SEX, DRUGS & TECHNO MUSIC

Why The Rap Against Ecstasy Has A Familiar Ring To It

LAST SPRING, THE Chicago City Council decided to "crack down on wild rave
parties that lure youngsters into environments loaded with dangerous club
drugs, underage drinking and sometimes predatory sexual behavior," as the
Chicago Tribune put it. The newspaper described raves as "one-night-only
parties . . .often held in warehouses or secret locations where people pay
to dance, do drugs, play loud music, and engage in random sex acts." Taking
a dim view of such goings-on, the city council passed an ordinance
threatening to jail building owners or managers who allowed raves to be
held on their property.

Mayor Richard Daley took the occasion to "lash out at the people who
produce the huge rogue dance parties where Ecstasy and other designer drugs
are widely used." In Daley's view, rave promoters were deliberately
seducing the innocent. "They are after all of our children," he warned.
"Parents should be outraged by this."

The reaction against raves reflects familiar anxieties about what the kids
are up to, especially when it comes to sex. As the chemical symbol of
raves, MDMA - a.k.a. Ecstasy -- has come to represent sexual abandon and,
partly through association with other "club drugs," sexual assault. These
are not the only fears raised by MDMA. The drug, whose full name is
methylenedioxymethamphetamine, has also been accused ot causing brain
damage and of leading people astray with ersatz feelings of empathy and
euphoria (concerns discussed later in this article). But the sexual angle
is interesting because it has little to do with the drug's actual
properties, a situation for which there is considerable precedent in the
history of reputed aphrodisiacs.

A relative of both amphetamine and mescaline, MDMA is often described as a
stimulant with psychedelic qualities.

But its effects are primarily emotional, without the perceptual changes
caused by LSD. Although MDMA was first synthesized by the German drug
company Merck in 1912, it did not gain a following until the 1970s, when
the psychonautical chemist Alexander Shulgin, a Dow researcher turned
independent consultant, tried some of it at the suggestion of a graduate
student he was helping a friend supervise. "It was not a psychedelic in the
visual or interpretive sense," he later wrote, " but the lightness and
warmth of the psychedelic was present and quite remarkable." MDMA created a
"window," he decided. "It enabled me to see out, and to see my own insides,
without distortions or reservations"

After observing some striking examples of people who claimed to have
overcome serious personal problems (including a severe stutter and
oppressive guilt) with the help Of MDMA, Shulgin introduced the drug to a
psychologist he knew who had already used psychedelics as an aid to
therapy. "Adam," the pseudonym that Shulgin gave him (also a nickname for
the drug), was on the verge of retiring, but was so impressed by MDMA's
effects that he decided to continue working.

He shared his techniques with other psychologists and psychiatrists, and
under his influence thousands of people reportedly used the drug to enhance
communication and self-insight. "It seemed to dissolve fear for a few
hours," says a psychiatrist who tried MDMA in the early '80s. "I thought it
would have been very useful for working with people with trauma disorders."
Shulgin concedes that there was "a hint of snake-oil" in MDMA's reputed
versatility, but he himself considered it "an incredible tool." He quotes
one psychiatrist as saying, "MDMA is penicillin for the soul, and you don't
give up penicillin, once you've seen what it can do." Shulgin did not see
MDMA exclusively as a psychotherapeutic tool. He also referred to it as my
low-calorie martini," a way of loosening up and relating more easily to
others at social gatherings. This aspect of the drug came to the fore in
the '50s, when MDMA became popular among nightclubbers in Texas, where it
was marketed as a party drug under the name Ecstasy. The open recreational
use of Ecstasy at clubs in Dallas and Austin brought down the wrath of the
Drug Enforcement Administration, which decided to put MDMA in the same
legal category as heroin.

Researchers who emphasized the drug's psychotherapeutic potential opposed
the ban." We had no idea psychiatrists were using it," a DEA
pharmacologist told Newsweek in 1985. Nor did they care: Despite an
administrative law judge's recommendation that doctors be allowed to
prescribe the drug, the ban on MDMA took effect the following year.

