Series: Part 3

WHEN THE PARTY'S OVER

It should have been a Christmas present, tucked under the tree in her
mother's new Rolling Meadows home.

Instead, Kelley's family gave the navy blue Ann Taylor suit -- selected
because it complemented the young woman's auburn hair --to the funeral
director, who dressed Kelley in it for her memorial service.

Kelley McEnery Baker was 23 when she and her boyfriend, Patrick, died from
overdoses of the illegal club drug Ecstasy two years ago.

While the number of Ecstasy deaths nationwide is difficult to pin down,
government officials say Kelley and Patrick were among the more than 30
people believed to have died from the drug between 1994 and 1999.

At least 11 more people, including four from the Chicago suburbs, have died
from the drug's more lethal look-alike, PMA, or paramethoxyamphetamine,
since May 2000. Almost all of them believed they were taking Ecstasy.

Though Ecstasy-related deaths may be rare, other health risks associated
with the drug are more common.

Ecstasy originally was conceived and developed as a diet drug. Part
amphetamine, part hallucinogen, it causes a person's body to heat up and
their heart to race. Its more long-term effects include depression and
memory loss.

When Ecstasy turns out to be PMA, the effects are even more dangerous. With
PMA, the high is less intense than Ecstasy, so unknowing users often take
more, thinking they're taking weak Ecstasy. But PMA, like Ecstasy, causes
the body to heat and blood pressure to soar. One physician compared using
the drug to "ripping out one's internal thermostat." Users can die, he
said, because their insides literally overheat.

Yet Ecstasy and other so-called "club drugs" are among the most popular
drugs used by young people today.

And their popularity appears to be rising at a rapid rate.

According to a national survey conducted annually by the University of
Michigan, 11 percent of high school seniors, or 352,000 teens, surveyed in
2000 said they had used Ecstasy at least once. Just two years ago, the
number was half that.

The drug's availability also has increased. In 1998, less than 40 percent
of students said Ecstasy was fairly easy or very easy to obtain. In 2000,
more than half said they could easily get the drug.

'Feels So Good'

The main attraction of Ecstasy is the way it makes users feel, says Steve
Jergensen, a 20-year-old Round Lake Beach man sentenced to prison for
selling the drug.

"It's an experience like no other," Jergensen said during an interview at
the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet. "You don't believe something
that feels so good can be bad."

But if Ecstasy lives up to its name in the hours after it is swallowed,
Kelley's mother, Kate Patton, wants you to know the experience can end much
differently.

It can end, like it did for Kelley, with a police officer trying to
identify your body and your mother, two years later, clinging to
"treasures" like your toothbrush because it's all of you she has left.

What Is Ecstasy?

Kate Patton had never heard of Ecstasy until the night her sister and two
Rolling Meadows police officers appeared at her front door.

Patton had just arrived home from a family friend's funeral. She was
rushing to get macaroni and cheese on the table for herself and her younger
daughter, Tori, when the doorbell rang.

It was her sister who broke the news.

"Kelley's dead," she said.

For a moment, Patton thought her sister was talking about their brother,
who like Kelley -- the first granddaughter -- shared their father's middle
name.

"No," her sister said. "It's your Kelley."

Wooden spoon still in hand, Patton stood in the foyer, flabbergasted.

She asked what had happened.

"Drugs," one of the officers said. "Ecstasy."

"I looked at them and said, 'What the (expletive) is Ecstasy?' " Patton
says through tears.

"There I am, just hearing the news that my daughter was gone from something
I'd never heard of. 1/4 I wanted to hit somebody for playing such a cruel
joke on me."

The Lure

It takes about 30 to 45 minutes from the time an Ecstasy pill is swallowed
for users to feel its effects, and anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes for the
effect to peak.

Most users say it's worth the wait.

Ecstasy prompts nerve cells to release a flood of serotonin, the chemical
in the human body that makes people happy. Users say the feeling they get
is one of incredible elation. They are happier than they have ever been,
and they become more affectionate. The drug causes many to crave human
contact, said Dr. David Gauvin, of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

The feeling is so good that once people experience it, they generally want
to use the drug again.

