Hey guys, sorry my response didn't go through sooner. I tried answering like 5 hours after the first reply/question before Reddit flipped out on me. Luckily, I always copy any long message every few minutes. If I hadn't, I probably would've thrown my macbook across the room and be done with it. Anyways, I've now finally found time to finish and post it. I didn't initially expand on the details because it's something very personal to me... but if it will help others, I don't mind as much. I think the reason I recommended avoiding MDMA for "most people" relies heavily on circumstance; it just so happened to be what triggered my eventual experience (as well as the experience of others I know personally).
First, I'd like to clarify that I never had a bad trip or bad experience/reaction while actually on MDMA. They were usually great, often amazing highs with the exception of the time where I wasted my day vomiting, overheating, and clinging to the arms of all my male friends as they took turns escorting me to the venue's bathrooms. However, come nightfall several hours later, I was comfortably back in the stadium. Once I got all the sick out of my system (aside from the shivers; I couldn't get warm), I was feeling wonderful and happy. So even that could be taken as a "good" experience.
By sparingly, I mean roughly 8-10 times a year, give or take... Maybe not quite once a month. My point of reference is the months or weeks school wasn't in session, along with the rare weekend a musical event would take place outside my school breaks. Within those times, I would take between 1 and 4 pills in a single day. I think on average I ingested 2 pills. If an event was held for longer than a day (like a 3-day festival), I rarely ever consumed 2 or more pills the 2nd and 3rd days. There was a time I took 5 in a single day (not much compared to active users with a high tolerance, though a lot for me), but my drops were spaced out pretty evenly. Also, we dropped around 2? 3? pm that day and didn't get out of the venue until a little after 4 am; that played a large part in why my consumption was higher than normal at that time.
While I chronicle a few of my changes, I'll also provide some scientific information on MDMA or such that may already be widely known by most users. So it's important to note that I'm not doing this to give a science lesson or tell you how drugs and mental illnesses operate, but to highlight specific portions that explain or contribute to my eventual deteriorated health.
The mental and emotional changes I eventually came to experience were very subtle; gradual. Like a description Elizabeth Wurtzel once famously took from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises to describe how the onset of depression hits: "Gradually, then suddenly." Now, I'm not particularly well-versed in the life or experiences of Ms. Wurtzel, but I do recall reading or hearing about her abuse/heavy use of cocaine and MDMA (along with marijuana, alcohol, etc.) around the same age I started trying MDMA or younger. More importantly, please don't mistake my mention of her as a point; and though she doesn't really concern my overall message, it has been strongly suggested by professionals (psychiatrists, university professors, etc.) that the severity of her prolonged depression was influenced by said drug use. She has long been cited in published papers discussing the active connection between depression and drugs in patients who have tried drugs (as opposed to drug-free depressed patients). Commonly discussed drugs include stimulants and MDMA (a stimulant derivative in itself). This is because these substances directly influence or alter (among others) the levels of the naturally-occuring, feel-good chemical in the brain via the central nervous system: serotonin.
Ignoring any depression that serves as a symptom to a medical condition/physical illness or was induced by a personal tragedy/life-changing event, major depression is characterized as having a chemical imbalance in the brain. The high produced from MDMA is largely caused by a significant increase in serotonin. When the high fades, your serotonin levels "dip back down." However, instead of returning to your natural threshold, it depletes--causing intense feelings of sadness, anxiety, exhaustion, etc. This is the comedown, where like so many others before us, my friends and I repeatedly described it as being "cracked out." These negative feelings or lousy reactions typically only last a few days before your body finishes repairing itself. Even so, the amount of time the body requires to "return to normal" depends on the amount of MDMA and the number of times a person has taken it. In most cases, the longer you use, the longer the depressive moods. In rare cases, some people have been reported to have used MDMA repeatedly enough to have developed a severe lack of serotonin unaffected or unfixable by antidepressants/medications that are designed to gradually increase serotonin.
As of today, I am on neither end of the spectrum, nor am I somewhere in the middle. That is, my chemical levels are not completely depleted, but they have not yet returned to their natural levels. It's been a long struggle, and something I work to maintain every day. I cannot stress the profound improvement that is, compared to who I was six years ago and maintained to be up until these last few years. My diagnosis of major depression was exclusively linked to drug use because I did not fall into specific categories of preexisting depression, in that I could clearly recall and attest to the happy, easily-pleased, well-organized, and optimistic person I was and continued to be even through my initial year of using MDMA. There were little changes during that time, but things I could easily brush off or overlook. Then suddenly, blaming my increasing desire to stay in and touchy moods on "that time of the month" or as simply being stressed out wasn't working anymore. I suppose there are only so many times you can use the same excuse or mantra of denial before you fill your quota. Physically, I became too thin, weak, and tired to do many physical things. This tiredness was also reflected in my mental deterioration. Mentally, I constantly went back and forth between feeling guilty about everything or being too tired to care about anything. I'm not particularly comfortable detailing specific actions or to what I was having those feelings towards, as I'm not proud of them or because those memories are still delicate to me... but suffice it to say, I ended up making very poor, detrimental decisions as a result.
Through that time, I didn't experiment with many drugs. I really only used MDMA outside the occasional use of amphetamines (like Adderall) a few years later, which is why I called out MDMA. It was the only substance I had taken enough to cause such side effects. That said, the same symptoms I experienced have also been linked to other drugs like stimulants, so I'm not saying only MDMA can cause severe depression. But since stopping, I and my life have improved greatly.
I'd also like to point out that these effects are not limited to myself; friends and acquaintances of mine have admitted to going through similar experiences with/after MDMA. I refrain from speaking specifically about them out of respect for their privacy and because I cannot say for certain whether some of these friends did or did not also frequently use other substances and/or already had depression prior to their MDMA use.
Of course, I don't think if you take MDMA a few times, you're going to go through what I did. In fact, the MDMA high is probably an experience I think anyone should have at least once while they're young (I'm not ageist, just speaking of a time when the body is most fit to mend itself). I think I just want to make aware the possibility of my experience happening, especially with the rise in popularity of MDMA and its exposure to a larger, more diverse audience. Like I said, my attitude towards MDMA is very circumstantial, meaning I think if I had been on any other serotonin-affecting drug instead of MDMA through that time, I would have named that as the one to avoid.
On a more technical note, MDMA is relatively cheaper and easier to get than say, cocaine, so it's more widely used. This increases the likelihood of MDMA being the cause of drug-induced depression. One may argue prescription stimulants like Adderall are even easier to come by and therefore even more used than MDMA. However, MDMA is less admitted to or reported in questionnaires/surveys and psychiatric counseling than prescription stimulants due to its illegal status, stigma surrounding its use, personal conscience, etc., so it's harder to seek treatment for MDMA-related effects. I think that makes it slightly more dangerous than prescription stimulants in the event someone experiencing unhealthy side effects will avoid treatment because of those reasons.
And as always, I'd like to reiterate again that every body is different; personality, environment, and genetics are quite capable of playing an equal role as drugs in inducing depression. Some people are more susceptible to major depression than others and have been since birth. That being said, the key here is in eliminating those factors in relation to yourself and determining whether your susceptibility to feeling low, worthless, anxious, etc. has changed since before and after taking substances, i.e. if you can rule out that you never had preexisting depression (such as the kinds caused by genetics, personality, a physical illness, a life event, or a combination of these factors) before drugs, then the possibility of your theoretical chemical imbalance/depression is most likely drug-induced.
My final words of advice?: No matter what you do, please just be careful.
Much love and respect.