Ecstasy/MDMA is New Zealand’s most popular illicit substance after cannabis - about 4% of Kiwis say they have tried it recently. Now, reported use among middle-aged and older Kiwis is also increasing. One couple told Hannah Brown it “changed everything” when they tried it for the first time over 50, and has been the best thing for their relationship in the 15 years they’ve been together.
WARNING: This article contains references to drug use.
Catherine* tried MDMA for the first time in her early 50s, provided by her husband Jon* - who had tried it and loved it three years earlier on a night out with mates.
“For our marriage, it’s become our thing,” she told the Herald.
“We take it at a concert occasionally, and we love those. And four times a year we have an at-home party, just the two of us. Music - very loud in the living room, we dance together, we caress each others’ faces and we list all the many ways in which we love each other, we connect, and for weeks afterwards all Jon’s best qualities are amplified and it’s hard to remember the things we normally get frustrated by.”
MDMA or Methylenedioxymethamphetamine - also commonly known as ecstasy, E or Molly - is a psychoactive drug developed incidentally by Merck scientists in 1912 when they were working on another drug. It later became a recreational street and party substance in the 1980s and 1990s, and in New Zealand is a Class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975.
It’s also the second most commonly used illicit drug in New Zealand after cannabis, with use rising over the past five to 10 years.
The Auckland senior manager and business owner have a couple of golden rules: Never have it when the teenagers are in the house, and never in the presence of colleagues or clients.
“It’s just too risky. I’m senior at work and I have a large team,” Catherine said.
Drug Foundation executive director Sarah Helm told the Herald: “I am in that age group myself”.
“While we don’t have evidence of statistically significant growth in MDMA over 45, I am aware that people in this age group do take MDMA. Across the general population, it’s only a relatively small percentage but, yes, some of them are older. It’s a false assumption that older people don’t try drugs.”
Helm said that while MDMA sits at the lower end of the spectrum of drugs for individual harm, it can have specific effects on women in middle age.
“MDMA affects the serotonin system of the brain, so you shouldn’t take it very regularly, and menopause can also decrease serotonin levels. So comedowns can be tough for some women, and anyone on anti-anxiety or -depression medication should also take care.
“There’s really good information on harm reduction on thelevel.org.nz,” she said.
Feeling like a goddess
Catherine said her first taste of MDMA was in 2020. It had taken Jon three years to convince her she should try it, and she had agreed to just a tiny dose.
“We were at a friend’s party - about 40 people, I had a really good meal beforehand. I didn’t drink that night, it was all planned out. I’d tested it with a kit I bought at a vape store, and Jon had pre-tried it at an earlier party.
I’m careful and paranoid. I was brought up in a conservative Christian household so I was scared of it being laced, or having an overdose.”
While it is possible to overdose, deaths from unadulterated MDMA are extremely rare. According to coronial data collated by the Drug Foundation, there has been only one death in New Zealand since 2013 where MDMA was the only drug present in toxicology.
When trouble arises it is usually from counterfeit drugs, or from people mixing combinations of drugs and alcohol: In that same 11-year period there have been 23 deaths where MDMA has been present in toxicology alongside other substances.
Jon had purchased the powder, Catherine said, and measured it out using a set of precision scales for precious metals the pair had bought from a website for people who trade in gold.
They emptied vitamin capsules and put the powder into the empty casings to swallow with water.
“I was in my 50s, not really enjoying my body at the time, the ageing process, and when it kicked in I remember leaning up against the wall at the party thinking ‘Actually I’m quite the goddess’ and I really, truly believed it for the first time in ages. I could see so clearly the truth that no one cared about the extra 10kg [I’d put on] and I took that goddess feeling forward into my daily life - it lasted months.
“When you’re boozed you feel great but then you come back to normal. That doesn’t happen with this for me - the positive feelings stay for quite a while. It’s like you glimpse the truth, and it sticks. I feel great about my body. I genuinely feel like I’m an attractive person.
