Characteristics and social representation of ecstasy in Europe - Irefrea

delirious music and dance, a question of feeling well and magical pills, smiles, meetings(…) everything seems to turn on “getting into the party” or not, with or without anydrug…”.Nevertheless, to take psychotropics “like in certain traditional religious initiations”,is often indispensable and “seeks to break the social personality”, to break ordinaryreality, to “travel”, explain the authors in their book. For both of them, the first,researcher in the laboratory of social dances, the second, ethnologist, “in the return totrance-celebrations” we see the opposition to a culture that supports all the ideologiesone does not believe anymore(…). Ravers try to escape from the world of rules andvalues and to get out of themselves, away from everything that conditions them. Tranceis a way, the end of censures gives way to a clear conscience. This integratedexperience, could become a rite of passage”.“Integrated” prevention strategies for ecstasy use should take into account this book“Raver”, full of interesting observations and thoughts, especially its analysis of technomusic, which allows a constructive understanding of this “‘wild celebration, ‘out ofculture’, that mixes symbols, times, religions, exalts utopian factors (...). The Techno,beyond its celebrations, would end into a global “techno” culture, going together withthe myths of our age. And so, ”ravers” risk to be recaptured by the society they aretrying to run away from. A society of appearances, lies, consume, that as soon as takingthe control of raves, would bring stereotyped attitudes and transform them intoregulated celebrations without “spirit”. And nothing would remain of raves but theirname”.Must prevention strategies of the Public Administration contribute to this process ofstandardisation?This kind of drug starts to appear in medical literature at the beginning of thenineties, when the first medical and psychological problems arise. (SUEUR C.Psychotropic drugs in Soins psychiatriques, 1991, 545). In 1994, a number of the“Revue documentaire du réseau de documentation spécialisé Toxibase” was dedicatedto ecstasy and pointed out the international literature on the subject (ANGEL P.Ecstasy, Toxibase, Revue Documentaire, 1994, 2, 1-10).Later, R. CAMMAS, psychiatrist of the Marmottan hospital, studied ecstasy in hisdoctorate thesis, in October 1995 (R. CAMMAS: Ecstasy: a new drug. Frompharmacology to Dream. Thesis of doctorate in Medicine. Paris, 1995). The same year,a collective article by A. TRAGUI, GHYSEL J.H., KINTZ P., MANGIN P., entitledEcstasy, Eve, speed…the new stimulants of vigilance and love, was published in leJournal de Médecine Légale, Droit Médical, 1995. The following year, a group ofpractitioners, D. TOUZEAU and others, wrote: Ecstasy: myth and reality, in La Revuedu Praticien, Médecine Libérale (April, 1996).In this same year, it was published a special number of the Revue Interdépendance:Ecstasy (September-October 1996). Finally, L’Express published a dossier: Thedangerous passions (From heroine to hashish: refusing to hierarchize the pleasures that133