Thus MDMA followed the same pattern as LSD, Moving from discreet
psychotherapeutic use to the sort of conspicuous consumption that was bound
to provoke a government reaction.

Like LSD, it became illegal because too many people started to enjoy it.
Although the DEA probably would have sought to ban any newly popular
intoxicant, the name change certainly didn't help. In Ecstasy: The MDMA
Story, Bruce Eisner quotes a distributor who claimed to have originated the
name Ecstasy. He said he picked it "because it would sell better than
calling it 'Empathy'. 'Empathy' would be more appropriate, but how many
people know what it means?" In its traditional sense, ecstasy has a
spiritual connotation, but in common usage it simply means intense pleasure
-- often the kind associated with sex. As David Smith, director of the
Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, observed, the name "suggested that it made sex
better." Some marketers have been more explicit: A 1999 article in the
Journal of Toxicology (headlined "SEX On the Streets of Cincinnati")
reported an analysis of "unknown tablets imprinted with 'SEX' " that turned
out to contain MDMA.

Hyperbolic comments by some users have reinforced Ecstasy's sexual
connotations. "One enthusiast described the feeling as a six-hour orgasm!"
exclaimed the author of a 2000 op-ed piece in Malaysia's New Straits Times,
picking up a phrase quoted in Time a couple of months before. A column in
The Toronto Sun, meanwhile, stated matter-of-factly that MDMA "Can even
make you feel like a six-hour orgasm." If simply taking MDMA makes you feel
that way, readers might reasonably conclude, MDMA-enhanced sex must be
indescribably good.

Another reason MDMA came to be associated with sex is its reputation as a
"hug drug" that breaks down emotional barriers and brings out feelings of
affection.

The warmth and candor of people who've taken MDMA may be interpreted as
flirtatiousness. More generally, MDMA is said to remove fear, which is one
reason psychotherapists have found it so useful.

The same effect could also be described as a loss of inhibitions, often a
precursor to sexual liaisons.

Finally, users report enhanced pleasure from physical sensations,
especially the sense of touch. They often trade hugs, caresses, and back rubs.

Yet the consensus among users seems to be that MDMA's effects are more
sensual than sexual.

According to a therapist quoted by Jerome Beck and Marsha Rosenbaum in
their book Pursuit of ecstasy, "MDMA and sex do not go very well together.

For most people, MDMA turns off the ability to function as a lover, to put
it indelicately. It's called the love drug because it opens up the capacity
to feel loving and affectionate and trusting." At the same time, however,
it makes the "focusing of the body and the psychic energy necessary to
achieve orgasm ... very difficult. And most men find it impossible .... So
it is a love drug but not a sex drug for most people."

Under marijuana's influence, according to a widely cited 1932 report in The
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, "sexual desires are stimulated and
may lead to unnatural acts, such as indecent exposure and rape." The
authors quoted an informant who "reported several instances of which he
claimed to have positive knowledge, where boys had induced girls to use the
weed for the purpose of seducing them." The federal Bureau of Narcotics,
which collected anecdotes about marijuana's baneful effects to support a
national ban on the drug, cited "colored students at the Univ. of Minn.
partying with female students (white) smoking [marijuana] and getting their
sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result pregnancy." The bureau
also described a case in which "two Negroes took a girl fourteen years old
and kept her for two days in a hut under the influence of marijuana.

Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis."

Drug-related horror stories nowadays are rarely so explicitly racist.

A notable and surprising exception appears in the 2000 film Traffic, which
is critical of the war on drugs but nevertheless represents the utter
degradation of an upper-middle-class white teenager who gets hooked on
crack by showing her having sex with a black man. Whether related to race
or not, parental anxieties about sexual activity among teenagers have not
gone away, and drugs are a convenient scapegoat when kids seem to be
growing up too fast.

