EXPERIENCING A DOUBLE DOSE OF ECSTASY

Early on in MTV's special report, ''True Life: I'm on Ecstasy,'' the
narrator asks whether the red-hot party drug poses the mortal threat to
young users that the government maintains or whether it's the peaceable
panacea that satisfied customers extol?

Whether the subject is red meat, alcohol, marijuana, or ecstasy, that
question is a non-starter, too simplistic for an intelligent answer. And
though it makes for a strong rhetorical flourish, both MTV and sister
Viacom company CBS are shrewd enough to leave it hanging in their
collaborative look at the ecstasy phenomenon. Tomorrow, the network of
Michael Jackson and the network of Edward R. Murrow share resources, a
reporter, and a few story lines in their separate hourlong investigations
into the drug's impact. (CBS's ''48 Hours: Ecstasy'' airs at 8 p.m. on
WBZ-TV, Channel 4, while MTV's ''True Life: I'm on Ecstasy'' airs at 10 p.m.)

Predictably, ''48 Hours'' is more tightly and neatly packaged than ''True
Life,'' with its grittier, documentary feel. But they are markedly similar
in tone and message, eschewing the ''Reefer Madness'' school of laughable
antidrug propaganda for a more nuanced, responsibly alarmist view. (This is
not your father's ''Dragnet'' episode in which crazed LSD users were shown
climbing walls and painting their tongues.)

For some baby boomers, the similarities between ecstasy and LSD may seem
eerie: the communal nature of the drug, the gyrating bodies, the music
(substitute techno for psychedelic), and the fact that both were drugs of
choice for middle- and upper-class white kids. In both cases, eager users
rhapsodized about finding inner beauty while doctors warned of possible
brain damage.

In steering a middle course, CBS and MTV tread lightly on the moralizing.
And for the most part, they spare us emotionally manipulative scenes of
mob-like ecstasy ''raves,'' instead training the plot and camera on
individual users. Still, the message is clearly caveat emptor -
particularly from MTV, which must feel a greater responsibility to sound
warning bells for its young audience.

There are several typically chilling tales of the all-American kid ruined
by ecstasy. On ''48 Hours,'' Katie is an ''athletic overachiever'' who
starts taking the drug at 16, moves on to crack and heroin, eventually
attempts suicide, and is finally turned over to the authorities by her
desperate parents. Today, she is clean, but damaged and reliant on
antidepressants.

On ''True Life,'' Lynn, now 22, is a small-town girl who moves to the big
city, and starts partying furiously. She ends up spending time in a
psychiatric hospital, and in the most gripping scene of the night, looks on
in horror while a doctor clinically compares her brain scan to that of an
elderly woman who's suffered several strokes. Today, she is struggling to
put her life back together.

To counter the impact of those tragedies, MTV brings us Seth, 22, a bright,
engaging, and apparently unimpaired ecstasy user who says the drug helped
him overcome adolescent discomfort about his body and social skills.

But the star of both ''48 Hours'' and ''True Life'' is Sue, a single mother
of three who began taking ecstasy with her fiance, Shane, after his cancer
began to strain their relationship. In a stunning home video, she and Shane
get high right before his death in an effort to create a final moment of
emotional intimacy. Later, trying to deal with the pain of his death, she
takes the drug under the guidance of an unlicensed therapist and seems to
succeed in her quest for some kind of peace of mind.

Both ''48 Hours'' and ''True Life'' seem to want to tell the unsatisfying
truth about most recreational drugs that have stormed the youth culture
since the 1960s. Some people can handle them and some can't. Some sink into
devastating self-destruction and some survive, perhaps even thrive. By
offering a range of cases from Lynn to Sue, MTV and CBS manage to reveal
that muddled reality, even if they can't quite bring themselves to say it.