COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY- PART TWO OF THREE

For five or so years, Ecstasy went more or less completely
underground, and in some places outright vanished. Not just in Austin,
but all across the country; from San Francisco, where it had gained a
sizable toehold amidst the city's multigendered club scene, to New
York and Boston, two other popular early-Eighties Ecstasy
strongholds.

Madchester Rave On

There's no sobriety so great that a little druggy ingenuity can't overcome
it, so during America's fallow Ecstasy years, the drug reappeared with a
vengeance in England. Not that 1985-1990 were completely E-starved stateside,
not by a long shot. Tablets and capsules continued to appear in the larger
urban areas, including Austin, but the quality was rarely up to snuff.
Besides, that old devil cocaine had made a startling comeback as the
Eighties' drug du jour.
In 1988, England's so-called Summer of Love took flight, fueled in equal
parts by the driving beats of acid house music and Ecstasy, dubbed "E" by the
Brits. The emerging overseas rave community, weaned on the Detroit techno
music of Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, and Juan Atkins, exploded with a shot
heard 'round the world -- or at least in Europe -- ushering in a golden age
of techno, house, acid, and their 1,001 permutations.

Record labels such as Alan McGee's legendary (and recently curtailed)
Creation sprang up overnight to fuse the more traditional sounds of
Northern Soul, bastardized Merseybeat, and psychedelia with the
outright beat-barrage of electronic and DJ-inspired musical styles.
The bands Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine released two of the
most important recordings of the past 20 years, Screamadelica and
Loveless; both these and countless others made epic use of Ecstasy not
only during the recording sessions (rumor has it), but also on a daily
basis.

England's precociously asinine Top of the Pops was, for a time, rife
with Ecstasy-inspired outfits such as the Shamen, whose jaunty
"Ebeneezer Goode" was a cheekily obvious nod to the drug. Even
international supergroups like New Order scored bonus points for their
massive -- and massively publicized -- Ecstasy intake, as well as
sneaking the line "E's for England" into their 1990 Royal-sanctioned
World Cup anthem "World in Motion."

Kerry Jaggers cheerily claims full responsibility for that notoriously
hedonistic band's longtime love affair with E. Back in the early
Eighties, he hooked up New Order with their very first hits hours
before their Club Foot show. Nearly a decade later, when they returned
during a 1990 world tour, the band took a week off to soak in Austin's
Ecstasy scene and relax on Lake Travis.

"They were walking around with sandwich bags full of cocaine and
Ecstasy literally strapped onto their belts," recalls a mischievous
Jaggers. "This is how we affected the English scene."

At one point in the early Nineties, the story goes, the British pub
community circulated a sort of in-house pamphlet outlining methods pub
owners could combat the increasing use of the drug by young people. So
many Brits had taken to using the drug on the weekends that no one was
going round to the pubs anymore, resulting in revenue losses unseen
since WWII.

At the tail end of the Eighties, an Ecstasy hub of sorts arose in the
Midlands city of Manchester, England, which in turn spawned the wildly
popular "Madchester" scene, home to Shaun Ryder's pharmacologically
oriented baggy-rockers the Happy Mondays (and later Black Grape), the
Stone Roses, the Charlatans, the Farm, and the Inspiral Carpets. While
Manchester had previously given the world Joy Division, the Smiths,
and the Fall, absolutely nothing on the scale of these grinny,
luvved-up, Fred Perry-wearing HappyTown Hooligans had ever been seen
before.

Ecstasy ruled the roost then, and continues to this very day: This
past April, the British drug czar noted that Ecstasy remains a
veritable staple of nightlife across the entire United Kingdom, with
an estimated 500,000 tablets and capsules changing hands every weekend.

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

As the American rave scene took off in the early Nineties, youngish kids and
the earlier, somewhat older generation of promoters, DJs, and clubgoers
naturally gravitated back toward a drug that was still considered underground
enough to be cutting-edge, and cool enough to be utterly without peer when it
came to dancing all night beneath a storm of argon lasers amidst hundreds of
like-minded individuals.
Attracted by the frenetic energy of the rave community, more and more kids
began crossing that Fender Strat off their Yuletide wish lists and hurriedly
scribbling in their urgent need for a pair of Technics 1200s turntables and a
Roland 303. Grunge came and went, and the vacuum left by its ignominious
passing was quickly filled to bursting with newcomers to the new Texas -- and
American -- rave scene.

At 25, Levon Louis is a working model of what many kids in the Texas
rave community are aiming for. Currently, he runs Space City Records
(www.spacecityrecords.com), organizes some of Houston's most slamming
raves (the last one, April 29th's Mystic Rhythms, played host to
Philly's Dieselboy and Brit DJ Spike E, one of the UK's earliest
proponents of rave and E culture), and along with Russian DJ Mir and
Austin's JT, acts as one-third of the techno band LunaTex.

