From marijuana and jazz, to amphetamines and punk, drugs and popular music have been inextricably tied together. Today the music is electronic and ecstasy and party drugs are the drugs of choice. In Ecstasy and Raves, Hunt, an anthropologist, and Evans, a sociologist, explore the attraction of the scene and the drugs to young people today. Using information from over 300 in-depth interviews with ravers, DJ's and promoters, the authors examine the social and ethnic background of the ravers and clubbers, their initial involvement with the scene, their experiences of the drugs and their changing tastes in music. They show how the scene is made up of many different social groupings based not just on social class, gender or ethnicity, but also length of time in the scene, choice of drugs, styles of dancing and types of music. Hunt and Evans discover that although ravers share many commonalities they are not identical and do not speak with a single voice. Through them, we learn of candy ravers, jaded ravers, newbies, old school ravers, veterans, house heads and trance heads. In contrast to the often stereotypical views of about young drug users as naive and poorly informed, the authors explore the sources of information used by ravers, the precautions they take both prior and after using and the controls they impose on each others' use. We learn about their frustrations with recent legislation controlling raves and clubs, their anger at the increasing commercialization of the scene, and their general skepticism about official pronouncements on the dangers of ecstasy and other drugs.

From marijuana and jazz, to amphetamines and punk, drugs and popular music have been inextricably tied together. Today the music is electronic and ecstasy and party drugs are the drugs of choice. In Ecstasy and Raves, Hunt, an anthropologist, and Evans, a sociologist, explore the attraction of the scene and the drugs to young people today. Using information from over 300 in-depth interviews with ravers, DJ's and promoters, the authors examine the social and ethnic background of the ravers and clubbers, their initial involvement with the scene, their experiences of the drugs and their changing tastes in music. They show how the scene is made up of many different social groupings based not just on social class, gender or ethnicity, but also length of time in the scene, choice of drugs, styles of dancing and types of music. Hunt and Evans discover that although ravers share many commonalities they are not identical and do not speak with a single voice. Through them, we learn of candy ravers, jaded ravers, newbies, old school ravers, veterans, house heads and trance heads. In contrast to the often stereotypical views of about young drug users as naive and poorly informed, the authors explore the sources of information used by ravers, the precautions they take both prior and after using and the controls they impose on each others' use. We learn about their frustrations with recent legislation controlling raves and clubs, their anger at the increasing commercialization of the scene, and their general skepticism about official pronouncements on the dangers of ecstasy and other drugs.