Cars packed to capacity line up single-file on a poorly paved county road in rural Illinois. Volunteers shiver in the crisp fall air as they check ID’s and distribute 21+ wristbands through passenger-side windows. Blue, red, and green lasers emanate from a building, piercing the darkness to reveal stumps of corn stalks beyond the wooden fence lining the property. Artificial smoke pours from the doors and clouds the entrance to the rave.

An eager young man pulls a giant costume mouse head from the trunk of his rust-covered four-door and tests the flashing LED’s inside the bulbous eyes before heading inside. Several young women pull leather jackets tighter to their corset-clad torsos and scurry across the wet grass toward the warmth of the barn, their legs protected only by fishnet stockings and spandex shorts. Ravers enter to the pulse of bass bumping with electronic snares. Looped melodies rise to crescendos, bringing an extra dose of energy to the crowd in front of the 7-foot speakers. Smiling faces and twisting bodies flash in and out of view as the lights swirl in time to the chest-penetrating sounds of the latest DJ to take the stage.

The line between costume and style is faint at this all-night ritual of electronic dance music. Wide-leg pants with nylon webbing straps flap on one man’s legs as he moves in choreographed patterns. On his back, he wears a fuzzy spiked turtle shell, half Pokémon, half Mario Kart. The outfit is at home in this environment – rave culture has evolved over decades of dancing and drugs with its own dress code and range of accessories. One table overflows with blinking light-covered jewelry. Glow sticks and necklaces are everywhere. Two teenage girls sport fuzzy rainbow boots, tulle tutus and black t-shirts with neon lettering: “Molly is my Homegirl.”

Rebecca Halleck
Andrew Holik
Sepideh Nia
Jacob Sweeney-Samuelson

Molly has made a lot of friends in the past few years, and not just at raves like these. Dealers sell Molly in clear capsules of white powder or crystals and tout it as pure MDMA, the same chemical that users seek in the pressed tablets known as Ecstasy. Unlike those pills, which gained a reputation for being laced or cut with more dangerous substances after publicized rave deaths throughout the ‘90s, Molly’s reputation is a pure, safe, and clean dose of MDMA. Indeed, MDMA was once the focus of years of medical research in psychotherapeutic medicine, and it still has devoted followers in the field. In controlled environments these researchers claim MDMA can be relatively safe and psychologically beneficial for mental health conditions ranging from PTSD to adult autism. Recreationally, the chemical promises empathetic euphoria and feelings of intense social connection; electronic music and the accompanying light show join with MDMA to create a few hours of emotional, serotonin-fueled release. Reincarnated as Molly, MDMA is having another moment in the mainstream. Artists from Tyga to Miley Cyrus to Jay Z pepper their lyrics with mentions of the drug. Molly is the party drug of the millennials.

But Ecstasy’s younger, cleaner cousin turns out to be anything but that. In August 2013, two attendees of Electric Zoo, a large music festival in New York City, died. News reports focused on the deceased taking Molly. Street demand is up, and, like any other product, sellers are looking to profit. But the ingredients to produce pure MDMA are difficult to acquire. Just as with Ecstasy, this leads to knockoffs and filler – with potentially deadly results. While drug enforcement agencies fight the dealers and cartels to control both the pure stuff and the impostors, user education groups are left battling Molly’s safe reputation.

Merck & Co., a German pharmaceutical company, first developed MDMA as a chemical compound in 1912 with the intent of creating a new blood clotting agent. Researchers, stumbling upon something entirely different, patented the drug and set it aside. The study of MDMA’s medicinal value has spanned decades and transcended prohibition. “It was used from the middle ‘70s to the early ‘80s in a therapeutic context under the code name ‘Adam’,” says Rick Doblin, longtime researcher of the drug and founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a Santa Cruz, Calif., non-profit advocacy organization that investigates potential medical uses for psychedelics and marijuana.

