HIGH, AND LOW, ON ECSTASY

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon as the three 19-year-old boys sit around a
table and discuss the usual teen-age topics.

Mike complains about his job. Luke brings up the pretty girl in the pink
bathing suit they saw at the beach. Brian mentions how they should see the
"X-Men" movie again.

Soon, their nervous laughs die away and they grow quiet as they contemplate
what they have gathered to do. They look at the three white Ecstasy tablets
nestled in a plastic baggy on the table.

Demand for the drug is high, both locally and nationally. An estimated 2
million tablets are imported into the country each week, according to Drug
Enforcement Administration scientist David Gauvin, who spoke about the drug
at a recent conference in Massachusetts.

The so-called "love drug" creates a powerful sense of euphoria, but
according to some reports it can also kill, causing brain damage, liver and
kidney failure, internal bleeding and body temperatures so high that
muscles literally dissolve.

History

Ecstasy, or MDMA, was first patented in 1914 by the German pharmaceutical
company Merck. The synthetic chemical, derived from the oil of the
sassafras tree, was seen as a substance that could lead to a series of new
psycho-therapeutic drugs.

However, no further development occurred until 1965, when Alexander
Shulgin, a 39-year-old former Dow chemist living in Berkeley, Calif.,
synthesized the drug, and he and others began working with the substance.

In 1978, Shulgin published the results of his experiments. MDMA, he
discovered, lifted the spirits of the test subjects and produced an overall
feeling of affection for those around them. The drug also heightened the
receptivity of the senses: touch became soothing and the body's response to
sounds, particularly music, was increased.

It was used for a short time by a small number of psychologists and
psychiatrists with varying degrees of success. However, when news of the
drug hit the streets of America's major cities, there was an immediate
demand, particularly in the dance clubs of New York Manhattan and Texas.

In 1985, MDMA/Ecstasy received massive media attention when a group of
people sued the DEA to try to prevent it from outlawing the drug by
categorizing it as a Schedule 1 drug, along with cocaine and heroin.
Congress had passed a new law allowing the DEA to put an emergency ban on
any drug that it thought might be a danger to the public. On July 1, 1985,
this law was used for the first time to ban MDMA.

A hearing was held to decide what permanent measures should be taken
against the drug. One side argued that MDMA caused brain damage in rats;
the other side claimed this might not be true for humans and that there was
proof of the beneficial use of MDMA as a drug treatment in psychotherapy.
The presiding judge, after weighing the evidence, recommended that MDMA be
placed on Schedule 3, which would have allowed it to be manufactured, used
with a prescription and to be the subject of further research. But the DEA
decided to place MDMA permanently on Schedule 1.

Trial research into the effects of MDMA on human volunteers resumed in
1993, with the approval of the Food and Drug Administration. It was the
first psychoactive drug approved for human testing by the FDA.

Back in the living room

Finally, Mike opens the crumpled bag and peaks inside at the powdery
pearls. Luke asks if anyone's ever seen the drug before. Mike says he has a
few times, on the news. He plucks each pill out slowly — each the size and
shape of a tiny mint — and places one delicately in front of each of his
two friends, and then himself.

They say they've heard it all: The rumors of kids dropping dead from
overdoses, the demonizing media reports warning of permanent brain damage,
threats of pills laced with insecticide, and the glowing praise from users
who describe the drug as a godsendcq that provides hours of inconsequential
bliss.

Over the past few weeks, Luke, Mike and Brian have debated with each other,
with other friends and with themselves whether to experience the drug no
one can stop talking about. With similar reasoning and reservations, they
decided to try Ecstasy.

"I'm not really worried about the health effects and I'm sure most of the
horror stories are exaggerated," says Luke. "The only reason I waited so
long to try Ecstasy was because I was afraid I'd like it too much."

Mike agrees: "Some people hate alcohol, some hate weed, some hate
mushrooms. No one hates E. No one. No one I know who's done it only did it
once. And they all talk about how they want to do it again."

Brian, the third friend, doesn't deliberate. "I don't want to do it as much
as I want to see what everyone is talking about," he says, sniffing his
pill. "I'm more curious than anything."

Reasons for concern

Researchers have determined that Ecstasy users have a reason to be concerned.

The few people who die each year from what is often termed an Ecstasy
"overdose" actually succumb to heat stroke, exhaustion, severe dehydration
or heart and kidney failure caused by the drug.

Using PET (positron emission tomography) to take brain scans, they have
determined that the drug causes significant reductions in the number of
serotonin transporters in the brain.

Serotonin is the chemical the brain produces that regulates mood and
emotions. The substance has also been found to affect learning, sleep,
memory, impulse control and other higher-order cognitive processes. Damage
to serotonin transporters could cause a variety of behavioral and cognitive
problems, including depression, anxiety, memory loss, the ability to reason
verbally and the inability to focus attention.

The first functional consequences of Ecstasy-induced damage for serotonin
transmitters has emerged from studies conducted by the John Hopkins Medical
Institute. The researchers there have determined there is significant
memory impairment among longtime Ecstasy users.

"The message from these studies is that MDMA does change the brain and it
looks like there are functional consequences to these changes," said Dr.
Joseph Frascella of the National Institute of Drug Abuse's Division of
Treatment and Development.

What's worse, the researchers say, is that memory is impaired two weeks
after taking the drug.

This "shows that Ecstasy's effects on memory cannot be attributed to
withdrawal or residual drug effects," said Dr. Karen Bolla of Johns
Hopkins, who was also involved in the joint study with the NIDA.

In a recent study, red squirrel monkeys who were given MDMA for four days
showed damage to serotonin-transmitting neurons six to seven years after
ingestion. This study, along with others performed on animals, suggests
that brain damage in humans resulting from Ecstasy use may last longer than
thought and may even be permanent, researchers now believe.

Staff writer Steve Haberman contributed to this report.