True Stories of Ecstasy and Ketamine

Cathy Isford

Cathy Isford, a Foothill High School Senior, gave up raves and party drugs one night when she saw ambulances racing to a rave she just left.  For two years, she stayed away.  Her life was full: finishing high school, preparing to become a teacher, looking forward to marriage.  One ritual of passage remained - her senior prom.  Against the wishes of her family and friends, she decided to take ecstasy one more time for prom.  On Voice of the Victims, her family tells how that night at the prom 38 kids took Ecstasy – 37 woke up to celebrate a new day.  One didn't.  That one was Cathy Isford.  She spent the night writing in pain, slipping into an irreversible coma.  She lay in a hospital bed for four days, but there was nothing the doctors could do.  With friends and family by her side, Cathy’s body fought until the very end.

Steven Lorenz

Steven Lorenz, a Chicago teenager, thought he was buying Ecstasy, but what the dealer sold him was actually PMA, a lethal substitute.  Quickly, his body temperature soared to 108 degrees, melting his internal organs causing him to “bleed out.”  His father explains on Voice of the Victims how he barely recognized Steven, as the boy’s handsome face shrunk, losing over an inch of mass in the emergency room, and how Steven’s death left him saddened and angry … an anger that played out as he sued the kingpin who supplied Steven’s dealer with the drugs - the first successful lawsuit of its kind. 

Sara Aeschlimann

The photos in Voice of the Victims of a beautiful and engaging Chicago teenager make it easy to see why Sara Aeschlimann was everyone’s best friend.  But one young man she thought was her friend crushed four pills of Ecstasy into her water so he could rape her.  Then he stood by for six hours as she convulsed on the floor, burning with fever and pulling out her beautiful blonde hair.  Sara was rushed to the hospital in time for her mother and father to see her one last time.  She died a few hours later…on Mother’s Day morning.  The young man that did this has not paid the price - he is in prison for dealing, but was never charged or tried for Sara’s brutal murder.  He will be released in just a few years.

Erin Rose

"I used to be so cool," Laguna Niguel teenager Erin Rose tells us in Voice of the Victims.  That was before she took Ketamine and quickly fell to the floor, convulsing.  Even though paramedics responded quickly, Erin 's heart was stopped for 17 minutes, halting the flow of blood to the brain of this once delightfully exuberant and intelligent young woman.  Miraculously, Erin was brought back to life.  Since her accident, Erin has been forced to adjust to life with a debilitating brain injury, learning to walk, talk, eat and tie her shoes all over again.  Erin believes her life was spared so she could reach other teens and help them avoid her fate.  She regularly gives presentations to high school students about the dangers of designer drugs, and encourages parents and their kids to watch Voice of the Victims, a film she thinks would have kept her away from drugs … if she had only known.