In July 2023, Australia became the first country in the world to make MDMA available as a prescription medicine. Psychiatrists can now prescribe it there for use during therapy for PTSD and treatment-resistant depression.
Across the past three years of New Zealand’s Health Survey data, more than 4% of adults report using MDMA in the past 12 months. That is, 3.6% in 2023, 4.3% in 2022 and 4.8% in 2021.
Catherine reported no comedown in the days following her experiences of MDMA and attributes it to her preference for low doses, but said Jon suffers from low mood afterwards.
“That first time it was a small dose, I only got a hint of the effects - I wasn’t high. I’d say it was warm, pleasant, great for my confidence and made me feel safe to try it again. The first time the drug really blew my mind was about a year later.”
Otago University’s Christchurch Health and Development Study has followed 1,265 participants since 1977 and MDMA is one of the things researchers have asked them about over the course of their lives.
“These people are now 47 years old” the study’s director Professor Joe Boden told the Herald, “and over their life courses so far, MDMA has been the most commonly used illicit substance other than cannabis. About 33% of our cohort have tried using MDMA at some point. At 47, they use it less than they did before they became parents, and a lot of them still have school-aged children and people generally try to avoid illicit drugs for that period, but as a cohort they do show signs of returning to their old patterns”
Boden also said several studies have thrown up similar results. “This study and the Dunedin longitudinal study and in Australian data as well - for whatever reason - we’re seeing that people born in the 1970s have very high levels of substance use. More so than people born in the 60s or 80s, across both New Zealand and Australia.
“It’s possible that because there has been publicity about current research into MDMA, ketamine, psilocybin and LSD for various issues, some people are seeking it out on their own. If they are, it’s imperative that they get it tested because the big harm isn’t MDMA, it’s taking something that you thought was MDMA but it wasn’t. MDMA is a reasonably benign drug as long as you maintain hydration and also don’t over-water yourself.”
It’s estimated 20 million people use ecstasy/MDMA recreationally around the world each year.
Boden said it’s hard to tell whether or not use is growing in New Zealand - because it’s illicit. “We’re better off looking at wastewater concentrations. People can lie about their drug use but their urine doesn’t lie.”
Police wastewater drug testing in New Zealand - which covers about 75% of the population - shows that in the fourth quarter of 2023, consumption averaged 8.4kg a week. That equates to roughly 67,000 doses a week - above the average quantity consumed in the previous four quarters.
A sense of guilt
Catherine told the Herald that for her, the worst part of taking MDMA is the guilt she feels about supporting a black market.
“I’m supporting gang culture, I’m supporting crime, and it’s untaxed, there’s all of the criminal stuff I struggle with. I know what a black market means in terms of the underbelly of society and human suffering. I do feel bad we’re supporting that underbelly and encouraging crime.
“I wish there was a way to get a safe dose legally. I think about the fact that it’s people in their early 20s who sell it to us, some of them are young women, and they have to connect to gangs to get it.
“I keep justifying it to myself because it’s tiny amounts, low use, and we’re only using ourselves, not supplying anyone. It’s like using plastic - I just feel a bit guilty about it.”
Detective Inspector Tim Chao of the police National Drug Intelligence Bureau said police take a health-based approach to the personal possession and recreational use of illicit drugs.
He said police don’t have sufficient information to comment on the drug use of older adults, and “older New Zealanders are not a cohort that attracts attention or that police commonly interact with on an enforcement basis.”
A generational trend
Reported Ecstasy/MDMA use among older Kiwis is increasing.
Accurate data on trends in illicit drug use is notoriously difficult to obtain and our best source on MDMA use by age is the New Zealand Health Survey, which has surveyed between 4434 and 13,869 adults each year since 2011.