The link between drugs and sex was reinforced by the free-love ethos of the
'60s counterculture that embraced marijuana and LSD. In the public mind,
pot smoking, acid dropping, and promiscuous sex were all part of the same
lifestyle; a chaste hippie chick was a contradiction in terms. When Timothy
Leary extolled LSD's sex-enhancing qualities in a 1966 interview with
Playboy he fueled the fears of parents who worried that their daughters
would be seduced into a decadent world of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.
The Charles Manson case added a sinister twist to this scenario, raising
the possibility of losing one's daughter to an evil cult leader who uses
LSD to brainwash his followers, in much the same way as Chinese men were
once imagined to enthrall formerly respectable white girls with opium.

The alarm about the sexual repercussions of "club drugs," then, has to be
understood in the context of warnings about other alleged aphrodisiacs,
often identified with particular groups perceived as inferior, threatening,
or both. The fear of uncontrolled sexual impulses, of the chaos that would
result if we let our basic instincts run wild, is projected onto these
groups and, by extension, their intoxicants. In the case of "club drugs,"
adolescents are both victims and perpetrators. Parents fear for their
children, but they also fear them. When Mayor Daley warned that "they are
after all of our children," he may have been imagining predators in the
mold of Fu Manchu or Charles Manson. But the reality is that raves --
which grew out of the British "acid house" movement, itself reminiscent of
the psychedelic dance scene that emerged in San Francisco during the late
'60s -- are overwhelmingly a youth phenomenon.

The experience of moving all night to a throbbing beat amid flickering
light has been likened to tribal dancing around a fire. But for most people
over 30, the appeal of dancing for hours on end to the fast, repetitive
rhythm of techno music is hard to fathom. "The sensationalist reaction that
greets every mention of the word Ecstasy in this country is part of a
wider, almost unconscious fear of young people," writes Jonathan Keane in
the British New Statesman, and the observation applies equally to the
United States. For "middle-aged and middle-class opinion leaders . . . E is
a symbol of a youth culture they don't understand."

This is not to say that no one ever felt horny after taking MDMA.
individual reactions to drugs are highly variable, and one could probably
find anecdotes suggesting aphrodisiac properties for almost any
psychoactive substance.

And it is no doubt true that Some MDMA users, like the woman quoted in
Cosmo, have paired up with sexual partners they found less attractive the
morning after.

But once MDMA is wipped of its symbolism, these issues are no different
from those raised by alcohol.

In fact, since MDMA users tend to be more lucid than drinkers, the chances
that they will do something regrettable are probably lower.

I Love You Guys

Another alcohol-related hazard, one that seems to be more characteristic of
MDMA than the risk of casual sex or rape, is the possibility of
inappropriate emotional intimacy.

The maudlin drunk who proclaims his affection for everyone and reveals
secrets he might later wish he had kept is a widely recognized character,
either comical or pathetic depending upon one's point of view. Given MDMA's
reputation as a "love drug," it's natural to wonder whether it fosters the
same sort of embarrassing behavior.

Tom Cowan, a systems analyst in his 30s, has used MDMA a few times, and he
doesn't think it revealed any deep emotional truths. (All names of drug
users in this story are pseudonyms.) "For me," he says, "it was almost too
much of a fake .... it was too artificial for me....l felt warm. I felt loved.

All of those sensations came upon me .... I had all these feelings, but I
knew that deep down I didn't feel that, so at the same time there was that
inner struggle as far as just letting loose and just being .... That was
difficult because of the fakeness about it for me." More typically, MDMA
users perceive the warm feelings as real, both at the time and in
retrospect. Some emphasize an enhanced connection to friends, while others
report a feeling of benevolence toward people in general.

