ON A MEDITERRANEAN ISLE, DRUGS ECLIPSE SUN AND SAND

Every summer, hundreds of thousands of young Europeans flock to Ibiza's
rave parties.

It's 3 a.m. on a Sunday, and the narrow streets of this pretty island are
jammed with 20-somethings throwing fried chicken at one another. Hundreds
of others are jumping up and down to the jackhammer beat of techno music;
others line up to get into clubs. A brunette in a sequined silver halter
top is passing out on the pavement.

Ibiza has become synonymous over the past two decades with the drug-
infested clubbing, or raving, subculture. Every summer, hundreds of
thousands of young men and women from around Europe - Britain in particular
- - come here not to sun themselves, but to escape into drugs, alcohol,
nonstop dancing, and anonymous sex.

Jane Hoadley says she used to do a lot of wild clubbing when raving first
began in the early 1980s. She says she still likes to party, but, as she
considers the scene at Ibiza, where she is vacationing, the single mother
of four acknowledges that ideas of "fun" have gotten out of hand.

"We wished we could feel good 24 hours a day. But we should have been
careful what we wished for," she says. "There is a difference, a boundary,
between fantasy and reality.

"This new generation does not like being unhappy. They refuse to sit with
thoughts and feelings, and instead go for a quick fix," she says. "And when
it's all over, they are walking around so incapable of dealing with
problems that they can't even tie their own shoelaces."

The pace here is swift, the young people good-looking, and the beat of the
music infectious - but underlying it all is a faint sense of desperation.

Like raving tours on other islands, such as Ayia Napa in Cyprus or Faliraki
in Rhodes, the Ibiza package usually involves a cheap charter, a crowded
hotel room, and a troupe of fawning, loud 'club reps' who bundle visitors
into minivans, escort them to parties, and - unofficially - tell the new
arrivals where to buy drugs.

Ecstasy and cocaine are the drugs of choice here. "I bring a few hundred
pills in from home," confides Ralph, a courier-service dispatcher from
Nottingham, England, who flew over the European continent hiding a stash of
Ecstasy on his person. He says that last year in Ibiza he fell over on the
pavement on his first night out and broke seven toes. "I messed up then ...
so this year I have to make up for it and party harder," he concludes.

The largest clubs hold thousands, and at 8 a.m., when the last of them
finally shuts its doors, clubbers, kept awake by the drugs, move on to
"afterparties" at smaller venues until the late afternoon, then maybe take
a fitful nap somewhere, and start the cycle all over again.

A survey carried out at the Ibiza airport last summer by John Moores
University in Liverpool, England, found that over 50 percent of clubbers
admitted to taking at least one Ecstasy pill during their one-week stay on
the island. Almost 31 percent of those surveyed said they had used more
than one type of drug, and 90 percent said they had drunk alcohol on five
or more nights of their stay.

The research further found that 54 percent of the sample had had sex while
on vacation and more than a quarter did not use a condom - although 23
percent had had sex with more than one partner. This year, say clubbers,
there has been an increase in the use of Rohypnol, the "date-rape drug"
which makes unsuspecting takers suddenly feel drowsy and fall asleep for a
short period of time.

Like other Spaniards here, Pablo Vicente, a local resident, resents the
clubbers, but benefits from the tourism money they bring in. "We complain,
but we need them," he sighs.

Lisa, a cable-TV saleswoman from Manchester, England, leans on a club
stairwell watching some 2,000 dancers hop up and down. She says she
recently divorced her husband, who cheated on her and beat her. "Yeah, I
have had rough times," she says. "And that's why I want to cheer myself up
here."