Ecstasy History
The history of ecstasy dates back to 1912 when a patent for it was filed for the first time by Merck (a German pharmaceutical company). It wasn’t ingested until the 70’s, though, when a pharmacologist in the U.S. discovered MDMA. From there it was promoted as therapeutic and given to patients for psychological purposes. However it hadn’t actually been clinically tested at this point. Shortly after the discovery of the drug it started to be taken as a party drug and became very popular as an innovative means to get high. Finally by 1985 it was deemed as having a high abuse risk and holding no medical value whatsoever. At this point ecstasy became banned in the United States. Many countries soon followed.
Action to make this drug illegal seemed to have little effect, as it was too late by this time. Ecstasy had already made its mark in the rave and urban nightclub scenes. There was no turning back for this psychedelic stimulant, the use of it was widespread, recklessly abused and people tended to utilize and rely on it in order to have an intensified dancing experience. By the early nineties ecstasy was everywhere.
Ecstasy Timeline
The first official “rave dance” in New Zealand was simultaneously during the same year (1970) that ecstasy was stumbled upon for recreational purposes. Users in the US were able to use ecstasy with abandon for about ten years before it became a Schedule I drug. Ironically the first death linked to ecstasy wasn’t until 1987, after the drug had already become illegal.
Apparently the British music scene pioneered ecstasy inspired music in the late 80’s. By the late ’90’s Hollywood found a way to incorporate this rising popularity of ecstasy into its main plots which resulted in a wave of mainstream ecstasy-specific drug movies to circulate until the early 2000’s.
In 2000 the country started to take more notice of the dangerous aspects of ecstasy which was clearly reflected in Time magazine’s special issue on ecstasy of that year. This was around the time that a version of ecstasy known as “Molly” came into existence, reported to have a very high purity of MDMA. Fast forward to the present and Molly is being referenced frequently in the lyrics of tons of pop songs. It’s at its peak of popularity, and with the reputation of being the most social drug on the market the term “emphathogen” came about to classify it.
Is Ecstasy Being Reevaluated For Medical Use?
Although the medical value of this drug had been denied at the time that it was banned in the United States, in recent years government regulators have licensed several labs permitting them to make MDMA for the sake of research to see if the drug has any potential for psychological benefit. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans diagnosed with PTSD, somewhere around two hundred, have already become patients of a South Carolinian husband and wife team who specialize in MDMA “therapeutic psychedelia”. Therapeutic psychedelia is basically a therapy session in combination with taking a dosage of MDMA for the purpose and intention of strengthening the therapy session.
The session lasts as long as the high from MDMA lasts, about eight to ten hours, and the therapists (husband and wife team in this case) are to alternate between letting the patient talk over and discuss the trauma with them, and then letting them focus in silence to get some introspection for themselves. Part of the purpose of using the MDMA for this type of session is to get the person to be able to face the trauma without turning away as much. Taking into consideration that MDMA is an empathogenic drug, this is said to help the patient open up with their therapist and communicate more easily about what’s traumatizing them. It supposedly eases the patient into their past more vividly and with less discomfort. There hasn’t been any official decision concerning the validity of widespread MDMA use for medical purposes yet, it’s still just exclusively government controlled studies that are being carried out.
The MDMA Purity In Ecstasy Over Time
Ecstasy started out as a drug people would rave about constantly for its particularly euphoric high that was said to be powerful and lasting. The combination of sensations was described exactly the same from one person to the next. The days, however, the drug has changed by a long shot. The chances of getting a “bad batch” are becoming higher and higher and more people are at risk of purchasing what they mistake for ecstasy. Sometimes bad batches have meth in them with only a low MDMA purity level. Sometimes it’s all meth and people are none the wiser. This is what makes the drug extremely dangerous today because you never really know why to expect and can’t be entirely sure as to what you’re taking. What can make matters worse is in the case of a user who is taking a particular medication for a specific condition. A user like this it put at further risk because they have no idea if they’re going to get a harmful interaction between what they’re already taking and a vague pill of Molly that they’re using to get high.
Molly became the new and hip type of ecstasy to take, becoming extremely popular in the early 2000’s. Ironically “Molly” came into the scene as a version of ecstasy that was supposed to be entirely pure. This couldn’t be further from the case today. The drug, over the last few years, isn’t as reliable as it used to be. The adulterants which have been found in batches are versatile, anywhere from caffeine to meth, bath salts, aspirin, blood pressure pills, LSD or other hallucinogens. Sometimes it’s even an odd combination of these adulterants that can put whoever is unfortunate enough to take it at a big risk. Finding “pure Molly” these days is actually getting more and more increasingly difficult and it has become quite obvious that the dealers involved have further corrupted an already corrupt drug dealing scene by adding anything they can find in order to increase volume and in turn make their batches more profitable. This predicament is not uncommon now and poses a threat to the festival and concert goers that aren’t aware of what they’re purchasing. This is compounded by the fact that in the case of someone who is given Molly with an MDMA purity level they aren’t prepared for they can actually overdose if they are mistaken on how much they have used in the past.
