Tag: ecstasy

The excesses of Berlin’s club culture?

I found this documentary by DW quite a find, especially with my early history of clubbing in Berlin just before the millennium.

I have heard so much about Berghain, which I have never been to but remember it being called something else (Ostgut/Snax?). It certainly wasn’t a place I was that interested in going to as a young twenty old to be fair.

The drugs is something worth talking about. I remember going to raves and the absolute dangerous politics around drugs testing. Its not ideal but with the drugs laws as they are, anything to help drug users make more informed choices is important I would say. I remember spending lots of time in the rave first aid rooms (mainly with a asthmatic attack) and seeing ravers who have had spiked pills, overdosed, etc. I couldn’t understand how the laws could be so mindlessly and badly written in the face of reality.

Would Jennifer and Carlo have made the choice to take the ecstasy knowing the dosage was so high? Who can say? But I like to think they might have reconsidered taking two?

Excessive energy drink use, symptoms include…

Caffeine under a microscope
What Caffeine looks like under a microscope

There was a time when I would consume upwards of 5-14 cans of redbull every night on a weekend, while going out clubbing and raving. So many I would add Tabasco sauce to slow me down if I was in a bar not a rave (imagine trying to smuggle in Tabasco sauce into a rave!). At the time there was no sugar free redbull and I was aware of the threat of diabetes.

I never touched any illegal drugs although I was surrounded by them, nope my drug of choice was caffeine (it was useful for those 12 hour raves, although I was wide-awake on the coach home when most were coming down). In retrospect maybe I would have been off with ecstasy (I half joke) Reading about the student who had heart failure from excessive drinking of energy drinks, I got away lightly, even with my brush with death.

For two years, the man drank four 500ml energy drinks a day, according to the BMJ Case Report. He spent 58 days in hospital, including the intensive care unit which he described as “traumatising”. Before the hospital admission, he suffered with shortness of breath and weight loss for four months.

Doctors treating him considered a number of diagnoses, but concluded: “Energy drink-induced cardiotoxicity was felt to be the most likely cause.” An organ transplant was considered after tests revealed both his heart and kidneys had failed – with the kidney failure linked to a long-standing but previously undiagnosed condition.

Is it our drugs are all digital now or digital is the new ecstasy?

My Generation by 0100101110101101.ORG

Sometimes I bite at these headlines written for maximum bite value. This one reads… Now All Drugs are Digital

Obviously this is a lie, there are many synthetic drugs hitting the market which are being sold through the web.  But its a  interesting concept nonetheless from Children of the Machine.

The PC is the LSD of the ‘90s,” stated Timothy Leary in his last book, Chaos and Cyber Culture. Your first-ever desktop was acid. Think about your iPhone. Think about Oculus Rift. These are the 21st century’s digital super-strains. Let’s get wired.

Interestingly when thinking about the headline I instantly linked it to my post from a while ago, computers are the new ecstasy.

Which one is it… our drugs are all digital or the digital is the new ecstasy? They sound similar but I would argue, the later is more true, if you watch people on their phones and online. But then again the software is crafted in a way which encourages lab rat like behavior… maybe thats the new ecstasy?

Ecstasy

Ecstasy Facts

My experience with Ecstasy is not like you would imagine.

I have never ever taken Ecstasy or for that fact taken any other illegal drugs. Even though I was surrounded by the ecstasy filled rave scene. Me personally I was very much into the music and the experience of dancing in time with people of all cultures and backgrounds. However I won’t be lie and say I never noticed the amount of drugs going around. In actual fact I have some interesting experiences off the back of ecstasy.

Channel4 are putting Ecstasy on trail in another one of their grand experiments.

Nearly half a million people are believed to take the Class A drug ecstasy every year in Britain and the country was dubbed the ‘drug-taking capital of Europe’ in a recent EU Drugs Agency report.

Now, in a UK television first, two live programmes will follow volunteers as they take MDMA, the pure form of ecstasy, as part of a ground-breaking scientific study.

Presented by Jon Snow and Dr Christian Jessen, the programmes aim to cut through the emotional debate surrounding the issue and accurately inform the public about the effects and potential risks of MDMA.

When I was in school, I had strongly held believes that Ecstasy should be decriminalised and even legalised for many reasons. Most of it is about getting drugs out of the drug dealers hands. But even more to get a base-level quality. Ecstasy use to be cut with all types of crap including brick dust, ketamine, asprin, sugar, etc, etc. So what your buying could be anything. In the past there was rumours of Ecstasy being sold with a coat of LSD. End of the day, you had no idea.

Ecstasy was new on the scene and was instantly demionised by the press. Then Leah Betts died and all hell broke loose. The notion that she had drunk 7-8 litres of water in 90mins was ignored or never came out till much later. After that the war on drugs went into overdrive and by the mid millennium ecstasy was being replaced by other drugs. The point I guess I’m making is it was never tested in lab conditions to see the full effect, who would be allergic to it and the long term effects.

You could say I’m a total hypocrite because I’ve never taken it and never will. But I’d suggest that I can have an opinion and I’ve seen more that enough use in my time.

In times when I rubbed up against ecstasy use. I’ve never seen anyone die, I have seen some admitted to hospital to have there stomach pumped however, I remember spending time in First Aid with a asthmatic attack talking with a girl who had eaten 11 ecstasy pills (of course who knows what were in them) but she was chatting away and hugging people while chewing her lips off. Not a good thing but certainly not what the war on drugs wants you to see and think.

I welcome the Channel4 trial but to be honest I don’t think it will be scientific enough. Ecstasy has been used for many things in the past including a tool for couples having relationship problems. Fact is street ecstasy is nothing like you see in the lab. This is why I was a massive fan of those people who went to raves and clubs and tested ecstasy in the wild. I was also part of the Drugs Awareness Campaign in Bristol and dj’ed for them in many different venues (good to hear it still exists)

Its all about cutting through the hype, crap and frankly bull. Giving people frank honest information. Something the war on drugs never learned…

It upsets me so many people are fed dis-information saying “Just say no…” Hopefully Channel4 can raise a light to this massive issue.