THE MORE THINGS CHANGE DEPT. ECSTATIC DANCING, WITH ECSTASY

The Greeks created a simple word, ecstasis, to convey the feeling of
displacement or bewilderment. The word literally meant to be taken out of
place, to be beside oneself.

Gradually, though, the word assumed a broader meaning.

In the late Greek, it came to be defined as an exit of the soul from the
body and an entrance, at times, into a prophetic state. Being "beside
oneself" was readily translated into a belief that the transported soul had
not voluntarily shifted but that some outside force had initiated the move,
and to achieve this, the soul had necessarily been "possessed." Thus, a
rapturous state might on the one hand be a divinely inspired religious
experience. But it could also be a demonic phenomenon with the soul
manipulated and possessed by Satan.

Medical writers of the Hellenic period applied the word ecstasy more
narrowly to altered states of consciousness; and sometimes it defined
individuals with acute dementia, implying that their souls had been driven
out of their minds.

Physicians of the early medieval period used ecstasy as a synonym for
swooning, fainting or states of hallucinatory trance in otherwise conscious
persons.

Shakespeare sometimes used the word to suggest the state of morbid anxiety.

Macbeth, for example, declares that his "restless ecstasy" is created by
"the affliction of these terrible dreams." Others, such as John Milton,
believed that only in a state of heightened ecstasy might the window to
future happenings become accessible.

More recent writers, such as Emerson, perceived ecstasy to be a state of
exalted rapture with rational thought necessarily excluded. Physicians,
though, tended to use the word in a less florid manner. Austin Flint,
author of one of the leading 19th Century texts in internal medicine,
defined ecstasy as akin to a fixation.

He stated that it was a mental condition in which the mind is "absorbed in
a dominant idea, and becomes insensible to surrounding objects."

Over the millennia, the word ecstasy has therefore served many purposes,
beginning with the simple sense of displacement, of being beside oneself,
and then as a diminished state of consciousness, a swooning. And when in a
religious context, the swooning had evolved into a sublime state in which
the mind is transported to wondrous realms. And during these brief
epiphanies, when the rules of logic are temporarily suspended, the future
might become intermingled with the present and thus be revealed.

In current writings, the word ecstasy is used to define feelings of intense
rapture or transported frenzy inspired more often than not by sensual
rather than spiritual experiences. When a perfume company recently named
its product Ecstasy, it certainly had not been motivated by religious impulses.

In 1912, a drug with the imposing name of 3,4-
methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) had been tested as an appetite
suppressant. Some of its unintended clinical consequences included altered
states of consciousness producing what one observer called a capacity to
touch the inner soul. In recent decades, the drug has experienced a
resurgence of illicit use as a mind-altering, spiritually enlightening
hallucinogen now called Ecstasy. In 1985, the Food and Drug Administration
classified Ecstasy as a Schedule I drug, thus making its sale illegal.

By 1995, the drug had found a major underground market with teenagers who
used it as a recreational agent to heighten their feelings, particularly
during extended dance parties called raves.

Ecstasy, or MDMA, functions as a psychomotor stimulant, its pharmacologic
effects akin to amphetamine (to which it is structurally related), but it
also produces certain psychodelic responses, much like mescaline.

The drug can be taken by mouth, smoked or by parenteral injection.

It causes an illusion of limitless energy and intensified perceptions, even
hallucinations. Heart rate and blood pressure are elevated, muscle tone is
increased, mood is decidely euphoric, pains are suppressed and appetite
vanishes; the body temperature is regularly elevated, at times to dangerous
levels.

Many of the deaths attributable to Ecstasy are caused by this hyperthermia
and accompanying dehydration. Toxic reactions are not rare, and emergency
rooms have come to recognize and, on Saturday nights, even anticipate such
bad reactions.

Newspapers have declared that these so-called rave episodes of frenetic
dancing are utterly new and frightening phenomena.

What makes them distinguishable from the usual Saturday night fraternity
dances, say recent reports, is, first, the duration of the dancing, going
on for 12 or more hours, and second, the frenetic, agitated nature of the
dancing, often in intentionally overheated, badly ventilated rooms. But
history has previously recorded such bizarre happenings in the apparent
absence of facilitating drugs.

During the scorching heat of Italian summers, 17th Century residents of the
southern port of Taranto were, in the words of a visiting physician,
"subject to ardent fevers, frenzies, pleurisies, madness and other
inflammatory diseases." And during such intervals, they rushed madly into
the streets, where they began a frenzied dancing. This manic dancing went
on for many hours, sometimes days, without respite. Some declared that the
dancers had been bitten by a local spider called the tarantula, and the
crazed, repetitive music that accompanied their dancing was hence called
the tarantella.

And there were even earlier instances of dancing mania.

The German city of Aachen, in the year 1374, witnessed a strange and
perplexing event. Large numbers of its citizens abandoned whatever they had
been doing to join in spontaneous street dances of increasing intensity,
finally reaching a frenzied delerium.

This dancing mania was first documented on St. John's day and hence was
called St. Johannes's chorea. Because so many of its victims sought relief
at the shrine of St. Vitus, it was also called St. Vitus's dance.

If this had remained a local event, it would have then been ascribed to the
morbid behavior of those surviving the Black Death plague that had ravaged
Europe in the preceding decades.

But for a while, the dancing mania then spread through much of Western
Europe, and to this day its cause remains a mystery.

It seems then that ecstatic dancing, with or without psychedelic agents
such as Ecstasy, has been a continuing human predicament or a necessary
emotional outlet -- for ages.