Chasing Molly  By Frank Owen & Lera Gavin Photography by Satoshi
Chasing Molly:    “How many do you want?” asked Fernando, a
stubby drug dealer with chubby hamster cheeks and a neatly
trimmed goatee.  “Just one. Are you sure this is real?”  “Don’t
worry, this shit is fire,” he said.  On a drug-fogged night in
late August, I found myself surrounded by a young crowd at a
party in South Beach. While New Order’s “Blue Monday” played in
the background, I was trying to ignore the loud conversation
going on around me so I could focus on my mission: the hunt for
the magic molecule called molly—the supposedly purer, allegedly
more potent crystalline form of a drug that used to be called
ecstasy (or MDMA). Just as methamphetamine was nicknamed “tina”
to appeal to a more upmarket crowd, molly is simply ecstasy
rebranded with a cute girl’s name, the better to sell it to a
new generation. Contrary to what many users believe, molly is
not a new drug (night crawlers were snorting powdered MDMA as
far back as the early 198