Twenty-five years ago, a little pill changed Britain forever. So when did the comedown start?
Back in 1988, there was a shampoo called Bliss, a cocktail called Orgasm and a drug called Ecstasy. One of these three was not like the others. It made you want to touch strangers (not in a creepy way) and dance all night long. “Coming up” on it was like being overwhelmed by an attack of happiness. And it shaped a corner of British culture forever.
Ecstasy, or methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), had first been synthesized in the late ’70s by American biochemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin for use in psychotherapy. (For him, the effect of taking Ecstasy was like a particularly lucid alcohol buzz; he called it his ‘’low-calorie martini.’’). But it remained a specialised, largely unknown drug until 1988.
Then the “Second Summer Of Love” happened. And as with the hippies the first time around in 1967, what began as a music-led youth revolution was to have profound cultural effects – influencing music, fashion, film, television and design for decades after.
However, it would also suffer some of the same ill effects. What comes up must come down, for every high there has to be a low... and Ecstasy – like acid and dope before it – was to have its own dark side.
Not that it seemed to matter back in 1988. Across the country, dedicated young ravers, already high on the euphoric beats and breaks of emerging house music, were about to bring Ecstasy into the mainstream. E could have been made for the music. And, back then, the music was certainly being made for E.
Nothing sounds more of its time than 808 State’s Pacific State, released in 1989. Clad in standard-issue Joe Bloggs baggies and sneakers, the band’s euphoric cheerleader Daz Partington first saw an Ecstasy pill in a shadowy corner of the farthest booth of The Haçienda nightclub in Manchester.
