Molly: Is She Really Innocent?

She became the most popular girl at the party faster than Lindsay Lohan in “Mean Girls”, and that’s honestly an understatement. Almost everyone ends up scheming for a way to hang out with her. You can always find her, and she comes in a few different colors, shapes, and sizes. She kind of sounds like the perfect girl… right?

Within the past few years Molly has achieved what I consider instantaneous popularity and an infamous persona. To put it into perspective, Molly made her way into our culture faster than The Jonas Brothers made their way out. Molly’s popularity has become so incredibly widespread that her usage has become not only common, but socially acceptable and expected.  Shane Morris’ recent eye opening article (it received more than 149,000 views, 20,000 likes, and 700 retweets in less than a month) “Finding Molly: Dancing, Drugs and Death,” exposes Molly for who she is really- a drug.

This article has been talked about all over campus. I’ve heard reactions ranging from the “this guy is full of shit” to “damn… Molly isn’t just fun and games”. Whether you’ve read Morris’ article or not you should know that this guy is backed with some solid credibility. Morris speaks from true first hand experience, having once been a seller and partaker in the music scene. Things quickly changed for Morris, however, in the wake of two drug related deaths at the Electric Zoo festival in New York this past August. After first abandoning his ten year career in the music industry Morris felt obliged to honestly and bluntly address the tangled truth of what has become everyone’s favorite party favor.

Molly is known as the pure form of MDMA, or Ecstasy, that comes in the form of crystals or powder. According to Morris, however, there is an alarming difference between Molly and MDMA. Molly is (more often than we realize) an anonymous powder. This is a truth that’s largely unknown to the majority of its users and the answer to everyone’s not so subtle question. Molly has gone missing. After having the chance to speak with Morris over the phone I received even more startling insight into Molly’s world.

“You have some people who will get a small amount of Crystal Meth and a small amount of 2C-I [another psychedelic drug] and mix it with some bath salts and they’ll put it into a bag,” Morris said. “You’re dealing with people who don’t have invested interest in keeping their customers alive.”

This is a scary thought considering that the number of users have undergone a rapid increase. There were 2,670 confiscations of MDMA in 2012, increasing from 186 in 2008, according to the United States Customs and Border Protection.

“The more people that are doing something, the more normal it gets,” Morris said. “Once you reach the tipping point, where it’s not just the minority, but the majority, then it’s like ‘Why aren’t you taking Molly, everybody else is.’

Molly has become a permanent stage five clinger at EDM shows and festivals such as Ultra, TomorrowWorld, and Electric Zoo. If you’ve never experienced one of these massive festivals let me put into perspective just how popular this music scene has become. According to Forbes magazine Ultra Music Festival in Miami hosted around 330,000 people from more than 80 countries this past year. That’s a whole lot of people, and a good number of them are enhancing their good time with Molly. But just how is everyone able to get their hands on the drug?

Morris told me that, “the promoters would go in and they would be the ones actually selling the drugs.”

This summer the Electric Zoo Festival prematurely closed its gates after two drug overdose related deaths. At that point the Molly phenomenon was anything but old news and the two deaths sparked a massive controversy. Despite being culturally acceptable the unfortunate events at Electric Zoo initiated a much needed and long time coming conversation about its risks.

“Young people need to get out of the mindset that it is safe,” Morris said. “Everyone is going to act uniquely to things. Just because one person is okay to take MDMA doesn’t mean the person standing next to them is, because we’re all unique snowflakes and we’re all going to react differently.”

Molly may seem innocent, but its dangers are incredibly real. The consequences can be fatal.

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