(7 of 8)
Still, the majority of people who end up in the e.r. after taking ecstasy are almost certainly not taking MDMA but something masquerading under its name. No one knows for sure what they're taking, since emergency rooms don't always test blood to confirm the drug identified by users. But one group that does test e for purity is DanceSafe, a prorave organization based in Berkeley, Calif., and largely funded by a software millionaire, Bob Wallace (Microsoft's employee No. 9). DanceSafe sets up tables at raves, where users can get information about drugs and also have ecstasy pills tested. (The organization works with police so that ravers who produce pills for testing won't be arrested.) A DanceSafe worker shaves off a sliver of the tablet and drops a solution onto it; if it doesn't turn black quickly, it's not MDMA.
The organization has found that as much as 20% of the so-called ecstasy sold at raves contains something other than MDMA. DanceSafe also tests pills for anonymous users who send in samples from around the nation; it has found that 40% of those pills are fake. Last fall, DanceSafe workers attended a "massive"--more than 5,000 people--rave in Oakland, Calif. Nine people were taken from the rave in ambulances, but DanceSafe confirmed that eight of the nine had taken pills that weren't MDMA.
The most common adulterants in such pills are aspirin, caffeine and other over-the-counters. (Contrary to lore, fake e virtually never contains heroin, which is not cost-effective in oral form.) But the most insidious adulterant--what all eight of the Oakland ravers took--is DXM (dextromethorphan), a cheap cough suppressant that causes hallucinations in the 130-mg dose usually found in fake e (13 times the amount in a dose of Robitussin). Because DXM inhibits sweating, it easily causes heatstroke. Another dangerous adulterant is PMA (paramethoxyamphetamine), an illegal drug that in May killed two Chicago-area teenagers who took it thinking they were dropping e. PMA is a vastly more potent hallucinogenic and hyperthermic drug than MDMA.
Most users don't have access to DanceSafe, which operates in only eight cities. But as demand has grown, the incentive to manufacture fake e has also escalated, especially for one-time raves full of teens who won't see the dealer again. Established dealers, by contrast, operate under the opposite incentive. A Miami dealer who goes by the name "Top Dog" told TIME he obtains MDMA test kits from a connection on the police force. "If [the pills] are no good," he says, customers "won't want to buy from you anymore." It's business sense: Top Dog can earn $300,000 a year on e sales.
As writer Joshua Wolf Shenk has pointed out, we tend to have opposing views about drugs: they can kill or cure; the addiction will enslave you, or the new perceptions will free you. Aldous Huxley typified this duality with his two most famous books, Brave New World--about a people in thrall to a drug called soma--and The Doors of Perception--an autobiographical work in which Huxley begins to see the world in a brilliant new light after taking mescaline.