That made it easy for Jergensen to make money selling Ecstasy in the
McHenry County area.

"You eat it once, you're going to like it, and you're going to do it
again," he said. "And I knew it."

A graduate of Johnsburg High School, Jergensen describes his family as a
"good, Christian family." His parents were around while he was growing up,
he said, and they didn't neglect him or his siblings. When they questioned
him about where he was getting money or why so many people were coming
over, he had a cover -- Jergensen also sold stereo equipment out of the home.

At first, no one really knew what Ecstasy was, and it was tough to get
large amounts, Jergensen recalled. But by 1999 and 2000, "the suburbs were
swamped with it," he said.

"It was easier than buying weed," Jergensen said. "It was probably the
easiest drug out there to get. Still is."

Jergensen made most of his connections at teen dance parties, or raves, in
Chicago and the suburbs. There he found dealers who were willing to sell
him "quantities," or larger amounts of the drug.

By the time he was arrested, Jergensen had graduated and moved out of the
house. He was going to college, working part-time, and had 10 to 15
"distributors" working under him, selling Ecstasy. Jergensen says he wasn't
using much of the drug himself. But together, he estimated he and the
dealers sold 1,000 to 2,000 pills a week, and brought in $2,000 to $4,000 a
week in cash.

The bulk of his customers, Jergensen said, were white, middle-to
upper-class teens from the suburbs who, like him, were raised in good homes
with good parents. They bought the drugs at raves, but they also bought it
at school and from friends. Some took the drug in their own homes, their
parents in the next room and none the wiser.

"These aren't the drug addicts you see on TV," Jergensen said. "They're the
kids who play sports and drive around in their parents' SUVs."

They are young people, Kate Patton says, like her daughter Kelley, who
attended a Catholic high school, grew up in a supportive family and never
wanted for anything.

Patton isn't sure when or how Kelley began using Ecstasy. She surmises it
happened when Kelley moved to New York after graduating from Indiana
University.

While she didn't need the money, Kelley apparently was also taken in by the
potential cash to be made by dealing. She, too, began selling Ecstasy,
though friends told Kate the young woman was planning to stop in the weeks
before she died.

Patton, a striking woman who lives in a home plastered with family photos,
scoffs at any parent who thinks their child is immune to Ecstasy's lure.

She has started a foundation in Kelley's name to educate people about
Ecstasy. When she speaks on the topic, she tells people she lost Kelley not
once, but three times to Ecstasy: once when Kelley first took the drug,
again when she began dealing, and finally, when she died.

"That's the grasp Ecstasy has on young people today," Patton says.

Jergensen, a born-again Christian, also plans to speak to youth and parents
about the dangers of drugs when he is released from prison. Especially
where Ecstasy is concerned, he said, too many kids think the drug is safe.

"(The high) is so intense, you don't understand you might be about to die,
and you don't care," Jergensen says. "But when you're doing Ecstasy, it's
like Russian Roulette. It can kill you."

Like Patton, he speaks from experience.

The Danger

Jergensen awoke early in the morning of May 7, 2000, to the sound of
someone kicking the bedroom wall.

It was his friend, Steve Lorenz.

Lorenz had been taking Ecstasy the night before with a group of friends.
Now he was lying on the floor in the living room, shaking and holding his
leg. Jergensen assumed his friend had just done too many drugs.

"I told him to shake it off," Jergensen recalls. "Then I felt his forehead,
and he was burning up."

Jergensen says he carried Lorenz into the bathroom, where his girlfriend
helped him put Lorenz in the tub. They began sponging his head with water
and giving him ice water to drink. After about 10 to 15 minutes, Lorenz
appeared to relax. The shaking slowed, and at one point Lorenz appeared to
be awake.

"I know I'll be all right," he said.

Moments later, his eyes closed, and the water Jergensen was giving him
would no longer go down.

Someone called 911. Jergensen says he attempted to perform CPR, but his
attempts -- and those of paramedics -- were unsuccessful.

