Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email
Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter
Long-term users of MDMA are more empathetic than people who take other recreational drugs, according to a study.
Compared to users of cannabis, cocaine and ketamine, people who take ecstasy report feeling “significantly greater emotional empathy” and are better at identifying others’ emotions, researchers at the University of Exeter found.
MDMA is known to increase empathy for a short period, but the researchers said their findings could point to longer-term effects with implications for possible medical uses.
The study recruited long-term but mild users who have taken the drug a minimum of 10 times to reflect does that may be used for medical treatment.
Participants included 25 people who used multiple drugs including MDMA, 19 people who took multiple drugs not including MDMA, and 23 people who used only alcohol.
World's 10 deadliest street drugs
Show all 10
Each completed a questionnaire about their own empathy as well as computerised tasks in which they identified emotions on the faces of others. They also reported how strongly they felt emotions based on seeing others in emotional states.
Researchers said ecstasy users reported feeling significantly greater emotional empathy and were revealed in the computer tasks to have greater cognitive empathy compared to people who used multiple drugs not including MDMA.
There was little difference between the MDMA group and the alcohol-only group.
The levels of empathy and social pain in MDMA users were consistent with “normal psychosocial functioning”, contradicting previous suggestions that long-term ecstasy use may cause heightened social distress, researchers said.
Professor Celia Morgan, senior author of the research, said: “We can’t say whether differences in empathy are due to taking MDMA, or whether there were already differences in the people who use MDMA and those who don’t before they started taking the drug.
"But, importantly, this study suggests that MDMA may be used safely as a treatment without side effects on these crucial social processes.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies