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ecstasy
(E, pills, doves, MDMA, MDEA, MDA etc.)
Ecstasy is a powerful stimulant and mood changer that speeds up your body
system and alters your perception of the world.
It can make you feel both uplifted and relaxed and feeling very happy, usually
with an overwhelming urge to dance. The effects of E vary considerably from one
person to the next, depending on who you're with, where you are and how you're
feeling at the time.
Usually coming in the form of small pills selling at around £8 - £12, or more
rarely as MDMA powder, the effects of E can be felt for anything up to 8 hours,
although this time reduces considerably for regular users.
Within 20 minutes to an hour after taking ecstasy, your heart may go into bangin'
gabba overdrive and you might feel a bit hot and sticky while your mouth goes
dry. Sometimes, you'll come up with a huge exhilarating rush and possibly
experience hallucinations.
During the two hours when the effects are their strongest, even the sound of a
cutlery tray being dropped will sound unbearably danceable, you'll be walking
around with a ludicrous grin on your face and even a set of Millwall fans will
appear hugely huggable.
Lights will seem brighter and colours more intense. You'll feel firmly locked
into the groove on the dancefloor and feel happy and confident. These feelings
will slowly diminish as the drugs wear down.
Because E removes all feelings of tiredness and thirst it is vital that you keep
yourself hydrated if you're dancing non-stop. Try to drink around a pint of
fluid an hour (not alcohol) to replace fluids lost by dancing - isotonic drinks
are particularly good. If you're not dancing then you don't need to drink so
much as it can be harmful - as in the tragic case of Leah Betts.
Side Effects:
Like most strong drugs, expect to appear very strange when encountering straight
friends. E can make you strut wildly and enthusiastically to some of the worst
tunes in the world while hugging very unsavoury characters. You will also quite
probably talk a whole load of bullshit and any photographs taken of you in this
state will prove wildly amusing to your friends afterwards.
Avoid taking ecstasy if you're on anti-depressants, and try to avoid wolfing
down cans of Super Tennents as the alcohol will dehydrate you - as well as
weaken the effects of the E. Ecstasy puts a tremendous strain on your heart,
liver and kidneys, and it's important to take time out in a chill-out area
during the night.
Most of the dangers come from people overheating and not replacing enough fluids
while dancing, so it is essential to keep drinking water if you're dancing. We
can't stress this fact enough. But also be careful not to drink too much - about
about a pint an hour is right if you're on the dancefloor.
Remember that water is not an antidote to E, it just helps combat the
dehydrating qualities of the drug.
Always make sure that you can get home safely before taking E, and don't try to
drive.
Because E is a stimulant, the comedown is much like that from speed. Once you've
come down you might feel a bit depressed, anxious, hungry and tired with some
people getting it worse than others. You might also notice a laxative effect.
Long-term frequent users often get run-down from exhaustion and suffer colds,
sore throats and flu. Women can be susceptible to cystitis and thrush.
How long do the effects last? MDMA: 4-6 hours, MDEA: 3-5 hours,
MDA: 8-10 hours, MBDB: 4-6 hours. Note: These are approximate
times as duration and intensity depend on a variety of factors including the
amount of the drug taken, its strength, purity, body weight and the physical and
psychological makeup of the individual concerned.
Health risks:
Despite all the hysterical reports in the tabloids declaring ecstasy to be the
Killer Drug from Hell, the truth is that it is a comparably safe drug when
compared to other legal drugs. That's not to say that it is harmless, but in a
climate of media hysteria and disinformation it is important to keep the risks
in perspective.
In 1995 Leah Betts tragically died after taking an 'E' and drinking water to
counter the drug's effect. Read the full
story here.
Since 1988 it is calculated that some 50-100 deaths have been linked with
ecstasy out of a regular user base calculated at over 500,000 people. There is
no conclusive evidence to the long-term effects of ecstasy, although some
experts suspect that it might lead to mental health problems in later life.
IMPORTANT: Recent health studies (July 2000) have suggested
that there may be a link between brain damage and long term ecstasy use. Click here
for more.
Detection periods: Ecstasy can be detected in the urine up to
2-4 days after use at common levels.
The Law: MDMA and Ecstasy are categorised as Class A drugs under the
Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971
(UK readers may be interested in purchasing an E Testing
Kit. The basic kit consists of a liquid which tests if a scraping of a
pill is amphetamine or E based and costs £15+£4 p&p, and the Advanced Kit
which also includes a Micrometer to compare the pill size to lab results on the
net £30 + £4 p&p. For delivery outside the UK add another £4. Send
cheques/PO to Green Party Drugs Group, 1a Waterlow Rd, London N19 5NJ. Info:
0181 678 9420)
Also check out the following E testing/info websites: http://www.drugpeace.org/ecstasy
and www.ecstasy.org
ecstasy: safety
Report from The Times, Nov 22, 1995
LEAH BETTS DIED OF DRINKING WATER TO COUNTER DRUG'S EFFECT
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Correspondent
Leah Betts, the teenager who collapsed after taking an Ecstasy tablet, died as a
result of drinking too much water, which made her brain swell.
Doctors who treated her at Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, Essex, where she was
taken after lapsing into a coma at home during her 18th birthday party, will
tell the coroner that "water intoxication", and not an allergic
reaction to the drug, was the cause of death. The inquest into her death is to
open in Chelmsford today but is expected to be adjourned. The coroner will
receive a post-mortem report by the Home Office pathologist Dr Paula Lammis.
Water intoxication occurs when a person drinks so much water - a minimum of
three litres - that the blood becomes diluted. Laboratory results show that on
admission to hospital hours after taking the 10 pounds tablet, Leah's plasma
sodium level - a measure of how dilute her blood had become - had fallen to 126
millimoles per litre compared with a normal range of 134 to 145.
As a result, water was sucked into her brain cells under osmotic pressure,
causing them to swell. This increased pressure on the brain stem, resulting in
coma and death.
Overheating and dehydration are known risks of taking Ecstasy, a stimulant which
can keep young people dancing for hours, and drug agencies advise users to drink
plenty of water and take frequent rests.
Although she had not been dancing energetically for hours, it is understood that
when Leah began to feel unwell at the party she made repeated trips to the
bathroom to drink water. She believed mistakenly that this was the way to ward
off the ill-effects of the drug.
Leah's case attracted national attention after her parents tried to alert young
people to the dangers of drug-taking, releasing a photograph of her in intensive
care. At Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday, John Major expressed sympathy
for the girl's parents.
Experts said yesterday that a single pill of the drug could not have poisoned
her and was highly unlikely to have caused an allergic reaction. Analysis of
blood samples has also shown that the pill was not contaminated, as earlier
speculation had suggested. Friends who took the same pills were unaffected.
Dr John Henry, director of the National Poisons Unit at Guy's Hospital, said
"I am not aware of anyone who has died as a result of an acute allergic
reaction to Ecstasy. Her low plasma sodium level makes her death much more
explicable. She drank a lot of water but with a lack of understanding of why she
needed to drink water. Water is not an antidote to Ecstasy, it is an antidote to
dancing."
Dr Henry said Ecstasy led to compulsive behaviour as well as blocking the body's
normal signals indicating thirst or tiredness. "There have been cases of
teenagers drinking too much water before," he said.
Dr Peter Berridge, a consultant anaesthetist at the Royal Oldham Hospital who
has treated Ecstasy users, said powerful stimulants such as Ecstasy triggered
release of ADH, a hormone that slows the action of the kidneys, even when excess
water is in the body. "Water intoxication can occur after drinking as
little as three litres. Under these circumstances, it causes headache, nausea
and vomiting," he said.
"Leah Betts died after just one [Ecstasy] tablet - she drank too much water
whilst the drug stopped her body disposing of it. It may be she set out not to
disgrace her parents. When she started to feel ill she thought: what could she
do, and she started to drink water."
Dr Berridge said the advice from drug agencies to young people to drink plain
water could have fatal consequences, as in Leah's case. They should drink water
or soft drinks with salt added at the rate of two teaspoons per litre or
isotonic sports drinks. If taken in excessive amounts these could lead to
swelling in the body tissues but would not cause swelling of the brain because
the would maintain plasma sodium levels.
"Young people going to raves should take a two-litre bottle of pop with
four teaspoons of salt added. It can be water or pop, flat or fizzy, anything
they like. It doesn't taste too salty.
"It is not realistic to rely on young people saying 'No' to drugs. There is
no way we are going to stop them using drugs. We have to limit the harm drugs
can do."
This article © The Times, 1995.
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