I can really relate to this, because I had a similar experience. However, for me the drug was alcohol. I could take your post, replace "MDMA" with "alcohol" and it would almost exactly describe my experience. People tend to forget that alcohol is a mind-altering drug like any other, but it totally is of course.
I was a teetotaler until my mid-tweens, and still I only drink in moderation. I've only gotten shitfaced once, when a pretty girl was hitting on me and kept buying us shots (an unlikely scenario, I know - hence the only once). However, that one time was enough to cure a lot of social anxieties for me.
Like your MDMA experiences for you, that one-time experience of drunk buffoonery opened the door to self-healing. In my case the fact that I managed to be a drunk idiot without being a drunk asshole made me worry less about losing control in general. That also highlights that while it worked for me, it's unlikely to work for everyone (and I'm sure you all have anecdotal experiencethat backs this up...). So my conclusions are the same: the usefulness of mind-altering drugs is highly context-sensitive and misunderstood.
I'm glad alcohol helped you, but have you ever tried psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, or MDMA? The effects are fundamentally different. Psychedelics have a much higher chance of triggering profound and transformative experiences.
Sam Harris, who I hope most people on HN can accept as someone with a slightly above average intelligence, seems to agree with you. He wrote a very interesting article on his experience with LSD: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-...
I am aware that different drugs have wildly different effects. I was just trying to point out that even alcohol - something considered "mundane" by most - should technically be considered a transformative, mind-altering drug.
Ate a tiny piece of space cake once and ended up jumping out of a window. Years I did MDMA once and did not notice much effects (and it wasn't a dud - I shared it with a friend and they definitely noticed its effects). Another anecdote suggesting that the effects of these drugs on people greatly depend on your state of mind when you take them. It's precisely there where we have little hard data on how the drugs work, I think.
I was a teetotaler until my mid-tweens, and still I only drink in moderation. I've only gotten shitfaced once, when a pretty girl was hitting on me and kept buying us shots (an unlikely scenario, I know - hence the only once). However, that one time was enough to cure a lot of social anxieties for me.
Like your MDMA experiences for you, that one-time experience of drunk buffoonery opened the door to self-healing. In my case the fact that I managed to be a drunk idiot without being a drunk asshole made me worry less about losing control in general. That also highlights that while it worked for me, it's unlikely to work for everyone (and I'm sure you all have anecdotal experiencethat backs this up...). So my conclusions are the same: the usefulness of mind-altering drugs is highly context-sensitive and misunderstood.