ALL LOVED OUT

Popping Es Could Club Your Sex Life To Death

THEY call it the love drug, but in reality ecstasy dampens passions, say
psychologists. It appears that people who use the drug frequently lose their
appetite for sex. And the damage could persist long after they stop taking
the drug.

Andy Parrott and his team at the University of East London collected
anonymous questionnaires from 768 young people in Rome, Padua, London and
Manchester. As people rarely take just ecstasy, the team wanted to find out
how using combinations of drugs affects mental health.

The team divided the returned questionnaires into six groups, based on
different drug-taking patterns. They ranged from people who took no drugs,
those who consumed cigarettes and alcohol, to "heavy" ecstasy users who had
taken it on over 20 occasions, as well as those who used drugs such as
cannabis and cocaine.

People who took a lot of drugs reported more psychological problems such as
agoraphobia and anxiety. But it was heavy ecstasy users who had most
problems with sex drive, and were nearly three times as likely to report a
loss of libido as nonusers. "It's ironic," says Parrott, because ecstasy has
the reputation of heightening sexual pleasure.

The drug produces a warm, euphoric high that can last for a few hours. It
works both by boosting the production and reducing the breakdown of the key
neurotransmitter serotonin, which is linked to mood. People coming down from
E have depleted levels of serotonin, and can hit their lowest point days
after the original hit-hence the "Suicide Tuesday" hangover experienced by
many Saturday-night pill-poppers. These feelings of sadness, depression and
anti-sociability normally fade within a week.

But the longer-term effects of ecstasy are now emerging. Regular use of
ecstasy could be damaging the neurons that make serotonin, says Parrott. His
team was the first to show that heavy ecstasy use can impair memory, and
other groups have found that these effects can linger for up to a year after
people stop taking the drug. No one is sure whether damage to neurons is
permanent. "The worry is that it may well be doing that - we're not sure,"
says Parrott. Permanently low levels of serotonin are linked to clinical
depression, anxiety and loss of libido.

People who find they have to up their dose of ecstasy should be very
concerned, says Parrott, as this could mean that the neurons making
serotonin are becoming insensitive to the drug. The average age of ecstasy
users in the study was only 23. "It's really quite worrying," adds Parrott.
"It certainly isn't a safe drug."

Although no one has yet proved that ecstasy damages these neurons in people,
researchers have shown that it does so in rats, says Mary Forsling,
professor of neuroendocrinology at the Guys', King's and St Thomas's School
of Medicine in London. "There's always the concern that this may be
happening in humans," she says.