Concerning ecstasy...

[Smith]

Why would so many people not touch ecstasy?
Purely because its illegal, because of health risks, or any other reason?
I'm just interested, that's all.

[hr]Signatures are for losers.... err, oops?

[Rilla]

[s]Smith wrote on 18:34, 16th Jan 2005:
Why would so many people not touch ecstasy?

I'm really not interested. Alcohol and caffeine seem to keep me happy enough.

[hr]
“Stepwise methods abusers frequently would rather not think about their data, for reasons that are funny to describe over a second Guinness”

[johness]

The danger of you being one of those people who have a fatal reaction to it like Leah Betes (think that was her name, there was a massive billboard campaign years ago, featuring posters of her in a coma after taken one, for the first time, on her 18th birthday, that came out after her parents took the decision to turn off her life support machine). The long term effects are, to my knowledge, as yet unproven but I doubt it does you any favours.
My cousin regularly takes e and I've seen her in right states, telling whole clubs full of people she has special connections with them and she's in love with everybody. She acts like a total fanny. Granted I get really drunk and do some stupid things too but the worst is a hangover, she has dreadful comedowns that render her useless for a couple of days sometimes. My boyfriend at the time took several at T in the Park one year and was so out the game I was scared to leave him alone in the tent. Ruined my whole weekend and missed so so many of the bands I was so excited to see.
I appreciate that taking drugs is a personal choice and I'm not paticularly adverse to it, love smoking grass on occasion (though some wish I wouldn't, I'm a giggler) but I have never taken e and never would.
Think this is my longest post yet!

[hr]today, I heart The Shins

[Smith]

I personally feel that the media have done a really good job with scare tactics as far as ecstasy goes. Every time someone dies from an ecstasy tablet, it's front page news, which makes people notice.
Even though the number of deaths ecstasy related is probably lower than alcohol related, and is most definitely lower than smoking related.

[benedict]

'I'd do it if I knew it was safe. However, there's always the chance of it being impure, mixed with who knows what, so until there's some I know is entirely free from dog pills, i'll stay away.'

http://drugs.greenparty.org.uk/kits/kits.htm

sorted

[Al]

"The danger of you being one of those people who have a fatal reaction to it like Leah Betes (think that was her name, there was a massive billboard campaign years ago, featuring posters of her in a coma after taken one, for the first time, on her 18th birthday, that came out after her parents took the decision to turn off her life support machine)."

Actually, and this was revealed at the time, Leah Betts died of water intoxication and not from an adverse reaction to Ecstasy. She believed that drinking vast amounts of water would stave off the negative effects of the drug. It was the swelling this caused to the brain that put her into a coma. The post mortem revealed this. It also revealed that the Ecstasy she had taken was pure. Furthermore, it was not the first time she had taken the drug. All this was known shortly after her tragic death and yet was not widely reported.

[hr]Life is too important to be taken seriously.

[Wong]

I just don't like the idea of things that mess with my head.

[johness]

[s]Al wrote on 19:31, 16th Jan 2005:
Actually... Leah Betts died of water intoxication and not from an adverse reaction to Ecstasy. She believed that drinking vast amounts of water would stave off the negative effects of the drug...Furthermore, it was not the first time she had taken the drug. All this was known shortly after her tragic death and yet was not widely reported.


Had no idea that was the case, it was a very effective campaign nonetheless.

Even so, how was she to know it was pure? I still wouldn't dream of risking it, what if you were lumped with a dog worming tablet? Just from personal experience of seeing it has the potential to make you into a complete twat for an evening and feel like shit for the privilige. Knowing my luck I'd have a bad reaction to it, not to mention long term effects. Just don't think its worth it at all. Have neen offered it several times here in St.Andrews but, interestingly, NEVER at home in Glasgow.
>edited for pants grammer and addition of st.a. fact.
[hr]
today, I heart The Shins

[flarewearer]

[s]Smith wrote on 18:34, 16th Jan 2005:
Why would so many people not touch ecstasy?
Purely because its illegal, because of health risks, or any other reason?
I'm just interested, that's all.


er, because it kills you and fucks you up?

[hr]
..if you smell an odourless gas, it is likely to be Carbon Monoxide...

[Rob]

i keep getting mistaken for a dealer.

[womble chris]

i am a binge drinker. ive only just now made it out of bed having had a banging headache and been vomiting bile 3 times during the course of the day.
i hope i would never take e due to the net effects of it. i enjoy going down the pub, occasionally drinking way too much by mistake, but some of the stories ive heard seem bad and im not willing to take the risk. one could say binge drinking is worse, but as i can easily go a week without having a drop then i dont consider myself an alcoholic and so dont see many problems with it.
about that girl's case, yes, you rightly pointed out that it was drinking too much water (as often leads to deaths with e, i remember a campaign atfer the 'drink lots of water if you take e', was 'dont drink too much water' as it was causing so many hospital cases.)


maybe its even worse that she died of drinking too much water, you can now evidently check whether the pill isnt pure, but you cant ensure you wont do something life threatening while under the influence of e (and the worst thing ive ever done when hammered is probably make a fool of myself and pick up a few bumps and bruises)

[steerpike]

[s]Smith wrote on 19:10, 16th Jan 2005:
Even though the number of deaths ecstasy related is probably lower than alcohol related, and is most definitely lower than smoking related.




by that logic, shouldn't we all give up the fags and the booze and take up ecstacy instead, since, as the above pointed out, less people die of it than smoking and drinking????

on a serious note though, unles you've been in hibernation, you might just notice that there are a number of acts going into practice to (try and) sort out the problems of binge drinking and smoking. it might not be front page material, but at least its more optimistic than feeding us grusome images of some poor bastard dying of a drug overdose.

