The Ecstasy of Amy Fisher

Nick Gillespie | April 28, 2006

How does a 35-year-old (or whatever) Long Island Lolita stay in the news? By blaming her badda-bing ways on drugs. Via Cicero at the wonderful To the People:

The Shoot-People-in-the-Face Drug

Amy Fisher, who shot the wife of the well-named Joey Buttafuoco in the face back in 1992, is now saying that Ecstasy made her do it. She may be the first person in human history to take a drug that gives you empathy and then shoot someone. That's how evil she is. Good lord, imagine what would have happened if she wasn't on the love drug. She probably would have shot Joey Buttafuoco too. And that would have meant the two of them never would have gotten back together for a reunion at Lingerie Bowl III. (More "whatever happened to Joey Buttafuoco" here.)

"I just did something totally irrational," Fisher says. "Believe me, rational people don't go to do something like that in the middle of the day. It's just insane."

Oh, Amy. Shooting people in the middle of the day? You are crazy. Everyone knows you're supposed to shoot people in the face at night.

Whole thing, with fun links, here.

Note Cicero, et al.: Shouldn't your blog be called To the Soylent Green Is People? Just a thought.

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|4.28.06 @ 11:17AM|#

The idea of lingerie bowl is scarier than anything else connected with Amy Fisher. Who the hell thinks these things up?

Jeff P|4.28.06 @ 11:22AM|#

I've noticed the Alyssa Milano Long Island Lolita TV movie showing up on cable a lot this month. If I remember correctly, there were three such films at the time.

I expect to see her hawking Girls Gone Wild tapes on late night TV, or hosting a male stripper tour like John Wayne Bobbitt did.

|4.28.06 @ 11:24AM|#

It was the demon rum!

No, wait, the devil weed!

Oh, wait, sorry, the wicked E!

Would you believe that I cooked up some meth before I went over there?

It just couldn't have been my own crazy fault!!

|4.28.06 @ 11:25AM|#

What if she had spent her evening snorting CRANK? One shudders at the implications....

"Dozens Dead, Hundreds Wounded in Dope Fiend Sex Kitten Rampage."

"Everyone knows you're supposed to shoot people in the face at night."

Unless you're the Vice President on a quail hunt.

|4.28.06 @ 11:29AM|#

You know, Cheney did wait a pretty long time to come forward, if he had only had a few drinks.... maybe he was rolling when he shot the lawyer in the face.

Timothy|4.28.06 @ 11:48AM|#

I thought Cheney only winged the guy.

|4.28.06 @ 12:18PM|#

|4.28.06 @ 1:07PM|#

Fischer is most likely blowing smoke but all methamphetamines like ecstasy can cause irrational behavior if used long enough in one stretch or during sudden withdrawals. Despite its gentle reputation, someone taking ecstasy solid for several days in a row will soon be a basket case.

Why would anybody take Ecstasy for several days in a row? It doesn't induce the brain to produce more serotonin, so it would lose it's effects fairly quickly. Continuing taking it after that would make you a basket case, but not the "shoot someone in the face" kind; more like the "I can't muster the energy to get out of bed because my brain is fresh out of a neurotransmitter whose absence causes clinical depression" type.

Also, calling it a methamphetamine, while technically true, is still terribly misleading. The effects, the doses, the side-effects, everything is completely different.

|4.28.06 @ 1:11PM|#

Aristotle is spinning in his gravy.

|4.28.06 @ 1:15PM|#

Was ecstasy even common back in 92? I don't remember it "catching on" until much later than that.

Besides, wouldn't her attorney have used a "drug-addled insanity" defense at her trial if she'd though of that excuse back then?

|4.28.06 @ 1:28PM|#

My friends in high school were regularly dosing on X in 1992, it had not hit peak popularity but was definitely beyond underground at that point.

Rave culture was getting huge and acid & mescaline were hard to come by. Ecstasy was a cheap and plentiful alternative.

Why would anybody take Ecstasy for several days in a row? It doesn't induce the brain to produce more serotonin, so it would lose it's effects fairly quickly.

