This is part of an email we recieved.. thanks to C. for the encouragement and kind remarks, we hope you dont mind us replying to this bit of your mail in public cos we'd like our readers to see what we have to say about the whole thing anyway..

I'm a bit unsure as to your practice of advertising E usage (abusage?). While it can all seem like good clean fun - Dancing for hours, drinking mineral water and shouting 'I love you man' to a grinning gouger against a ferocious and infectious breakbeat - there shall be a price to pay : have you ever come Across a documented case of divorced yin or yang? If so, please let me know. We all know about unhappy lotto winners, lovers that spoil their marriages with pointless affairs, youths that spoil their youth with pointless marriages, and on and on. Extasy shall never come without some agony. You may not be the one who experiences it, it might be the one who ODs on H as he's coming down.
Print what you like but I would be more pragmatic. How would you feel if 20 years down the line all the clubbers start to develop immune system diseases (a sort of Acquired Clubbing Immune Deficiency Syndrome - or ACIDS for short)? Great, at last we're rid of the muppets? Or, fuck, maybe we made somebody take the plunge into E-world and now they're seriously ill? They're your odds - you play with them.

S@E reply: To a certain extent we agree with you. Of course you cant go out taking E or whatever it is, be it acid, speed or coke, on a regular basis, even once a month, without doing a fair amount of damage to your immune system and even your nervous system. I dont think we would ever say that you can do drugs that produce the kind of responses that E does, without any kind of negative effect. It can be seen every year with the increase in people seeking psychological help after going out on the tear just that one or two times too much. It can be seen with the amount of fucked up heads getting the NiteLinks home on a Saturday night.
It can be seen in the amount of people skipping Mondays off work cos their head is mush..As for us "advertising" E usage, I think that term might be a bit unfair. We're not saying "Hey kids, you know what? E is great, go out there every Saturday night and get fucked up, it's great, you wont feel like your heads been beaten against a wall the next day..", but what we are printing is an accurate account of the nights out we have. I dont think it would be any better just to censor the reviews of the nights out.
If you read any magazines or fanzines with club reviews or gig reviews that would feature dance music or some offshoot (and reviews of clubs are few and far between, most places will preview nights out but never tell you how they went), they never talk about the drugs or drink they took at them. But if you look at nights out, the case in hand being the Spiritualized gig in Galway and then Fat Boy Slim afterwards, there was a HUGE amount of people absolutely fucked off their heads at both events.
Nobody will ever say that though. It all has to be kept hush hush. Its something you do in secret. I think its better to be honest with the readers and be honest with other people. Admittedly theres been loads of times when I went out and if I hadnt taken any drugs, I would have had a shit time. But then theres been other nights when I went out and took acid or an E or three and my head was wrecked, I'd go home early and then I'd be plugged into the wall all night waiting for a shitty comedown. Perhaps we should focus more on the negative effects of drugs rather than promoting the spirit of hedonism but so far we have to admit that our positive experiences with drugs (esp. E) have outweighed the negative ones. But as you say, doubtlessly in several years time we will regret what we have done to ourselves. I dont think anyone is going to go out and take drugs just cos they read a review in S@E where the author(s) were off their heads. Most people will come into contact with drugs and make up their mind to try them or not in their circle of friends.
What more can we say? Of course drugs are bad for you, you shouldnt do them and eventually they will seriously fuck you up, but the state is saying that every day, every hour to people and they still wont listen. People will always do things that are bad for them. But people arent stupid. Alright, they are, but when it comes to looking after number one, people will generally make the best decision for themselves and their own health.

This argument was a bit unstructured but basically what we're saying is: We just want to tell the truth about how it is in the clubs and gigs we go to, be it on drugs or not. We're not advertising E usage although we understand how it could be seen that way. E is dangerous, whether you look after yourself or not, you never know what shit you are buying. We've always encouraged people to make their own mind up, so kids, do that, but use your judgement as an intelligent human being.