"I was very alert but very relaxed at the same time," says Alison Witt, a
software engineer in her 20s. "I didn't love everybody ... it's a very
social drug, and you do feel connected to other people, but I think it's
more because it creates a sense of relaxation and pleasure with people
you're familiar with." Walter Stevenson, a neuroscientist in his late 20s,
gives a similar account: "I felt really happy to have my friends around me.
I just enjoyed sitting there and spending time with them, not necessarily
talking about anything, but not to the degree that I felt particularly
attracted or warm to people I didn't know. I was very friendly and open to
meeting people, but there wasn't anything inappropriate about the feeling."

Adam Newman, an Internet specialist in his 20s, believes his MDMA use has
helped improve his social life. "It kind of catapulted me past a bunch of
shyness and other mental and emotional blocks," he says. Even when he
wasn't using MDMA, "I felt a lot better than I had in social interactions
before." Bruce Rogers, a horticulturist in his 40s, says one thing he likes
about MDMA is that "you can find something good in somebody that you
dislike." He thinks "it would make the world a better place if everybody
did it just once."

That's the kind of assertion, reminiscent of claims about LSD's
earthshaking potential, that tends to elicit skeptical smiles.

But the important point is that many MDMA users believe the drug has
lasting psychological benefits, even when it's taken in a recreational
context - -- the sort of thing you don't often hear about alcohol.

Not surprisingly, people who use MDMA in clubs and at raves emphasize its
sensual and stimulant properties, the way it enhances music and dancing.
But they also talk about a sense of connectedness, especially at raves.

Jasmine Menendez, a public relations director in her early 20s who has used
MDMA both at raves and with small groups of friends, says it provides "a
great body high. I lose all sense of inhibition and my full potential is
released .... it allows me to get closer to people and to myself."

Too Much Fun

Euphoria is a commonly reported effect Of MDMA, which raises the usual
concerns about the lure of artificial pleasure. "It was an incredible
feeling of being tremendously happy where I was and being content in a
basic way," Stevenson recalls of the first time he felt MDMA's effects. He
used it several more times after that, but it never became a regular habit.

Menendez, on the other hand, found MDMA "easy to become addicted to"
because "you see the full potential in yourself and others; you feel like
you won the lottery." She began chasing that feeling one weekend after
another, often taking several pills in one night. "Doing e as much as I did
affected my relationship with my mother," she says. "I would come home
cracked out from a night of partying and sleep the whole day. She couldn't
invite anyone over because I was always sleeping. She said that my party
habits were out of control.

We fought constantly. I would also go to work high from the party, if I had
to work weekends.

The comedown was horrible because I wanted to sleep and instead I had to be
running around doing errands."

Menendez decided to cut back on her MDMA consumption, and recently she has
been using it only on special occasions. "I think I've outgrown it
finally," she says. "I used e to do some serious soul searching and to come
out of my shell, learning all I could about who I really am. I'm grateful
that I had the experiences that I did and wouldn't change it for the world.

But now, being 23, I'm ready to embrace mental clarity fully. Ecstasy is
definitely a constructive tool and if used correctly can benefit the user.
It changed my life for the better, and because of what I learned about
myself, I'm ready to start a new life without it."

Sustained heavy use of MDMA is rare, partly because it's impractical. MDMA
works mainly by stimulating the release of the neurotransmitter serotonin.
Taking it depletes the brain's supply, which may not return to normal
levels for a week or more. Some users report a hangover period of
melancholy and woolly-headedness that can last a few days. As frequency of
use increases, MDMA'S euphoric and empathetic effects diminish and its
unpleasant side effects, including jitteriness and hangovers, intensify.

Like LSD, it has a self-limiting quality, which is reflected in patterns of
use. In a 2000 survey, 8.2 percent of high school seniors reported trying
MDMA in the previous year. Less than half of them (3.6 percent) had used it
in the previous month, and virtually none reported "daily" use (defined as
use on 20 r more occasions in the previous 30 days). To parents, of course,
any use of MDMA is alarming, and the share of seniors who said they'd ever
tried the drug nearly doubled between 1996 and 2000, when it reached 11
percent.

