A young man in his late twenties decides to visit some close friends out of town for a weekend. Upon arrival, each of them agrees they want to go out at night to celebrate their being together. While waiting in line to enter the city’s hottest club, the man notices two guys in a corner exchanging something. Although it looked peculiar, he brushed it off and continued to converse with his buddies. Once they enter the club, he notices the loud music, strangers dancing and begins to scope out his surroundings. While at the bar, one of the gentlemen he saw exchanging something, approached him and told him he had some “ecstasy” if he was interested. The young man never heard of such a thing and took a step back. The “drug dealer” leaned in to educate the young man on what ecstasy is. He said things like, “everyone is doing it,” “it’s totally safe,” and “it makes you feel good.” As the young man looked around, the man proceeded to tell him the majority of the people there were “on it.” The young man asked himself, “How could this hurt if everyone else was on?” and “Only one couldn’t hurt.” So, the young man agreed and the drug dealer sold him one pill.
After thirty minutes of ingesting the pill, the young man begins to feel a weird feeling, but a “good” feeling. It’s a feeling of enhanced pleasure and self-confidence. He immediately encourages his friends to try it. Soon, the intense feeling of pleasure begins to subside and the young man eagerly finds his drug dealer to purchase more of this thing called ecstasy. We will say the young man’s name is Phil. After purchasing more ecstasy, Phil thinks to himself, “I don’t know what ecstasy is, but what ever ecstasy is, I like it!”
Phil’s scenario is all too common in many clubs and dance parties of all ages. The term ecstasy refers to a drug with a long name, methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA (hereinafter referred to as ecstasy or MDMA). MDMA also has other street names such as: “XTC,” “STP,”...