In July 1984, at the tender age of 10, Louis appeared in a Newsweek
article on break dancing, bustin' moves with his pint-sized breaking
crew. At 16, he began DJing around Houston, spinning at private
parties, and working in and around a club scene he wasn't even old
enough to legally be involved in. A couple of years later, Louis
headed out to Nacogdoches' Stephen F. Austin State University, where
he majored in electronic music and began throwing warehouse parties in
the rehearsal hall of his reggae band Zion Lion. After college, Louis
moved to Dallas and says he immediately fell in love with that city's
exploding rave community, working alongside the infamous Haysee Daze
crew in Deep Ellum. In 1996, he returned to Houston, formed LunaTex,
and began working seriously on getting the music to the masses while
throwing major multimedia raves to help defray the cost of getting his
own tracks out there.

"The first time I ever took Ecstasy was in 1993," he recalls. "I was
given some by a friend at the first big rave I attended -- and by big
I mean over 1,000 people -- in Dallas. I was frankly blown away by the
effects, and though I've done it a couple of times since, I personally
haven't taken any Ecstasy in several years.

"My focus has been on my music and in supporting the scene, finding
and cultivating new artists. I haven't found myself needing that same
feeling from that same pill, either, because whenever I'm in that rave
environment, it all comes back. When you experience a thing like
Ecstasy even once, you really don't need a drug to keep it going."

As one of Central Texas' top rave promoters, Louis has found himself
in the thick of the emerging, mainstream-media-driven anti-rave
climate, watching how Ecstasy -- for better or worse -- is impacting
the scene, and what, if any, drawbacks there might be. Drug hysteria
is fine and good for Dateline NBC and 60 Minutes II sweeps-week
ratings-grabbers, but Louis says the reality of Texas' Ecstasy scene
is a different matter entirely.

"The only damage I've seen is from people buying bad pills on the
street," he says. "I see these kids walking around buying whatever
they can get their hands on without knowing where it's coming from or
who's selling it, and they're getting pills cut with crystal
methamphetamine, ketamine, GHB, strychnine, cocaine -- whatever the
supplier happens to have lying around. It's these impurities that get
people into trouble and make people ill."

As for Ecstasy use outside the rave scene, Louis is convinced that
said dance culture makes up only a fraction of the whole, a notion
echoed many times not only by those interviewed for this story, but
also by members of the APD, DEA, and National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA). Contrary to 60 Minutes II's recent interview with Detective
Mike Stevens of the Orlando, Fla., Police Department, the warnings
directed at parents about "rave drug paraphernalia" such as glow
sticks, Vick's Vap-o-Rub, and painter's masks are as specious as
saying someone with a pack of matches is an arsonist.

"You've got to understand that this drug isn't just being used by
people at raves," says Louis. "From the professionals that I've been
working with in my dealings with the record labels and from doing
major events where I needed to procure funds from investors, many
lawyers, investment brokers, high-level professionals, city officials,
and just everybody I talk to outside of the rave community seems to
have an understood appreciation of ecstacy.

"If they don't currently do it themselves, they have in the past, or
if they do it themselves, then they just don't advertise the fact to
their co-workers. But they all do it and they all know they do it.
It's almost as though a lot of the urban professionals that I meet and
deal with lead somewhat of a double life from the office to the
weekend. And if that's what needs to happen, then so be it."

Nonstop Ecstatic Dancing

It's 2am on a recent Friday night. Do you know where the kids are? If not,
follow the gargantuan beats haranguing the walls of the Austin Music Hall and
you'll likely find them inside, dancing beneath a blanket of sternum-rattling
bass or lounging outside on the Hall's open-air front deck, vacuum-packed in
fresh teenage sweat like brightly hued sardines, dropping science,
cigarettes, and the occasional tab of Ecstasy.
This, of course, is the new, improved millennial version of that popular
teenage rite of passage that dates back as far as youth itself: getting
fucked up and staying out all night. The only legitimately new spin on
display, arguably, is the addition of the empathogenic Ecstasy; as far as
youth movements go, even that has its older, trippier brethren in the
psychedelic heyday of the late Sixties.

The parallels between the new century's rave culture and the original
Woodstock generation are obvious. Both groups positioned themselves
around a type of music that parents just don't understand. But when
did they ever?

