1991 The love pill

I’m happy to present the final part dedicated to ecstasy in the 1990s. Early 90s. Evening news. Serious tone. Blurry images. A man in a shirt, facing the camera, explains very seriously what “ecstasy” is. At the time, apart from those who went to nightclubs, no one could have believed that this erotic-sounding word referred to a drug, and talking about it on television was something of a revelation for the general public, linked to that famous smiley seen everywhere, which few people actually connected to ecstasy. It’s true that this drug was a perfect deal for dealers: a substance with a pleasant name, that didn’t take up space in pockets, wasn’t expensive, and came in candy-like form. It was fairly new, and people said it wasn’t addictive—this “love drug.” Back then, it even had a bunch of cute little nicknames: Eva, X, Exta… Moreover, it wasn’t something injected or snorted, but a tiny, colorful pill supposed to induce euphoria, empathy, and an intense sense of well-being. Put that way, it almost sounds like an ad for a beautiful journey. Except, from the other side, the tone is alarmist, educational, almost anxiety-inducing. Parents must be informed, young people warned, the unknown framed—because now it’s serious, and everyone, especially the government, begins to take it very, very seriously. The years of tolerance end, perhaps because the phenomenon had grown too large. Youth were falling a little too easily into the ecstasy trap. This drug has two sides: at first, it’s friendly, then it plunges you into the “come-down,” the malaise, even emptiness. The more addicted you become, the more you need it to feel good; gradually, you lose balance, and things get worse and worse. So you need to get high to feel okay again, you need other drugs to regain that original energy—the energy that, a few years earlier, never left you. But it’s a losing battle: the body deteriorates, the mind is restless, the comedowns grow longer and deeper. What strikes you today, watching these images, is realizing that a drug we know so well now was once something that had to be explained, and was in part created to enjoy the music. The absolute seriousness of this TV report, facing a reality that was already elsewhere: everywhere in clubs, raves, and warehouses. Letting it pass for the night, the party, the letting-go. Looking back, there’s something almost touching about this clumsy education. You can feel that they’re discovering the phenomenon as they comment on it. Nothing is fully codified yet. Words are finding their place. The images too. Nobody knows, they don’t know. Two worlds observing each other without truly understanding, and which never really understood each other—because closing nightclubs didn’t stop the drugs. This will be the closing line: ecstasy was first… a generational misunderstanding captured on the 8 PM news, before becoming the emblematic drug of the 1990s and far beyond. And you—do you remember the first time you heard about XTC?