Characteristics and social representation of ecstasy in Europe - Irefrea

important preventive implications. What we observe is that the NC group is morepreoccupied, with the serious problems that could be involved in the use of this drug.This opens up the extremely interesting hypothesis that fear of the consequences fromdrug use has in some way a certain influence on the decision of using or not using them.In the same sense non ecstasy users believe that people wants to take this drug ‘toescape from reality’.SENSATION SEEKER AND SOCIAL DEVIATION SCALESAs we expected, consumers and non consumers have different scores for thesescales. That is to say, consumers have higher scores than non consumers. On the SSSglobal scale, and on the rest of subscales, except on the Thrill and Adventure Scale(TAS), where the non consumers only get a lower score than the occasional consumers,all consumers groups score higher than the non consumer group. Another result, thatreflects the same trend is that the individuals belonging to the consumer sample, eitherdisco or university sample, are higher sensation seekers than the individuals belongingto non consumer sample.The scores of the different groups of consumers are very interesting because wecould expect, from the obtained data, that each group should show differences from theothers with regard to the SSS. The ex-consumers are the ones who get the lowest scoresamong the consumers. On the contrary, the occasional or experimental consumers,though not very clearly, occupy a special place as sensation seekers. As we have seen,it is the only group that maintains significantly different scores on all the subscales. Thefact that the scores of this group stand out in comparison with other groups which havehigher frequencies of consumption may be because the search for sensation is morerelated to those individuals who use drugs occasionally, or in an experimental way, andnot with those who do so habitually or compulsively, as, after all, the latter are searchingfor effects that they already know; they are not new sensations for them and, bydefinition, the sensation seeker “always seek something new” (Zuckerman et al., 1972).The factors that correlate drug use, as far as sensation seeking is concerned, differfrom city to city. In one (Utrecht), the variables related to experience seekers have moreweight and this implies a not very conventional way of life. And a certain transgressionof the norms. In others, the factors relating to boredom have more weight (Nice andCoimbra) or to hedonism (Modena). Palma is characterised by the necessity of a notvery conventional way of life and the tendency to hedonism, scoring very low inboredom susceptibility.With regard to the Social Deviation Scale (SDS), we said that the ecstasy consumers,either from disco or university, have more deviated behaviour than the no consumers.And that within the consumer group, those from disco sample are more deviated thanthose from the university. Another result, also expected by us, is that men score higherthan women on this scale.187