[Rob Hearn]

A lot of people have died whilst drinking, or have killed or assaulted others, and the cumulative effects of alcohol consumption have a massive death toll. The fact that e is stigmatised and alcohol isn't is a simple double standard, and nothing else. Which is not to say that e can't casue harm, because it clearly can. It's just that there's no sensible way to distinguish it from alcohol in terms of its harmfulness.

[Happy-Go-Lucky]

I guess it's because ecstasy has a high potential to kill you on your very first pop. Alcohol usually requires a rediculously large quantity to be consumed before it runs the risk of killing you. But I would be too scared to pop an E, because there is a chance, that it might kill me just by itself, and if it does, it'll be an extrememly unpleasant death. If it was perfectly safe, but just illegal, I'd give it a go. Even if it required quite a high dose like several pills to be a risk, I expect many more people would give it a try. But there are numerous incidents of people dying after only one pill, or even only half a pill, so it really is a lottery on your life. I can't imagine why anybody would risk being dead by the end of the night for the sake of a good buzz.

[amac]

[s]Rob Hearn wrote on 20:55, 16th Jan 2005:
A lot of people have died whilst drinking, or have killed or assaulted others, and the cumulative effects of alcohol consumption have a massive death toll. The fact that e is stigmatised and alcohol isn't is a simple double standard, and nothing else. Which is not to say that e can't casue harm, because it clearly can. It's just that there's no sensible way to distinguish it from alcohol in terms of its harmfulness.

That's an extremely nieve comment to make. As Happy-Go-Lucky points out, you'd need to have taken in large quantities of Alcohol to die from it, and you should be able ot easily moderate that amount. E is nothing like that. You can't guarantee the quality / know the strength, and taking just one could kill you.

[Rob Hearn]

a) one ecstasy tablet can kill a person who takes an adverse reaction, but I suspect the number of people who die annually by eating nuts without knowing that they have a serious nut allergy, or get stung by bees unaware that they are allergic to beestings, is greater. The issue is with people being allergic to substances whatsoever, not substances that happen to be illegal.

Although you do put your finger on an important point: the dosage of alcohol tends to be more incremental, and so safer in a sense. However, as I say, the cumulative effects remain potentially lethal. Liver failure and heart disease from alcohol are much greater on the continent, where the binge drinking culture is less prevalent, but the overall consumption of alcohol is generally greater.

[Smith]

The binge drinking culture will die down if bars go 24 hours...

[Rob Hearn]

The evidence from other countries actually suggests otherwise. People just drink for longer, and all of the symptoms of binge drinking are amplified. According, that is, to some professor of addiction studies at UCL or somewhere, who I heard being interview the other night on radio four.

[David Bean]

[s]Rob Hearn wrote on 21:31, 16th Jan 2005:
a) one ecstasy tablet can kill a person who takes an adverse reaction, but I suspect the number of people who die annually by eating nuts without knowing that they have a serious nut allergy, or get stung by bees unaware that they are allergic to beestings, is greater. The issue is with people being allergic to substances whatsoever, not substances that happen to be illegal.

Trust an atheist fundamentalist to come out with such abject nonsense. For the first thing, does anyone ever die from 'eating nuts without knowing that they have a serious nut allergy'? I rather doubt it, considering that serious nut allergies have such severe symptons that people generally know about their condition from early childhood, not as an adult when they eat their (presumably on your account) first ever nut. In reality, the only serious problems with a nut allergy come when food items contain traces of nut (or where the alergy is so severe that the scent can cause a reaction, assuming that is actually true); apart from those cases, a nut allergy is hardly likely to prove fatal. With ecstacy, there is (as far as I know) no practical way of telling whether one has an allergy without actually taking the drug, yet people die.

Second, regarding bee stings, you make it sound as though people are stinging themselves with bees in the mistaken belief that they won't be harmed by the experience, when in fact they happen to suffer from a severe allergy that leads to their deaths. What really happens is that people die from bee sting allergies because bees have a nasty habit of flying around the show, and it's difficult to rationalise with a bee and prevent it from stinging you by explaining that you are allergic. Point being, people are not stung through any action of their own, whereas taking ecstacy necessitates a conscious choice.

Third, since when did the number of people affected by something become a measure of how dangerous it is? I assume you're a scientist, so try using a scientific method for one second: if a million people ate nuts and ten of them died, whilst a hundred people took ecstacy and one of them died, it wouldn't exactly be rational to conclude that nuts are more dangerous than ecstacy, would it? Even if you are correct in your assertion that more people die from nut allergies or bee stings than who die from taking ecstacy, the last of these remains distinctly a minority pursuit whilst vastly greater numbers of people regularly eat nuts and are exposed to the possibility of being stung by an insect, and so it would hardly be surprising if a greater ad valorem number of people were affected by alergies other than to ecstacy. The question is whether to put oneself at unnecessary extra risk for the sake of a reward of dubious value. So on this point, as with the other two, your argument falls.

By the way, what happened to b)? I think you've been stung.

[hr]
"Fiat justicia ruat coelum (let justice be done though the heavens may fall)" - Judge James Horton (family motto)

[Smith]

Rob I disagree, in my experience binge drinking occurs as a result of having to get as many drinks in as you can before a certain time, because you won't be able to carry on drinking afterwards.

David, I disagree, I know people who have taken thousands of ecstasy tablets, and they in turn know people who have taken thousands of ecstasy tablets, and none of these people know anyone who has died from taking tablets.
The number of "bad pills" and the number of people that die from taking them is very small, but the event is broadcast in such high profile in the media when it actually happens it leads people to come to these conclusions that ecstasy is a killer drug. Its a very efficient way of stopping people taking them, IMHO.