Alright so Im finaly gettin off me arse and getting aroudn to trying to tear this article apart. I've kind of loathed to do it because well the piece was trash and it almost doesn't deserve to have a rebuttal or even someone to say how much mis-information is in it. I would hate to think that people think that a lot of this is true.
Here is the article I am am talking about Click here, tis drug related
As for my response:
As many of you know I am an old school, jaded raver. I've been out of the scene for a couple years now and consequently am not up to date on a lot of it now. However, I still do love them and would consider becoming invoved again if the chance were given to me. I am by no means an expert but I will tell you what I know through research and person experience.
Here is a great slide show of the brain chemistry while on E .
This is a great quick read on what the drug is.
Last, this is just a good site to see what people think and how they handle it.
First the writer starts off with a sharp slap to parents faces. The statement alone made me want to hurt the writer.
“Aside from all the problems you might have if your daughter is raped or sexually assaulted in some ugly fashion, kill yourself if you ever let your kid go to a teen night at an adult club.
As you read further you find that these are the words of Terrence P. Farley, director of the Ocean County Narcotics Strike Force. In the words of my mother, “he must be republican.” Not to make snap judgements or make you think I don't approve of this man, it just happened when I read the whole article. Next:
“If you see your child over age 2 or anybody up to about age 35 with a pacifier around their neck, or on a bracelet or carrying it in some other conspicuous way, you can pretty much be assured that person is using Ecstasy,”
Well first of all most kids with a pacifier have it in their mouth and not around their neck. Second, that may have been one of the motivating factors of seeing them at a party, they are now just an accessory for some and not used for the foul purposes of drug use. Though I will admit he is right that use of E can cause one to grind their teeth and thus a pacifier is handy. Moving on:
“So we see the kids carrying two things, pacifiers and/or blow pops, and they put them between their teeth to stop the grinding.”
Well I only had 3 binkies during my party times, second I just happen to like blow pops, though chupa chups became my vice after I started travelling abroad. Never did I have my blow pops for the express purpose of teeth grinding. Next:
Ecstasy (MDMA) has been around four to five years in this country. It is a synthetic drug made from highly toxic chemicals. When ingested, it causes the brain to release large amounts of seretonin, the chemical that allows people to feel moods such as joy, love, sadness, etc. Following that release, the body stops the production of seretonin, causing major depressive states, which hit about three days after use.
Whoa! five years? I'd say that's a bit optimistic. Seriously the first patent was released in 1913 to the German company Merck. Then it was made “illegal” in 1985. Let's do some math shall we? 2003 - 1985 = More than 5 lemme tell ya. Not only that it was being tried in psychiatrists offices as a therapeutic tool which it can be effectively used as. I've also always been under the understanding that it is not the body stopping the production of serotonin, it is just depleted. Imagine an aquifer with so much serotonin made, release all of it through E and poof it's empty. Now you need to wait til your body produces more before you can actually feel normal again. This is why people experience depressive states after use of this drug.
“will have to live on Prozac, literally, for the rest of their lives because they would not be able to produce seretonin”
This one I can't find the sources or anything right now but, it's still not a proven fact medically, that there are long term effects. Preliminary data suggests that, but it doesn't seem to be from lack of serotonin production, it seems to stem from the receptors inability to recieve the serotonin. Thus, depressive moods again.
When it first was introduced into this country, Ecstasy was fairly easy to spot.
“It always was in the size and shape of an aspirin or pill,” he said. “They had some kind of design or logo on them and were in a couple of different colors. Today, we see every size, color, shape and design you could imagine.”
This statement just irks me because it implies that now that they have designs and logos they are harder to spot. Small personal beef there. Though now I suppose manufacturers are getting craftier with their pills as they make them look generic or like breath mints.
Mr. Farley said the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) estimates 2 million Ecstasy pills are smuggled into the United States every week. Of that amount, 750,000 Ecstasy pills are filtered into what is referred to as the New York-Jersey Shore corridor, the area from New York City to Cape May. This occurs, he emphasized, every week.
Yeah that number just proves to me that we are winning this “war” on drugs. Each week we win this war more and more. Now we go into the typical scenerio of a rave or a club that plays techno. He seems to be a bit knowlegdable and even gives a fairly non-biased description of a rave, then it all goes wrong.
In all likelihood, he said, the first thing the teens will encounter will be people selling heavy vinyl balloons, like the ones that are sold in parking lots at rock concerts. The cost is about $5.
“That's their first hit of the night,” he said. “That's nitrous oxide, an anesthetic.
“Now as you enter whatever this venue is, you're going to be literally accosted within seconds to minutes, to buy 'E,' ecstasy, 'K,' ketamine, 'G' for GHB; you name it. It's just rampant in the places where teen-agers will congregate.
So most places I went to you'd be lucky to find one person selling N2O, then came the part of finding, chatting and finally purchasing. He makes it seem as if they are set up like balloon stands. next is the getting accosted to buy drugs. Never going to happen, you will always have to look, nobody will ever don a top hat and throw a pitch at you about how great their product is.
“The key to all this is techno music — 200 to 300 bass beats a minute just banging the brains out
As far as I know most techno hovers in the 130-170bpm arena.
The girls will be scantily dressed, sometimes reminiscent of the hippie era of the '60s, he said. Teen boys, who usually arrive later in the evening, may be dressed only in baggy pants and shoes. The a reason for the dress, he said, is “because one immediate side effect of Ecstasy is that it blows up your body temperature.”
Actually it's called a style, this just happens to be the most prevalent style at parties. Most guys I know show up with shirts too, they just take them off because of temps in the venue. Believe me it's not just E that makes you sweat when you pack 500 people together that are dancing and such yer gonna get a hot arena. Last I heard everybody arrives whenever, I never knew women were supposed to be there first. Though elevated body temps are a side effect of this drug.
