BITTER PILL

It Seemed Like The Perfect Drug: Cheap, Non-Addictive And Lots Of Fun. But
Evidence Is Mounting That Ecstasy Can Cause Permanent Brain Damage. Sarah
Boseley Asks If E Is Stunting The Minds Of A Generation

There was a time, while the dance music was pumping and before free raves
were closed down, when it seemed as though one young generation had finally
found the perfect pill. It got them high, it was cheap, it did not send them
to hell and back on bad trips, and it was not addictive. They had found
Ecstasy. Hundreds of thousands of kids were dropping Es, dancing all night
without so much as a mouthful of expensive alcohol, and heading for school
or work on Monday morning pretty much intact.

They still are. Ecstasy is the way of the weekend for large numbers of young
people. The latest figures show that 12% of 16- to 24-year-olds have taken
it at some time. Only 2% admit to regular use, but not everybody is going to
confess to the British crime survey; there's no doubt the real figures are
higher. Look at the temptation: a pill that will give you euphoria and
energy all night long for less than a tenner.

But it is starting to look as though it's all going sour. First there was
the death of Leah Betts, after she swallowed a single Ecstasy tablet at her
18th birthday party in 1995. Now one study after another is suggesting that
the drug can give you brain damage. No, it isn't likely to leave you a
vegetable in the near future, but evidence seems to be accumulating steadily
that it is doing something to your brain, and it may be irreversible. The
research is still in its early stages, there's still time for most of it to
be overturned, but it's all pointing the same way.

The latest study is a pilot, involving 30 people aged 18-25 who took
psychological tests to establish whether Ecstasy had affected their working
memory - the part that enables us to carry out everyday tasks such as
cooking a meal. It also tested their ability to take in and use information.
The scientists, from Edge Hill College of Higher Education in Ormskirk,
Lancashire, found that Ecstasy users performed significantly worse than the
others.

"We don't want to start any scares or panics," says Dr Philip Murphy, one of
the authors of the study published in the British Journal of Psychology.
"It's a pilot study with a relatively small sample. We have to balance that
with our responsibility as scientists to point out potential dangers that we
discover. The problems that we found in working memory emerged when people
worked under pressure and, most notably, under time pressure. For normal
working circumstances there was no problem."

So could Ecstasy cause problems for people in high-pressure jobs late in
their lives? "That is perfectly conceivable," he says.

Last December came the really scary news, published in the British medical
journal the Lancet, that a group of scientists in the United States had
scanned human brains and found damage to serotonin neurons, caused, they
believe, by Ecstasy. Serotonin is the chemical in the brain partly
responsible for mood changes; neuroscientists are beginning to believe that
people who drop Es may be at greater risk of mood and sleep disturbance,
aggressive tendencies and anxiety.

All drugs cause mood swings. If you go high, you must come down low. But the
most alarming part of the research is the suggestion that some of the
changes caused in the brain could be permanent. Professor Una McCann of the
US National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, described a
series of experiments on monkeys carried out in laboratories around the
world. Each was given a four-day course of Ecstasy. Every single animal was
showing signs of brain damage seven years later.

These are early days. Monkeys are not humans. Much more research needs to be
done. The scientists cannot be sure how much Ecstasy their human volunteers
have taken and what other drugs they may have mixed it with. So it is too
soon to say whether Britain is heading for a nation of the neurologically
impaired.

Some people think there is a danger of making the wrong risk assessment.
Children are already getting it wrong because of the spin that has been put
on information about Ecstasy, say some campaigners. After the huge publicity
given to the death of Leah Betts, and the campaign against the drug launched
by her father, research showed that schoolchildren thought Ecstasy was more
dangerous than cocaine and heroin. Yet among healthy young people there have
been only about 80 deaths while taking Ecstasy, and nearly all collapsed
with severe heatstroke at raves.

"A lot depends on what sort of criteria you are using to measure risk," says
Harry Shapiro of the drugs information charity Drugscope. "If you are
talking about addiction, drugs like heroin, cocaine, tobacco and alcohol are
going to come fairly high up the list, but you don't drop dead from smoking
a packet of cigarettes. There have been a number of people who have died
after taking one pill. It's the same as with glue-sniffing. It could be the
first time."

