Wes­ley Gib­bings

At $200 a pop, pure and adul­ter­at­ed ver­sions of the sub­stance that gave Ec­sta­sy its rep­u­ta­tion as an ef­fec­tive "par­ty drug" and sex­u­al stim­u­lant, is prov­ing to be a risky, high-priced game of roulette on which a grow­ing num­ber of young bod­ies and minds are be­ing staked.

MD­MA, or 3,4-meth­yl­ene­dioxy-N-methy­lam­phet­a­mine � an am­phet­a­mine of ar­guable ther­a­peu­tic val­ue–has long been the base drug in the for­mu­la­tion of Ec­sta­sy but is now coun­ter­feit­ed for use in a va­ri­ety of new ap­pli­ca­tions that are grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty on Trinidad and To­ba­go's high-fly­ing par­ty cir­cuit.

"This is not some­thing you are go­ing to get on the reg­u­lar block," Pe­ter (re­al name not be­ing used for this ar­ti­cle) told T&T Guardian. "You would be sur­prised about who deals with this stuff. It is very pop­u­lar in the west and some parts of the south where peo­ple have mon­ey."

Com­mon­ly used drugs that claim to have an MD­MA base and which are usu­al­ly tak­en by some mem­bers of the par­ty crowd, in­clude pills known as "Mol­lies" or "Mol­ly" and "Me­ow Me­ow" which are tak­en pri­or to en­gag­ing in five and six hour pri­vate and pub­lic "raves".

The drug comes in the form of cap­sules or tiny pills–"like a birth con­trol pill," one per­son said–and is usu­al­ly swal­lowed or tak­en out of the cap­sule and placed raw on the tongue or gum.

In Trinidad James's All Gold Every­thing, the pop­u­lar Trinidad-born rap­per's re­frain goes:

"Shout out to them fresh­men/On In­sta­gram straight flex­in'/Popped a mol­ly, I'm sweat­ing woo/Popped a mol­ly, I'm sweat­ing woo."

Ac­cord­ing to par­ty reg­u­lars, hours of fre­net­ic danc­ing, the ex­ces­sive use of al­co­hol, mar­i­jua­na and oth­er nar­cotics and promis­cu­ous sex­u­al be­hav­iour among users is a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence in "rave" cir­cles as a di­rect re­sult of the eu­phor­ic ef­fects of these drugs. Look out for Black­ber­ry sta­tus mes­sages that state sim­ply: "Look­ing for Mol­ly."

"I have seen peo­ple swal­low one, and in about an hour take an­oth­er one to keep the high," one young woman who has at­tend­ed "raves" told T&T Guardian.

Pe­ter, who works in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, has been there. But he speaks flu­ent­ly about the chem­i­cal at­trib­ut­es of MD­MA, de­scribes it as safe once used in its orig­i­nal form and de­cries the im­i­ta­tions. He has scoured the in­ter­net and every piece of avail­able lit­er­a­ture in search of ev­i­dence to sup­port this view.

"It is an in­cred­i­ble ex­pe­ri­ence," he said. "But fake drugs are tak­ing over."

Then one day, his girl­friend, Car­o­line (name changed for pur­pos­es of this ar­ti­cle) wait­ed un­til he had turned his back and swal­lowed three cap­sules he had been "keep­ing for me and my friends for a par­ty that was com­ing up."

The les­son they both learnt was al­most at the cost of her men­tal health and, prob­a­bly, her life. She still re­ceives ther­a­peu­tic coun­sel­ing as a re­sult of her ex­pe­ri­ence.

Car­o­line, a teacher, re­mem­bers the mad scram­ble to get to a pri­vate Port of Spain hos­pi­tal and very lit­tle af­ter that. It was her first time with what Pe­ter thought was MD­MA, but what turned out to be a po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly com­bi­na­tion of drugs.

"Many users do not re­alise that what they are re­al­ly buy­ing is usu­al­ly a cock­tail with a whole bunch of stuff," ther­a­peu­tic coun­selor Nizam Mo­hammed said.

Mo­hammed, who coun­sels re­cov­er­ing sub­stance abusers at the New Life Min­istries re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion fa­cil­i­ty in St Bene­dict, said through­out the man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and sup­ply chain, dif­fer­ent sub­stances are used to "add bulk" to some drugs and there­by in­crease in­come-earn­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties.

The re­sult, with re­spect to MD­MA, has been an ex­pand­ing menu of sub­sti­tutes and en­hance­ments such as mephedrone which is in­creas­ing­ly used in the pro­duc­tion of Ec­sta­sy and MD­MA sub­sti­tutes. It pro­duces the symp­tom of "teeth-grind­ing" ob­served by Pe­ter en route to the hos­pi­tal with Car­o­line.

"I re­mem­ber talk­ing and talk­ing and grind­ing my teeth," Car­o­line said in an in­ter­view. "I could not sleep and just re­mem­ber talk­ing and talk­ing."