While the drug of choice has mutated from LSD to Ecstasy, the
similarities between the two pharmaceuticals and their resulting
subcultures are inescapable: both tend to bond people together (hence
the term empath-ogen), and Ecstasy, while nowhere near the
brain-baking power of LSD in terms of its propensity for
hallucinations, does indeed have a minor reality-altering quality
running alongside its methamphetamine high.

The music, the drugs, the clothes, the attitudes, the emphasis on
cutting-edge technology and knotty doublespeak: It's as if the hippie
guide book had been rewritten by William Gibson, tweaked by Bruce
Sterling, and sent out as some crypto-funloving cyber-virus to kids
hither and yon -- ILoveYou redux.

Inside the Music Hall, toward the front, a metal crash barrier is set
up to hold back the throng. Behind it, slouching erect, is a
presumably internationally famous DJ from New York/ San
Francisco/London/somewhere doing what he does best, beatmatching two
different 12-inch vinyl records, mixing them together, and winning
hearts and minds at a furious pace that would make William MacNamara
proud as punch.

Clustered around the artist at work, heads bobbing relentlessly, feet
shuffling, all rapt gazes and fluttery hands, this vanguard of the new
school is a sight to behold with its glowing tubes zipping all over
the place and pouty empathogen grins. It's called liquid dancing, and
the title is apt: Light sticks perched atop their fingers, the rave
kids describe trippy little patterns in the air. It's hard not to find
oneself unconsciously mimicking their movements, and realizing that
the drugs aren't the only potential addictant around.

Walking the perimeter of the 1,200-plus attendees, awash in sound and
light, is revelatory. As suspected, the median age tonight appears to
be skewed toward the mid-teens. Only a dull smattering of hoary old
twentysomethings have managed to elude their beds and make it out this
evening, and they're bellied up to the bar in back, necking down $3.50
Shiner Bocks like it's a smart bar and they're moments away from going
mano a mano with Regis.

Making his way through the crowd, an off-duty policeman works
security. He doesn't appear particularly fazed by the excess of his
current beat, nor does he seem to be very threatening to the ravers
around him. He's in good-guy mode, and the kids barely register his
presence as he slips past them and moves on through the throng.

Huddled in dark little camps abutting the throng is a flotilla of
chill-outs: Kids all danced out line the walls, chatting, impossibly,
amidst the sonic overload. Clearly, the lost art of lip reading is
making a comeback. Cuddle-puddles dot the periphery. Ecstasy
stimulates the tactile senses to the point where the whole concept of
a back rub verges on the orgasmic. If kids have been told to just say
no to sex, they've apparently got no qualms about just saying "hell
yeah!" to their own private version of the next best thing: a tab of X
and half-dozen like-minded peers massaging each other's backs and
shoulders in what looks to be a supremely pleasurable, slackerized
conga line.

Smiles abound, and not just on the blissed-out high-wire acts. As with
any massive party, there's a palpable energy that comes from just
being young and in the thick of the action. The trance occasionally
swells into a juddering, stacatto break, and 1,000 hands stretch
skyward en masse, glowsticks dotting the semi-darkness like Zippos at
mom and dad's Seventies rock show.

The only difference is there are no beefy biker security guards to
rough anybody up. Indeed, there's no apparent trouble of any sort, no
evidence of alcohol-or drug-related mishaps anywhere. And with 1,200
or so kids in a loud, enclosed venue on a weekend night, that's pretty
remarkable. Later, Levon Louis offers his take on the whole phenomenon.

"Raves are a very important part of what's happening in our society,"
he says. "Society as a whole is racing toward the future in areas of
commerce and technology and the rave is a reflection in the arts of
what's happening elsewhere. These multimedia displays of light, color,
and sound are a clear reflection of the times we live in.

"I also think it's very important for the city and the state to
recognize the importance of having a safe place for these young people
to congregate peacefully and enjoy whatever forms of entertainment
they might be enjoying, so long as they're not hurting anybody. There
are almost never instances of violence at raves.

"I've worked at or attended over 300 raves in my life, and in all that
time, I've seen only one fight, and even that was a case of a girl
defending herself from an ex-boyfriend. These parties are giving kids
who've made the choice -- right or wrong -- to do drugs in a place
that's safe and supervised as opposed to cutting them loose on the
freeways."

Dealing With It

Simon the ex-X-dealer has responded to my online query and is willing to be
interviewed -- over the phone -- regarding his shady past. A face-to-face
interview would of course be preferable, but apparently his current life
outside the realm of illicit pharmaceuticals distribution is going swimmingly
and he'd rather keep a lid on his previous line of work as much as possible.
The 29-year-old Dallas native admits spending "a couple of years" during the
mid-Nineties selling Ecstasy in and around the burgeoning Austin rave scene.
He's quick to point out that he also sold the drug to countless others
("cowboys, frats, you name it"), but his main focus was dealing to his
friends in and around the local electronica scene. Asked to estimate how many
tablets of Ecstasy he sold in his time dealing, he thinks for a long moment
before hesitantly offering a figure in the 30,000-plus ballpark.

