Are a few hours of pleasure worth a lifetime of depression?
Regular use of ecstasy increases your tolerance to the drug, and you need to take ever increasing amounts to feel a same or even diminishing high. With tolerance, there is a real risk of dependence, and once ecstasy users achieve a level of dependence they must also endure a period of withdrawal after use is curtailed.
Although ecstasy withdrawal and detox does not induce dangerous physical symptoms, the psychological symptoms of withdrawal can be severe and long lasting, and ecstasy addicts may require inpatient treatment to learn the strategies needed for future drug avoidance.
Symptoms of Ecstasy Detox
The primary symptoms of ecstasy withdrawal and detox are all psychiatric in nature, and ecstasy addicts in detox report severe and long lasting feelings of depression, problems with sleeping, difficulties concentrating, and memory problems. These sensations of detox can linger for months or even years after use is curtailed.
Additionally, because ecstasy is almost never sold in its pure form, ecstasy addicts may present with a secondary and undiagnosed addiction to psycho stimulants that dilute ecstasy sold at the street level. These secondary addictions can induce any number of distinct symptoms of withdrawal.
Ecstasy Treatment
The only effective treatments for the symptoms of ecstasy detox are psychiatric prescription medications…and time. Anti depressant medications can help to ease some of the feelings of depression, and in some cases anxiolitics help with experienced anxiety.
Because of ecstasy's role in the seratonergic systems of the brain, ecstasy detox induces severe and lasting sleeping difficulties. The brain takes time to regulate its depleted serotonin and until it does, sleep can present a challenge. Addictions professionals in general do not advise the use of sleeping medications because of their potential for abuse, and recommend instead sound sleeping policies as the best way to a restful nights sleep.
Ecstasy detox reduces the ability to concentrate, and also the ability to form and retain memories, both processes also related to the seratonergic systems of the brain. Like sleep, these mental processes will get better in time.
Quit Ecstasy
From the first time you take ecstasy and every time thereafter, you destroy brain cells and compromise your future ability to feel happiness, to sleep, and to consolidate memories. If you are abusing or dependent on ecstasy you need to stop now, before the damage becomes irreversible. If you cannot stop on your own, you need to consider professional treatment assistance.
The mind can only take so much, and its supplies of pleasure producing chemicals are finite. Artificial manipulation of the mind always contains an element of risk, and for those people who play too frequently with their neurochemistry, the ultimate consequences can be high indeed.
If you cannot stop, you need to learn what it is that makes you crave intoxication, learn how you can overcome cravings to use, and learn how to enjoy yourself without a need to get high. A period of in or outpatient treatment may provide you with the therapy and re-education you need for a better life free from ecstasy and other drug abuse.
Page last updated Sep 02, 2015
