MDMA

Different genres of music are inspired by different drugs. One cannot separate Reggae and Marijuana, The Velvet Underground and Heroin, the later Beatles and LSD, Rock'n'roll and booze.

Of course, drugs are not required by the finest minds to create: there are innumerable examples of geniuses who found the clarity of sobriety the best mode of working: and any musician brilliant on drugs is certainly brilliant without. It does not matter for the audience what the performer has indulged in before the show - they cannot share in the experience and the performance is seldom better for it.

Nevertheless, creative types, moreso than any other part of society, are drawn to drugs for some reason, and the characteristics of the drug make it's effects felt on the work, whether as a subconscious guiding or an effort by the artist to portray what experiences they have witnessed in the throes of a trip.

The artists of the old world need not worry about harming their brain with drug-use; neither the chemical drugs capable of causing sinister injury, nor the field of neurology to study and observe them existed yet.

The old-world drugs: cannabis, opium, cocaine, alcohol and nicotine (and in prehistory and tribal cultures, a number of plant-based sedatives and hallucinogens including kava, psilocybin, ayuasca, mescaline and so on); had not been criminalised and could be reliably obtained from their organic sources through honest trade.

The progress of science in the 20th century resulted in man's new ability to synthesise compounds not found in nature. This created a new class of drugs - the pharmaceuticals - and also the new recreational drugs.

New compounds were invented one at a time and put to test on animal and human subjects to determine their utility - beneficial or detrimental.

Sometimes there would be a delay until the harm was made known by the drug, such as thalidomide and birth defects in the 1960s, and an unfortunate generation would wear the damage, for the damaging effects cannot be known by science until some creatures, sometimes human, have suffered them.

The neurotoxicity of MDMA has been demonstrated by O'Hearn et al. (1996) and Croft et al. (2001). The most quoted study (Ricaurte et al., 1988) was with doses comparable to those in real life on primates - in which serotonergic axons were damaged seven years later. Gouzoulis-Mayfrank et al.(2000) have found a decline in cognition in human users which may be permanent.

The brain remains largely a mystery. Though we try to understand it as if it were a computer, compartmentalised into different sections for different functions, how a work of art is received from the ether and made into fruition - no man understands; therefore how the physical damage MDMA imparts on particular neurons impairs artistic expression is also open to conjecture.

The other heavyweight drugs; heroin, cocaine, that admittedly may cause more deaths due to impeding functions of the body or overdose, are, by comparison, innocuous to the mind.

If marijuana is tied to reggae, MDMA is tied to rave culture. It is improper to study genres such as techno, trance and hard house without assuming the intended audience, hundreds or thousands of them to be simultaneously under the influence of MDMA.

Rave culture for a young person is fallen towards in a similar fashion to religion; it offers a sense of belonging and connection centred around the MDMA experience rather than a concept of God.

The brain flooded with serotonin appreciates different things to a sober state; but none appear to be profound or even interesting. There is nothing to be gained by going outside and contemplating the wonders of nature on MDMA, not has anything insightful been uttered. Fluro colours, glo sticks, enclosed rooms full of neon lights and the nauseating, incessant, metronomic beat. Yes, the older generation have grounds to stand on when they reduce the genre to 'doof'. It is an apt description.

Now, before you accuse me of being closed minded towards a particular genre, let's ask: is rave culture and the multitude of sub-genres of locked-tempo dance music - the end product of the collective action of MDMA on the minds of humans - reflective of truth and beauty as all good art points towards, or a shallow illusion, a whole genre only made enjoyable by veritably damaging one's brain?

(note: I mean not to vilify electronic music in general)


References:
Croft RJ, Klugman A, Baldeweg T, Gruzelier JH. Electrophysiological evidence of serotonergic impairment in long-term MDMA ("ecstasy") users. Am J Psychiatry 2001 Oct;158(10):1687-92.

Gouzoulis-Mayfrank E, Daumann J, Tuchtenhagen F, et al. Impaired cognitive performance in drug free users of recreational ecstasy. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2000; 68:719 -725.

O'Hearn E, Battaglia G, De Souza EB, Kuhar MJ, Molliver ME. Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) cause selective ablation of serotonergic axon terminals in forebrain: immunocytochemical evidence for neurotoxicity. J Neurosci. 1988 Aug;8(8):2788-803.

Ricaurte GA, Forno LS, Wilson MA, DeLanney LE, Irwin I, Molliver ME, Langston JW. (+/-)3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine selectively damages central serotonergic neurons in nonhuman primates. JAMA. 1988 Jul 1;260(1):51-5.