It seems the mainstream media, with their fingers permanently pressed against the pulse of American pop culture, has once again saved us from a brand new deadly narcotic that definitely hasn’t been around for years and definitely hasn’t killed anyone before. I’m not making light of the recent deaths at the Boston House of Blues and Electric Zoo. Loss of life is tragic, obviously, and I can’t imagine the trauma of a friend passing before your eyes during a night out you’ve planned for months in advance. But it still happens, and the reason I’m frustrated is because we keep asking why.
This scene has always had a heavy stigma of drug use attached to it. Only now instead of Red Motorolas or Blue Transformers, kids are sneaking in bags of chemical powder or rocks that the media has so professionally lumped together as “Molly.” Now, if you’ve ever bought Molly you probably know that getting the real deal can be a bit of a pain in the neck these days. Having a Marquis chemical test kit (a highly recommended investment…or so I’ve heard) allows you to take a tiny sample of your product which, when introduced to a chemical agent, will turn a certain color. Cross-reference the color with the included key and you’ll find there’s a very high chance what you got wasn’t Molly. It was probably Methylone, actually. You remember bath salts? Now you know where they all went when they were made illegal. Prohibition is fun.
Infamous “Blue Transformer” Ecstasy Pills
But I’m not about to act like pure MDMA is a perfect drug. Like other things, it’s perfectly fine in moderation, but start eating the stuff every weekend at your local club and not only will the high not be nearly as good, you’ll do enough damage to your brain to leave you with permanent, crippling, depression. It’s just common sense, you’re doing heavy damage to your serotonin receptors and your body in general. When I first heard about these “overdoses” my initial thought was “Damn, they must’ve taken a lot.” Let’s pretend for a moment that the media is correct and every bag you buy off the dude with quarter sized pupils in the parking lot before the show is pure MDMA. It takes around a gram and a half to two grams of the stuff to approach death with pure Molly. For those of you unaware, a tenth of a gram is a typical dose for a first-timer. So it would take ten to fifteen hits of the real deal for you to be in dangerous territory. This is a rough figure mind you, you need to account for body weight and tolerance as well of course.
Now I obviously don’t know the girl from Zedd or the two people from Ezoo. I wasn’t there when they bought it, I wasn’t there when they took it, there are a lot of variables. But I’d be willing to bet that their deaths could’ve been prevented had they kept hydrated, taken breaks, or maybe chosen a less crowded portion of the dance floor to enjoy the show on. I’m not lecturing anyone. We won’t know what actually killed these people until the toxicology reports come out, but I guess once again the media is one step ahead of all of us and has determined it was without a shadow of a doubt pure MDMA and pure MDMA only that did it. Unless they twisted words and went off assumptions, but I highly doubt that, what with them being the media and all. I go to plenty of shows and festivals and I understand wanting to go hard as you can at events. I also understand wanting to do drugs at these events because it’s, you know, fun. But we live in the age of the internet. Any and all questions you could possibly have about dosage and harm reduction is at our fingertips. Maybe these poor individuals did research what they were allegedly taking. Maybe the girl from Zedd tried to buy a bottled water but couldn’t afford it because they were six dollars each. I’m not picking on clubs here, businesses need to make their money, but would allowing concert goers to bring in a factory sealed bottle they could refill with tap water be all that expensive? Not as expensive as cancelling the second of two sold out shows, I’m sure.
With Electric Zoo heat exhaustion is obviously a major factor. Ezoo has a great rep and they made water refilling stations readily available to people. The sad part is that for how beautiful and unifying festivals can be, there’s always going to be risks when you throw a couple thousand people in one place doing drugs. We’re all adults here, it happens. I attended Camp Bisco this year and last year and there was an overdose casualty each time. Both were from opiates however, and both deaths occurred the night before the actual festival was set to begin. Both deaths also received minimal media coverage, especially when compared to the glut of recent articles spreading half-truths and urban myths about drugs. I watched a girl in a site across from mine seize up from heatstroke. She ended up being fine but the scene gave everyone a good jolt. This can happen to anyone, but it doesn’t mean it has to.
This needs to be a common theme everywhere.
A lot of veterans of the scene who don’t use drugs at shows are obviously fed up and for good reason. There’s been many a call to arms for us to all sober up and start coming to these shows for the music, not just to get high. This will never happen though. These people are frustrated because they want electronic dance music to be just as legitimate a genre of music as rock or country or hip-hop. I agree with this sentiment as I’ve had many relatives and friends unfamiliar with the scene roll their eyes at me for going to so many shows and call it “that glowstick music.” The thing is, though, I don’t care what these people thing. They’re not gonna “get it” and they probably never will. Just like I can’t fathom how dressing up in flannel and blacking out on a bleacher at an Eric Church show is anything remotely resembling a good time. Generalizations are fun too.
While we’re on the subject of other music genres, let’s also not forget the loads of drug use that comes with them. Go to a hip-hop show and you’re gonna find people drinking and smoking weed. I have friends who don’t even listen to country music and go to country fest every year “to get hammered dood” the same way some people come to the shows I go to just to “roll face guy.” Go into the bathroom at a punk show and you might find a lot of people with the sniffles in the stalls. But you can’t define an entire genre and all its fans by the actions of some. This should be a no-brainer but I think we could all do better to remind ourselves of it here and there. I lose sight of that mindset myself. Look at my little dig at Eric Church last paragraph. I’m sure he’s probably a chill guy.
I’m also sick of the way that the term “drug use” immediately spurs negativity and panic from the public and fans. I’ve seen many people in the scene complain about how so many people are spun out of their minds at shows or six feet deep in a k-hole or tripping out of their head on acid. Unless these people are intentionally bothering you, why do you really care? They’re enjoying the show they paid to see, who really cares? Not to mention, you’ll never find a nicer group of people than a group of people on Molly. You don’t need drugs to be nice to people, I’m not claiming you do, but I think it would be unfair to discount Ecstasy’s impact on the welcoming, nonjudgmental atmosphere that I love so much at raves. You get a true sense of unity and inner peace at these events whether you’re on drugs or not, and having been to hundreds of concerts spanning tons of genres and I’ve found the “love drug” vibe to be irreplaceable. It’s not a slight to any other genres, I’m a hip-hop head too, but a mere anecdote.
As many others have noted I think we’ve reached the unfortunate (but probably necessary given recent events) bursting of the recent EDM bubble of the past few years. Now that events are getting cancelled and clubs have been forced to close their doors (RIP Ocean Club) all over the country it seems the scene will once again sink back into the underground. Undoubtedly it will always exist and people will always bring drugs to them, but you probably won’t see too many more paint parties, electro 5K’s, and concerts at theme parks any time soon. Personally I’m kind of relieved, even though it sucks that people died to bring us to this point. I’m not relieved in a hipster “I liked this before it was cool” sense either. I’m more or less glad that the media will direct its attention to another scapegoat to slander and tarnish with misinformation and scare tactics. Or, God forbid, they do their homework next time. I predict the former will happen much sooner than the latter, but to my fellow frustrated fans hang tight, this will blow over soon.
This has been a guest editorial by Steve Cahill. You can find him on Facebook. WRR thanks Steve for his time and dedication to this piece.
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