A Deer Park man, living at a drug treatment facility, is warning teens and club-goers about a drug known as "Molly."
"It's taken me nine months of being clean to realize the insanity of it all," Dylan Aleba, 27, said.
Molly or MDMA is the purest, most powerful building block of Ecstasy. It is most commonly found in pill form, and billed as a relatively harmless way to "enhance" a night out.
Miley Cyrus references the drug in her hit song, "We Can't Stop." And at a recent concert, Madonna made a cryptic reference to the illegal substance.
"Has anyone seen Molly?" Madonna asked from the stage.
Twice, Aleba landed in the emergency room, sweating profusely with his jaw locked after taking Molly.
"I broke several of my teeth," Aleba said. "My body just seized up, convulsions, my eyes were flipped back in my head."
Aleba, who hails from New York state, now calls, the Cenikor Foundation in Deer Park home.
Cenikor is a boot-camp style drug and behavioral treatment center.
"I realize now I'm an addict. I'm a drug addict, so whether it's beer or MDMA, I'm going to abuse the crap out of it and push it to the limit," Aleba said candidly.
Aleba agreed to talk to Local 2 because he does not want to see other teens and young adults go through what he did.
"I lost everything," Aleba said.
Neither the Houston Police Department nor the DEA's Houston office keep specific statistics about MDMA, but emergency room doctors on a national scale have noticed an uptick in patients who have taken Molly.
MDMA typically causes a rise in body temperature and heart rate, and can be fatal.
As problematic as the drug itself is the fact that there is virtually no way to quickly and safely make sure a pill is authentic.
"People go out to clubs and they think that they're getting one thing. They very well may not be getting what they bargained for. Thirty to 50 percent is not even MDMA," said Amy Hansen, Cenikor's clinical manager.
Aleba is rebuilding his life one day at a time with Hansen's guidance. He plans to join the Army when his treatment is complete in 15 months.
"You think everything's great, everything's fine, when really it's the exact opposite," Aleba said.
Click here to learn more about Cenikor.