Saturday, April 29, 2006

UK: 1st in Europe, 2nd in the World

The availability and use of ecstasy is increasing steadily despite a fivefold increase in police seizures, according to an important new study, covering the years 1994 to 2003.

Young Britons are still by far the leading consumers of MDMA (ecstasy) in Europe and the second largest worldwide, after Australia. An estimated 750,000 regular users consume about 26 million tablets a year (considered probably an underestimate).

If you or yours are into ecstasy, then the study is a worthwhile and sensible read.

Why do they do it?

If you don't know why people want to take ecstasy, here's some extracts from The MDMA Experience at mdma.net (a very extensive and intensive resource):
"Taking MDMA induces an amazing feeling of closeness and connectedness to one's fellow human beings. MDMA triggers intense emotional release beyond the bounds of everyday experience. The drug also enhances the felt intensity of the senses - most exquisitely perhaps the sense of touch. The body-image looks and feels wonderful. Other people look and feel wonderful too. Minutes after dropping a pill, a lifetime of Judaeo-Christian guilt, shame or disgust at the flesh melts away to oblivion."

"When MDMA is taken outdoors, the natural world seems vibrant and awe-inspiring, perhaps even enchanted. The experience of colour is gorgeously intensified. On MDMA, Dr Shulgin [a Californian chemist] reported how mountains he'd observed many times before appeared to be so beautiful that he could barely stand looking at them."

"MDMA is sensuous and sensual in its effects without being distinctively pro-sexual. Although once dubbed 'lover's speed', MDMA is proverbially more of a hugdrug than a lovedrug: 'I kissed someone I was in love with and almost felt as if I was going to pass out from the intensity, recalls one American clubber.'"

"On pure MDMA, subjects feel at peace with themselves and the world. They discover an enhanced sense of self-worth, self-forgiveness and complete self-acceptance. Cynical thoughts and negative feelings disappear. Aspects of life normally too sensitive to talk about can be explored freely. Heightened feeling allows long-forgotten and repressed emotional memories from childhood to be retrieved with unusual ease. In some settings, painful, highly-charged and even hitherto unmentionable problems may be discussed with (rose-tinted) candour. On MDMA, a lifetime of accumulated psychological barriers and defence-mechanisms go down, somehow magicked out of existence with a pill. Anger, irritability and ingrained fear dissolve; the hostile amygdala is subdued, if only for a few hours. Ecstasy users tell each other affectionately what beautiful people they are; and they do so from the depths of their hearts."
And all the above is in addition to the strong experience of music and the urge to dance. Read about a rave night in Seattle in this recent Seattle Times article; about pink diamonds, pink hearts, candy kisses, candy ravers, 'light shows' and 'P.L.U.R.' (peace, love, unity and respect).


Yes, ecstasy should be a very beautiful feeling.
But I'll say this:

If you're under, say 18, then you should be aware that the general advice given is that, as your body and brain are still physically developing, it's riskier for you to introduce chemicals into your system. I don't know enough about that, but it seems reasonable advice. In any case, when you're inexperienced in handling potentially problematical states, it's wise to act with caution (this I do know!).
READ what happened to Mary Ann Leneghan - important!

Parents: It's happening out there like you can't imagine: or change. You'd best get knowledgeable - ie, replace ignorance with real information. And, if you can possibly do it, you need to connect with how your parents reacted to your behaviour/lifestyle when you were young: and then remember how you felt about it at the time. But most of us become too pig-headed, prejudiced and reactionary to permit ourselves to feel back that far.

If you can understand what your children are doing and why, without being pig-headed or censorious, maybe they will talk to you about it. Though you may not love what you hear, at least you'll know.
READ what happened to Mary Ann Leneghan - important!

Governments: I don't know what the answer is. But I do know that your insistence in the way of prohibition, on Drug Wars, Drug Tsars and the paraphernalia of battle, makes casualties of the public. And despite many billions of pounds, dollars, whatever, of the public's money being spent, your war is not being won.

So-called 'drug abuse' is a public health, not a criminal, issue. Its criminality is, anyway, an enticement. A senior member of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs remarks on the dangerous Crystal meth: "Moving it [up] could have the perverse effect of making it a more desirable product for users and so stimulate demand." Holland has proven over many years that accepting drug use reduces public demand. And, of course, its current criminality makes it very, very profitable - and potentially dangerous.
READ what happened to Mary Ann Leneghan - important!

Most of the drug users you would criminalise are using them from free choice: not to go against the law, but to have the experience. The fact of the illegality of such drug use is balanced against the right to choose to have the drug experience. Most free thinking people would believe they have the right to choose: also, that an authoritian government, which uses distorted and inflated arguments to achieve its ends, is out of touch; and clearly is not in control.

We choose our experiences. We go on holiday to pleasant places; we travel; we dine and drink out; we seek to place ourselves outside our ordinary everyday. We take risks to have thrills: on mountains; on rapids; on microlites, racing cars and motorbikes; at the end of bunjee ropes; on and under the sea. To me, it's all about the same basic thing: brain chemicals squirting enjoyably. Get yours as it suits you best. But know what you're doing - whatever it is.

Manufacturers and dealers: Get your act together and stop cheating people with shit. You've got a ready market of good-timers; don't be arseholes. Read the study paper noted above: 100mg is the required dose. Play the game - clean.
READ what happened to Mary Ann Leneghan - important!

READ what happened to Adrian "the bitch set me up" Thomas and his five fellow torturers, rapists and murderers.

Image: Om Eye God! © 2006 R deCinabre

1 Comments:

Blogger deCinabre said...

Thanks for those excellent links.

It's like two parallel worlds: one in which common sense and rationale prevail, the other where cant and hypocrisy rule. Unfortunately, the latter is dominant.

9:20 PM  

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