Researchers had built a mountain of work around MDMA’s therapeutic qualities prior to its prohibition as a Schedule I substance in 1985. The Department of Justice defines schedule one substances as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Doblin says “Adam” was used in about a half million doses medicinally during the decade before its prohibition. Some patients sought to profit on their prescriptions by selling it in recreational settings, primarily nightclubs, rebranding the drug with a new street name, Ecstasy. When the DEA moved in 1984 to criminalize MDMA the public had not heard about it as Adam. “They had never heard about it as Adam and they had no idea that was used for so long for therapy purposes,” Doblin says.

The public’s negative stance on MDMA in the U.S. forced the trade into the underground realm of illicit drugs, where the pharmaceutical-quality Adam gave way to the mysterious Ecstasy. Whether the pills were locally made or imported from Europe, users were less and less sure of what they were taking. As demand for MDMA rose, dealers laced the drug until it no longer resembled its former self and sometimes didn’t even include MDMA at all. But after overdose deaths pulled Ecstasy and other “designer drugs” into the spotlight, potential users were scared off. Ecstasy was demoted in mainstream drug culture, but its popularity never waned in the rave scene.

Experts fear Molly is headed on a similar trajectory. Fourteen years ago, Carissa Cornwell spent a harrowing night terrified a close friend would die after he took a pill he thought was MDMA. Since then she has been on a mission to inform potential users about the danger of popping pills or capsules with no knowledge of the contents. She founded DanceSafe, an organization that promotes harm-reduction efforts around drug use at concerts, festivals, and raves. “If I hear one more person say that ‘Molly’ means a pure form of MDMA… It just makes me want to scream. It is absolutely not that,” Cornwell says. “It definitely can be whatever anybody wants to put in a capsule, and a white powder could be any number of things.”

The allure of the unique high from pure MDMA draws users to take the risk Cornwell warns against and pop a capsule’s contents, known or not, onto his or her tongue.

For the first hour after ingesting MDMA, the user feels little but anticipation. Once Molly enters his bloodstream, he begins to feel its effects pulsing through his body, tingling his senses. An overwhelming sense of euphoria will overwhelm him for the next several hours.

Greg, a 23-year-old from California who splits time between work and school, says a tingling sensation creeps up his lower back and moves across his body in waves. “And then your vision starts getting a little blurry and messed up, like you can't read small print or anything like that,” he says. “You start to forget what you're talking about mid-sentence. And you definitely start getting a good body feeling.” [Last names of all users have been omitted to protect their identities.]

The first time Richard, a 23-year-old graduate student and friend of Greg’s from California, used Molly he was in his junior year of high school at a party. “I heard it was fun and other people were doing it so I was going to be the cool kid and I guess just try it,” he says. He recalls feeling as if his head was vibrating and a feeling of pure happiness. “I remember when I took it I felt like someone was massaging my head, but no one was touching me,” Richard says.

The effects of Molly typically last from four to six hours; the user doesn’t feel an abrupt crash, but rather a slow return to normalcy that can extend many hours beyond that. “You start gradually turning back to reality,” says Josh, a 26-year-old Washingtonian who took Molly 17 times between 2005-2010. “The first couple times you take it and you wake up the next day and feel great. It’s called an afterglow. For some reason you just feel wonderful the next day. The second day after you’ve taken it you don’t feel so great. It’s like that’s when the hangover happens. Imagine getting trashed from alcohol thinking, ‘I’ll be great tomorrow, but the next day I’ll be puking in a toilet.’ That’s how it was.”

For Josh, the more often he used Molly, the less interesting the experience and the worse the “hangover.” “It’s more dull. It’s more cloned. It’s less interesting. Then the second day the afterglow completely disappears and a miniature hangover happens,” he says. “The real, real hangover starts to magnify slowly. Then it starts to go on for longer. You don’t recover immediately. It takes more than three days to recover from it. It starts going to four, five, six. And then it turns into where you take it and you know the next week is going to suck,” he said. “It just became unpleasant.”

