drug

Order Description
Please view excerpts from the ABC documentary “Beneath the Mirror Ball”, an investigation of the dance party scene on Australia’s east coast.
There are interviews with party organisers and party-goers about
1. the dance party culture (e.g. origins, politics, subcultures, use of recreational drugs),
2. organising dance parties (e.g. communication about locations, regulatory aspects, security),
3. use of mood enhancing recreational drugs and their health effects (e.g. dependence) including minimising harm associated with recreational drug use (e.g. care about other drug users,
4. testing for the contents of drugs, restricting own use, first aid at parties).
There are four sections in this documentary.
Section 1: View the film clip which introduces you to dance parties and dance culture and describes the history and their popularity. (6min)
Section 2: Show the next excerpt of the people and the drugs (10min). Some of the dance party regulars describe their experience of the music and drugs.
Section 3: The downside expands on ecstasy and some of the adverse health consequences and introduces the mechanisms of action on the brain (12min).
Section 4: The aftermath of attending a dance party and using ecstasy (2min). This clip shows interviews with ‘ravers’ the morning after.
After viewing each of the four excerpts, think about the interesting physiological, pharmacological, social, harm reduction, public health and health promotion issues arising from the four clips and answer the following questions.
1. How does ecstasy work?
2. What are the effects of ecstasy? What are the dangers? Are there positive benefits?
3. Who uses ecstasy and why? Is it just in dance scene? What age and socioeconomic groups? Does it have a different pattern of use to other drugs?
4. Those interviewed seemed to make an educated decision to use ecstasy – was their information accurate? – from where are they getting their information?
5. What harm reduction strategies were identified, “rave safe”?
6. What line should health education take – “just say no” is naive