AGONY OR ECSTASY?

Scientists Can't Agree On Whether The Love Drug Is The Gateway To The
Divine -- Or To Brain Damage

It's been less than an hour and you can already feel it. The corners of
your mouth are starting to lift up, creating a big semicircle, a Cheshire
grin.

The pit of your stomach, normally so weighed-down with stress, is
lightening. You're giddy, like the first time you fell for someone. The
pupils of your eyes are dilating, growing with excitement.

You look around and announce to the world that you're in love -- with
everyone and everything. It's like the best moment in your life. And all
it took was just one pill, one gulp of water and $20.

There's a reason why this dose of happiness, methylenedioxymethamphetamine
(MDMA), is called "ecstasy." It's a swallow of pure bliss -- triangular,
circular or diamond-shaped bliss.

"It's the most amazing feeling in the world," says Sam, a writer. "It just
makes you want to touch everybody and be touched by everybody. When you're
in a club and they're playing good music, it becomes the best music you've
heard in your life."

But for every chemically induced pleasure, it seems, there's a price.
Excessive use of ecstasy has long been suspected of causing neurotoxic
effects -- ie, brain damage. But a new study raises the stakes; it posits
that only a few uses of the drug can cause permanent impairment. And some
researchers see other long-term problems as well -- including, ironically
enough, depression.

MDMA isn't a new drug. It was patented before the first world war by the
Merck drug company and rediscovered in the 60s.

In Canada, ecstasy has been illegal since 1976, and in the United States
since 1985. But the substance is only now moving up North America's
drug-popularity ladder and in consequence is being closely watched.

Steep increase

In Canada, customs officials have seen a steep increase in the number of
doses seized nationwide in the last four years. Seizures have been made in
Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.

So far this year, 231,970 doses have been seized in Canada, compared to
1,221 in 1996.

In the U.S., customs has also seen a surge in the amount being smuggled into
the country.

"This has mainly been used by middle-class college students, but the fact
that this is pouring in here now, primarily from Western Europe and the
Netherlands, (creates) a real worry that we could see street dealing of this
stuff," says Dean Boyd of U.S. Customs.

Most Canadian seizures have also been from the Netherlands, but according to
Toronto police, ecstasy is also being produced in Canada.

"A large quantity of it that's pre-stamped, pre-pilled, is coming out of
Europe," says detective Randy Smith of Toronto's special investigative
services. "We are (also) getting it up from the United States, but we're
manufacturing it here. We have no laws against the precursors, which are
the chemicals used to make these drugs."

Up until last year, however, Smith says Toronto police were focused more on
heroin and crack cocaine.

"There was little focus because there was little knowledge about the
chemical drugs, because it is such a young market," says Smith. "And police
have a hard time infiltrating such a young market."

Boyd says that as the market grows, its distributors are changing as well,
from the dorm dealer to the drug world's more traditional retailers.

You've probably seen the eggs-in-a-frying-pan commercial describing the
harmful effects of drugs. To paint a picture of what your brain looks like
on ecstasy requires a walk through cranial byways and through doctors'
vastly different interpretations of what happens when you take it.

Is E, which is not physically addictive, the harmless "soft drug" users
think it is? Or is it just sneakier than other drugs, inflicting injury
without the telltale warning signs?

Its partisans love it. "I think my life is pretty good and I wouldn't want
to do anything to wreck it," says John. "I would never do cocaine or speed,
because I don't like that loss of control. Ecstasy is a safer escapism, and
you still have your wits about you."

But researchers are increasingly contending that the attitude of users like
John is naive.

"We are very concerned because of its rise in popularity and how people
claim that it doesn't have a big effect," says Alan Leshner of the U.S.
National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Scary development

New research on primates, funded by Leshner's organization and reported in
the June 15 issue of the Journal Of Neuroscience, concludes that the use of
ecstasy just a few times can lead to long-term brain damage in squirrel
monkeys. The report is a scary development for those who have just
flirted -- and are not in a full-blown relationship -- with ecstasy.

"I think the danger is that people are slowly damaging their brains and are
totally unaware of it," says Una McCann, associate professor at the
department of psychiatrics at Johns Hopkins University. "I think the older
they get, the (users) will be much more vulnerable to a variety of problems
such as depression, memory disturbances, anxiety disorders and sleep
difficulties."

MDMA works by increasing the levels of certain of the brain's
neurotransmitters: dopamine, norepinephrine and, particularly, serotonin.
The last of these is important in many functions, including the body's
regulation of mood and its sense of well-being, and E users end up with a
massive amount of it in their brains.

