[Skip to Content]

Lessons from Upstate: Party drugs can have lasting consequences

Danging at partyA 20-year-old woman was dropped off semi-conscious at Upstate University Hospital‘s emergency room. She did not respond to doctors. She was not feverish. Her heart beat normally. She had wet herself and vomited. Blood tests revealed no alcohol in her system, but a dangerously low level of sodium known as hyponatremia.

In trying to piece together the woman‘s previous 24 hours, a medical student scrolled through her cell phone messages. He found several references to “Molly,” a street name for the amphetamine-derived party drug also known as Ecstasy.

An Upstate physician told The New York Times that “Ecstasy had been shown to cause this kind of extreme hyponatremia, especially in young women. The drug affects the brain and kidneys in ways that promote water retention, which dilutes the sodium in the body. It is a dangerous side effect. Nearly one in five who developed hyponatremia because of the drug died. Others had permanent brain damage.”

The woman in Syracuse clearly had suffered a brain injury when she awakened a week later. Doctors reported her speech jumbled and slow and her vision impaired. She was in therapy for months to learn how to read and write again.

This case helped lead to passage two years ago of New York State‘s Good Samaritan 911 law, which protects people who seek help for someone with a drug overdose from being arrested for drug possession.

Read the New York Times Magazine account of this incident.


 
Top