MDMA (Molly/Ecstasy) Dosage

MDMA (Molly, Ecstasy) Dosage

This advice applies if you are determined to take MDMA. The safest option is to not use MDMA, the second safest option is to use MDMA responsibly, and the most dangerous option is to use MDMA irresponsibly.

Most important things to know about MDMA dosage

1. Guideline: More conservatively, 1.5 mg/kg (with a max of 120 mg even if you weigh more than 80 kg / 176 lbs) for the entire session including booster doses. More realistically as we know many people want more, try and keep to no more than your weight in kg, plus 50 = total dosage in milligrams for the session.

2. If finger dipping powder: ideally switch to weighed doses, but if not that, use “crush, dab, wait.”

3. If using tablets and you haven’t taken a tablet from this exact batch before, start with half, or less.

4. Low doses may be particularly important for your first few uses, as you might unknowingly have a health condition like malignant hyperthermia that makes MDMA more dangerous. 80 mg may be a good first dosage.

5. A study found that MDMA desirable effects are maximized, and undesirable effects minimized, at doses between 81-100 mg.¹

6. If you’re unwilling to use these dosage guidelines, please make extra sure your friends are aware of the signs of heat stroke and heat exhaustion, and pay extra attention to keeping cool.

7. “I think there’s no “safe” dose if you have a preexisting health condition contraindicated with MDMA.” For example, malignant hyperthermia, which you may have but be unaware of.

8. A small female died soon after consuming 500 mg of 91% pure MDMA. It is highly probable that they had a health condition that interacted dangerously with MDMA, but this shows why it’s important to pay attention to dosage.

9. This dosage advice is only relevant if you actually have MDMA! 87% of “Molly” analyzed by the DEA between 2009 and 2013 contained 0% MDMA, instead mostly containing substances like methylone and mephedrone.^{2 3} If these dosages seem low, remember that only 13% of “Molly” tested during that period contained any MDMA. Fake MDMA substances like methylone have weaker effects per milligram.

10. 46% of Ecstasy tablets analyzed in a study contained 0% MDMA.⁴

11. There’s a reasonable chance it may take a user 90 minutes to feel MDMA’s effects, and though rare it’s not unheard of for the effects to take 2-2.5 hours to kick in. Particularly if it’s one of your first 5 times using MDMA or you had recently eaten a large meal, please wait at least 3 hours before concluding that your dose didn’t work.

12. Avoid taking any booster doses or redoses if possible.

Dosage guideline: your weight in kg, plus 50 = total dosage in milligrams for the session.

We state the ‘kg + 50’ dosage guideline instead because of a great suggestion to optimize for helping the largest number of people the most - weight in kg + 50 easier and simpler to remember, and so may allow us to help more people, and with real MDMA, it’ll be a satisfying dose.¹ The optimal method for harm-reduction if you’re willing is perhaps 1.5 mg/kg total during the session, with a 120 mg maximum even for heavy people.

Taking low doses may be particularly important for your first few uses, so that you can reduce the risk you have a health condition you’re unaware of that interacts dangerously with MDMA.

If you’re dosing by dipping your finger in the powder, ideally switch to weighed dosages, but if you can’t or won’t do that, follow the advice from UK group The Loop: crush crystals to a fine powder, lick your finger tip and dab the powder to consume a small amount, and then wait 1-2 hours before considering taking more.⁵ Crush, Dab, Wait. 🔨👇🕐

If using tablets: Look up your pill and see if you can figure out the dosage content. If you can’t, a good guideline is to take no more than ¹⁄₂ the pill, and then wait at least 1.5 hours before considering taking more.

If you’re unwilling to use these dosage guidelines, please make extra sure your friends are aware of the signs of heat stroke and heat exhaustion, and pay extra attention to keeping cool.

Consider 80 mg or less for your first roll

If it’s your first time, consider dosing of perhaps between 0.8 mg/kg - 1.2 mg/kg with a max of 80 mg. This allows you to make sure your product is high purity (you should still expect to feel some euphoria and empathy at 70 mg), and the other benefit for first time users is that it may reduce the risk of feeling “that no future MDMA sessions will ever be as good as my first time,” which is a somewhat common and often regrettable anecdotal sentiment.

