bucky

Just thought I'd pass along this story, its going to be in the newest issue of Time magazine.. It's interesting in that it talks about the effects / benefits of MDMA (not ecstasy, but MDMA), how it works, where it came from and more...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/a...6,46162,00.html

bird

I'm rather impressed... pretty unbiased reporting from a mainstream magazine.

While I didn't come across any new info that I hadn't read before, I couldn't spot any glaring mistakes either.

Also refreshing was the neutrality of the piece in presenting the facts. Yes, "E" doesn't equate with "mdma" on the street. Yes, there are dangers and side-effects along with the benefits. And yes, it is now another target for the futile "war on drugs" the US gov is bullying everyone else into.


I'm going to assume most people on this board is atleast moderately educated about drugs.. how about passing on some of that knowledge to your peers, or taking the initiative to learn a little more?

try www.erowid.org to start..

j.

responsibility...

[This message has been edited by bird (edited May 29, 2000).]

dzia-dzia

I'M GOING TO GO AND BUY THAT SHIT. SOUNDS A LITTLE INTERESTING. I CAN'T BELEIVE HOW FUCKING POPULAR "E" IS!!!

Santa-Mike

Great article...

heard it all before, but you can never expect anything new

*shrug*

~ mike ~

ECSTASY: Happiness is ... a pill?
JUNE 5, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 23

The Lure Of Ecstasy

The elixir best known for powering raves is an 80-year-old illegal drug. But it's showing up outside clubs too, and advocates claim it even has therapeutic benefits. Just how dangerous is it?

By JOHN CLOUD

Cobb Vounty, Ga., May 11, 2000. It's a Thursday morning, and 18-year-old "Karen" and five friends decide to go for it. They skip first period and sneak into the woods near their upscale high school. One of them takes out six rolls--six ecstasy pills--and they each swallow one. Then back to school, flying on a drug they once used only on weekends. Now they smile stupid gelatinous smiles at one another, even as high school passes them by. That night they will all go out and drop more ecstasy, rolling into the early hours of another school day. It's rare that anyone would take ecstasy so often--it's not physically addictive--but teenagers everywhere have begun experimenting with it. "The cliques are pretty big in my school," Karen says, "and every clique does it."

Grand Rapids, Mich., May 1997. Sue and Shane Stevens have sent the three kids away for the weekend. They have locked the doors and hidden the car so no one will bug them. Tonight they hope to talk about Shane's cancer, a topic they have mostly avoided for years. It has eaten away at their marriage just as it corrodes his kidney. A friend has recommended that they take ecstasy, except he calls it mdma and says therapists used it 20 years ago to get people to discuss difficult topics. And, in fact, after tonight, Sue and Shane will open up, and Sue will come to believe mdma is prolonging her marriage--and perhaps Shane's life.

So we know that ecstasy is versatile. Actually, that's one of the first things we knew about it. Alexander Shulgin, 74, the biochemist who in 1978 published the first scientific article about the drug's effect on humans, noticed this panacea quality back then. The drug "could be all things to all people," he recalled later, a cure for one student's speech impediment and for one's bad lsd trip, and a way for Shulgin to have fun at cocktail parties without martinis.

The ready availability of ecstasy in the U.S., from Cobb County to Grand Rapids, is a newer phenomenon. Ecstasy--or "e"--enjoyed a brief spurt of mainstream use in the '80s, before the government outlawed it in 1985. Until recently, it remained common only on the margins of society--in clubland, in gay America, in lower Manhattan. But in the past year or so, ecstasy has returned to the heartland. Established drug dealers and mobsters have taken over the trade, and they are meeting the astonishing demand in places like Flagstaff, Ariz., where "Katrina," a student at Northern Arizona University who first took it last summer, can now buy it easily; or San Marcos, Texas, a town of 39,000 where authorities found 500 pills last month; or Richmond, Va., where a police investigation led to the arrest this year of a man thought to have sold tens of thousands of hits of e. On May 12, authorities seized half a million pills at San Francisco's airport--the biggest e bust ever. Each pill costs pennies to make but sells for between $20 and $40, so someone missed a big payday.