Hi, Loser!

25-a-day man biggest ecstasy user ever
Doctors believe a man who claims to have taken 40,000 ecstasy pills during his lifetime is the biggest recorded user of the drug, it emerged today. [...]
At the height of his drug use he was consuming 25 pills every day.
"For a few months, he felt as if he was still under the influence of ecstasy and suffered several episodes of `tunnel vision'.
"He eventually developed severe panic attacks, recurrent anxiety, depression, muscle rigidity (particularly at the neck and jaw levels), functional hallucinations, and paranoid ideation."
[Various news sources]

Also, calling it a methamphetamine, while technically true, ...
It's not true, technically or otherwise.

|4.28.06 @ 1:41PM|#

Shem

Anything that keeps dopamine levels high can lead to impulsive behavior. People do take ecstasy for prolonged periods especially those who are depressed. I myself have witnessed the effects of such benders. Ecstasy is very safe compared to other street drugs (and even some legal drugs) and this in turn leads some people to treat it with carelessness.

There is also the issue of how different people in different emotional states respond to the same drug. For a person already in good mood out to hit the clubs, ecstasy merely polishes their already existing natural high and they won't take a lot but for somebody in the throws of clinical depression the change in mood is significant and the person may keep taking the drug for protracted periods.

Virtually all drugs with anti-depressent properties run the risk of provoking depression's polar opposite, mania. Manics are impulsive and convinced of their own rectitude. This leads them to self-justify irrational actions. If Fischer took enough ecstasy to provoke a manic state should could easily convince herself she was justified in shooting her lover's wife and that she could get away with it.

|4.28.06 @ 1:44PM|#

I agree with David--maybe it's possible for someone to shoot a person solely because they took too much ecstasy, but if Amy Fisher had taken it her lawyer would have tried to use that to mitigate her sentence. No, this is just a vile, selfish bimbo trying to shirk responsibility for her evil actions.

|4.28.06 @ 2:10PM|#

I don't know about New York law, but in Texas, insanity produced by drugs or drink isn't a defense. A defendant who committed murder in an LSD-induced halluciation or the delirium tremens from being drunk is still guilty of murder, no matter what the hallucination said. Insanity is only available if it resulted from an organic neurological problem.

|4.28.06 @ 2:23PM|#

Mur-What's your point?I didn't say it was impossible, just tremendously stupid. Besides, that sounds like something out of the Weekly World News.

And MDMA=methylenedioxymethamphetamine

Shannon-True enough, I suppose, but mania of that sort isn't the sort of thing that one recovers from without serious psychological help. In fact, it's usually the result of latent Bipolar disorder that was triggered by the drug and not any property of the drug itself.

...I guess what I'm trying to say is that she's a big fat liar.

|4.28.06 @ 2:26PM|#

in Texas, insanity produced by drugs or drink isn't a defense. A defendant who committed murder in an LSD-induced halluciation or the delirium tremens from being drunk is still guilty of murder, no matter what the hallucination said.

What if you can prove that taking the substances wasn't your fault? Like for example, I thought I was drinking plain juice, but had no idea someone put LSD in it?

|4.28.06 @ 2:43PM|#

Drop the flourescent binky and come out with your hands up!

|4.28.06 @ 2:49PM|#

Shem,

I guess what I'm trying to say is that she's a big fat liar.

You won't get any argument from me. Given that the this was a classic love triangle murder the most the ecstasy did was give her the energy and confidence to carry out a murder she already wanted to commit.

My point was directed more at the idea expressed in the linked blog post that ecstasy couldn't provide the kind of push to somebody to commit a violent crime.

|4.28.06 @ 2:59PM|#

Jennifer, you don't write questions for the Texas bar exam in your spare time, do you? If not, please consider talking to our Board of Bar Examiners. That's a good question.