MDMA impacts the user’s nervous and cardiovascular systems. It targets three of the brain’s main neurotransmitter systems: dopamine, a chemical involved in regulation of movement and feelings of motivation and reward, serotonin, which is most commonly associated with sensations of happiness and well-being but can also control appetite, sleep, memory, temperature regulation and cardiovascular function, and norepinephrine, which affects the heart rate. According to Michael J. Kuhar, Ph.D., professor of neuropharmacology at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center, MDMA is an amphetamine derivative. Its main effect is to “inhibit the uptake of serotonin and promote its release,” he says.

Once MDMA enters the bloodstream, nerve terminals start releasing large amounts of excess serotonin. Meanwhile both norepinephrine and dopamine are also released. “The release of these chemical messages, or neurotransmitters, creates a whole array of symptoms,” says Bertha K. Madras, Ph.D., professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School. MDMA can also cause a spike in body temperature, provide extra energy and increase activity, which in turn can push body temperature higher, she says. Kuhar warns that in extreme cases users risk severe mental clouding, seizures and perhaps death.

Madras says she believes the drug can be addictive, and that younger users are more at risk because they have not had negative experiences with the drug in the past. “In other words, they’re not sitting in a hospital emergency department, which can happen. They haven’t had an acute cardiovascular event,” she says. “They haven’t suffered hyponatremia, you know, so their kidneys shut down. They haven’t had an acute hyperthermia where their body temperature has risen over 105. For many of these folks that have had the [drug] experience without these negative effects, there’s a perception that the drug is safe, but the science tells us quite differently.”

Dr. Kuhar says he has not seen enough research on the subject to make a definite judgment on its addictive properties: “For a substance to be considered addicting, the hallmark has to be that you seek the drug in spite of negative consequences in your life and personal distress,” he says.

“Studies suggest that animals will self-administer the drug; they will seek out MDMA. But it seems that animals may seek out MDMA less than they do other substances like cocaine. That is not to say the dangers of the drug are any less overall than the dangers of something that’s more addicting like opium or cocaine, because the dangers are significant.”

Back in Illinois, where the concert promoters have requested that identifying details about the rave be protected, it is no secret that Molly is present. In the darkness just out of reach of the outdoor floodlights, a short man intercepts ravers before they enter: “Hi, my name is Ivo, Ivo with the braids,” he says, sticking out his hand for a shake. “I’ve got that Molly, I’ve got that good Kush.” He goes on to announce the rest of his offerings, using more buzzwords that carry a lot of meaning but not much substance. His short cornrow braids rest on his sweatshirt hood and he clutches a half-filled, clear plastic cup in his other hand, a wave of liquor fumes accompany his greeting. “If they sell it to you for $100, I’ll give it to you for…for $40.” As proof he can be trusted, he assures potential buyers he’s “part of the Grateful Dead family,” pulling up his sleeve to reveal a smudged tattoo that covers his upper arm.

Later, Ivo will wander up again, clearly drunker, even friendlier. Is Molly going by the gram? No, he’s selling pressed pills. Normally $20 a dose, but he’d go $30 for two. This time, he leans in closer, hot boozy breath punctuating every word. “I’ve got that coke, too.” Two serious men stand closely behind Ivo, clear-eyed, watching closely. One wears a Chicago Bears hat and a gray jacket and jeans. No neon, no glowing lights or fun masks like the crowd swirling around them. Unsmiling, businesslike. Ivo is just the bait; these are businessmen and Ivo seems to be offering a deal on their behalf.

The question of Molly’s purity has had little bearing on sales, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. “We’ve seen a slight increase in virtually every office,” says Special Agent in Charge of the Midwest, Jack Riley. “Some of the other larger cities, New York, Philadelphia, the Washington DC area have seen a significant spike over the past five years.”

Demand for the drug has increased so much that cartels are entering the marketplace, according to the DEA. In the past, small amounts of MDMA were being smuggled in from the club scene in parts of Europe where the drug is legal, but “much of what we’re seeing now originates in Asia,” Riley says. “Traditionally we’ve seen it from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, those areas. Recently we’re seeing quite a bit, bulk stuff coming from Asia.”

