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What’s Your Poison? – Ecstasy (1997)

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This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

There is a down side to taking ecstasy when it is mixed with other drugs, usually alcohol. In a large Sydney hospital on a weekend night, a young man is brought in with a psychotic reaction to a cocktail of ecstasy and alcohol.

Curator’s notes

by Janet Bell

Science reporter Geoff Birchfield explains what can go wrong when we don’t know just how much MDMA might be in each tablet of ecstasy. The drug is illegal so it’s not possible to have the pills properly labelled, thus prohibition causes its own set of problems.

The distorted, drug-influenced point-of-view of the drug taker in emergency is recreated using a wide-angle lens on a handheld camera. A variety of filmmaking techniques, more commonly seen in feature films or cinema release documentaries rather than television, are consistently used in this series, enlivening the scientific content.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows still photos of dancers and colourful lights in a nightclub, edited to give a strobe-like effect. The viewer then sees, from the perspective of a patient admitted to hospital after an adverse reaction to drugs, a group of emergency department staff leaning over and asking questions. Dr Gordian Fulde, the head of the emergency department at St Vincent’s, a major Sydney hospital, comments on the habit of mixing drugs. Science reporter Geoff Burchfield shows ecstasy tablets and discusses their composition and the age of users.

Educational value points

  • The drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), ecstasy, or more simply 'E’, was developed as an appetite suppressant in 1914 by E Merck for Merck Pharmaceuticals. Although it was never prescribed for that purpose, MDMA was used clinically in psychotherapy during the 1970s, but it has since been defined as a 'class A’ drug and is now banned in Australia, the USA, the UK and elsewhere.
  • According to the Australian Medical Association, the use of ecstasy and other 'party drugs’ appears to be increasing – research shows that by 2001 around 6.1 per cent of the population had tried ecstasy. More recently 'Ice’, a highly purified crystalline form of the illicit drug methamphetamine, has become the second-most commonly used illicit drug in Australia after cannabis.
  • The effects of ecstasy are controversial. According to Merck Pharmaceuticals, 'chronic, repeated use may produce problems similar to that of amphetamines. Some users develop paranoid psychosis’ (www.merck.com). Ecstasy lowers inhibitions and elevates feelings of excitement. Like amphetamines, but not to the same extent, ecstasy also heightens energy levels. Unsafe sex and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, both of which are associated with the use of amphetamines, are not noted as a consequence of ecstasy use.
  • The effects of taking ecstasy usually begin 20 to 30 minutes after taking the drug and may last for 6 hours, with effects reported as an increase in feelings of confidence and well-being and a need to get close to others, hence the term 'love drug’. Anxiety, nausea, teeth grinding and increases in heart rate and body temperature are other effects.
  • These scenes are from the 'ecstasy’ program in the award-winning series What’s Your Poison?, filmed as part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC’s) Quantum science show. During a journalism fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993, reporter Geoff Burchfield saw the need for the public to access scientific facts about illicit drugs and this was the genesis for the What’s Your Poison? series, including this one on ecstasy, and three others, on marijuana, nicotine and alcohol. The series won a number of awards, including an Australian Teachers of Media Award for Best Science Documentary.
  • The filmmaker re-creates the disorienting and disturbing experience of taking a drug by combining still photographs and moving footage shot with a hand-held camera, by filming from the drug taker’s point of view, and by using unusual camera angles. Such strategies liven up documentaries and provide variety for the viewer.
  • The clip showcases the approach of the award-winning ABC weekly science program Quantum. Filmed by the ABCTV science unit, Quantum’s half-hour programs aimed to celebrate the joy of scientific discovery and also to explore the implications of scientific developments. The approach brought science to life for the audience, and combined responsible scientific reporting with analysis of complex ethical, moral and social issues. Quantum screened for 16 years, and more than 500 episodes were filmed. The final episode was shown on 26 April 2001.