Taking Ecstasy too casually would appear to be unwise

One death in L.A., two deaths in the San Francisco area, more than two dozen hospitalizations... It's possible -- just possible, mind you -- that Ecstasy might not always be the best party drug.

The L.A. Now blog reports Thursday on the Ecstasy-related downsides at two raves. It notes:

"One emergency-room patient suffered organ failure, requiring a stay in the intensive-care unit after suffering a seizure and liver and kidney failure. He needed dialysis to detoxify his blood, according to the report, and remained hospitalized for 28 days. The report said that, after his discharge, the man continued to need dialysis." Read the full post.

The L.A. Now details are drawn from a just-released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report about a New Year's Eve rave. That report helpfully includes a definition of a rave.

And here's some information about Ecstasy, from the American Council for Drug Education. It includes street names, description, history, effects on the body -- even how it causes death. All good things to know.

-- Tami Dennis

Photo: Ecstasy is known in some circles as 3-4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine -- or MDMA. Here, tablets are displayed after a U.S. customs seizure in L.A. in 2000.

Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Henry]

Mass "MDMA" related deaths are never from the pure chemical compound and almost always involve bad chemistry and substances such as PMA and GHB.
Pure MDMA related deaths are often the result of dehydration or over-hydration, where body is unable to excrete urine as an individual is drinking and the brain literally drowns. In cases of overdose, a patient may experience cardiac arrest.

Whenever I see an article like this, I like to remind people that even when analyzing statistics by 1000 users, alcohol and tobacco are far more dangerous drugs that almost anything else on the market. Media coverage is vastly tilted, however. I would love to see a 3 paragraph article on everyone who needed a liver transplant or got in a drunk wreck in the state of California over the weekend. The fact, however, remains: news organizations are, literally, thousands of times more likely to report a single fatality from a substance that wasn't even the original drug sold.

And what about pharmaceutical research into relationship counseling or with patients with post-tramatic stress disorder? Even the United States and Israeli armed forces are looking into this substance as an effective treatment under proper medical supervision over 3 or 4 psychologist directed sessions.

And, most importantly, who is Tami Dennis? A medical professional? An addiction specialist? Why should we be listening to bits and pieces echoed back from a police report and copied and pasted from the L.A. Now Blog?

If you don't understand the issues, don't have the qualifications to effectively discuss the issues, or were to lazy to do the appropriate research to make this a worthwhile article, please stop posting crap online. "All good things to know."