The television rule of drug-dealer thumb applies to Simon about as
poorly as a cheap pair of Reebok trainers; for one thing, he's a
well-spoken Aggie graduate who currently works for "a Fortune 500
company which I'm not going to name so please don't ask." Most dealers
of Ecstasy appear to be users as well, and Simon is no exception,
having been given his first hit at a Dallas rave in 1994.

"It made a huge impression on me," he says. "I immediately understood
the aesthetic of what was going on around me. I wasn't much of a
dancing person before, but I felt very comfortable in that rave
environment. I could see that the music was very obviously tailored
toward that state of mind, and any kind of latent homophobia that I
may have had stashed away in my mind, that all sort of evaporated.

Photo by Bruce Dye

"There were all these drag queens there that first time I did Ecstasy
and I just totally understood what they were about. It just created an
amazing empathy in me toward others."

After that first time, Simon sought out the drug, and although the
mid-Nineties were a notoriously dry time for Ecstasy in Texas, he made
a connection and began dealing as a means of income. Regarding the
continuing attraction of the drug in Austin, he notes that since
Ecstasy is a relatively new drug, "you had the feeling that you were
doing something that hadn't been done before.

"With drugs like acid or mushrooms, you're sort of tied to the past by
the sense of history they engender," he explains. "What you were doing
with Ecstasy was being part of the first generation of people to use
this drug, recreationally, in this way. You were on the cusp of all
these technologically amazing visual and musical events, and so you
were literally on the forefront of American popular culture.

"It was a brand-new scene with an accompanying brand-new drug. It was
underground, and it was very much like what the hippies must have felt
in the mid-Sixties with LSD. The cops didn't even know about it yet."

By anyone's standard, dealing illegal drugs is right up there on the
stressful jobs scale, so after a few years, Simon decided to quit
while he was still ahead.

"Eventually, I had too many ethics to continue drug dealing," he says.
"If someone stiffs you, you can't just call the police like you would
in the real world. You have to enforce your own rules, and that can
cause problems.

"But I took a lot of care in the curatory aspects of what I was doing.
I made sure that what I was selling was real. I really tried to make
sure that this stuff ended up in a safe, useful form. I took care to
inform people of guidelines for use, and tried to make sure that the
people I sold to were not getting sloppy with this drug.

"The problem" he adds, "is that there is the potential for abuse with
any drug, and there are real dangers with Ecstasy. It's typically not
the kind of thing you want to do every single weekend. There are those
people that do, of course, but typically that's not the case.

"Dealing Ecstasy, I felt that I was helping people have an experience
that, hopefully, will have an enlightening aspect to it. I can give
some very forthright recommendations about doing this drug. Which is
nice, because so much of the 'War on Drugs' rhetoric is so
transparent. It's such bullshit. And, of course, once the government
gets this reputation of dispersing bullshit to young people, it
becomes very easy to blow off anything 'they' say."

Fool's Gold

Detective Michael Burns is a 15-year veteran of the Austin Police Department,
with 10 years of narcotics work. Deferring to his precarious position as an
undercover officer, we'll dispense with the physical details. Suffice it to
say, he's got a quick smile, a rapid-fire delivery when he speaks, and a
solid family life. A stack of High Times magazines and a poster depicting
various images of LSD blotters vie for space in his small Twin Towers office.
Stern and scowling Joe Friday he's not. Asked how the war on drugs is coming
along, Detective Burns shakes his head. "We're not winning it," he admits.
"We're just taking the top off things."
As far as Austin's Ecstasy situation, Burns says he doesn't think there's a
boom under way, believing instead that much of what passes for MDMA on the
street is actually over-the-counter cold remedy ephedrine, retabbed and
packaged as the real deal. Detective Burns also notes the increasing
popularity of other so-called club drugs such as Ketamine and the notoriously
dangerous animal tranquilizer GHB, which took off in Britain years ago and is
only now making inroads in the States.

Since the question on everybody's lips these days is if Ecstasy is as
outright dangerous as the prime-time news magazines and their
sweeps-week horror stories would suggest, Detective Burns naturally
expects the query. Users say no way, but Burns' answer to the
question, although hardly unequivocal, is notable for its restraint.

"I don't really know of any actual overdoses on Ecstasy where
anybody's ever died from actual Ecstasy," he says. "What they die from
is overheating, exhaustion, and dehydration. (continued in part 3)

Part Three: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n817/a03.html