Smaller groups in surveys have more sampling errors and 10 years ago the percentage of 45-54 year olds reporting MDMA usage - about 0.5% - was too close to the margin of error to interpret reliably. But two of the past three surveys included more reliable results - 3.1% and 1.2% of respondents over 45 reported using MDMA within the previous 12 months.
Associate Professor Chris Wilkins leads the drug research team at Massey University running the New Zealand Drug Trends Survey.
“This is a generational trend” he told the Herald. “People are starting to appreciate that alcohol is not a low-risk drug and there are clear consequences to using it, and other substances offer other experiences.
“Both internationally and here in New Zealand there’s a growing movement towards therapeutic uses of drugs that’s less hedonistic and more about relaxing and getting a different perspective on your life.
“People aged in their 50s now were young in the 1980s and 1990s so - unlike previous generations - they have knowledge of things like ecstasy. So even if they prioritised raising families and developing their careers, now they want to try it in a much less risky way, unrelated to typical youth culture.
Wilkins urges common sense, especially around drug checking. “Getting drugs checked is a really smart thing to do because the market is illegal and unregulated and often the drug dealers themselves don’t quite know what they’re getting - and there are some dangerous synthetic opioids like fentanyl that can be put in these drugs during production.”
Know Your Stuff is a free, legal and publicly-funded drug-checking service that operates throughout New Zealand.
Wilkins also said people can reduce the likelihood of harm by taking small amounts of drugs and gauging the effects before taking more, not mixing drugs with alcohol or opioids, having a sober friend as a guardian, avoiding intravenous options, and arranging safe transport.
Drug-checking clinics found 86% of apparent MDMA tested throughout Aotearoa in 2023 was pure MDMA according to the NZ Drug Foundation. Six per cent was MDMA mixed with another psychoactive substance - commonly synthetic cathinones (bath salts) and caffeine - and 7% was not MDMA at all.
A drug harm ranking study by the University of Otago published in the UK Journal of Psychopharmacology in 2023 found that alcohol causes more widespread harm to New Zealand society than other illegal drugs, followed by methamphetamine, synthetic cannabinoids and tobacco. Measured against 17 different harm criteria, MDMA came in at 17th of 23 drugs scored for societal harm.
Ecstasy date-nights
After that first time, Catherine says she read on the Drug Foundation website that it’s good to go three months between doses of MDMA. “So I looked at the calendar and said - ‘Jon, on March 31, we’re doing it again’.”
“Normally we schedule a date night so we’ve got at least a month to look forward to it. And it never disappoints. Jon would say it’s been the best thing for our relationship in the 15 years we’ve been together.
“The one time it really blew my mind. It was a beautiful summer evening and the sound of the birds was so intense in the garden, the grass was like velvet and then you’ve got someone you love telling you you’re the most amazing person they’ve ever met and you’re not deflecting it, you’re embracing it completely and feeling the truth of it. It’s just fantastic. I freaking love it.
“And I tend to live with that for a long time afterwards. I don’t have a downer day afterwards because I keep the doses light. It definitely benefits the relationship. We are much more into each other in the last few years than we were prior to this. There’s something about it, it’s like your neural pathways change but they don’t change back again.
“I can drive to work, just playing the same music and I can get shivers up my back and arms just as I did when I was on MDMA listening to that track.
“The other thing is when Jon does it with his male friends they get very honest with each other and close, so it’s been good for their male friendships. They’re all 40s and 50s and he can’t believe the depth of friendships he has with those friends.
“I’m more accepting of myself. It’s more than that, it’s like I see the truth. It’s like I’m more honest. The truth is I am an attractive person. And nobody cares how old I am and whether I should lose weight, or have an unattractive chin.
“Are we encouraging people to do more drugs by talking about this? I don’t know. This is just my experience. I have found it very beneficial. I exercise regularly, I eat well, I have a challenging job, a family, there’s lots of big life stuff going on all the time - but this has changed everything.”
Additional reporting by Herald Data Editor Chris Knox.
* Names have been changed