Aims  Ecstasy, the street name for 3,4‐meththylenedioxymethamphetamine, has been associated with a range of psychiatric symptoms and impaired psychological health in both problem and recreational users. The purpose of the present paper is to determine how these impairments are related to the history of polydrug use, and the conditions under which individuals ingest ecstasy. Design  Associations between the variables of interest were investigated utilizing negative binomial regression. Setting  Liverpool and Preston in the North West of England. Participants  A convenience sample of 159 recreational ecstasy/polydrug users (80 males, 79 females). The sample was composed primarily of undergraduates. Measurements  The dependent variable was the number of reported ecstasy‐related adverse effects. Independent variables included quantitative aspects of ecstasy and other drug use, and the various beliefs and behaviours associated with ecstasy use. Findings  The number of adverse effects was associated positively with life‐time exposure to ecstasy and negatively with period of abstinence from the drug. Adverse effects were more common among those who consumed ecstasy and alcohol concurrently, but were unrelated to other aspects of polydrug use. They were unaffected by whether the user took precautions when using the drug, and only weakly related to prior beliefs concerning the effects of ecstasy. Conclusions  Greater life‐time exposure to ecstasy and consuming the drug concurrently with alcohol increase the likelihood of experiencing adverse effects, including paranoia, poor general health, irritability, confusion and moodiness. Adverse effects decrease with the period of abstinence from the drug.

Rationale: Prospective memory (PM) deficits in recreational drug users have been documented in recent years. However the assessment of PM has largely been restricted to self report measures that fail to capture the distinction between event based and time based PM.The aim of the present study is to address this limitation.Objectives: Extending our previous research we augmented the range laboratory measures of PM by employing the CAMPROMPT test battery to investigate the impact of illicit drug use on prospective remembering in a sample of cannabis only, ecstasy/polydrug and non users of illicit drugs, separating event and time based PM performance. We also administered measures of executive function and retrospective memory in order to establish whether ecstasy/polydrug deficits in PM were mediated by group differences in these processes.Results: Ecstasy/polydrug users performed significantly worse on both event and time based prospective memory tasks in comparison to both cannabis only and non user groups.Furthermore, it was found that across the whole sample, better retrospective memory and executive functioning was associated with superior PM performance. Nevertheless, this association did not mediate the drug-related effects that were observed. Consistent with our previous study, recreational use of cocaine was linked to PM deficits.Conclusions: PM deficits have again been found among ecstasy/polydrug users which appear to be unrelated to group differences in executive function and retrospective memory.However, the possibility that these are attributable to cocaine use cannot be excluded.Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to execute a particular behaviour at some future point in time which may be in the short or long term, for example remembering to turn off the lights when leaving a room or remembering to attend a meeting, meet a friend or pass on a message. Self report measures of this construct have been developed (e.g., Crawford et al., 2005;Hannon et al., 1995) and in previous research from our laboratory, Fisk and co-workers have demonstrated apparent impairments on these measures among ecstasy/polydrug users (Montgomery & Fisk, 2007) and cannabis only users (Fisk & Montgomery, 2008). Other researchers have also reported deficits on self report PM measures among users of illicit drugs (Heffernan et al., 2001a;2001b;Rodgers et al., 2001; and studies from our own laboratory and elsewhere have revealed deficits among illicit drug users in laboratory measures of PM (Hadjiefthyvoulou et al., in press;Rendell et al., 2007a;Rendell et al., 2009).Unsurprisingly, given their role in supporting memory functions in general, evidence suggests that PM is dependent on medial temporal-hippocampal processes. For example, in a clinical group with medial temporal sclerosis, Adda et al. (2008) found that PM performance was impaired and that among those with left hemisphere lesions the degree of impairment was correlated with that in delayed (7 day) verbal recall on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Task ...

The impact of ecstasy/polydrug use on real-world memory (i.e. everyday memory, cognitive failures and prospective memory [PM]) was investigated in a sample of 42 ecstasy/polydrug users and 31 non-ecstasy users. Laboratory-based PM tasks were administered along with self-reported measures of PM to test whether any ecstasy/polydrug-related impairment on the different aspects of PM was present. Self-reported measures of everyday memory and cognitive failures were also administered. Ecstasy/polydrug associated deficits were observed on both laboratory and self-reported measures of PM and everyday memory. The present study extends previous research by demonstrating that deficits in PM are real and cannot be simply attributed to self-misperceptions. The deficits observed reflect some general capacity underpinning both time- and event-based PM contexts and are not task specific. Among this group of ecstasy/polydrug users recreational use of cocaine was also prominently associated with PM deficits. Further research might explore the differential effects of individual illicit drugs on real-world memory.

Objective Previous research suggests that ecstasy users are impaired in processing visuospatial information. However, for the most part, the deficits observed appear to involve the recall and recognition of complex visual and geometric patterns. The present research sought to determine whether ecstasy use was associated with deficits in serial spatial recall and visuospatial working memory (VSWM).Methods Thirty-eight current ecstasy/polydrug users, 16 previous ecstasy/polydrug users and 52 non ecstasy users completed serial simple spatial recall and VSWM tasks. Results Both the current and previous users of ecstasy exhibited deficits on the VSWM task. Following controls for group differences in aspects of cannabis and cocaine use, the overall group effect fell to just below statistical significance. However, the difference contrast comparing users with nonusers continued to demonstrate a statistically significant ecstasy-related VSWM deficit. Conclusions Ecstasy users were impaired in processing visuospatial information especially under conditions of high processing demand. The results are consistent with ecstasy-related impairment either in the short-term posterior parietal and occipital area store or the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex processes, which augment it under conditions of higher processing demands. Further research is needed to pinpoint the actual source of the ecstasy/polydrug-related VSWM deficits that have been observed here and elsewhere.

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Prospective memory deficits in illicit polydrug users are associated with the average long term typical dose of ecstasy typically consumed in a single session. AbstractRationale Neuroimaging evidence suggests that ecstasy-related reductions in SERT densities relate more closely to the number of tablets typically consumed per session rather than estimated total lifetime use. In order to better understand the basis of drug related deficits in prospective memory (PM) we explored the association between PM and average long-term typical dose and long-term frequency of use. Method Study 1: Sixty five ecstasy/polydrug users and 85 non-ecstasy users completed an event based, a short-term and a long-term time based PM task. Study 2: Study 1 data were merged with outcomes on the same PM measures from a previous study creating a combined sample of 103 ecstasy/polydrug users, 38 cannabis-only users and 65 nonusers of illicit drugs. Results Study 1: Ecstasy/polydrug users had significant impairments on all PM outcomes compared to non-ecstasy users. Study 2:Ecstasy/polydrug users were impaired in event based PM compared to both other groups and in long-term time based PM compared to non illicit drug users. Both drug using groups did worse on the short-term time based PM task compared to nonusers. Higher long-term average typical dose of ecstasy was associated with poorer performance on the event and short-term time based PM tasks and accounted for unique variance in the two PM measures over and above the variance associated with cannabis and cocaine use. Conclusions The typical ecstasy dose consumed in a single session is an important predictor of PM impairments with higher doses reflecting increasing tolerance giving rise to greater PM impairment.

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