Aus - Is ecstasy really that dangerous? All your questions answered

[Black]

If Australians were willing for our country to become a police state like Singapore, it is possible that the use of ecstasy would decline considerably

why do they always cite singapore? the first thing that happened when i arrived at the airport in singapore was that the taxi driver offered to sell me some meth...

 

[SixBuckets]

I can't speak for decline in global supplies, but whatever caused it, the MDMA drought of 2009 - 2012ish definitely caused a massive surge in meth use in the local rave scene here in Adelaide, and it seemed to do the same in Sydney (along with GHB) from what I saw when I went over there and, I'm told, Melbourne.

Meth had always been around, but most people used it as a supplemental type drug - take a dab to add some energy to your buzz if you were too munted, or drop half a point (of the old cheap stuff) in a beer to kick the night off, or eat a bit to make it to work after a night out, it was never the main DOC except for a minority who'd mostly been going at it for years, for everyone else it was MDMA, then k/acid, then meth in distant third place. And the meth itself was mostly either powder or gluggy, damp stuff, and almost always just eaten, not the high quality crystal which everyone started smoking.

Then in late 2009 the MDMA vanished and all the pills were suddenly duds/pips/speedbombs. By coincidence, all the K dried up at the same time, and around the same time there was a huge influx of high quality ice (this is when the price doubled, but the purity made up for it).

So if you were going out and wanted something more than booze to catch a buzz and keep you dancing, your choices were basically start using meth, eat awful pills (which were mostly meth anyway, but people would keep trying in the hope that they'd land on a good batch) or trip every weekend (which a dedicated minority did, but weekly tripping is not for everyone). Meth was the closest alternative to pills, and it gave you the energy to keep going, so suddenly most of the rave crowd were smoking it every weekend. It wasn't that people made a conscious choice to swap to meth, it was just the only decent quality drug going around in high quantity.

It really did a number on the scene - the atmosphere degraded massively because people were no longer loved up, attendance dropped as people spent more time in their car passing a pipe around than in the venue, a lot of drama emerged surrounding money and dealing, eventually a lot of them developed a problem and stopped going out entirely, etc etc.

It was pretty tragic to see, honestly.

Quite a few long term MDMA users in my social circle also started adding meth to their MDMA rolls in the last five or six years to ameliorate the MDMA come down. I've never polled anyone outside people I know personally to see if this is a common practice, though.

 

[spacejunk]

It really did a number on the scene - the atmosphere degraded massively because people were no longer loved up, attendance dropped as people spent more time in their car passing a pipe around than in the venue, a lot of drama emerged surrounding money and dealing, eventually a lot of them developed a problem and stopped going out entirely, etc etc.

Yup, lots of people (myself included) observed the drop in loved-up comradery, while the humourless short-fused douchebaggery skyrocketed.
From cuddle-puddle (proclamations of love from strangers!) to macho posturing, aggro, fights. Not a pretty transition :/

why do they always cite singapore? the first thing that happened when i arrived at the airport in singapore was that the taxi driver offered to sell me some meth...

Well, its debatable of course, but i think Singapore is mentioned in the conservative Australian mainstream press so often because the editorial bias leans towards hardline reactionary reaponse - 'zero tolerance' policing and sentencing for drug offences - rather than any notable success in curbing demand or traffic.
Talkback radio and tabloid newspapers feed on outrage and fear, and demonising drugs and people that use them is an easy target.
It's mentioned here because Singapore's drug laws do constitute a police state that i like to believe fundamentally opposes most Australians' values of fairness and justice.
Talkback radio hacks love holding Singapore up as a conformist utopia free of corruption and riff-raff.

It's nonsense, of course - there is plenty of meth in Singapore - and most people realise that punishment such as floggings is neither an effective nor humane way to decrease the demand, consumption or market for drugs.

It's crazy, but people that believe stuff like that tend to be the ones that don't understand the reality of the situation - in Singapore or Australia.

 

[Biscuit]

I can't speak for decline in global supplies, but whatever caused it, the MDMA drought of 2009 - 2012ish definitely caused a massive surge in meth use in the local rave scene here in Adelaide, and it seemed to do the same in Sydney (along with GHB) from what I saw when I went over there and, I'm told, Melbourne.

Meth had always been around, but most people used it as a supplemental type drug - take a dab to add some energy to your buzz if you were too munted, or drop half a point (of the old cheap stuff) in a beer to kick the night off, or eat a bit to make it to work after a night out, it was never the main DOC except for a minority who'd mostly been going at it for years, for everyone else it was MDMA, then k/acid, then meth in distant third place. And the meth itself was mostly either powder or gluggy, damp stuff, and almost always just eaten, not the high quality crystal which everyone started smoking.

Then in late 2009 the MDMA vanished and all the pills were suddenly duds/pips/speedbombs. By coincidence, all the K dried up at the same time, and around the same time there was a huge influx of high quality ice (this is when the price doubled, but the purity made up for it).

So if you were going out and wanted something more than booze to catch a buzz and keep you dancing, your choices were basically start using meth, eat awful pills (which were mostly meth anyway, but people would keep trying in the hope that they'd land on a good batch) or trip every weekend (which a dedicated minority did, but weekly tripping is not for everyone). Meth was the closest alternative to pills, and it gave you the energy to keep going, so suddenly most of the rave crowd were smoking it every weekend. It wasn't that people made a conscious choice to swap to meth, it was just the only decent quality drug going around in high quantity.

It really did a number on the scene - the atmosphere degraded massively because people were no longer loved up, attendance dropped as people spent more time in their car passing a pipe around than in the venue, a lot of drama emerged surrounding money and dealing, eventually a lot of them developed a problem and stopped going out entirely, etc etc.

It was pretty tragic to see, honestly.

I agree with all of this. I have been banging on about this precise issue for a few years now but haven't managed to ever put it as eloquently as this. Thank you Crankinit! Western Australia has really bore the brunt of this phenomenon and even now we are still struggling to replace all the meth with quality MDMA. The kids these days have really missed out and those munted few that think they know, really have no idea.

 

[Crankinit]

That said, I think in the eagerness to undo decades of defamation regarding MDMA, guys like Wodak and Nutt are shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring the question of neurotoxicity.

At the very least, the jury is still out on the issue, but there are a lot of ways that a drug can do damage or ruin a life that don't involve killing someone or turning them into an addict. Having seen too many blank-eyed pill-gulping rave scene casualties, I think that the issue of the neurological and psychological side effects of MDMA is one that needs to have a serious place in the discussion about changing our society's attitude towards the drug.