Rio - Interview 37

Age at interview: 21

Brief Outline:

Rio is 21 and a college student. He started taking recreational drugs (mainly ecstasy and stimulants) in the party scene with his mates. Rio thinks that drug use was a catalyst for him to develop depression and that recreational drug use can amplify negative factors in life that can lead to depression. After Rio was diagnosed with depression and put on antidepressants, he immediately stopped taking recreational drugs. His depression is well controlled at the moment.

Background:

See 'Brief outline'

Rio was worried that his ecstasy use had been the cause of his weird feelings and caused 'permanent damage'.

I’d travel to [city name] and see all the lads, and then we’d go out and have a blast in you know in a club or whatever. And we’d do, you know, do a few drugs as well, which is a bit silly, but you know it’s what happens in big raves and things you know and clubs so, we’d just do it, a bit of fun. And then the day after is Sunday, you know and the driving home, you know a couple of hours drive down to London and it was like you know you’ve got work in the morning, you feel tired and so you could kick off the week in a bad, bad note anyway.

 

So it got worse and worse and worse over a period of two or three weeks and I became seriously worried that like ecstasy which is the drug I took, had kind of done some serious permanent damage. You know, no-one really knows what the effects are of ecstasy, it’s sort of, you know it’s a lighthearted social drug that’s acceptable, all of a sudden you know that dark side to it has gone bang [click] you know, what’s happened, what is this? Has this changed you know chemicals in the brain or something?

Rio says you can 'quickly go past the point where you think it's fun'.

I did a couple of those [drugs] and they’re very strong, you’re only supposed, you struggle if you took one, but these things were really strong and I took a couple of these things, and yeah they, the, it’s a really, really strong hallucinogenic, and you’re sitting there, you’re completely on another planet, you know just battling with yourself to try and get back to reality, but some people might enjoy it but, it’s, in my experience like, you can take, take you very quickly past the point where you think it’s fun and so be very careful what you do. And like even if you go to the club you know sells, you know the dealer there or whatever, you know is good, it doesn’t matter it can still be, you know it can still be really bad.

Rio says taking ecstasy was a 'catalyst' for his depression.

It is a catalyst in my experience. So it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back another way to say it. It brings about factors in your life that would cause depression, inevitably I think, but brings it out quite quickly and amplifies what would normally come out so it brings about a stronger depression I think. And much quicker, you know, speeds it up. So it’s not a good idea if you’re feeling down, even if you don’t know you’ve got depression, it would be a silly thing to do like, unless you’re really confident that you’re having a great life and you only do it now and again, then fine but.

 

Is that what the GP agreed with you?

 

Well the GP just said, “Don’t do it ever. No-one should ever do it, and because it’s just the worst thing for your body”.