I know what he means as at one point just after I moved here and was still partying there was a fair bit of good crystal MDMA which was similar (but not quite as energetic as a pill which is usuallly pressed with a smaller amount of a “normal stimulant”)
The eyes rolling etc are more a product of MDA ( a still legal albeit expensive analogue of which is 6-APB). Also the comedown on purer MDMA is less harsh, provided you are sensible about using it…. i.e once every month rather than once every week, and midweek use of “psychedelic” stimulants is a no-no unless you want mental health problems (way worse than straight amfetamine or MDA). In fact by the mid 90s to 2000s I stopped doing MDMA regularly though took normal amfetamine as the comedown was less harsh and didn’t affect my work as much.
More recently from 2008/2009 hard enforcement on both sides of the sea against MDMA plus feds across EU not immediately noticing the cathinones (it was the health ministries what noticed their use first) meant that much “MDMA” sold in the UK was a mixture of MDMA, mephedrone, methylone, butylone, flephedrone, and fuck knows what else plus bulking powders. Also pills were increasingly contaminated with these mixtures of substances and/or piperazines, this last nasty chemical thankfully having mostly disappeared from Europe since it was made a controlled substance with similar penalties to “better stuff”.
TBH especially reading the Dutch news and party sites I suspect making cathinones a controlled substance at the same time a new younger generation had discovered them and them moved on to MDMA has caused a resurgence in MDMA use.
Also party drugs have a definite specialist market (unlike heroin or cocaine which is done everywhere outside the music/party scene) which depends a lot on electronic dance music being tolerated.
Today its a smaller but still resilient scene since 20 years ago full of relatively clued up young people who are otherwise middle class and law abiding and view it as a “rite of passage” often before or after University, at least in the UK. In NL the ravers do seem to be of a slightly wider age group but people still calm down after age 30. I am not sure if this is through their own free will or social/police pressure, probably both same as the UK). This also means dealers tend to be younger, as nowadays cops and parents view a “older person hanging around with kids” suspiciously for all sorts of reasons – but also means its increasingly hard (and more risky, as if kids get ill or die parents grass up dealers even if they dealers were best friends) to punt out shit drugs (or even good strong drugs without appropriate warnings) to this smart young crowd.