Seriously, I don't know what difference unintentional consumption would make. I vaguely remember a case in which a woman's conviction for assault was reversed because she had a violent and, luckily, very rare reaction to a prescription drug, but I don't know the details. I am pretty sure uninentional exposure is a defense for DWI purposes, in that if you didn't know that what the doctor gave you would put you to sleep in five minutes, you can't be held responsible when it did and you were behind the wheel. For what little it's worth, if there isn't an exception like this, there ought to be.

R C Dean|4.28.06 @ 3:05PM|#

Well, the E might have given her the energy and confidence to make a pass at Mrs. Buttafuoco, but its really hard for anyone whose ever taken it to connect it up to an act of violence.

|4.28.06 @ 3:12PM|#

There was a case in Colorado(?) a few years ago where a juror was jailed for contempt for voting to aquit a drug offender.

That could be an effective weapon in the WOD, they should pass a law that makes it illegal to find a defendant guilty if he is charged with any crime having to do with drugs and there is a preponderint of evidence that he may have been guilty. We also need a law that makes it illegal to be suspected of drugs.

We cannot forget that the drug users are commiting the most evil and imoral act by using drugs because drugs cause violince and support the terorists. Most crime, wether property or violint is caused buy drugs which is why they are illegil and we done gots to keep them that way.

I think to stop drugs and terorism and solve the deficit we shood export our drug users for sale as slaves to any country what wants them. We no that we have got to export more for are trade balince to be more everer, and we done gots to stop the peoples from doing the drugs.

|4.28.06 @ 3:13PM|#

David -- I started undergrad at the U. of Colorado in 1988 and X was used quite a bit there at that time, but I think Boulder is some sort of test market for drugs.

|4.28.06 @ 3:17PM|#

The reason she did it was because she was raped. She was three weeks below the legal age, and that legally makes it rape. The emotional trauma of this caused her to do what she did.

I know it is only three weeks, but we need some cutoff. I know she was a prostitute but they have rights too. Even though she was not a virgin, at even 1 hour befor the legal age it is rape and legally it is the same thing as forcible.

Joshua|4.28.06 @ 3:29PM|#

The reason she did it was because she was raped. She was three weeks below the legal age, and that legally makes it rape. The emotional trauma of this caused her to do what she did.

So if Joey had just waited until Amy was of the legal age of consent, she wouldn't have been emotionally traumatized? Somehow I find this hard to believe. There is no "magic age" at which all women suddenly become competent to give consent for sex and not be traumatized by it. The only reason our society sets an arbitrary cutoff age is because we need a simple, uniform and easily enforcible legal standard.

|4.28.06 @ 3:41PM|#

Psst! Joshua! I think Sarah was being sarcastic. We had this big argument here about age of consent, remember?

|4.28.06 @ 6:16PM|#

We had a would-be cannibal/child rapist/dismemberer in Purcell arrested a few days ago. (He'd killed a 10 year old girl with the intention of cannibalism, etc., but was arrested before he carried the rest of it out, except maybe the rape.) An expert has come out claiming he did it because of antidepressants. Somehow I don't think that defense is going to work.

|4.28.06 @ 6:55PM|#

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Amy Fisher.

Amy Fisher wh--

BANG!

(After all these years, it's still funny.)

strat|4.29.06 @ 2:26PM|#

Manics are impulsive and convinced of their own rectitude. This leads them to self-justify irrational actions.

Sounds like the U.S. Congress. Sorry, couldn't resist.

P.S. It warms my heart to hear psychopharmacology intelligently discussed in the middle of a discussion on what is most notably fodder for Lifetime and "E!". Thank you, Shannon.

|4.29.06 @ 3:55PM|#

Why are we treating her statements regarding ecstasy as worthy of discussion? I mean, for Christ sake, the girl's a drug addict!

|4.30.06 @ 4:36AM|#

Shannon,
Amy's not a murderer. She didn't kill Mary Joe Buttafuco (sp). She only disfigured her.
Maybe she should be thanking E for making her nearly miss from point blank range.

|4.30.06 @ 12:05PM|#

I first took MDMA in 1984.
It's been around since 1912, was first used recreationally in the 1960's and became popular in Texas in 81 or 82. It was so popular by 1988 to inspire legislation.

But I am old.

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