Is LSD, the same thing as ecstacy? Or however you spell it?!

Is LSD, the same thing as ecstacy? Or however you spell it?

malibu,

No, it's quite different, even though it has some similar properties, such as working on the serotonin receptors in the brain..

LSD is a psychogenic drug--it gives you hallucinations--actually called D-lysergic acid diathelimide tartrate (that's why we use just the initials). It was originally made from a fungus that grows on grains, and was greatly popular in the 1960s. The main problem with it is that the "trip," or series of hallucinations, could last a long time, could go bad (become frightening and even damaging psychologically--one girl I knew screamed for several minutes because she saw propellors coming toward her face and she knew that she was going to have her face and maybe her head cut off) and they could recur unexpectedly and without any more of the drug. It is not a stimulant, but even without that, LSD is pretty nasty stuff.

Ecstacy, on the other hand, is both psychogenic--a hallucinogen--and a stimulant, much like a combination of methamphetimine and mescaline. It is a single drug, but unlike LSD, which is derived from natural sources, Ecstacy is synthetic.


Recreational drugs are sneaky funny things, I think. They trick the body into recognizing them as part of the body's own mechanisms, and then do damage to them.

Heroine works on the dopamine receptors (which are part of our feelings of pleasure) in the brain, but as it works on them it also kills them off, reducing the ability of the heroine addict to feel any pleasure at all.

Ecstacy works like that on the serotonin receptors, damaging them, too, and so far we are not quite sure that the damage isn't permanent. Early research from Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health show that serotonin receptor damage can last for years, and in monkeys at any rate, the damage appears to be permanent. This lowers seortonin metabolism, which leads to depression, insomnia, impaired memory, and lack of good judgment. People who have died from ecstacy have actually, died from heat stroke because either their bodies couldn't regulate their temperature correctly and/or their judgment was so impaired they couldn't tell they were becoming overheated or they didn't care. Since serotonin works on blood pressure via vasoconstriction/dilation, it's probably a combination of the two, not that it matters to the dead people.

So LSD and Ecstacy, while similar in some ways, are very different drugs. They are equally dangerous, however.