

When an 8-month-old boy swallowed a tablet of the club drug ecstasy, he developed seizures, an abnormally rapid heartbeat, and a high fever. His mother brought him to University Children's Hospital in Cologne, Germany. She was not on drugs, and knew what had happened.

After checking his vital signs, the medical staff injected a small amount of diazepam (Valium) into the infant’s rectum. Within five minutes, the seizures had stopped.

Pediatricians then inserted a catheter into the boy’s penis and used it to collect urine for a rapid drug test kit. The boy was positive for ecstasy, amphetamine, and methamphetamine.

The doctors cooled the infant down, gave him fluids intravenously, and waited for the drugs to filter out of his body.

Six hours later, the child’s body temperature and heartbeat had returned to normal.

During the following day, the physicians collected samples of the infant’s blood serum for chemical analysis. Those tests revealed that his body had destroyed half of the drug in six hours – far faster than an adult could do it.

In their correspondence to the European Journal of Pediatrics, Frank Eifinger, Bernhard Roth, Lars Kröner, and Markus A. Rothschild said that these events are rare, but when they happen it is essential to administer tranquilizers immediately. The sedative medications ward off convulsions and brain damage.

Toward the end of their report, which became available online at the end of September, the doctors said that they do not know why children can survive doses of ecstasy that would be fatal for adults. A table in the document described nine other infants that had ingested the club drug. All of them survived.