I'm a bit confused by the following line in the article though:
> all the money we spent on ecstasy, or E as we called it
Usually a fiver a pill and one pills all you need. Double dropping is a waste of time.
I never bought MDMA or any other drug in nightclubs, but I've seen people dealing, and I think the price was €10 a pill. In the same places at the time, a random shitty drink was like €9 and a beer (330 mL) around 8. People would clearly drink more than a single drink a night.
Its unfortunate that due to prohibition, a lot of harm reduction advice is based on folk wisdom kind of knowledge as opposed to hard science.
Also increases risk of taking too much and ending up doing yourself harm.
On MDMA alcohol isn't really needed (and is usually detrimental to the experience). So its a cheap night out.
You might have a couple of beers, but not the massive and expensive overconsumption that is usually the "norm".
Obviously they were all way better back in't day.
The pills coming out of the Netherlands these days are absurdly potent - tests have found ones up to 350mg.
There's a lot of mythology out there about if different production methods change the "effect", but lab tests show no difference on a chemical level.
The problem today is that whenever there's a good stamp going around, there's always a knockoff that's just cheap speed and caffeine or some other shite.