Dancing the night away with ecstasy

I started out on burgundy/But soon hit the harder stuff/ Everybody said they'd stand behind me/When the game got rough/But the joke was on me/There was nobody even there to call/my bluff/ I'm going back to New York City/I do believe I've had enough -- This forlorn cry from Bob Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues is quoted in Prozac Nation, a book by Elizabeth Wurtzel, a former drug addict who became a popular-music critic for The New Yorker and New York magazine. The song is about loneliness, one of the reasons why some people turn to narcotics. Like many other nations, Indonesia is facing the increasingly serious problem of drug abuse. Loneliness, depression, insecurity and lack of self- confidence are among the major reasons behind drug addiction. Some people, however, take drugs or stimulants for the sheer fun of it, which makes the problem even more bizarre. As Wurtzel narrates in her book, many addicts in Indonesia are people who actually belong to the future, on whose hands the fate of the nation lay. The following story and several others on Page 7 tell of the problem in the country, the danger of the drugs and efforts to help addicts.

JAKARTA (JP): The discotheque in Kota, West Jakarta, was a sea of people. Teenagers, yuppies and middle-aged adults all danced excitedly together on the floor in front of the stage. They kept moving their bodies, legs, arms and heads in time with the music. Some couples hugged each other tightly, eyes closed, performing what looked like acts of love-making .

At the tables surrounding the dance floor, people were sitting in couples, caressing each other, while shaking their heads, mimicking the dancers on the floor.

The music was fast, powerful, electrifying, if monotonous. And they all apparently liked it.

"Ecstasy, ecstasy, ..." cried a song. It sounded more like the ravings of a lunatic than a song. The word was continuously mentioned from start to finish. Another song, in Indonesian, repeatedly chanted "Asyik, asyik,... (Cool!)".

Welcome to "Ecstasy" night, the latest fashion that has made inroads into the country's nightlife. You can witness it in the country's discotheques from Jakarta and Bandung to Surabaya and Bali. People can dance till morning and maintain their sexual arousal for a long time. No fatigue, no boredom. All because of Ecstasy, which is now almost as easy to find in discotheques as beer and mineral water.

People who take it can be identified by their strange dance style. If they are high, or tripping as it is called in local slang, they usually move their heads to the left and right either while dancing or sitting watching the dancers. And they are able to dance all-night long.

But not all people who indulge in the strange head-shaking dance style are Ecstasy users. Some of them are only pretenders or, as the locals call them, putri, short for pura-pura tripping (pretending to be high on Ecstasy). They feel ashamed if they don't follow the fashion.

"When you are tripping, you forget all your worries, all is happiness, all people look like friends to you, it's paradise," said a discotheque worker who once tried the drug.

The drug has reportedly been used locally since the 1980s, but the public only started to make a great fuss about it after the death of a businessman, Rifardi Seokarno Putra, in the house of starlet Ria Irawan in January 1994. The man was believed to have died after taking an Ecstasy overdose. The press widely- publicized the death and the effects of taking the drug.

The death, which still remains a mystery, was followed by a series of raids on discotheques by the police in a bid to crack down on Ecstasy abuse. All discotheques were ordered to stick notices on the walls discouraging people from using drugs. The slogans included: "No drugs" and "Say no to drugs". Yet, instead of discouraging people from taking the drug, the raids seemed to have made it more notorious and more people became tempted to taste it out of curiosity.

"Had the press have not made a fuss about the drug, only an exclusive group of people would have known about it and be using it. Now, every disco goer is willing to try it," said Gondrong, a discotheque employee, who claimed to have once tried the drug but never become an addict.

The dealers and abusers have little to fear as none of them have thus far ended up in jail. There has not yet been any law against drugs like Ecstasy. Those captured by the police during the raids were immediately released after their drugs had been confiscated. The severest penalty at present is to have to report to the police twice a week in order to discourage one from reusing the drug.

Ecstasy does not count as a narcotic. It is a psychotropic substance which is said to provide a surge of energy and vitality and a blissful, hallucinogenic sense of euphoria.

According to experts, its danger is that it can cause severe dehydration and excessive body temperature fluctuations and can affect the brain's neuro cells.

Users praise Ecstasy for stimulating them into energetic, friendly, lovable people; when they can forget all their worries and are able to make love for hours. But they also acknowledge its danger. As with many other drugs, Ecstasy causes people to expend energy excessively. They become physically very weak. Nevertheless they are not keen to eat anything.

"We don't feel hungry. So there is nothing replacing the lost energy. People are bound to become prone to sickness after that," Gondrong said.

Indonesia is now preparing a Psychotropic Law. While waiting for its completion, the police lately made a breakthrough. They arrested three Dutch citizens for trying to smuggle thousands of pills into the country. They are charged with selling drugs that are not registered with the Ministry of Health. They can be sentenced to 15 years in jail or fined up to Rp 300 million (US$130,000).

It remains to be seen if they will be found guilty.

The attempted smuggling also showed that Ecstasy has now become a lucrative business in this country. The demand is high and the price is good. Traffickers can easily rake in a lot of money in a short time.

A high quality pill in the Netherlands reportedly costs about seven gilders (US$4). In Indonesia, the pill is pulverized and re-manufactured into a mixture with other substances, including flour. One pill then becomes six pills, which each costs about Rp 50,000 ($21.5). By remaking the drug, the dealers can receive above Rp 200,000 ($86) profit from one pill or about Rp 200 million ($86,000) from 1,000 pills.

The traffickers have developed a cunning ploy to net the faithful customers.

"They first give pills to their prey, who are usually children of rich people. Once the targets have become addicts, the dealers start charging them," explained Joni, also a discotheque employee.

Thus far, the police have yet to find a satisfactory method of preventing the Ecstasy trade. City police chief Maj. Gen. Hamami Nata told The Jakarta Post the smugglers can easily carry the drug through the airport by concealing pills on their bodies.

"We don't even have dogs who can detect the drugs," he said. However perhaps they will not need them. For as a onetime user of Ecstasy says, the drug is only a fashion that, with or without the crackdown by law enforcers, will disappear by itself eventually. But it will probably disappear only to make way for another drug. (jsk/sim/bsr/sur)