Molly, Ecstasy and the alleged profession of journalism

Look people, this is really very exceptionally easy to understand. It is not rocket science.

New drug “Molly” produces lasting side effects

Recent social media posts have focused on the side effects of Molly, an MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine) drug similar to ecstasy that has become increasingly popular among college students over the past year.

No, it is not “an” MDMA drug and it is not “similar” to ecstasy.

Recreational drugs have all kinds of nicknames. Names that vary across time, place and subpopulation. A given user, however, means something specific.

“Ecstasy” was and is the drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, known as MDMA for short. You can read my musings in the archives.

It is also the case that illicit drug sellers, at times, provide the customers with a drug product which is something other than what the person intends to purchase. In the case of cocaine and heroin, most casual readers will be intimately familiar with teevee and movie plot lines which involve “cutting” pure cocaine or heroin with other substances. The goal, in fiction and in reality, is to make more money from a limited commodity.

“Ecstasy” supplies are notoriously variable in both active drug quantity per dose (i.e. traditional concepts of “cutting”) and in the psychoactive ingredients contained therein. In the case of the latter, there is reason to believe that the non-MDMA, psychoactive drugs might serve as a partial substitute. These alternatives include meth/amphetamine, MDA, MDE, mCPP and caffeine here, here, here, here and here. (Lots of caffeine, actually.) Head over to ecstasydata.org and you can search for pill constituents yourself.

Now, given this diversity and given that these are psychoactive drugs that have their own fan bases, it would not be surprising in the least to find people actually seeking out or preferring “Ecstasy” that was in fact not MDMA. There is a set of focus group comments here that I find illuminating. You can imagine for yourself why an Ecstasy consumer would prefer to think of methamphetamine as “speedy”-MDMA rather than good old methamphetamine. Also, people are very bad at blind identification of, say, methamphetamine vs MDMA. So there’s that. It is not impossible that some individual might have consistently been sold “Ecstasy” that is actually something else, like mCPP and caffeine, and prefer it and think that this is “Ecstasy”. But I doubt it. Hard to get clear estimates and it varies across time but something on the order of at least half of “Ecstasy” contains only MDMA.

Now, against this history of things marketed as “Ecstasy” that might or might not be pure MDMA, there arose a marketing trend (and user bragging right boast) for pure, genuine Ecstasy/MDMA. Reflecting, of course, that this particular compound/molecule is what substantial parts of the “Ecstasy” market were intending to purchase.

This marketed-as-pure MDMA became termed “Molly” in recent parlance.

Get it journalists? Molly = MDMA = Ecstasy.

And juuuuuusssst as with the prior episode, illicit drug suppliers are motivated to cut and substitute the product they move to people who are seeking to purchase MDMA. Once again, there is undoubtedly drug being sold as “Molly” that in fact contains other psychoactive substances and/or is cut with inert substances.

None of this makes “Molly” some new drug of uncertain identity, however.

Additional Reading:
Music Festival in Washington Leads to Dozens of Drug Overdoses, One Death
Molly: Pure, but Not So Simple
There’s something (potentially dangerous) about molly
Club drug ‘Molly’ on major upswing as Ultra Music Fest Miami approaches
These Rappers Hate Ecstasy