Professor Andy C. Parrott, Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Wales, UK has conducted extensive research over many years on the effects of this substance.

Professor Andrew Parrott’s expert view is epressed below. It is written the context of a concerned response to the attempt by the AMCD (UK's equivalent of the ANCD) to downgrade Ecstasy:

After conveying my concerns to the ACMD, its response leaves me with very serious concerns. Indeed, it leaves me even more concerned than I was before.

I cannot believe that I have spent the past 14 years undertaking numerous scientific studies into Ecstasy/MDMA in humans, then for the ACMD to propose downgrading MDMA without a full and very detailed consideration of the extensive scientific evidence on its damaging effects.

DANGERS: ACUTE.
MDMA has very powerful effects in all users. Cardiac stimulation, faster breathing, gurning/jaw stimulation....etc. Most recently, we have demonstrated an average 800% increase in the stress hormone cortisol in recreational MDMA users at dance clubs (Parrott et al, 2008). Every acute ecstasy/MDMA user is in a state of strong metabolic overstimulation. So all users typically display levels of the serotonin syndrome - see my 2002 paper. Car driving, attention and impulsiveness/riskiness are similarly impaired. Hence it is very dangerous in real-life situations - especially in a polydrug context. As a recent study of London hospitals shows, even children are being admitted for care after mixing ecstasy and alcohol.

DANGERS: POST-MDMA RECOVERY.
Low moods, anhedonia, fatigue, disrupted sleep, mid-week depression... It takes several days to recover from MDMA. In frequent users – eg, every weekend – this is a problem for the everyday health and occupational well-being of all ecstasy users (see Topp et al, 1999 for a more detailed coverage). The ACMD should be fully aware of this – but is it? If it is not fully informed of these, why not?

LONGER-TERM PROBLEMS.
Neurocognitive damage is just one element here, and probably not the most important. There are also frontal-executive deficits and development of impaired immunocompetence over time (Pacifici et al).

Reay et al (2006) demonstrated impaired social intelligence. There is increased oxidative stress and well-publicised psychiatric problems as well as harm to many other functions - see my 2006 review.

At the recent Swinburne MDMA conference which I organised, Una McCann from Johns Hopkins in the US reported on sleep apnea. This was significantly higher in young E users than controls; there is also significantly more sleep apnea in the more experienced lifetime E users. The thoracic medics involved in the study were not surprised – they knew about the serotonergic control components of breathing during sleep etc.

My research has been published in numerous top quality journals, and can be accessed via my Swansea University webpage  http://psy.swansea.ac.uk/staff/parrott