SCIENTISTS FEAR ECSTASY DULLS YOUNG PEOPLE’S BRAINS PERMANENTLY

Ecstasy may be turning thousands of young people into sluggish dim
wits - and the effects could be permanent, new research revealed today.

Scientists found that taking the drug harms the mechanism in the brain
responsible for learning and thinking quickly. More worryingly, former
users who had not taken ecstasy for at least six months were equally
affected, implying that the damage is long term or even irreversible.
Psychologist Michelle Wareing, who led the study, said: ‘‘we are
talking about a brain mechanism that’s involved in learning new tasks.
Ecstasy users, therefore, may not pick up things so quickly. They’ll
be a bit slow on the uptake. As soon as there’s a bit of pressure,
that’s when they are going to have problems. So it could affect
performance at work, or in exams if you are a student.’’

Ms Wareing and colleagues at the Centre for Studies in the Social
Sciences at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, Ormskirk,
Lancashire, recruited 30 young men and women aged 18 to 25 and put
them through two tests designed to test their working memory and
information processing ability. Most of those with experience of
ecstasy had taken the drug once or twice a week.

One test involved speaking aloud a randomly chosen consonant letter
every time a bleep was heard. Vowels and alphabetical and repeated
sequences were not allowed. Pressure was applied by increasing the
frequency of the bleeps from four to two seconds, and then to one.

Both current and previous Ecstasy users found the task difficult,
performing significantly worse than non users. For two previous users,
the experience was so unpleasant they were not asked to do the test at
the one second rate. For the other test, participants were asked to
compare rows of letters. Half the rows were the same, and in half just
one of the letters was different.

The volunteers had to classify as many rows as possible as the same or
different in the space of 30 seconds. Again, non users outperformed
the two ecstasy user groups.

Another of the scientists, Dr Philip Murphy, said: ‘‘the poor
performance on these tasks of former ecstasy users is potentially
worrying as it implies the possibility of long term effects which may
not be reversible.’’ The scientists took account of other drugs the
young people were taking or had taken, as well as their mood.

Both ecstasy groups were more anxious than the non
users.

In both animals and humans ecstasy has been shown to destroy nerve
endings in the brain responsible for producing the important message
transmitter chemical serotonin.

This is thought to cause disturbances of mood, appetite and sleep
associated with taking ecstasy.

Animal experiments have also shown that nerve fibres damaged by
ecstasy eventually grow back, but are rewired abnormally.