Safrole, a liquid that is the primary ingredient used to make MDMA, can be extracted from sassafras or from the roots of ancient Selasian wood trees throughout Southeast Asia. Much of the safrole processing takes place in the Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia. The Selasian wood trees are an endangered species in Vietnam as are many species of wildlife that reside in their shade. Harvesting these trees without permission is illegal, adding further hurdles for potential MDMA producers.

Safrole is classified as a List I chemical, meaning that in addition to legitimate uses, it is also used in manufacturing a controlled substance, according to the U.S. Department of Justice., and the finished product is banned: yet the trade spans multiple continents. Faced with this barrier, dealers turn to combinations of other drugs to create an analog of the high from MDMA. By the time Molly is finally distributed at concerts, festivals, raves and parties here in the U.S. it’s laced with anything and everything to maximize profit. “Lets make it very clear, the people producing this are not in white coats and sterile labs,” Riley says. “No, this is in the basement of some crook’s house. He’s stirring the bucket, pressing the pills out. So, however cosmetically appealing the capsule may look, there’s no way to know.”

Cornwell wants to help ravers party safely with information about the substances they’re ingesting. Her group travels from event to event and sets up booths that offer safety tips, earplugs, condoms, and water. But they also offer more direct peace of mind: a place to purchase a drug testing kit of four chemical indicators.

In Illinois, a couple enters the yellow DanceSafe tent, zipping themselves in. She’s wearing lavender bell-bottom sweatpants and thick-rimmed glasses; he’s ready to dance in his tent-legged pants. He hands over a small purple-blue pill. It’s from a festival in Arkansas, she explains. “I just want to know what it is, I know it’s not the real deal because it made me see stars in my peripheral vision, you know?” The tester scrapes a bit of the pill into several wells of a plastic dish, and drops different liquids into each. In the first cell, the liquid envelops the purplish powder, turning an orange-red.

The pill likely contains mostly a type of Cathinone, a common MDMA impostor with effects similar to amphetamines and cocaine. Cathinones are often found in mixes of drugs known as “bath salts” (because producers sometimes use deceptive packaging in order to sell them legally).

Results such as these are not surprising to Cornwell. “I would say 80 percent of the things that I test that are ‘Molly’ are not MDMA,” Cornwell says during an interview in Chicago. In a single evening she sees everything from the Cathinones to DMT (a powerful hallucinogen), to methamphetamines, and a number of other substances.

“Now that you know what it is, would you still take it?” says the safety-gloved tester who consults a color-coded chart to identify the chemical reactions.

The man scoffs, “No.”

“Here, try this one,” the raver offers, pulling a plastic sandwich bag with about 200 clear capsules half-filled with milky crystals granules out of his enormous pockets.

Immediately as the indicators hit the substance, bubbles erupt from the surface, fizzing as the mixture pops from colorless to a deep indigo. In the next dish, another indicator liquid flashes to life. This is the real thing, real MDMA. There’s no need to squint at the color combinations on the chart. The couple shares a knowing glance. “Got that on the internet,” they say. “Silk Road.”

“Our costs are probably two to four bucks a dose, and we sell it for 10, maybe 20,” she says.

Silk Road, a website recently shut down by the FBI, sold drugs, including MDMA, in a secret digital marketplace. Users could allegedly purchase any manner of illegal substances and have them mailed directly to their doorstep. Customers could also review products like you’d rate a purchase made on Amazon.

Doblin says Silk Road was a resource for a drug-using community that wants a transparent and regulated market. With the closing of the site, Cornwell fears that the lacing of Molly will escalate even further. “The vendors [on Silk Road] are advertising what they have as what they have. They’re not misinforming, saying, ‘Hey I’ve got MDMA when it’s not MDMA,” she says, though she says she’s never personally been to the site. “Anyone can take a white powder and put it in a capsule and sell it to you as ‘Molly,’ but if you’re buying something and you know it’s a Cathinone right off the bat, at least you know.”

