Yea, it's just not gonna happen with a controlled dosage under supervision. People that over dose (as in take too much, not dying) can have a bad trip at least for an amount of time.

Sure, maybe under a controlled environment where candidate selection is a thing. I've seen some wild reactions in people who turned out to have undiagnosed bipolar disorder or border line personality disorder at the time. They all got diagnosed and treated at a later date so hooray for them. But goddamn, the serotonin dump from even a moderate amount of mdma triggered some intense episodes of mania. Hell, I bet you could use it as a means of diagnosis; it was so obvious in retrospect. Group of friends, chill environment, everyone taking about the same amount, good quality stuff and one person just losing their shit afterwards. Makes you suspect there's something not quite right with them..

You can definitely have a bad time on it that's akin to a bad trip, especially if you're hashing out trauma with a therapist while on it.

Many people have had bad trips on MDMA. I don't know where this reputation comes from, but it's common to have extremely intense and unpleasant emotions, sensations, or thoughts. Anxiety, agitation, muscle tension, sweating, and/or chills are all documented effects of the drug.

For a dozens of anecdotes, just search "MDMA bad trip".

Meh.

What's your source?

Yes, those things can of course happen, but they're very rare and in the minority.

It is absolutely NOT common to have a "bad" experience with a drug that is chemically designed to make you feel incredible via serotonin depletion.

OK. Firstly, people in academia don’t even talk like this (“what’s your source!”). Secondly, you’re fighting anecdotes with anecdotes, which is fine, except you’re trying to pull the ladder up after you.

You’re coming across as an MDMA fanboy and the way that you’re approaching the conversation will have if anything a negative impact on “the cause”.

MDMA wasn’t ‘designed’ to do anything. It happens to do something. I’m surprised that you’re even phrasing it this way because MDMA fanboys tend to obsess over the lore of its discovery.

I have been present for bad MDMA trips. One of these people has C-PTSD (putting aside the controversy about its existence), and had a C-PTSD-related bad trip, which seems highly highly relevant to this topic.

I’ve done a bunch of MDMA. I’m certainly going to do a bunch more throughout the rest of my life. I’m not going to kid myself about it being perfect. I’m not going to kid myself about the fact that over a large enough population even “improbable” adverse reactions are meaningful. Nerds that do drugs are so often insufferable because they’ll try to intellectualise what’s essentially “God I love drugs and they’re great!”

MDMA was discovered as an intermediate in the synthesis of a completely unrelated substance. No one designed it.

MDA is a naturally occurring precursor to MDMA and was traditionally used in Root Beer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassafras_albidum

MDA is not naturally occurring