Despite some 100 years of police, politicians, and lawmakers telling us drugs are bad, about half a million Australians will have wilfully taken an ecstasy pill by the end of this year. On a purely survival basis, that may seem reckless—but there are good reasons why people take illicit substances. Drugs are usually euphoric, invigorating, and enlightening, as almost anyone who’s ever used them recreationally will attest.

Sometimes, though, they’re none of these things. Of the half a million Australians who will have taken ecstasy by the end of this year, thousands will likely be forced to seek emergency medical treatment. The causal factors for this are manifold, but they can often be traced back to a general lack of understanding around the contents of pills, their effects, and the safest way to take them. And that’s because, in the midst of the cacophanus shouting match around whether or not people should be allowed to take drugs, few authorities are bothering to properly educate users on how to minimise the risks.

So we remain at an impasse. People will continue to take drugs—blindly, for the most part—and many will subsequently run the risk of overdose, and even death. But if the authorities won’t provide information and tools for harm minimisation, we will.

Here’s how to take pills as safely as possible. Think of it as a guide to your night on the gear—along with some bonus tips to help you deal with that inevitable comedown.

Preparing for Your Night

There are typically two main factors to consider when looking at the contents of an ecstasy pill: purity and dose. Purity essentially refers to how much of your pill is actually MDMA (the active ingredient) and how much of it is something else—whether that be an innocuous cutting agent, a toxic contaminant, or some chemical that's a bit like MDMA but cheaper and/or more readily available. Dose refers to how potent the pill is, and thus determines how intense its effects are going to be. It’s the dose that makes the poison, according to an age-old adage of toxicology—which is to say that while cyanide can be harmless at small enough doses, even water can be poisonous if consumed in excess. It all depends on how much you’re having.

It’s therefore worth stressing that pure, unadulterated ecstasy will still kill you if you ingest too much. MDMA triggers a sharp rise in internal body temperature, and this can pose serious problems in the case of a particularly strong batch—especially if taken within certain circumstances, or in combination with other substances. We’ll talk about ways that you can mitigate these risks, but ideally you’ll have at least a semi-informed understanding of what it is you’re taking beforehand.

This starts at the point of sale. Just as you’d exercise due diligence to ensure that any food, drink, or general substance you’re about to put into your body isn’t going to make you sick, you should do the same with drugs.