The dress, though, is only one telltale sign. The other, he said, is they will be all be sweating profusely.
Riiiiiiiiight, cuz nobody sweats when they dance right? You're sweating? You must be HIGH!
Ecstasy can raise the body's temperature as high as 110 to 111 degrees
I thought the human body could only tolerate an internal temp of up to 105 or so before death occured.
“You're going to see bottled water all over the place,” Mr. Farley continued.
Water can run as high as $14 per bottle at major events.
Yep, because sweaty dancing drug users need their liquids, nobody else in the world needs fluids. Though I never have seen water prices run that high. I have seen $3 but never $14, if that ever happened Im sure kids would revolt.
The first thing Ecstasy does, he continued, is cause the user to vomit.
Not true, it may cause some to vomit, but not all. As with anything that messes with your body it effects different people different ways.
“So the first thing you see on the floor is a lot of vomit,” Mr. Farley said. Then you see a lot of water, between the drinking of the bottled water and the sweat, because the user's body temperature is rising to 105 degrees or higher. They boil their internal organs, that's what's happening. It's an incredible death for these kids.”
Nice, luckly I've had the pleasure of missing this party that Mr. Farley went too. Tons of water on the floor, Im sure most of it is from those sweaty drug users, rather than accidently spilled water bottles. Wow, so he's saying that each kid should be dead or at least not able to function because their organs are being crisped.
Along with the vomit and sweat, Ecstasy use also causes incontinence so users urinate not only on themselves, but the floor. It also causes uncontrollable defecation.
Well it may be true on some level if we look at the following definition of incontinence:
in·con·ti·nence
Pronunciation: (')in-'känt-&n-&n(t)s
Function: noun
1 : inability or failure to restrain sexual appetite
2 : inability of the body to control the evacuative functions
It could apply if we go by the first definition. However I seriously doubt that if uncrontrolled defecation and urination were truely a side effect, that anybody would use this substance again.
“They call that 'disco dumping,'” Mr. Farley said.
Probably just out on the vernacular of the scene, but I've never heard that particular phrase used for that purpose before. However it is a quiant lil phrase and I think I may keep using it.
“Most of the clubs shut off the water in the bathrooms — in the toilets and in the sinks — so they'll have to buy water from them.
This is true of a few venues, but that's what you get when you bring profit hungry people into the picture.
The feeling of openness and wanting to communicate is enhanced by the techno music and the glow sticks that are seen everywhere.
“Something in the color of the glow sticks,” he said, “makes the high higher.
Hrm, ok, this is a toughie, just becuse of the absurdity of the statement. It's more of the experience of those two factors themselves that make the trip enjoyable. Neither actually causes you to reach new levels, just different areas. Then he talks about sex drive. It's not really more sex drive, it's just the fact that everything feels so good, that you're more open and ready for it. Though the ability to perform is often a casualty of use.
According to Mr. Farley, Ecstasy and Viagra, in combination with amyl nitrate, sprang up first in gay communities “and thousands of gays across the world died from it.”
Of course, because gays are pioneers and they always find the great combos, or diseases. Then they consequently die because they are wrong in the eyes of the lord. I think that's the only part he left out was the eyes of the lord. I haven't seen much information about this particular combination, but I can suspect that it would increase your chances of meeting thr Grim Reaper.
Ravers, at this stage of “partying,” are now high on at least one drug and may have lost control of both their bladder and bowels. They are dancing on a floor that is smeared with water, vomit, urine, sweat and defecation, guzzling water and sweating profusely. Now, because of the effects of Ecstasy, they want to touch and be touched. And the boys have taken their “performance drugs.”
Oh oh, sign me up for the next rave that you go to Mr. Farley. Ye gads, I can't believe this was actually said. It's like some nightmare I had back when I was 16.
“Now you have all this stuff on the floor,” Mr. Farley said, “and they call it 'cuddle puddles,' because now, I'm going to grab five or six friends, strangers, guys, girls, and we're going to sit down and make out in the cuddle puddles, or 'rave sludge' as it's called. These are just little, wonderful side effects.”
Oh yeah, onto this “cuddle puddle” , normally it is just people gathering for comfort and relaxation. Since the tactile sense is increased it is only natural that one would want to cuddle, touch, rub, massage, or even neck with someone. However, I have not had the pleasure of being a part of a cuddle puddle in Mr. Farley's world, nor have I had the joys of sitting in “raver sludge”. I can tell he was trying to be sarcastic, but yeesh, you put it like that you don't need sarcasm. As for the rest of the article its kind of on, not in a good way or even a semi informative way. Kind of a harsh light on the subject way. He throws in more obtuse jargon in attempts to make it sound even worse than it really can. But for the most part he is right about the blues and bouts of depression from repetitive use. Then he ends with:
He added, “When kids are willing to do that, you'd better get to them as early as possible because our kids have no fear, and they never have. If we don't start getting into the lower grades — fourth, fifth, sixth — we're just going to keep on losing generation after generation of Americans.”
He makes it sound as if each and every child does this. If he's right then we can surely see that our “war” on drugs is almost over. This is not a generation wiping epedemic, it's a generation attempting to find identity and find themselves through experimentation. The more we clamp down, the more they will slip through our fingers. I think education is key, not this meaningless drivel/propoganda. I would like to just say that the newspaper nor the reporter was really at fault with this article, since it took the words from Terrance P. Farley. This is the man we can blame for the RAVE Act and many others like it. I will have more on the subject soon, but I am sleepy and this article is painful to me. Read it tell me your thoughts and such, even better let the newspaper what you thought of the article.