The party may be over for marijuana and Ecstasy users: In several studies, scientists have weeded out the popular drugs' mental impact and found nothing to rave about.
In the one study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, Euphrosyne Gouzoulis-Mayfrank, M.D., a psychiatrist at the University of Technology in Germany, put 28 Ecstasy users through tests on a range of mental abilities. While users were as mentally alert as non-users, they fared far worse on measures of memory, learning and general intelligence. The more frequently they took Ecstasy, the worse they did. This is likely because Ecstasy alters neuronal function in a brain structure called the hippocampus, which helps create short-term memory.