What’s perhaps most tragic about the Molly conundrum is that these people aren’t trying put themselves in danger. Users are searching for something that they don’t find in their day-to-day interactions. After MDMA’s wholesale prohibition in the U.S., research in the use of MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological issues has largely stopped, but that doesn’t stop some who have discovered their own therapeutic uses for the substance. In the case of Greg, a life-long EDM enthusiast who now chooses to abstain from drugs, MDMA was an attempt at self-medication.

His traumatic memories from childhood were difficult to express and have often made it hard for him to relate to others. Taking Ecstasy, and later Molly, helped him feel close to others he says, to feel like one of the crowd. In junior and senior year of high school, "it brought me out of my shell and made it easier for me to connect with people," he says.

Doblin hypothesizes that this is a common theme among recreational users—they are taking it with the intention of escaping past trauma or even simply finding human interaction without a screen. “For most of us, what life’s about is human relationships,” he says. “MDMA is about love, it’s about connection, it’s about listening, it’s about feeling.” He notes that it’s an antidote to our heavily technology-driven culture. “People are hungry for being able to communicate and talk to people.”

Molly fans also report feeling “in control” of their high. Compared to the sloppiness resulting from alcohol or the paranoia from hallucinogens, Molly users feel composed, even authoritative, while rolling (taking MDMA). Josh, now a videographer who hasn’t taken Molly since his Junior year of college, says: “The way I could talk to people was at this level that actually impressed me. I just felt that whoever was talking to me I could make laugh and I had complete control over the conversation. I felt like a benevolent dictator, is what I’m saying. I felt great and I wanted everyone to be happy and on my side.”

According to the latest NIH-funded Monitoring the Future study from 2012, just over 7 percent of high school seniors self-reported using MDMA in their lifetime. These numbers dropped slightly from 8 percent in 2011, indicating that Molly may have reached a cultural peak. But it still has a concrete position in youth drug culture. Richard says Molly never had trouble getting into the show, even as security has become tighter. “You can hide it in so many different compartments, your shoes… and they want your money at the end of the day, you know?”

Greg says the calming, euphoric feeling that can break down even the toughest people makes Molly an ideal introduction to narcotics: “If you’re going to do drugs for the first time, I mean I’m not recommending anyone do drugs at all, but Molly would definitely be the safe one to go.”

“MDMA is about love, it’s about connection, it’s about listening, it’s about feeling. And it’s an antidote to this heavily electronic culture that we’re developing.”

By the bonfire at the rural rave, people are friendly. They offer cans of Keystone to strangers, gushing over costumes and relinquishing precious fireside space to one another on this cold November evening. One especially embellished young woman shivers and cautiously steps between bodies to get closer to the fire. Her blonde hair is separated into twin buns high atop her head and blue glitter on the outer corners of her eyes reflects the firelight. She’s wearing a multicolor, lace-up corset over a long sleeve black shirt; her short flouncy skirt bounces with her tiny, childlike frame as she tries to keep warm. Her outlandish attire garnishes countless compliments from her peers, which she accepts sweetly. Stretching her sleeves over her clenched fists, she clutches her forearms to her chest as she explains how she’s studying at a community college in a nearby town. She used to study pharmacology. She used to do drugs, too, she says but now, she shakes her head, gazing off in the distance, “they’re just too unpredictable.” Backtracking, she starts to explain how she spent three years living in Europe and she never saw the addiction problems that she sees here, citing prescription ADHD medications in particular. But no one is listening anymore except a stranger she doesn’t know and her date’s wandered away, uninterested. The cold air becomes a new safe topic and a fire breather appears on the other side of the bonfire, distracting anyone who was still paying attention.

EDM is big business, estimated by financial advising firm Massive Advisors, LLC as a $15-20 billion industry, and no one wants to publicly acknowledge the connection between drug use and EDM events.

But the re-emergence of EDM in mainstream culture has coincided with a new rise in popularity of MDMA-laced drugs. The DEA has noticed a spike in MDMA seizures between 2007 and when EDM began frequenting top 40 charts, and Molly’s fans agree that there’s just something about rolling (taking Molly or Ecstasy) that seems to compliment the genre. “I think the beat just sounds a lot better—the way your body moves and the way your mind feels it just intertwines with that,” Richard says. “It just feels good, it feels right, it just kind of goes together. I don’t really know how to explain it to you but if you put on a rap song I probably wouldn’t feel the same.”

