Ecstasy and Other Drug Addiction
The Use of Ecstasy as a Technique to Avoid or Lessen Addiction to Hard Drugs
We have found a few instances in which our respondents calculate that ecstasy is a way to avoid or lessen heroin or other drug addiction. The 16-year-old gang member strategizes:
My homeboys, they just get all messed up on coke and crack, but that shit is too hard. It is too easy to get addicted to it.
He prefers “X” or LSD to coke and other hard drugs.
An 18-year-old heterosexual female notes this rationale for using ecstasy:
When I was sixteen I started snorting heroin, I got hooked on that shit fast! It was all that I wanted to do all the time. All of my money went getting more, and when my money ran out, I would start sleeping with the dealers, or anyone who had some. After a while I was shooting all the time too. I was like that for about five months, then I got arrested one night. They sent me to a rehab place, I broke out twice, and that’s when they sent me to jail. I had no choice but to come clean. I was in there for eight months. When I got out I decided that I would never do that again. So then I realized that a lot of the bad “X” has some heroin in it. So it was better for me to try and find that kind of “X”, rather than the pure stuff. When I buy “X”, I go to the raves and try to find someone with “X” with heroin in it and trade them hits. It gives me just that little fix that I want sometimes. I have not done heroin in a year and a half now, and I am glad. It is good to have a little control over my life now.
Bad ecstasy is used, then, as a strategy for managing a previous heroin addiction.
If you are looking for an addiction treatment program in your area go to www.recoveryconnection.org or call the addiction treatment helpline at 1-800-511-9225.
