According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health,
about 16 million people have used ecstasy at some point in their life,
and during the 2012 year, 869,000 people used ecstasy for the first
time, far higher than the number of new LSD and PCP users combined. The
number of new ecstasy users is also greater than the number of new users
of cocaine,
stimulants, and inhalants. The percentage of people who will use
ecstasy sometime in their life is between 2 percent and 3.5 percent. The
average age for first-time users was 20.3 years old, smack dab in the
middle of the college years.
Ecstasy has been and remains primarily a college drug. Not only is it a college drug, it’s a college party drug. It is a hallucinogen, and users report increased energy and feelings of connectedness to others.
An article in the Suffolk Journal
quotes a student, Steve, saying, “It’s everything. In your head, you’re
happy with the position you’re in. Physically, things around you feel
good, familiar. You feel what it is and enjoy it.”
Perfect for a party, right?
According to a fact sheet from The Higher Education
Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention,
ecstasy also creates short term effects including severe anxiety, paranoia, teeth clenching, and sweating. Longer term effects include impulsivity and damage to areas of the brain involved in thinking and memory. Additional dangers include the frequent combination of ecstasy with other drugs including heroin and methamphetamines, which can cause physical harm to long-term overall health.
In
2001, there were 76 deaths attributed to ecstasy use, most due to
heatstroke associated with dancing to the point of dehydration and
exhaustion. Additional deaths are attributed to hyponatremia—drinking
too much water without accompanying salts, due to the fear of heatstroke while taking ecstasy.
The
risks of the drug extend far past use of the drug itself. Ecstasy is
commonly known as the “love drug” and consequences of this love drug
include everything you might expect when young people have sex
without the use of their best judgment, from unplanned pregnancies to
the spread of sexually transmitted diseases to legal problems due to
unclear consent. College-aged ecstasy users are more likely
to have unprotected sex. This population also has a higher rate of
sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS and herpes. Finally,
ecstasy use leads to a higher rate of unwanted sex, especially in young women who take the drug.
Additionally, the use of ecstasy increases suicide
risk. Also quoted in the Suffolk Journal article, a student named Ryan
says, “It gives you a feeling of euphoria for four or five hours, but
then you feel like shit when it’s over. You feel depressed. You
shouldn’t take it if you’re already depressed. You’ll just feel worse.” A study
from the National Institutes of Health confirms this observation,
finding almost double the risk for suicide in young adults that had used
the drug in the past year and writing that, “Adolescent ecstasy users
may require enhanced suicide prevention and intervention efforts.”
No matter its name—ecstasy, X, E, molly, or others like love drug, dancing shoes, skittles, or beans—the
fact of the drug is that it is an unpredictable mix of lab chemicals
produced in uncontrolled labs around the world, likely designed for
stimulation and hallucination. With ecstasy, you simply don’t know what
you’re getting and so you can’t predict its effect. Every time you take
ecstasy is a roll of the dice. Is it really worth it?
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Richard Taite is founder and CEO of Cliffside Malibu, offering evidence-based, individualized addiction treatment based on the Stages of Change model. He is also co-author with Constance Scharff of the book Ending Addiction for Good