Parental fears have been stoked by reports of sudden fatalities among MDMA
users.

Given the millions of doses consumed each year, such cases are remarkably
rare: The Drug Abuse Warning Network counted nine MDMA- related deaths in
1998. The most common cause of death is dehydration and overheating. MDMA
impairs body temperature regulation and accelerates fluid loss, which can
be especially dangerous for people dancing vigorously in crowded, poorly
ventilated spaces for hours at a time. The solution to this problem, well
known to experienced ravers, is pretty straightforward: avoid clubs and
parties where conditions are stifling, take frequent rests, abstain from
alcohol (which compounds dehydration), and drink plenty of water.

MDMA also interacts dangerously with some prescription drugs (including
monoamine oxidase inhibitors, a class of antidepressants), and it raises
heart rate and blood pressure, of special concern for people with
cardiovascular conditions.

Another hazard is a product of the black market created by prohibition:
Tablets or capsules sold as Ecstasy may in fact contain other, possibly
more dangerous drugs.

In tests by private U.S. laboratories, more than one-third of "Ecstasy"
pill turned out to be bogus. (The samples were not necessarily
representative, and the results may be on the high side, since the drugs
were submitted voluntarily for testing, perhaps by buyers who had reason to
be suspicious.) Most of the MDMA substitutes, which included caffeine,
ephedrine, and aspirin, were relatively harmless, but one of them, the
cough suppressant dextromethorphan(DXM),has disturbing psychoacdve effects
in high doses, impedes the metabolism Of MDMA, and blocks perspiration,
raising the risk of overheating. Another drug that has been passed off as
MDMA is paramethoxyamphetamine(PMA), which is potentially lethal in doses
over 50 milligrams, especially when combined with other drugs. in 2000 the
DEA reported 10 deaths tied to PMA. Wary Ecstasy users can buy test kits or
have pills analyzed by organizations such as DanceSafe, which sets up
booths at raves and nightclubs.

Nervous Breakdown

Generally speaking, a careful user can avoid the short-term dangers of
MDMA. Of more concern is the possibility of long-term brain damage. in
animal studies, high or repeated doses of MDMA cause degeneration of
serotonin nerve receptors, and some of the changes appear to be
permanent.The relevance of these studies to human use of MDMA is unclear
because we don't know whether the same changes occur in people or, if they
do, at what doses and with what practical consequences. Studies of human
users, which often have serious methodological shortcomings, so far have
been inconclusive.

Still, the possibility of lasting damage to memory should not be lightly
dismissed.

There's enough reason for concern that MDMA should no longer be treated as
casually as "a low-calorie martini." If the fears of neurotoxicity prove to
be well founded and a safe dose cannot be estimated with any confidence, a
prudent person would need a good reason --- probably better than a fun
night out --- to take the risk. On the other hand, the animal research
suggests that it may be possible to avoid neural damage by preventing
hyperthermia or by taking certain drugs (for example, Prozac) in
conjunction with MDMA. in that case, such precautions would be a
requirement of responsible use.

However the debate about MDMA's long-term effects turns out, we should be
wary of claims that it (or any drug) makes people "engage in random sex
acts." Like the idea that certain intoxicants make people lazy, crazy, or
violent, it vastly oversimplifies a complex interaction between the drug,
the user, and the context.

As MDMA's versatility demonstrates, the same drug can be different things
to different people. Michael Buchanan, a retired professor in his early
70s, has used MDMA several times with one or two other people. "It's just
wonderful," he says, "to bring closeness, intimacy --- not erotic intimacy
at all, but a kind of spiritual intimacy, a loving relationship, an
openness to dialogue that nothing else can quite match." When I mention
MDMA use at raves, he says,"l don't understand how the kids can use it that
way."

Reason Senior Editor Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason.com) is writing a book
about the morality of drug use.