As the Austin City Limits Music Festival hits its second weekend stride, Austin Police are issuing a warning about sourcing fans’ illegal drug usage after a young woman died after reportedly taking ‘molly’ at the festival.
According to APD, the 21-year-old woman was found on Sunday, Oct. 5, when an APD detective was working an off-duty traffic control assignment at a crosswalk in the 2100 block of Veteran’s Drive around 10 p.m. A person flagged the officer down to alert them of a female in distress under the MoPac bridge, police said.
The woman was conscious, though sweating profusely with a gray complexion. Police said the woman’s body was rigid and her hands and feet were flailing. The woman’s friends told the detective that she had taken the drug ‘Molly,’ a derivative of the drug ecstasy which is often mistaken for a more pure form of the euphoria-inducing drug.
Austin-Travis County EMS performed CPR and transferred her to Seton Medical Center. According to police, on Wednesday, Oct. 8, the woman died. Toxicology results are still pending.
The woman was reportedly provided with molly by an acquaintance while at ACL, police said, and her group of friends also took the same drug. Each of the friends had adverse reactions to the drug, but not as severe as the woman’s, police said. This is, so far, an isolated incident.
An investigation into this incident is ongoing.
Without resorting to ignorant hysteria, ACL and other festival attendees should be very careful about what substances they choose to partake in, particularly when provided by strangers. Those determined to take their experience to narcotically-induced heights should nevertheless be as safe as they can, and use purity-testing kits such as the EZ Test, which tests chemicals and quickly detects the presence of various substances. Users are able to find out if a sample contains what would be expected or if it has another, possibly unwanted substance in it.
Molly culture is off and running with an entire genre specifically geared to its enhancement. Buying pills from complete strangers isn’t quite Russian roulette, but it is certainly a pitifully stupid decision for adventure seekers who lack the social connections of their own. If you’ve never rolled, tripped, flipped or otherwise at a show, let alone a massive music festival, don’t throw yourself into the experience haphazardly. Know what you’re putting in your body, underestimate your intake threshold, and make sure you’re surrounded by people you trust when embarking on such chemically-driven journeys into the unknown.