Lorenz, 17, of McHenry, died later that day. He would end up being the
first of four young suburbanites to die in less than a year from PMA, the
more lethal drug often mistaken for Ecstasy.

On May 18, 18-year-old Naperville resident Sara Aeschlimann died from a
lethal dose of PMA. Police are still investigating whether Aeschlimann
chose to take the drug or whether it was slipped into her drink.

Jason Burnett, a 20-year-old Lisle man, died less than two weeks later.
Authorities said he had PMA, heroin and cocaine in his system. Then, in
February of this year, Carpentersville police found Keith Lane, 19, dead
inside a friend's home. The Elgin resident and Barrington High School
graduate also had taken PMA that he believed was Ecstasy.

The deaths may have opened some eyes, but law enforcement officials and
drug educators agree too many young people still believe they were
aberrations. The misconception is that unlike cocaine and heroin, Ecstasy
is a "safe drug."

"To a lot of kids, cocaine and heroin are scary," said DeAnna Casucci, a
drug counselor who works with teens at the Renz Addiction and Counseling
Center in Elgin. "But taking Ecstasy is like taking an aspirin, and most of
them have done that before. They're more willing to try something like that."

Even if users don't die, there are other dangers. Emergency room doctors
say they have treated young people with body temperatures as high as 107
degrees (Lorenz's temperature was 108 degrees before he died) and blood
pressures as high as 220/130 (doctors consider a blood pressure of 140/90
or greater to be high, or unhealthy). Heart rates have been reported as
high as 220 beats per minute -- a number that doesn't even appear on most
heart rate charts.

Users may become dehydrated, and in severe cases, patients can suffer heart
attacks, muscle breakdown and organ failure, said Dr. Silvio Morales, the
head of emergency services at Edward Hospital in Naperville. To cool the
body, doctors sometimes have to insert two chest tubes, then run cold
saline in and out of the body "like a garden hose," Morales said.

The drug is particularly dangerous because it is chemically created, and
users never can be sure what, exactly, they are taking or how potent the
dose is. Because the drug takes some time to take effect, users often take
more of it before their first dose has peaked, a practice called
"piggybacking."

Mistakes also can happen when the drug is being made, making the end
product PMA when the manufacturer intended to make Ecstasy. (The two drugs
have an almost identical chemical make-up.)

Users can buy kits from a non-profit organization called DanceSafe to test
their Ecstasy to ensure it is pure and that it's not PMA. But doctors and
police warn the kits aren't always accurate, and may give users a sense of
safety that can lead them to take more of the drug.

They also warn that users can't trust their dealers, either, noting that a
dealer's main motivation is to make money -- and there's more profit in
selling a drug that has been mixed with other things.

"People say, 'I'm not worried, I know my source,'ae" Jergensen said. "But I
was selling it, and I never knew (what was in the drugs). My guy (who was
supplying the Ecstasy) didn't know either.

"You never know, unless you're making it yourself. And even then, you don't
know unless you're a perfect chemist."

In addition to the immediate dangers, there also are long-term effects.
Studies have shown Ecstasy can cause brain damage and memory loss. One
study by Johns Hopkins University also found users had lower vocabulary
scores than non-users and that they had trouble with "sustained attention
tasks" like math problems.

Use of Ecstasy also can destroy the brain's ability to release serotonin,
causing users to suffer clinical depression that will stay with them the
rest of their lives. Physicians suspect other long-term effects they don't
even know about yet will also surface years from now.

And often, Ecstasy is used with other club drugs like methamphetamine, GHB
or ketamine -- all of which have their own dangers.

A stimulant, methamphetamine gives users a quick "rush" that is described
as extremely pleasurable. Prolonged use can cause paranoia, aggression and
violent behavior.

GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyrate, is a depressant that is usually taken in
liquid form. Frequently referred to as the date rape drug, it causes muscle
relaxation, drowsiness, and can lead to a drop in blood pressure and heart
rate, sometimes leading to coma and even death.

Ketamine, sometimes called Special-K, is a depressant that is sometimes
used as an anesthetic for both humans and animals. It can cause
hallucinations, delirium and potentially fatal respiratory problems.

