In the case of Mr. A, doctors say he took more than 40,000 ecstasy tablets over nine years.
Since his story came out in the Psychosomatics journal in 2006 it has become an underground legend for culture vultures. In a new interview with The Face, the author of the case study explains why Mr. A's tale is still so compelling.
Specifics from the Mr. A case study are the stuff of pure party mythology: from the ages of 21 to 30 the subject took what can only be described as a cubic shit-ton of MDMA. He began taking five pills every weekend for a few years, then increased the dose to 3.5 pills per day for three years, and then took an average of 25 tablets a day for four years.
The team at St. George's Medical School worked with a man who had stopped taking most drugs seven years before.
He continued to experience a number of mental and physical effects even after quitting, ranging from "episodes of 'tunnel vision' to the development of severe panic attacks, recurrent anxiety, depression, and muscle rigidity". Mr. A had short-term memory issues.
The fact that the subject had a serious dependence on the drug, despite its reputation as non-habit-forming, was as interesting as the long-term symptoms.
The doctor told The Face that it was an exceptional case of high use. The amount of tablets he was taking was not typical. His use was very high. Then he withdrew money. He was unable to move for a long time.
The St. George's team was able to identify some of Mr. A's later memory issues due to his MDMA use.
He told the magazine, "but we can safely attribute the memory difficulties that he had experienced when I saw him to the heavy use of ecstasy for a long period of time."
Mr. A was very much into the club scene, but as his E use grew, he began using it in a different way than most of his peers.
He told the magazine that it was like a management of his mood rather than excitement and having fun.
"We need to be very careful how we use Mr. A's, who at his highest rate of use took more MDMA in a day than many."
When the study came out in 2006 about the therapeutic uses of MDMA, it was more important than ever.
The moral of Mr. A's story is, of course, that you shouldn't take anywhere near this much molly, but if you do, make sure you enroll in mental health studies afterwards.
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