A Texas State student died last month after what friends say was her first experience with the drug Ecstasy. Jessica Hunter, 21, took the drug at the Austin City Limits festival on Oct. 5 and later had a seizure on the sidewalk, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. She went into cardiac arrest and received CPR from paramedics before being taken to the hospital. When her parents arrived, Hunter was in an induced coma after her temperature had surged to 106 degrees. Over two days, Hunter bled from her nose and mouth. After a scan showed she was suffering brain hemorrhaging, her parents decided to take their only child off life support. "Her eyes were open—you could see that there was nothing there," says her mother.
Now her parents—who wrote in their daughter's obituary how they would miss her "excitement for the small things in life"—are working to make the dangers of the drug known. "We are trying to get as much good out of this as we can ... if we can just stop one (person) from making the same choice," her father says. Meanwhile, Hunter's friends released balloons with messages for her and urged each other not to try drugs, KEYE reports. "We want everyone to understand that it only takes one time," says one. Hunter, she notes, "was not a drug abuser." Since Ecstasy isn't regulated, its effects can be unpredictable, says a doctor. "You never know if one capsule is 10 times more concentrated than another capsule," he notes. "So it really is always a game of Russian roulette." (In another tragedy this year, a teen died after drinking energy drinks on the beach.)
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