Ecstasy remains a niche drug. The number of Americans who use it once a month remains so small--less than 1% of the population--that ecstasy use doesn't register in the government's drug survey. (By comparison, 5% of Americans older than 12 say they use marijuana once a month, and 1.8% use cocaine.) But ecstasy use is growing. Eight percent of U.S. high school seniors say they have tried it at least once, up from 5.8% in 1997; teen use of most other drugs declined in the late '90s. Nationwide, customs officers have already seized more ecstasy this fiscal year, more than 5.4 million hits, than in all of last year. In 1998 they seized just 750,000 hits.

The drug's appeal has never been limited to ravers. Today it can be found for sale on Bourbon Street in New Orleans along with the 24-hour booze; a group of lawyers in Little Rock, Ark., takes it occasionally, as does a cheerleading captain at a Miami high school. The drug is also showing up in hip-hop circles. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony raps a paean to it on its latest album: "Oh, man, I don't even f___ with the weed no more."

Indeed, much of the ecstasy taking--and the law enforcement under way to end it--has been accompanied by breathlessness. "It appears that the ecstasy problem will eclipse the crack-cocaine problem we experienced in the late 1980s," a cop told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In April, 60 Minutes II prominently featured an Orlando, Fla., detective dolorously noting that "ecstasy is no different from crack, heroin." On the other side of the spectrum, at ecstasy.org, you can find equally bloated praise of the drug. "We sing, we laugh, we share/ and most of all, we care," gushes an awful poem on the site, which also includes testimonials from folks who say ecstasy can treat schizophrenia and help you make "contact with dead relatives."

Ecstasy is popular because it appears to have few negative consequences. But "these are not just benign, fun drugs," says Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "They carry serious short-term and long-term dangers." Those like Leshner who fight the war on drugs overstate these dangers occasionally--and users usually understate them. But one reason ecstasy is so fascinating, and thus dangerous to antidrug crusaders, is that it appears to be a safer drug than heroin and cocaine, at least in the short run, and appears to have more potentially therapeutic benefits.

Even so, the U.S. government has launched a major p.r. effort to fight ecstasy based on the Internet at clubdrugs.org. Last week two Senators, Bob Graham of Florida and Charles Grassley of Iowa, introduced an ecstasy antiproliferation bill, which would stiffen penalties for trafficking in the drug. Under the new law, someone caught selling about 100 hits of ecstasy could be charged as a drug trafficker; current law sets the threshold at about 300,000 pills. "I think this is the time to take a forceful set of initiatives to try to reverse the tide," says Graham.

What's the appeal of ecstasy? As a user put it, it's "a six-hour orgasm." About half an hour after you swallow a hit of e, you begin to feel peaceful, empathetic and energetic--not edgy, just clear. Pot relaxes but sometimes confuses; lsd stupefies; cocaine wires. Ecstasy has none of those immediate downsides. "Jack," 29, an Indiana native who has taken ecstasy about 40 times, said the only time he felt as good as he does on e was when he found out he had won a Rhodes scholarship. He enjoys feeling logorrheic: ecstasy users often talk endlessly, maybe about a silly song that's playing or maybe about a terrible burden on them. E allows the mind to wander, but not into hallucinations. Users retain control. Jack can allow his social defenses to crumble on ecstasy, and he finds he can get close to people from different backgrounds. "People I would never have talked to, because I'm mostly in the Manhattan business world, I talk to on ecstasy. I've made some friends I never would have had."

All this marveling should raise suspicions, however. It's probably not a good idea to try to duplicate the best moment of one's life 40 times, if only because it will cheapen the truly good times. And even as they help open the mind to new experiences, drugs also can distort the reality to which users ineluctably return. Is ecstasy snake oil? And how harmful is it?

