I'm an oldkool raver and took Ecstasy and speed in the early 90s and into 2000, and there is no comparison with the 90s and the 2000>
No recreational drugs today are the same as they were 20-30 years ago. Particularly Ecstasy and amphetamines.
I always suspected that the one thing that changed it all was the birth of the "Legal High/Research Chemical industry.
The use and application of the many hundreds of research chemicals has destroyed the oldskool illegal drugs market. Most if not all illegal oldskool classic type drugs today are mixed with the legal high/research chemicals. Amphetamine is the classic example. It simply does not exist anymore. It is simply research chemicals mixed with tiny amounts of real amphetamine to give it the smell of amphetamine. Utter garbage.
I'm now middle aged and no longer participate in such activities, but I strongly believe that the research chemical boom changed everything permanently, even after the governments banned the sale of them. They are all now just incorporated into all the other drugs.
Drug abuse has always been dangerous and risky, but so much more risky today. Todays drug takers will never realise because they don't know any different.
Stay safe guys.
I too tasted the glory and magnifiscence of the original MDMA, 90's up to mid 2005, when it was still as banging as ever.
I just want to make one point in relation to what you say about the legal RC market being responsible.
I am personally very thankful to have been able to acquire pure, pharma grade LSD homologes from Holland which work as well as any LSD 25 I ever took.
I don't agree with the assertion the RC market has been a bad thing, for the modern drug user.
MDMA could still have been produced to identical standards, I believe.
I see the RC market as an actual godsend to so many. Very clean, pure, potent psychedellics at exact, known dosages have been accessible to many psychonauts for years now.
Tryptamines and Lysergamides in particular. No way can anybody assert that those are not proper, or real drugs. They absolutely are.
Also pure benzodiazepines, dissociatives like 3 MEO PCP, the infamous "god molecule" tryptamine 5 MEO DMT, hailed as one of the 3 or 4 most potent drugs on the planet, alongside LSD and Salvia extracts.
There are members here, longterm lovers of true MDMA who I know greatly appreciate the RC stimulants such as 6 MAPB etc.
Im just saying I feel that far more has been given to the world of recreational psychonauts by the RC scene from Holland, than has been taken away.
If no RC scene had ever existed, it's perfectly conceivable to me that MDMA production and quality would have taken the exact same dive.
I will admit perhaps the mass arrival of Mcat on scene in 2005 I think, a bit of a coincidence, timing with the beginning of MDMA's downfall.
So Im not ruling out your suggestion. I just don't think it's valid to attribute blame on the RC scene.
Okay, Im really not saying this very well. I'm just trying to defend a good thing, on the whole, for most drug users, IMO.
MDMA, LSD 25, ALD 52, Mescaline, Cocaine, Speed etc etc, ARE research chemicals. No different to 4-ho-mipt or AL-LAD in that sense. Just supersceding.
I have taken note of the thriving RC scene over recent years, the storm it has been and still is, and the overwhelming positive impact it has had on so many people's lives by opening up clean, safe, reliable avenues with a huge array of top quality psychedellics and other psychoactives on hand.