioned genetics) and it becomes more difficult again when we suddenly remove the drug (again forcing us out of that range that our genetic regulatory mechanisms would like us in)

During periods that we are using the exogenous compound we can form new habits driven by changes made by the drug which can stick around after removal, as removal of the drug won't suddenly undo many of the synaptic changes that occurred. I think this is what we can call the integration of experiences and I think that long term potentiation is a big factor in those changes (which is a pretty neat topic on its own, I'd recommend reading about LTP if you want to understand some of the mechanisms of learning)

> multiple times per week for months on end yes

that is not use but abuse, and I'd expect bad consequences.

That sums it up very succinctly, thank you.