pill and tablets in a glass

Some users trip happily with Molly, others roll into dangerous territory with the illegal drug

EL PASO – During the Labor Day weekend Sun City Music Festival earlier this year, a 17-year-old girl from Houston was taken to a local hospital after an adverse reaction to the synthetic street drug Molly, short for molecule. Fortunately, she survived her encounter with the dangerous designer drug unlike other users across the U.S. over the past decade. On the same Labor Day weekend in New York City two revelers at the Electric Zoo electronic dance festival suffered fatal overdoses caused by Molly. These incidents may have been related to a rash of overdoses in the northeast United States blamed on a bad batch of the designer drug, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency. Molly also known by the street name Mandy, is the powdered form or crystallized form of methylenedioxy methamphetamine or MDMA.

Danny Avila during his set at SCMF in Ascarate Park during Labor Day weekend. (Valeria Hernández/Borderzine.com)

Electronic music brings me happiness, but it also has a dark side

EL PASO ­– The beat was big and loud, echoing in my chest, and the flashing lights were like an array of Technicolor feeding the crowd’s hungry eyes. I looked around and I could almost see the pure joy exuding from everyone’s faces. Their ear-to-ear smiles said it all. In that huge sea of people dancing to Tiesto’s “Adagio for Strings,” under the Sun City’s starry sky, I was one with the crowd and it was perfect. Electronic dance music has been around since the mid-1990’s, roughly, but it has been growing in popularity and is perhaps at its peak right now.

(Diana Carrillo/Borderzine.com)

The rave is all about music, but some seek Ecstacy to enhance the dance

EL PASO – The dancing crowd rides a wave of lights surging to electronic rhythms while neon colors waft the wall and the crowd becomes one with the massive electro-beats as the wave becomes tsunami, flooding the hall up to eight hours at a time. The ecstasy that drives hours of nonstop dancing, typical at music festivals and raves, is sometimes fed by Ecstasy – the illicit drug. “I wouldn’t have lasted dancing, or even standing for the whole seven hours that I was there. I rolled for seven hours straight,” said Robert, 21. For many years, people have combined the music scene with drug use to increase the energy and enhance euphoria.

Young Users Find Ecstasy in a Cheap Abundant Pill

EL PASO, Texas – Electro-beats fill the arena, green laser lights project out to the dancing multitude and somewhere in that crowd many will be consuming ecstasy, including 19 year-old Randy. “The first time I ever took ecstasy was when I went to a rave a few months ago and my friends gave me this really small pill. I took it and everything changed,” Randy said. “I just felt happy and everything sounded and looked even better than before.”

El Paso has seen an almost 2 percent increase of ecstasy seizures from 2008 to November 2009 according to Diana Apodaca, Drug Enforcement Administration special agent. “At first we thought it had to do with the violence in Mexico, but then we realized it had nothing to do with it,” Apodaca said.