Teens share horrors of street drug 'Molly'

Do you know what Molly is? Is your kid using it?

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – "I think I would have been dead," one 17-year-old said of her year addicted to the street drug Molly.

The girl we are not identifying who is currently in a rehabilitation program at the Gateway Community Center, says she would rather forget after experiencing day after day of being high on Molly. She says that drove her to commit crimes.

"I beat up a cop and got charged for battery on a law enforcement officer. It made me do crazy things that I would ever do while I was sober. I would never touch a cop like that," the former addict told me. "With how much I was doing, I didn't care, and I wasn't safe at all."

Molly is not a new drug at all.  It's said to be the purest form of the club drug ecstasy. Users typically ingest Molly in the form of a pill, or sometimes they snort it, which puts the drug directly into their blood stream.

The DEA cracked down on Molly a decade ago because it was being sold in high schools.

What is new however is the glorification of the Molly in popular music, which makes the abuse even harder to stop.

Today's hottest artists are singing about Molly in their songs including performers Kanye West, Riyannah and Miley Cyrus.

UNCUT INTERVIEWS: Teenager 1 | Teenager 2 | Anti-drug PSAs

A local doctor says what's unpredictable is the way the body will react to the drug.

"In the background, it can be increasing your heart rate, increasing your blood pressure, it impairs your bodies ability to regulate it's own temperature, which can lead to organ failure, seizures," said Jessica Rivera a clinical toxicologist at the Poison Center of Jacksonville.

Rivera says drug dealers sometimes mix Molly with bath salts, cocaine and even methamphetamines. Molly has the potential to shut the human bodies organs down and send teenagers to the morgue.

"You never know what your getting, regardless of what the supplier tells you or the internet site, you cannot predict what type of response you'll have," said Rivera

"One of my family members actually ended up in the hospital , because he took a bad molly and it wasn't good at all," said Deangelo Bright who lives on the Westside.

Bright says he knows of Molly horror stories all to well. Bright says paramedics had to pump one of his family members stomachs because what she thought was Molly, was actually a synthetic drug.

"It can do permanent damage, jitters, they move their mouth," said Bright.

Chief of narcotics for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Ron Lemdvay, says what troubles him is the growing number of websites being used to promote Molly.

"It does make our job harder, we have to get our message out with public service announcements, but it's difficult it cuts through every part of society, music is a powerful tool," said Lemdvay.

Police say there are several obvious signs that your teenager could be using Molly: dilated pupils, bags under their eyes, and unusually irritated. Molly users experience a loss of appetite, which results in dramatic weight loss.

The intense high users feel with Molly, also causes users to grind their teeth. To to offset that reaction, Molly users often chew gum excessively.

"I've seen so many people that I know over the past 3 months doing Molly,and a few of them have died. It's not good at all," said a second teenager in recovery.

She urged others not to start.

"It puts you in a state where you are honestly not smart, your not making smart decisions," the 17-year-old said.


About the Authors:

Tarik anchors the 4, 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. weekday newscasts and reports with the I-TEAM.