Why is Britain suffering from an ecstasy overdose?

[S.J.B.]

Why is Britain suffering from an ecstasy overdose?
Max Daly
ShortList
June 12th, 2018

It's a dangerous time to be an ecstasy user in Britain. This summer, as the music festival season cranks into gear and schools close, tens of thousands of young people will be getting high, perhaps for the first time, on a drug that's been a mainstay of the British party scene for three decades. Yet never before has ecstasy been so potent or deadly.

Since 2012, ecstasy pills and powder have been getting progressively stronger as producers have ramped up the amount of MDMA, the mildly hallucinogenic stimulant, they contain. In the space of only a few years, pill potency has doubled and tripled. Pills are a different proposition to what the parents of today's teenagers were necking in the 80s and 90s. Back then, the average pill contained around 80-100mg of MDMA. Now pills containing 150-200mg dominate the market, alongside so-called 'super-pills'.

Earlier this year the Trimbos Institute, which tests pills in Holland, came across a skull-shaped tablet containing 360mg - enough MDMA to get five people high.

Ecstasy is far from being the demonic 'Russian Roulette' drug the media, police, and judges make it out to be. At the very least 4.3 million pills are dropped each year in England and Wales, so if the chance of death really was one in six, Britain would have become a mass burial ground by now. But what is clear is that as the purity has jumped, so have the number of deaths. In 2016, the latest year for which figures are available, a record 98 people died after taking ecstasy in the UK. The previous high, at the height of Britain's ecstasy boom in 2002, had been 79 deaths.

In almost all cases, these deaths have not been down to 'rogue batches' of pills laced with strange adulterants: they are caused by what coroners call 'MDMA toxicity'; in other words, too high a dose of MDMA.

Read the full story here.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

That's strange that a pill would have such a high dose. If the makers cared enough to use mdma instead of any other easily obtainable RC you'd think they'd take care to get the pills pressed consistently and at a lower dose. Then again it's probably easier to move 100 300mg pills rather then 300 100mg pills.

 

[spacejunk]

I think the most interesting and illuminating discussion about this is on bluelight;

What is wrong with the MDMA available today?

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

5 people? three would be more likely if that quantity of pure MDMA were to be divided equally, put in capsules and handed to the users, four if it were to be a weak ass roll, but five? not a chance of any more than threshold effects.

And if anything things getting more dangerous is due to illegality, and because safrole is hard to get hold of in comparison, they'd be using propenyl/allylbenzenes more available such as to make PMA or PMMA, which are easier to obtain by far. And thus producing products which are of infinitely greater toxicity, to the point of being extremely dangerous or even lethal quite easily.

If they legalized MDMA and MDA, that would never happen, if people could just walk into a pharmacy and purchase a pack of proper MDA, MDMA, MDE pills of a known dosage and be as certain of receiving what they expect to receive as they would be when buying a pack of antacids, co-codamol or honey and lemon syrup.

We need this done, and ASAP, for safety, and to help stop the deaths. That largest dose of MDMA listed IS a large dose, but a single tablet wouldn't kill a person taking one, not directly as a result of toxicity, only if they succumbed to the combination of overheating and salt loss plus drinking lots of water alone, without replenishing electrolytes, although of course this is never anything but a consequence of poor awareness of how to stay hydrated properly and lacking awareness of hyponatraemia due to water intoxication if what they drink IS just water, and is totally and entirely preventable with education and awareness,

That pill would be a fucking strong one but not a lethal dose of MDMA. I'd take half and maybe two top ups over time, or take the other half as it began to wear off. if I felt like it, rather than all at once, but such a dose in any case is not enough to kill.

 

[pofacedhoe]

^ not everyone reacts the same

some people get super high off tiny amounts (i have seen it before where one person who is mega sensitive had eyes rolling back and was dry heaving and everyone else was barely buzzing and feeling short changed)

plus some people just have funny reactions and their kidneys fail etc.

so mdma is not without danger although statistically that sort of thing isn't hugely common hence makes the news immediately

at the same time most people will agree 100mg is bare minimum to come up

 

[cj]

I think the most interesting and illuminating discussion about this is on bluelight;

What is wrong with the MDMA available today?

Thanks for the link. Very interesting discussion

 

[S.J.B.]

I think the most interesting and illuminating discussion about this is on bluelight;

What is wrong with the MDMA available today?

There's a hell of a lot of nonsense in that thread.

 

[cj]

There's a hell of a lot of nonsense in that thread.

Yeah I don't know enough about precursors or racemic mixture to make heads or tails of lejunks argument