Have you seen Molly?
My friend was looking for her. Actually just about everyone was. I was even accosted in a hotel elevator by two young girls at the Electric Daisy Carnival last weekend in Orlando if I had any Molly. When I laughed and politely declined, one of the girls said, “Oh, he must be a good kid.”
Is this what it has come to?
Molly is the street name for a drug that is pushed as the pure powder form of a banned substance known as MDMA, the main chemical in ecstasy. Molly is often described as the purified version of MDMA, or so it’s believed to be. No one really knows. A lot of people claim to have the “pure” stuff. The combination of pounding bass music, vibrant light displays, visual tricks and wonders plus a bit of Molly is supposedly life altering.
How exactly life altering is it? Maximillian Ganz, a junior biology and psychology major with a chemistry minor at the University of Tampa, is studying neuropharmacology at Oxford University next semester and recently did some research on Molly.
“The most interesting study I looked at dissected primate brains and labeled them for serotonin receptors. There was a dramatic decrease in serotonin receptors throughout the brain after and extended use of MDMA,” Ganz said.
In other words, Molly will still have a negative effect on your body even if you stopped taking Molly years ago.
Additionally, people may think that doing Molly will only have short-term negative effects,” Ganz said. “However, they also took primates years after the exposure to MDMA (meaning they were not exposed to the drug for years after the initial exposure) and found the same dramatic decrease compared to primates of the same age with no exposure to MDMA.”
Serotonin is one of the chemicals in the brain that is impossible to completely replace naturally once gone. As a result, many people will need to use synthetic means to reach normal serotonin levels. Serotonin is the chemical in the brain that experts believe is most closely related to happiness.
In the 1990s, teens were experimenting with ecstasy in the dance club scene. People take Molly to reach another level of happiness just as they might any other drug.
“Molly is just a marketing tool,” said Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “It could be a whole variety of things.”
According to Jennifer Forkish, the vice president of communications and public affairs for Insomniac, the company that organizes Electric Daisy Carnival, all of Insomniac’s festivals have a zero tolerance policy for drugs, and they heavily monitor age restrictions by checking IDs upon entry.
There are also many water bottle refill stations and medics on site to ensure public safety.
“We like to create an open and accepting environment inside of our events where people feel comfortable asking for help if they need it,” Forkish said.
The song “Molly” by rapper Tyga has peaked at #66 on the Billboard Top 100, but the drug, like the song, is overplayed and many people are actually upset with the widespread use.
“Just ‘cause someone gives you a capsule with stuff in it, you’re willing to eat it? Most Molly is actually not MDMA like people think,” an anonymous source familiar with selling and manufacturing of the drug said. “A flood of similar chemicals is on the streets masquerading itself as the real deal.”
The individual claims that other substances are substituted and improperly labeled as “Molly.” According to him, common names of substances used to masquerade “Molly” are mdpvvv, M-1, methelone, bath salts and more.
“Other studies have directly correlated a reduction of serotonin to aggressive and impulsive behaviors,” Ganz said. “Thus, regular use of MDMA is not only a permanently mind altering psychoactive drug, but it actually causes increasingly aggressive and impulsive behavior that cannot, with current scientific practices, be corrected.”
Pranav Lokin can be reached at pranav.lokin@spartans.ut.edu