After the bad batch of Molly reportedly contributed to two deaths at Electric Zoo, the event’s promoters cancelled the last day, rocking the EDM world and prompting reactions from all sides. Kaskade, a prominent DJ, took to Twitter expressing his anger that the media is demonizing his entire genre. In a string of related posts, the artist tweeted: “But we're being tasked with fixing problems that are global in scope + limitless in reach. Scapegoating at its most transparent.”

In his late September rant, Kaskade pointed to the substance abuse he said is encouraged in other past times, especially alcohol at professional sporting events. Despite instances of alcohol poisoning and injury, cities don’t force sports teams to cancel their games. Those not responsible for tragedies like the Electric Zoo or the Electric Daisy Carnival, a touring festival where press coverage focused on Molly found in the system of a Las Vegas concertgoer who jumped to her death, are being punished by cancelled concerts and negative media attention, Kaskade says, whether that’s fans who abstain from drugs or the musicians themselves.

Tom Swoon, a rising Polish DJ recently named a 2013 ‘Artist to Watch’ by Billboard Magazine, is also frustrated by the propensity for one person’s misconduct to earn a bad rap for an entire industry.

“When you see this news about the drug-related things, for example, at the major festivals and stuff like that, it’s weird because it takes only one irresponsible person to make an image for a whole festival, for a whole community, for a whole genre,” Swoon says.

Cornwell of DanceSafe believes that promoters of EDM should acknowledge the reality that some young people at parties are bound to do drugs. But because of what Doblin calls our “prohibition culture” in the United States, harm reduction is often stifled. Organizations like DanceSafe aren’t always allowed into events because that would equate to an admission that the venue is aware of drug use occurring and is, to a certain extent, permitting it.

By contrast in Europe, especially in countries where recreational drug use is decriminalized, harm reduction entities like DanceSafe are not just allowed into concerts, they can be encouraged. Portugal’s Boom Festival is a massive Burning Man-type event where drug use is tolerated and public. They take drugs and harm reduction so seriously that dealers must bring their products to a central tent to be tested, and then the purity (or lack thereof) is broadcast to all concertgoers, creating a truly transparent marketplace. Users know what they’re taking, they know where it’s coming from, and they know the risks before them.

This open-mindedness isn’t possible yet in the United States, but Cornwell says that more events are beginning to welcome DanceSafe. This past summer the organization was invited to TomorrowWorld, an EDM festival in rural Georgia, run by European promoters. It is the first international iteration of Tomorrowland, one of the world’s largest EDM festivals, which originated in Belgium.

It’s unlikely the DEA would support this kind of free-market transparency. “It would be crazy to legalize drugs,” the DEA’s Riley says, adding that dealers like Ivo will always look to profits first. “They’re in it for the money, and they don’t care what happens. So, the end user is the one that’s left holding the bag and at most risk,” he says. “So these people are preying on people’s lives. There is no difference between, in my opinion, between someone that’s selling Molly at a nightclub than a Gangster Disciple who’s selling heroin and has a pistol in his hand and just killed somebody.”

But rave culture doesn’t feel that way to participants. At the DanceSafe tent, another young man offers his newly acquired Molly to be tested. This is his sixth year attending, he says. He started coming when he was 15. He says his age, 22, like it's an apology. The first test is done and it looks like he might’ve gotten the real deal—real MDMA. He stares at the ground as he says where he got the drug. “Just outside,” he offers as an explanation. His voice is definitive and unapologetic, but he avoids eye contact. The second chemical test confirms MDMA is present in his pill. He smiles and rubs his knees, as if it’s decided. He's going to take it. As he looks up he is warned that there appears to be something else in this pill, unidentifiable, probably a cathinone. He moves towards the tent entrance anyway: no drug is ever safe, he’s told, drink water and stay hydrated. But he disappears through the flaps and evaporates into the crowd.