A recent report from Time Magazine titled, “The ‘Love Hormone Can Make You Hate” suggests that Molly (MDMA or ecstasy) can make a person racist. The report is based on an experiment conducted at the University of Amsterdam, where a professor of psychology studied the effects of releasing high amounts of oxytocin in the brain. It says that when Molly is consumed, oxytocin is released and it provides a “loved up” feeling, but the study found that this feeling only extends to your “in group.”
All participants in the study were Dutch males, and were told that they had to choose five people out of six that would gain access to a life-saving lifeboat. The men on oxytocin were more likely to deny men with Muslim or German-sounding names access and save the men with Dutch names, while the men who were given a placebo didn’t pay attention to the origin of the names.
The trouble with the Time article is that nobody in the University of Amsterdam study actually consumed MDMA. Instead, the participants were given a nasal spray of oxytocin. Therefore, the Time article assumes that anything that releases oxytocin, such as MDMA, will make a person racist.
Oxytocin has been linked to developing trust between a mother and child during breastfeeding, and between partners after sexual intercourse. As a result, the Time article could also allude to ideas like “breastfeeding makes you racist” and “sex makes you racist”.
Ecstasy and MDMA are dangerous drugs that have caused many hospitalizations and notable deaths at EDM events over the past few years.They can be dangerous drugs and should be treated as such. We must all be aware about the facts and effects of what we’re putting into our bodies, and Molly is no exception.
At the same time, it is also bad form to provide misinformed assumptions about a substance and present it as fact (lookin’ at you Time). We’ve thought long and hard about how to stop the deaths and hospitalizations from drug use at EDM events; check out our ideas here.
While young people must be careful of the decisions they make, the notion that MDMA makes one racist is silly and doesn’t seem to hold water. However, WhiteRaverRafting does not condone the use of illegal substances.
Photo via Details.com
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