75-120 mg if it’s not your first time

The best dosage of pure MDMA based on our current knowledge for maximum desirable effects, minimum undesirable effects, and safer use, is: your body weight in kg * 1.5 (or weight in lbs * 0.68), with a maximum of 120 mg, with no-redose or booster dose (Baggott).

So if you weigh 70kg/154lbs, you’d take 105 mg, with no redose/booster.

If you weigh 50kg/110lbs, you’d take 75 mg.

If you weigh 80kg/176lbs, you’d take 120 mg.

If you weigh 90kg/198lbs, you’d take 120 mg (120 mg maximum to reduce risk of neurotoxicity).

RollSafe knows that many people will choose not to follow this dosage advice. If you won’t do 1.5 mg/kg, we’d ask that you follow MDMA researcher Matthew Baggott’s advice to stay below 2 mg/kg MDMA in total (including re-doses) during a session.

Warnings:

• Your MDMA may not be pure, and you may be increasing your risk as a result. 87% of “Molly” analyzed by the DEA between 2009 and 2013 contained 0% MDMA, instead mostly containing “bath salts.”² Terrible. 😠 Use a test kit to reduce some risks, but know that even test kits cannot guarantee purity. Read more on testing.
• Always re-set your dosage with a new source. It would be highly possible for someone to be used to taking ~250 mg of “Molly/MDMA” (that unknown to them) is fake/impure and actually methylone or similar, and then to get a new MDMA source, and then take 250 mg of what is now actually MDMA and put yourself at greater risk because MDMA has stronger effects at lower dosages than methylone.

Lower dosages help reduce neurotoxicity risk, help increase enjoyment, and help reduce the risk of serious adverse effects.^{6 7}

From MDMA researcher Matthew Baggott:

“I trained in an MDMA neurotoxicity lab (Lewis Seiden’s) and then went on to do human studies (giving MDMA to volunteers to understand its emotional effects). I think MDMA may well be neurotoxic at the higher end of recreational doses. I wouldn’t personally take/give more than 1.5-1.7 mg/kg and would never take/give a booster dose, unless there was strong reason to think the person would have some clear benefit (as in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy) to offset the added risks. Just my opinion.”

“To the best of my understanding, doses around 1.5-1.7 mg/kg MDMA (roughly 100 to 125 mg MDMA) are unlikely to cause long-lasting serotonin changes. Studies by MAPS have looked for changes in mental abilities after people participated in their studies, with some participants receiving 125 mg followed by 62.5 mg, and have not found any changes.”

“In studies such as this, we sometimes see bigger effects on heart rate than I would want and people frequently say they feel close to maximal effects. As a result, I tend to think 1.5 mg/kg is high enough and I would worry that 120 mg is too high for many smaller people.

I do agree there are limits to mg/kg scaling. Mg/kg is correcting for the volume in your body that the drug dissolves into, with the idea that people will get similar blood (and then brain) concentrations. However, this volume doesn’t scale with weight perfectly because peoples’ bodies are different on the high and low ends of weight. So I would personally suggest 1.5 mg/kg up to a maximum of 120 mg. I don’t have strong evidence for a minimal dose from my studies, but if forced to choose I might use a minimum dose of 75mg.

Interestingly, MAPS is seeing preliminary evidence that lower doses might be more therapeutic, which is consistent with observations by therapist Leo Zeff that people want higher doses than they need.”

“I would discourage total doses over 2 mg/kg MDMA.” (During the entire session/night, including re-doses)

From the fantastic book Acid Test

“Since the MDMA dosage Ricaurte had tested was about three times the average therapeutic dose equivalent—1.7 milligrams per kilogram—Rick urged him to do another test at a lower dosage to determine if, at any point above the therapeutic dosage, MDMA would show no long-lasting effect on serotonin neurons anywhere in the brain.