E users may be moved by the threat of brain damage. But young people's risk
perception is different from that of older people. "Everyone thinks they are
immortal," says Shapiro. Faced with the possibility of something happening
to them 20 to 30 years down the line, they may decide, as they often do with
cigarettes, to say: "I'm not going to bother with that."

John, a graphic designer, has no intention of worrying about scare stories,
and he is a relatively long-term user of the drug.

"You feel absolutely brilliant," he says. "That first rush is fantastic.
Plus it's incredibly social and it's good to dance to - all the stuff you
normally hear about it. I am 31 now and I started taking E when I was 21,
though only using it heavily - around once a week - for about a year of
that. The rest of the time might be once a month or so. But when I say using
it, that would be two pills, or occasionally three.

"I've never had any negative side effects or negative experiences, and I
have never seen anyone have a negative experience. I have got a bit bored of
the dance scene, so now when I take it would be round with some friends. But
I have good friends who still use it regularly at raves.

"I have never been one for the scare stories. I do think there should be
more testing on it, but it wouldn't put me off taking it."

Others worry more. "When I was at university I used to take Ecstasy quite a
lot," says Anna, 25. "I was really into the club scene and I knew lots of
people who went mad on it. I did really enjoy it and then I managed to stop
in the last year. I do feel now that it's made me a bit paranoid and
panicky. It's hard to tell, but discussing it with my friends who have been
through similar times, they feel the same way as well.

"One of my friends definitely thinks that it's made her have panic attacks,
and is convinced that it has had a really bad effect on her. I think it does
affect your memory. I don't know whether it's a paranoia of mine that I have
a bad memory, but I do feel it's slowed me down in that way."

While everybody agrees Ecstasy is not physically addictive, Dr Murphy is one
of those who think it may cause psychological dependence, in that anything
that makes you feel good has you wanting it again and again. Scott, a
23-year-old student, says the highs are so good that the lows, to him, feel
really bad.

"I haven't taken any for a year or so. I must have taken E for the first
time when I was 17. All my mates were doing it. It was amazing - a real rush
like nothing I had ever done before. I had done acid and smoke [cannabis],
but it was like nothing else, a total euphoric feeling. "I have taken it a
few times, about a year ago, but now I don't want to get that spaced out,
because the come-downs are a nightmare.

"The come-downs get worse over time. It's like drinking: as you get older,
the hangovers get worse. I think your body gets a bit weak. The next day you
are feeling completely washed out. The highs are really happy and loved up
and everything's great, and the lows are the complete opposite of that.

"I hope I haven't suffered any long-term effects, but I imagine that heavy
use would affect you. It's mental damage, isn't it?"

Ecstasy - formally known as MDMA - was first synthesised in 1912. It is part
of a group of drugs known as MDA, some of which (including MDMA) are derived
from the oils of natural products such as nutmeg and sassafras. From an
early stage Ecstasy was considered benign. It was used by marital therapists
in the US because it defused the hostility of angry couples, allowing them
to talk civilly to each other. It has only been available in Britain since
the mid-80s, produced in underground labs there, in the Netherlands and in
Belgium.

Last March the Police Foundation made a pragmatic risk assessment, saying
that Ecstasy should not be bracketed with heroin and cocaine, which kill,
and destroy lives. "Although deaths from Ecstasy are highly publicised, it
probably kills fewer than 10 people each year, which, though deeply
distressing for the surviving relatives and friends, is a small percentage
of the many thousands of people who use it each week," said the Police
Foundation report. Nor is it clear what killed those victims. Was it E and
the cocktail of drugs in a pill, or hyperthermia, dehydration, or excessive
rehydration because of acute thirst (the verdict at the inquest into Leah
Betts's death)?

The Police Foundation recommended that Ecstasy be changed from a class A
drug to class B, not least so that those who drop Es will not be emboldened
to try heroin, which is in the same class. It got short shrift from the Home
Secretary, Jack Straw, who rejected the idea on the grounds that it would
suggest the Government was going soft on drugs.

If there is such a thing as a fashion in drugs, E may be on the way out.
Harsh publicity about its dangers may well persuade some young people not to
take it. The trouble is, they may look elsewhere for a high. And there are
some drugs that do not go out of fashion, because those who use them become
terminally addicted to them.