The problem, doctors say, is that MDMA functions almost like a laser-guided
weapon that destroys what it hits -- the nerve terminals, which are the
parts of brain cells that release serotonin.

George Ricaurte of Johns Hopkins University, lead author of the recent
study, concedes that since his study was done not on E-using ravers but on
primates, there is room for uncertainty about its effects on humans. He
says the amount of the drug the researchers gave the monkeys was high.

Twice a day for four days, Ricaurte and his researchers gave squirrel
monkeys either ecstasy or salt water. Two weeks later, they killed part of
the test sample and looked at their brains. McCann explains that for E to
qualify as neurotoxic in their study, there had to be damage remaining after
two weeks. There was.

Six or seven years later, the researchers killed the remaining monkeys and
found that although the serotonin neurons recovered in certain parts of the
brain, there was still damage remaining elsewhere. The areas particularly
affected were the neocortex, which is important for conscious thought, and
the hippocampus, which is critical for long-term memory.

Other scientists disagree. They dispute MDMA's neurotoxicity and find flaws
in the methods of both the animal and human tests.

No way

Regarding the tests on humans, critics say there's no way to tell for sure
that the subjects were using pure MDMA. Ecstasy is often cut with other
drugs.

"From a scientific standpoint, there is no evidence that it causes brain
damage in humans," contends James P. O'Callaghan, head of the molecular
neurotoxicology lab at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
who has studied MDMA's effects on the nervous system.

"Because these drugs act by releasing serotonin, you have to have terminals
there for the drug to act on. By definition, you can't be destroying the
machinery if the drugs continue to work."

Charles S. Grob, professor of psychiatry at UCLA's medical school, also
doubts claims that MDMA is a neurotoxin. After looking at its psychological
and physical effects in 18 volunteers, he found no changes in their memory
and only a few complications with the blood pressure of some who were also
taking other medications.

Grob wants to continue studying the therapeutic effects of MDMA on humans,
but hasn't received U.S. Federal Drug Administration approval to do so.
Because it's such an emotionally intense drug, he says he believes MDMA can
be very effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder and
obsessive-compulsive disorder, and can serve as an emotional aid for
patients with terminal illnesses.

However, even proponents of the therapeutic use of MDMA say recreational use
can be dangerous.

For example, Grob's study was done in a clinical environment, where the
temperature was cool and doctors were monitoring the subjects, who were
lying in bed. The setting was vastly different from raves, where users are
more likely to overheat and not replace their fluids -- leading to a risk of
hyperthermia, which has been responsible for some MDMA-related deaths.

In Toronto, scientists with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
(formerly the Addiction Research Foundation) say there are currently no
Canadian studies being carried out on ecstasy. "All medical and biological
assesssments are taken from U.S. reports," says the centre's Ed Adlaf.

Whatever the merits of the arguments about the dangers of MDMA, all involved
say one of the most perilous aspects of ecstasy is that other drugs are too
often sold under its name.

Bill Hayley from Vancouver sells a kit called E-Z Test that can tell
potential users whether what they've bought is MDMA.

Hayley is also part of a harm-reduction program that sets up booths at
raves, stocked with bottles of water so people don't get dehydrated.
Locally, that's done by the Queen West Health Centre's Toronto Raver
Information Project (TRIP), which provides quick medical knowledge about
what to do when trips go bad.

"We try to make sure that no one gets lost in those big and often crowded
spaces," says coordinator Kim Stanford.

>From Salon, www.salonmagazine.com, with additional reporting by Scott
Anderson

SAFE TRIP

A little dose of information can go a long way toward preventing (or at
least mitigating) bad trips and other party-drug-related pitfalls.

These Web sites are a good place to start for some background on your
favourite chemical toys.

- - http://www.lycaeum.org -- An extremely comprehensive drug archive with
FAQs, articles, chemistry 101 and personal experience info on every drug
imaginable. Looks cool, too. Mmm... pretty colours....

- - http://www.hyperreal.org -- This mega-site is an electronic-music-culture
bible. Click on its "chemistry" section and receive mind-boggling amounts
of information garnered from the rec.drugs and alt.drugs newsgroups on
everything from how-to lessons and the complete lowdown on every drug of
your dream (and some not) to links to political struggles around drug use.

- - http://www.ecstasy.org/ -- This very detailed site on E is heavy on the
scientific technical data (eg, "What happens when you have diabetes and take
E?"), but also includes a large section on relationship issues around E use
(eg, "Did you lose your girlfriend because of E?"). You can also send in
your own questions.

- - http://www.urban75.com -- Not as robust as the others, this UK-based site
nevertheless has some good quick info on various drugs, first aid and safe
use.

- -- LEAH RUMACK