Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
I took the drug for nearly a year to lift myself to euphoria. Then I crashed hard.
Jun 14, 2000 | Ecstasy has rolled back into the media spotlight. A wide-eyed young raver stared out from the cover of Time last week, with the headline, "What Ecstasy Does to Your Brain." The first film to be picked up by a major production company this year at the Sundance Film Festival, Greg Harrison's "Groove," a celebration of the San Francisco underground rave scene and ecstasy, just opened in San Francisco and New York. "Better Living Through Circuitry," the Jon Reiss documentary about rave culture and the role ecstasy plays in it, was also recently released. "Ecstasy: The New Beer?" teases the June cover of Spin magazine, an issue devoted to the club scene.
Understanding and embracing the rave scene is suddenly hip, even though the movement has been thriving underground for more than 10 years. Ecstasy is touted as the miracle elixir that not only energizes the late-night electronic dance scene but also encourages the sense of community on which the rave scene is allegedly based. Ecstasy users, myself included, praise the drug for inspiring empathy, compassion and a profound sense of well-being.
But after using the drug regularly for more than a year, I have also become convinced that ecstasy has nasty consequences. An ever-present depression gradually became a frame around the increasingly muted canvas of my life.
I'd heard ecstasy users mention minor depression, but only in a dismissive way. I certainly didn't worry about it when I started using the drug. Only when I stopped did I recognize how depressed I'd become. It happened so subtly, I didn't understand that it was crippling my life.
The first time I took ecstasy was at a Jane's Addiction concert in San Francisco. I wasn't overwhelmed by the drug's effect. But I felt agile and rhythmic, which is (unfortunately) unusual for me on the dance floor. My curiosity was piqued.
The second time I took ecstasy was like being thrown full-throttle into a tornado of joy. I felt gloriously free and literally ecstatic, and at the same time completely lucid. The music was insanely intense. My friends were extraordinarily witty and wise creatures. The world seemed less daunting, more filled with love.
Ecstasy became a casual but constant addition to my weekend. I went to throbbing clubs with a widening group of new friends who were also infatuated with the drug. After spending hours on the dance floor, we'd convene to someone's apartment and talk into the early morning hours. On ecstasy, I felt less self-conscious, unburdened, light and lovely. My husband and I took it on our honeymoon and spent several sun-soaked days on a deserted beach in Indonesia watching the waves break and sharing our private dreams for our future together. I felt marvelously close to him. To an extent, I credited ecstasy with our newfound intimacy.
During these months I noticed that the day after I'd taken ecstasy I felt blue and irritatingly lethargic. But the hangover seemed an inconsequential, if inconvenient, side effect of the fabulous times I was having on ecstasy. I rationalized away the unpleasantness by telling myself it was probably exacerbated by the lack of sleep and eating that accompanies ecstasy use.
The depressive aftereffects are beginning to show up in the medical literature. But Time blows them off in a few sentences, using the cutesy phrase "terrible Tuesdays." In "Groove," one of the main characters is alone in bed the next day crying. The viewer is left to decide whether to blame the drugs or the despicable behavior of her boyfriend. When I did an Internet search of ecstasy, I found tons of information, but only brief mentions of depression as a possible side effect.
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