When people hear the word molly, they often think of pure MDMA, the active ingredient in Ecstasy. That’s why the drug is so popular in nightclub and music festival settings. Molly, also known as ecstasy or MDA, is a stimulant and psychedelic that floods the brain with neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin. This makes users feel elated, empathic and full of energy. But the drug’s effects can be dangerous. “The more you use it, the more it depletes your brain’s natural production of these chemicals,” said Dr. Theodore Bania, a medical toxicologist and emergency medicine physician at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. Go here

While MDMA can cause these positive feelings, it can also have negative side effects including a rise in body temperature and drowsiness. It can even interfere with your senses, such as visual or tactile sensations. These can make it difficult to work or go about your day.

Microdose Molly: Harnessing the Potential of Small Doses

But most of the time, what people are taking when they say they’re on molly are actually different compounds. While Congress passed the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act, controlling 26 of these compounds by name, chemists are constantly changing their formulas. As a result, these drugs aren’t just less pure; they’re also less safe. According to a study by Spain’s harm reduction nonprofit Energy Control, 8324 samples of psychoactive substances delivered in gummy form between 2014 and 2015 were analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The results show that 81 percent of these samples contained different psychoactive chemicals than the ones on which the government had previously acted.