We Watched “True Life: I’m Hooked On Molly” So You Don’t Have To

Many EDM fans cringed when MTV announced that their next installment of the True Life series would be entitled True Life: I’m Hooked On Molly. We had fears that the show would take a dramatic stance, and unfortunately we were right. There’s no denying that both of the women depicted exhibited behavior around “molly” that was worrisome, but unfortunately the show did little but highlight what seem to be all the bad things that happen to you if you do molly without providing any real education to a captive audience.

Because we love you, we’ll summarize it for you so you don’t have to lose an hour of your life that you’ll never get back. The show starts out introducing us to Paige, a 23 year old living in Las Vegas. Paige is a classically trained dancer who moved to Vegas to work with a dance company… and because she figured there would be lots of molly there. Sadly she began using molly daily, and it led her on a downward spiral.

“All the while I was taking molly and I could feel it taking a toll on me. I was staying up all night and I wasn’t eating well and it began to affect my dancing. That’s when I entered rehab for 6 weeks to try and get clean. When I got out of rehab I found out the dream job I had was given to another dancer.” -Paige

Paige’s tale is at times hard to watch due to the behavior she exhibits. When she is out or almost out of molly and alcohol she throws temper tantrums that are not unlike a toddler meltdown when a parent says no in a store. In one particularly memorable moment she has a friend bring her alcohol and then yells at him when he refuses to give her the money that her mother gave him to pay Paige’s rent. After the friend rightfully refuses to let her blow the money on molly she is a crying, sobbing mess in her house who talks about wanting to go to his house to beat him up and get “her” money.

“All I want is to do some molly right now, but without that money I can’t get any.” -Paige

Fortunately, Paige has a couple of friends who have her best interests in mind and do their best to help support her. Towards the middle of the episode we come to find out that Paige is trying to reinterpret her dancing dream and is starting a contemporary dance company with the hopes of performing in Vegas shows. Her best friend Jordan, who is also working on the dancing with her, had severe reservations about her molly use and her commitment to bettering herself.

Paige realized maybe she’s getting a little too friendly with molly in a chat with a close friend.

Jordan: “You’re sitting here with all this passion and these dreams and you’re hoping that your drug use doesn’t get in the way of it all…Doing it every single day like this you will literally die.”

Paige: “I know what I’m doing… I know I’m doing that [taking too much] but maybe it’s because I think I’m invincible and I do think I can do whatever I want and there’s no consequences because I have this ego where I’m invincible.”

Paige’s story, at least as far as the show goes, ends with her and her friends performing at a showcase for Vegas talent companies and with a realization that she will need to reduce her molly usage if she really wants to get back into a real dance career. At the end of the episode she says she is down to using “only” twice a week and hopes to quit by next year. We truly hope that she does find success with dancing and is able to find sources of joy and happiness beyond molly.

Ally, 21, has a slightly different story but has clearly also developed an unhealthy relationship with molly. Ally’s story sounds all too familiar for some. She was raised in a home where both of her parents are college professors, she gets to live with them rent-free, has an allowance, gets to drive a Lexus, and yet is still unhappy. She recently graduated from beauty school after two years, from a program that should have taken only 9 months to complete.

“In high school I was a total outcast. Then I started going to raves. I felt like I fit in. They appreciated me for me. I started taking molly because it made me feel connected to the music. It made me happy. But it’s not like that anymore. In the beginning I was using molly every weekend, but then I needed more and I started binging 3-4x a week for weeks at a time. But I got sick and tired of feeling like crap after I rolled and decided to focus on school.”

We get introduced to Ally right after she has graduated beauty school and is going out with her friends. As one might suspect, molly features prominently in her celebrating. (insert quote about dog). It becomes clear quickly that her use of molly is to escape an unhappiness, but due to the after-effects of molly she found herself in a vicious cycle of using molly again to feel happy, but feeling unhappy when it’s been a while since she’s had molly and therefore taking more molly. See where this can be problematic?

Ally’s mom shares some hard truths with her

Like Paige, Ally has people in her life who care about her well being and one of them is her mom, Charlee. Her mom is very aware of what her daughter has been doing, and it reached a point where the family had had enough. Ally reached a point as well where she realized she’d gone too far and needed to scale it back.

“I know I can’t keep living this way. I wanna be sober. I want to only have to smoke a cigarette to calm my nerves down. But if molly is around I can’t say no. Molly is still what I want because I want to be happy. And I haven’t found a way to be happy without it yet.” -Ally

Ally’s mom Charlee helped her reach a turning point, by way of a discussion about how her behavior was affecting the health of the family as a whole. Many of us throughout our lives have had the “tough love” talk with mama, but this one was certainly one of the more hard-hitting ones we’ve seen in a while.

“This is a family thing, it’s not just a one person thing Ally. Your moods affect all of us… You’ve been on drugs for the past few years Ally. Get your head together. We don’t want to see you sad. We don’t want to see you as moody as you’ve been. We want to see you be stable and be a content person. That’s what daddy and I have wanted. Maybe you can find happiness and maybe they can help you at rehab.” -Ally’s mom Charlee

However, as hard as it was to watch the talk with Ally, the end result was a good one as she did go off to rehab after her mom bought her a new wardrobe of clothes for a fresh start. Upon returning from rehab Ally has been able to stay sober and was able to start a new relationship with a girlfriend who supports her sobriety. At time of writing Ally is still sober and is working as a hostess at a restaurant while pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter.

We are happy to see that both women seem to have moved past the extreme issues they had with molly, however we have some serious issues with the show that we must address.