This is what we know:

An ecstasy pill most probably won't kill you or cure you. It is also unlike pretty much every other illicit drug. Ecstasy pills are (or at least they are supposed to be) made of a compound called methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or mdma. It's an old drug: Germany issued the patent for it in 1914 to the German company E. Merck. Contrary to ecstasy lore, and there's tons of it, Merck wasn't trying to develop a diet drug when

JUNE 5, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 23

Rave new world

It's more than just ecstasy. the youth culture is in thrall to deejays and floats on the relentless beat of electronic music

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

It's hard to talk to women at raves, says Ben Wilke. The big beats drown out small talk. If you really need to, you can go to a "chill-out" room for get-to-know-you conversation. And if you really need them, there's "a moderate amount of drugs," says the 17-year-old from Houston. But for him, raves are "all about the music." Says Wilke: "Real party kids don't do drugs. We go to dance and have a good time." He goes on: "A lot of people don't understand it, but the guitar thing's been done. Electronic music is all I listen to. It beats my heart."

First we had the Beat Generation; now we have the Beats-per-Minute Generation. And it's not just about ecstasy.

Simply defined, a rave is a party--often an all-night-long party--at which some form of electronic, or "techno," music is played, usually by a deejay. A rave can be as small as 25 people or larger than 25,000. And while raves have been around for a decade in the U.S., the rituals, visuals and sounds associated with raves have started to exert a potent influence on pop music, advertising and even computer games. Several new films about raves are either in theaters or coming soon, including the British comedy Human Traffic and the documentaries Better Living Through Circuitry and Rise, a study of the rave scene in New Orleans. Says Jason Jordan, co-author of Searching for the Perfect Beat, a new book about raves and visual art: "Rave culture is youth culture right now."

"Rave culture is affecting pop culture in ways similar to the Beat Generation--and it's being misinterpreted in the same way," says Greg Harrison, director of the new movie Groove, a fictional take on the rave scene. "In the case of the Beats, a complex and subtle ethos was distilled by pop culture to marijuana, goatees and poetry. I would argue that just as there was much more to the Beats, there's something more subtle and interesting about the rave scene."

To find a rave, you can pick up one of the artfully rendered flyers at cafes or cool record stores like Other Music in New York City or Atomic Music in Houston. Or you might surf the Net and check out sites like ravedata.com or raves.com. Or you might just ask a friend in the know. Raves have traditionally been held in venues without permits or permission, giving them an outlaw allure. Today, however, an increasing number of raves are legal ones, and places like Twilo in New York City specialize in re-creating the rave feel in legitimate clubs. "The New York club scene was not about music until Twilo opened," says Paul van Dyk, a popular deejay who specializes in trance--a soft, transporting form of techno and one of the genre's many, many offshoots.

Ravers often wear loose, wide-legged jeans that flare out at the bottom. Knickknacks from childhood, like suckers, pacifiers and dolls, are common accessories. Dancers, sweating to the music all night, often carry bottles of water to battle dehydration, which can be aggravated by ecstasy. Attendees sometimes dress in layers so clothes can be stripped off if the going gets hot, and blue and green flexible glow sticks are popular. One sound you'll hear if the party's going right: a communal whoop of approval when the deejay starts riding a good groove. "The first rock-'n'-roll shows were dance events," says 6th Element promoter Matt E. Silver, who has worked with best-selling electronica acts such as Chemical Brothers and Prodigy. "Now it's about deejay culture." In the movie Groove, the filmmakers refer to that connection between deejay and dancer, between promoter and satisfied raver, as "the nod." Many rave promoters and deejays don't do it for the money. They do it for the nod.

One electronic musician who is definitely getting the nod these days is the American deejay-composer Moby. Most deejays a decade ago were faceless shadows lurking behind turntables. Now deejays associated with the rave scene--like Van Dyk, Armand Van Helden, Keoki and BT--are artists, celebrities, superstars. "If Stravinsky were alive today, this is the kind of music he'd make," says BT, who composed music for the rave movie Go (1999) as well as the PlayStation game Die Hard Trilogy. "It just affords you a broader sonic palette to work from."

