Ecstasy

Growing up in the 1980s brought me many happy memories. One of my favourite magazines at the time was the New Musical Express, one of Britain’s top music publications. The NME covered the mainstream but was essential reading every week especially for the discerning music fan. It told me nearly all I needed to know on what was happening and new acts were regularly written about in its pages. Sometime in the late eighties however, it started to have ‘Smileys’ dotted around each issue. The ‘Smiley’, I soon found out referred to the dance scene, ‘raves’, that were happening all over the UK at every weekend (they never really came to Ireland). As a 16 year old music fan I had no knowledge that drugs were an integral part of the ‘rave’ scene. Not Heroin, not Cocaine, not Cannabis but Ecstasy.

Ecstasy, more commonly known as ‘E’, was the drug of choice and it was/is used by thousands of people each weekend. An article for The New Scientist online edition, in February 2009, states that: “around half a million people take ‘E’ every year in England and Wales and 30 die from the acute effects, mostly overheating or water intoxication.”

One of those who has tried it and suffered is Mark Hennessy, a raver in his early 40s. In an article in March 2009, in The Guardian newspaper, he told of his life of hell after using ‘E’ for the first time last year. “The MDMA had induced a toxic reaction in my brain, heating it up to 41 degrees. My cerebellum – the part of the brain that tells the body how to balance, how to make sounds recognisable as words and remembers how to write and hold a pen – was fried”, he explained to the British daily newspaper. “I later found out that I was one of four people in the hospital that weekend to have taken an ‘E’ – and the only one to survive. My friend was told by a consultant that you could take ‘E’ or MDMA 100 times and suffer no ill-effects or you could take it once and that would be it.” Mr Hennessy was lucky to live, but that is the nature of drugs – they are unpredictable.

The New Scientist piece says of the dangers posed by ‘E’: “people who took even a small amount of Ecstasy at some point consistently performed worse on psychometric tests, which measure mental performance, especially memory, attention, and executive function, which includes decision-making and planning”. The analysis goes on to say that “the most pronounced effects are on memory, mainly verbal and working memory.”

Mark Hennessy says that after his internal organs began to fail he “spent a month in a coma before waking and being transferred to the high-dependency unit.” Mr Hennessy informed The Guardian, that his “cognitive and intellectual functions were intact, but the lack of fine motor skills meant that I could not stand, balance or talk. I still had the same thoughts but my body disobeyed me.”

Experts are cautious about labelling Ecstasy harmless. But Mr Hennessy is clear about it: “My life has been ruined.” Almost as bad as death. Maybe worse. One suspects the man will never dance again, precisely the reason he took ‘E’ in the first place.