This is mostly a reminder to self, as I’m running out of said patience.
BBC, today: “Man ‘took 40,000 ecstasy tablets'”.
For two years, he took five tablets every weekend, rising to an average of 3.5 tablets per day for the next three years, then soaring to 25 tablets a day over the next four years.[…]
When he saw doctors at the addiction centre at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, south London, he was still using cannabis, and said he had previously taken solvents, benzodiazepines, amphetamines, LSD, cocaine, and heroin. […]
[Dr Kouimtsidis] told the Guardian: “This is probably an extreme case so we should not blow any observations out of proportion. But if this is what is happening to very heavy users, it might be an indication that daily use of ecstasy over a long period of time can lead to irreversible memory problems and other cognitive defects.”
Stop with that, already! “Might be an indication”? The guy’s use surpassed the previous known lifetime-use record twenty times over; he’s used a bunch of other substances; so spare me singling out MDMA for scaremongering. If I drank 25 cups of drip coffee a day for years, I’d have paranoid delusions too.
I love it how they take an extreme case and do a News Story on it, without putting it into perspective.
(Edited to add: The Guardian reported this as well; and Mindhacks has a response to the Guardian article much along the lines of mine, only more substantiated and less sputtering.)
GRRR. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrr.
I this kind of shit reporting. I saw this story this morning on SomethingAwful and I just couldn’t believe it. This is how ignorant people get convinced that the so-called “war on drugs” is a good idea. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
This is when the point-and-laugh method of detraction becomes relevant.
“Dear sirs – So what, next you’re going to discover that an overabundance of water leads to death? Watch out, fifty pounds of lettuce per day leads to severe suck, so that means lettuce is bad! Drinking a full gallon of milk every waking hour leads to cows calling you Mommy, so that means milk is bad!
“Very charming. When you get around to measuring sane doses, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll be sure to not have penetrative sex every five minutes over the course of a month – I’ll surely start abrading my skin off, which of course would mean that sex leads to leprosy.
“Thanks for the laugh, $signature”
Wait, why exactly do we owe the reporters any sort of patience?