When Sam took her first pill, she was convinced she wasn’t going to have a good time. 'The second after I swallowed it I instantly regretted it because I thought I was going to have a bad reaction,' she tells The Debrief. 'I’d been dead against drugs for a while because I believed the propaganda that if you take one pill you would either end up dead or hooked on crack.'
Sam, whose name has been changed, was in a nightclub with her good friend who'd made her promise she would talk her through what she was feeling. 'I told her I was freaking out and she talked me back down,' Sam says that not long after that she started to feel the pill’s effects. 'First there’s this rushing feeling in your body and everything gets louder and quite intense, but I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them, everything looked wonderful,' she says.
‘I didn’t see things that weren’t there, but I just felt really fuzzy and the music in the club sounded really clear. It was like I could hear all the different musical elements of the tracks. And for the rest of the night it felt like I was wrapped in a hug.' The active ingredient in a pill is MDMA, or 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as ecstasy or Mandy (or Molly in the US). It’s a synthetic drug with stimulant and hallucinogenic effects that alter perceptions. It’s usually ingested as a pill or in powder form, but can also be snorted or mixed into a drink.
'MDMA causes the release of the neurotransmitters dopamine, seratonin and adrenalin, which are very important in the relegation of mood, appetite, sleep, motivation and pretty everything that goes on in the brain,’ says Guy Jones, Senior Chemist at harm reduction organisation The Loop. 'The effect of it is a result of the way it interacts in the brain, and the buttons it pushes. It turns up the dials that make a person interested in connecting in a deeper way than perhaps other stimulants would.'
There’s a growing body of research that suggests that women are more susceptible to MDMA’s effects than men. Last year’s Global Drugs Survey found a four-fold increase in the number of women seeking emergency treatment as a result of MDMA in the last three years. 'It has been for a long time thought there's little or no difference between the sexes, however, we are increasingly finding that for women – particularly in certain parts of the menstrual cycle – the hormones do affect some of the physical effects. That's particularly to do with how MDMA causes the retention of water within the body.'
Jones says that in order to mitigate against these risks, women need to carefully manage their water intake. He emphasises, however, that anyone taking MDMA needs to make sure they stay properly hydrated as both heatstroke and hyponaetremia (where there is not enough sodium in blood caused by drinking too much water) are the biggest dangers of doing pills. This is because MDMA inhibits the body’s thermoregulation (temperature gauge, to you and I). 'Don’t drink more water than you usually would for the activity you are doing,' Jones says. 'That means about 500ml per hour if you are dancing in a hot environment, or 250ml per hour if you are in a house party environment.' He adds that taking regular breaks from dancing is also a good idea.
People who encounter complications from MDMA rarely do so because of the drug itself. In 2009 Professor David Nutt, of Imperial College was controversially fired from his post as the government’s drug advisor after saying that ecstasy was no more dangerous than riding a horse. His comments were based on the fact that at the time, the number of people who died in horse riding accidents were similar to those who died after taking ecstasy (roughly ten a year).
Ecstasy deaths have risen since then, as has the number of people who take them. One of factors thought to be causing the spike in fatalities is that MDMA has become stronger in the last couple of years. This has led to harm reduction organisations launching awareness campaigns encouraging people to take smaller amounts of the drug on a night out. The Loop’s CrushDabWait initiative urges people to crush up their crystals into a fine powder and start by dabbing a small amount onto their gums and wait at least an hour before taking any more.
Recently, The Loop has offered pill-testing at some UK festivals. Groups of volunteers are on hand for punters to anonymously bring their drugs to find out what’s actually in them. At Boomtown festival, The Loop found a number of cases of pills being sold as MDMA that actually contained pentylone, a nasty substance that can keep people up for 36 hours leaving them paranoid and anxious.
‘We give you any advice that you can use to both reduce your risks while maintaining your enjoyment,' Jones, who also runs Reagent Tests UK where you can buy at-home kits, says. 'We give realistic information about how you can enjoy yourself as you plan to without exposing yourself to the risks.'
Sam says that while she’s never had a particularly bad time, she has felt queasy on occasion. 'You can feel quite nauseous when you’re coming up and you might even actually be sick.'
The sick feeling isn’t bad enough to put her off, though. Sam says that whenever she takes pills, which she's quick to add is once every three or four months, the experience has been good. 'It’s so cliche to talk about euphoria but that really is the best way to describe it,' she says. 'You get an overwhelming feeling of contentment. And everyone just looks fantastic. Me and my mates take so many selfies when we were high because we think we look so great.'
If you'd like to know more about MDMA and its effects, visit The Loop
If you liked this, you might also be interested in:
Follow Anna on Twitter @annacod
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.