At the pri­vate hos­pi­tal, which lat­er pro­duced a $30,000 bill, clue­less doc­tors turned to Google to get to the bot­tom of Car­o­line's symp­toms. In the end, they ad­min­is­tered an in­tra­venous dose of val­i­um which, Pe­ter said, did noth­ing to help. "They re­al­ly did not know what they were do­ing."

This lack of knowl­edge about the ef­fects of non-main­stream recre­ation­al drugs is not re­strict­ed to this hos­pi­tal anec­dote. Re­tired deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er, Win­ston Coop­er, said there has not been a ten­den­cy by the po­lice to leave the heav­i­ly-trod­den path that leads al­most en­tire­ly to the il­le­gal pos­ses­sion and use of mar­i­jua­na and crack co­caine.

He said that around 2007/2008 there were at­tempts to widen the il­le­gal nar­cotics net be­cause the po­lice were wit­ness­ing the in­creased sale and use of oth­er drugs, "but I don't know what is hap­pen­ing now."

"Maybe this is the kind of thing that pre­vents us from get­ting the big fish," he said.

High cost and re­strict­ed avail­abil­i­ty make MD­MA and its as­so­ci­at­ed nar­cotics, ac­cord­ing to one po­lice source, a "high-class drug that you won't find on the reg­u­lar block."

Pe­ter be­lieves a thriv­ing "black mar­ket" has emerged which is "flood­ing the coun­try" with adul­ter­at­ed drugs bear­ing the name MD­MA, Mol­lies and Me­ow Me­ow � the lat­ter he blames for his girl­friend's med­ical scare.

He says he knows of two sui­cides that have re­sult­ed from use of such drugs. "There are peo­ple who take the pills, for in­stance, and their mouth gets numb," he said, adding that this in­di­cates co­caine would have been added to the oth­er­wise po­tent brew.

Some tell-tale signs of MD­MA or "Mol­ly" use are dry­ness of the mouth lead­ing to the heavy use of bub­ble gum or heavy in­takes of wa­ter; per­pet­u­al­ly glazed, dis­tant eyes and in­ces­sant talk­ing, touch­ing and over­ly-af­fec­tion­ate be­hav­iour.

Pe­ter iron­i­cal­ly blames the mu­sic in­dus­try for push­ing the use of Mol­lies in par­tic­u­lar. "Triple that mol­ly on the top front tip/ Chill­in' in the deep I ain't go­ing nowhere," Dan­ny Brown raps in his song Mol­ly Ring­wald.

One "rave" favourite is the song Mol­ly by tech­no mu­si­cian, Cedric Ger­vais. "Please help me find Mol­ly/I've been search­ing every­where and I can't seem to find Mol­ly" a fe­male voice re­peats sev­er­al times in a sex­u­al­ly sug­ges­tive video ren­di­tion of the song that has over 3.7 mil­lion hits on YouTube.

For Pe­ter, the song is all over for MD­MA and its coun­ter­feits. "I am done with this," he said, re­call­ing the pro­tract­ed "downs" ex­pe­ri­enced in the days fol­low­ing heavy "Mol­ly" use. "Some­times you just can't re­cov­er the joy you felt."

Mo­hammed reck­ons Pe­ter's promise will be much eas­i­er said than done.

What is ec­sta­sy?

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Ec­sta­sy is a syn­thet­ic chem­i­cal with the sci­en­tif­ic name 3,4-meth­yl­ene­dioxy-n-methy­lam­phet­a­mine (MD­MA). Ec­sta­sy tablets al­so fre­quent­ly con­tain two sim­i­lar chem­i­cals, MDEA and MDA, which tend to have slight­ly dif­fer­ent ef­fects, in par­tic­u­lar lack­ing the so­cia­ble qual­i­ties of MD­MA.

Pills sold as ec­sta­sy may al­so con­tain oth­er psy­choac­tive chem­i­cals, such as am­phet­a­mine (speed), LSD (acid), caf­feine and a num­ber of syn­thet­ic chem­i­cals.

Ec­sta­sy acts as a stim­u­lant and in­creas­es brain ac­tiv­i­ty. It caus­es nerve cells in the brain to re­lease a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter (sig­nalling chem­i­cal) called sero­tonin, which is in­volved in the con­trol of mood, emo­tions, pain per­cep­tion, ap­petite and sleep.

Ec­sta­sy be­came par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar in the 1990s when it was as­so­ci­at­ed with the de­vel­op­ment of rave cul­ture.

It's of­ten tak­en by club­bers, who say it in­duces a sense of eu­pho­ria, fol­lowed by a feel­ing of calm. They claim it makes them feel more so­cia­ble and in­creas­es their aware­ness of their sur­round­ings, and are able to stay awake and dance for hours.

Slang names for ec­sta­sy in­clude E, XTC, pills, hugs, the love drug, dol­phins, dis­co bis­cuits.

In the UK, Ec­sta­sy is a Class A il­le­gal sub­stance, with se­vere penal­ties for pos­ses­sion or sup­ply.

–Source: BBC Health