Ecstasy Users Risk Margaret Thatcher-Style Nightmares

UK researchers claimed this week that using ecstasy could lead to long-term sleep disturbance patterns significantly worse than for non-drug takers, smokers and drinkers.

Lynn Taurer from London's Metropolitan University created a sleep disturbance scale for the research and asked 1000 people to describe their sleeping habits. Speaking at a drug conference, Ms Taurer revealed that E users had registered a score of 9.5 compared to a normal rate of 4 on her sleep disturbance scale, with side effects remaining for 7 years amongst some users.

"Sleep is a fundamental part of life. It's disturbance has an effect on concentration and has been shown to increase accidents on the road, in the home and at work," she told the Observer.

"There are also clear links between sleep disturbance and depression."

Even more alarmingly, the sleep deprived E users could presumably be at risk of developing character traits similar to Britain's notoriously vicious former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who ran Britain ruthlessly in the 80s on just four hours sleep a night.

"You can (manage on four hours a night), provided that about one day a week you do have a night when you can just have longer if you wish," Thatcher told journalist Brian Lamb, in 1993.

"But you know, it becomes so much a habit that you find you can't sleep very much longer."

And according to a report in the Irish Times last year, Thatcher (also a keen whisky drinker) was by no means the only world leader who attempted to stay up forever.

"Short-sleepers, who have included Margaret Thatcher and Alexander the Great, tend to bypass the less productive, interim phase of stage two sleep, but spend just as much time in the lighter and deeper stages," said the Times.

"Studies have suggested that short sleepers have more hard-working, ambitious and inflexible personalities than eight-hour-nighters."
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