Moby has used his palette skillfully. He got his start as a deejay, but he also sings and plays with a backing band when he's on tour. His 1995 album Everything Is Wrong sold about 125,000 copies. His critically acclaimed new album Play, which samples old blues songs and sets them to futuristic beats, has already gone platinum. The rave scene is catching on with a new generation of fans, Moby believes, because it offers an alternative to today's version of bubblegum. "The consolidation of all the different record companies under big multinational parent companies," he says, has spawned the current crush of mass-produced teen pop acts. "Your BMGs, your Sonys, your Time Warners ... nothing against these companies, but they buy music companies and they expect music to perform the way that, say, snack cakes or liquid paper performs. There's so much commercial emphasis on disposable pop music that I think it leaves a lot of people desperately looking for other types of musical expression."

One of the most creative ways in which rave culture expresses itself is its party flyers. These handouts are to raves what graffiti art is to hip-hop and psychedelic posters were to the acid rock of the '70s. They give vision to rave's sounds. Sometimes--much like rappers' sampling old songs--they appropriate corporate logos with ironic visual twists. The MasterCard logo becomes "MasterRave," or Rice Krispies becomes "Rave Krisp E's." Other flyers employ 3-D images and wild metallic hues that draw inspiration from sci-fi films, anime, even the rounded, flower-power imagery of the Summer of Love. "In a lot of ways it's one of the most modern visual art forms you can see," says Eric Paxton Stauder, a member of Dots per Minute, a network of designers that focuses on rave flyers. "Stylistically, you see things in flyers that you don't see other places--uses of line work and fontography. It's open and unrestricted, and it's a testing ground for combining visual elements together."

Rave iconography is already being co-opted by Madison Avenue, which has learned all about digging up the underground and selling the dirt. TV ads for Toyota's Echo have the trippy look and feel of rave flyers (Toyota is sponsoring a U.S. tour of British electronica acts Groove Armada and Faze Action). Every song on Moby's 18-track album Play has been licensed, popping up in ads for the last episode of Party of Five, movies like The Beach and commercials for Nissan's Altima sedan and Quest minivan. Donna Karan's DKNY label plans to use deejay John Digweed's song Heaven Scent to promote a fragrance with the same name.

Wayne Friedman, entertainment-marketing reporter for Advertising Age, says today's admakers look to tap into underground movements quickly so that they can make use of sounds and images that aren't necessarily familiar but that pique interest. Acts like Moby fit the bill. Says Friedman: "It's almost like you can't be overly commercial when you're trying to make commercials."

Many ravers are wary and weary of the media's embrace. In particular, many believe that the press is more interested in writing about drugs than about the music--and that the press coverage is partly to blame for the supposed ecstasy boom. Says Jon Reiss, director of Better Living Through Circuitry: "The media hype says if you want to do drugs, come to these parties. So all these kids come to the parties looking for drugs. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Indeed, some of the biggest acts associated with the rave scene say they are drug free. Van Dyk says he was introduced to electronic music in East Germany, when he secretly tun

societies_devil

"e" is everywhere nowadays...
hell i even heard susan talking about it on the sunday night sex show last night ..

hopefully now people will drop the automatic relation of "e" and raves...

tinkEE pinkEE

andrew...hunny...its sue not SUSAN!! *L* u silli bitch hehehehe sue johanson is my queen and yea..she talked a bit bout parties then went into E....but trust me it wasnt anything good...of course not

*muah*
Kayla

Roches

ahh... a couple things...

- time is owned by time-warner, which has a major share in the record industry. think about that. moby did =)

- mescaline is a very weak drug, it's not fair to compare it with MDMA

-dr. grob's comment is very interesting because it has been shown that the damage caused by MDMA is greatly increased at high temperatures and almost stopped at low temperatures.

-still haven't seen any mention of junglists or gabber or techno or house people. apparently all 'ravers' are still candykids.

anyway.. i can EASILY see why MDMA is so popular. it's all about love and sex, which is one of the major human drives. it comes in pills-people are used to swallowing pills-and doesn't have the stigma of something that has to be snorted or injected. it causes mainly a natural-seeming happy feeling without paranoia, hallucinations, or anything that makes casual users feel fucked up or out of control. and it's VERY glamorous - check out the picture of the e on tongue thing on the time site.

but personally, i believe very strongly in the neurotoxicity evidence... and i think the "e boom" is going to lead to a lot of SERIOUS problems for people in the long term...