But what if you don't die? What if you escape unscathed, at least
physically and mentally?

Then there is always the chance, Jergensen says, that you could end up like
him.

Almost immediately after paramedics took Lorenz to the hospital, Jergensen
and the other people who had been sleeping in the McHenry apartment were
taken to the police department for questioning.

About five or six of them told the police Jergensen was the person who sold
Ecstasy in the area and that the drugs they had taken came from him.

While he was not charged with Lorenz's death, Jergensen was charged with
unlawful delivery of a controlled substance, a felony. He pleaded guilty in
February, and in March, he was sentenced to four years in prison.

After seven months in prison, Jergensen was transferred to a work release
program in Rockford, where he currently lives and works.

Jergensen is less than thrilled to be where he is, but he also knows he was
lucky.

"These drugs have turned my life upside down," he said. "I lost a friend.
But it could have just as easily been me."

The Aftermath

If only Kelley had been so fortunate.

As Kate Patton stood before state lawmakers in February to testify in favor
of a law that imposed stricter penalties on Ecstasy dealers, that was the
message she tried to relay.

"If my son or daughter was in jail, I could still see them," Patton said,
"but I can't see my daughter again."

Instead, Patton spends her days learning about Ecstasy and other club
drugs, then sharing her knowledge with others. She has become a "drug
information junkie," and she believes other parents need to do the same.

Patton works out of a small upstairs office, where Kelley's bright smile
shines from several photographs. She has on her desk a green butterfly --
Kelley loved butterflies -- and a parking ticket she found in Kelley's
things after she died. The date on the ticket is Nov. 3 -- Kate's birthday,
and the last day she saw her daughter.

Kelley and her boyfriend had been home to celebrate Kate's birthday with
her. The whole family had dinner together -- Kate made Kelley's favorite,
fettuccini alfredo -- and they recalled old family stories as they ate.

Kelley was especially happy for her mother, who had just been through a
divorce. Kate had a new home, appeared to be happy, and had just gotten a
new job at Ann Taylor. They joked that with two daughters, the employee
discount would come in handy around Christmas.

As Kelley and Patrick headed off to the airport, Kelley called her mom on
her cell phone to leave her a message: "Bye, Mom, I love you."

Less than two weeks later, Kelley was dead.

Patton still cherishes the memories of that last visit, the conversation,
the time spent with her daughter.

"She looked beautiful. She was dating someone nice, and we had such a nice
time," she recalled. "She was so happy to be here with me and with her
sister, and we were so happy to have her home."

While her days are usually occupied, Patton struggles most with the nights.
It was sometime during the night that Kelley died, and sleep is slow to
come when Patton lies in bed and thinks about her daughter dying, alone, in
a hotel room.

It bothers her that she doesn't know exactly when Kelley died. She thinks
it must have been around 4:30 because it's about that time every morning
that Patton wakes with a startle.

"It's a mother thing," she says. "I know when her first breath was. I was
there. But I don't know when her last breath was. I don't know what she
went through, whether she was scared. If she needed me."

In her speeches to the public, Patton encourages parents to talk to their
children about drugs, to be aware of the warning signs and to watch for them.

Users often sweat profusely and drink copious amounts of water. They may
have rapid eye movements and paranoia, and often use pacifiers or suckers
or chew gum to stop from grinding their teeth. (Ecstasy affects a nerve
that causes users to grind their teeth.) They may appear very hyper, then
sleep for long amounts of time. Some become depressed a day or two after
using the drug.

Parents also should keep their eye out for the drug itself, which looks
like aspirin, Altoids or candy but is usually stamped with some kind of logo.

It may be an uncomfortable topic, but the fact of the matter, Patton says,
is that Ecstasy and other club drugs are out there, and they are
frighteningly easy for your children to get and to use.

It is almost a certainty that they will be exposed to these drugs, and when
they are, they should be prepared.

"I'm just a mom. And I don't ever want another mom to go through what I'm
going through," Patton says. "Talk to your kids. Because the alternative is
hell."