That point came at 2.5 milligrams per kilogram, still 50 percent above the usual therapeutic dosage. Eight doses of that size were administered over four months (one dose every two weeks), after which there was no detectable damage to neurons. Rick was greatly relieved, since that would be the key to persuading the FDA that it would be safe enough to conduct human therapeutic trials.”⁸

How re-dosing (booster doses) is done in MDMA research

MAPS uses “80 or 120mg MDMA (plus supplemental half dose of 40 or 60mg unless contraindicated)”⁹

The re-dose of ¹⁄₂ of the initial dose is taken in MDMA PTSD research 1.5 to 2 hours after the first dose is ingested.¹⁰

If you do re-dose, you should follow this and take ¹⁄₂ of your initial dose just after you’ve peaked from the first dose, likely 2 hrs after ingesting the first dose. Don’t redose before your first dose has reached peak effects, unless you’re using a dose and source that you’ve used many times before and therefore know exactly how strong the effects will be.

Before considering re-dosing, please note Matthew Baggott’s comments: “I wouldn’t personally take/give more than 1.5-1.7 mg/kg and would never take/give a booster dose, unless there was strong reason to think the person would have some clear benefit (as in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy) to offset the added risks. Just my opinion.”

There isn’t a good risk/benefit tradeoff of re-dosing except perhaps in therapeutic use (Baggott).

MDMA Dosage Safety

From private conversations with Emanuel Sferios of DanceSafe:

“I think there’s no “safe” dose if you have a preexisting health condition contraindicated with MDMA.” “Or if you are in a super hot environment.” “Or both.” “But it’s a relatively safe drug nonetheless.”

Dosages in MDMA related deaths

15-year-old Martha Fernback died three hours after consuming 500 mg of 91% pure MDMA. Some reports initially suspected the deadly adulterant PMA, but it was later reported after toxicology that she consumed 91% pure MDMA.

I would be unsurprised if many of the MDMA-related deaths occur in people with contraindicated health conditions, i.e. conditions that produce a susceptibility to heat stroke or cardiovascular disease. Though it is important to note that some people may have a contraindicated condition and not realize it.

Desirable effects are maximized between 81-100 mg

A study found that MDMA desirable effects are maximized, and undesirable effects minimized, at doses between 81-100 mg.¹

If less than 120 mg sounds low to you, you may have been taking fake MDMA

Ask yourself: how certain are you of the purity levels, not just MDMA presence, of your MDMA? How do you know?

Are you aware that 87% of “Molly” analyzed by the DEA between 2009 and 2013 contained 0% MDMA, instead mostly containing substances like methylone and mephedrone (which, in higher dosages, can have some similar effects to MDMA)?²

And are you aware that 46% of Ecstasy tablets analyzed in a study contained 0% MDMA?⁴

Please buy a test kit if 120 mg sounds low to you. (Really, everyone should buy a test kit.)

Higher doses are less safe

Higher doses are more likely to cause neurotoxicity.¹¹

Higher doses are more likely to lead to serious adverse effects, including the possibility of MDMA-related death. See this MDMA-related death after an individual consumed an estimated ~750 mg. Again: “I would be unsurprised if many of the MDMA-related deaths occur in people with contraindicated health conditions, i.e. conditions that produce a susceptibility to heat stroke or cardiovascular disease. Though it is important to note that some people may have a contraindicated condition and not realize it.”

People have died in MDMA-related deaths after consuming more than 125mg of pure MDMA (very few people, but more than zero). We have not heard of any deaths related to taking pure MDMA at a dosage of less than 125mg.

RollSafe does not support the Erowid dosage advice - it is too high for users that care about their health.

Measure your dosage

1. Don’t eyeball your doses, be safe.
2. Buy a 1 mg scale.
3. Use a playing card or similar - fold the card in half so it’s easier to pour later, put the card on the scale, then zero the scale.¹²
4. The scale should be at 0 mg.
5. Use a spoon or similar to put little bits of MDMA onto the playing card, until it reaches your (safe) dosage.
6. Put the folded edge of the card up to the capsule, and tap it until the MDMA is inside the capsule. This is why it helps if it is folded.
7. Done.

References