91av

THIRTY years ago, ecstasy was becoming the drug of choice at raves – and whenever young people use drugs to have a good time, concerns are rarely far behind. “,” 91av reported on 21 January 1989.

The claim came from Stephen Peroutka of Stanford University in California, who warned users to abandon the drug altogether. “If they continue… they risk damage to their nervous system that may take decades to manifest itself,” we reported. “It could emerge initially as depression or disturbance to sleep.”

The article said ecstasy, or MDMA, prunes the endings of nerve cells that release the brain chemical serotonin. But there was no mention of evidence to support Peroutka’s claims of long-term harm – in fact, he acknowledged that “no studies have shown unequivocal evidence of toxicity in human users of MDMA”.

The idea that MDMA rots the brain has proven remarkably persistent, although convincing evidence is still lacking. One oft-cited study from 2002, reporting that MDMA caused neurotoxicity in monkeys, was retracted the following year after it was discovered that the experimenters had used a different party drug, , by mistake.

Alongside the ecstasy story in our 1989 issue was a report that phencyclidine (PCP) – a popular recreational drug in the 1960s and 70s known as angel dust – “could make a comeback as a medicine that prevents brain damage in patients recovering from operations”.

PCP never made the crossover into medicine, but MDMA’s story has followed a similar arc. It is now seen as a promising therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. If results from small studies are matched in larger trials, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy could be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2021.