CHICAGO — Molly is known as the drug of laser-washed rave tents, a euphoria-producing chemical ideal for loud music and wild nights. But when Alex Place took a form of the drug in February, he was just hanging out with buddies in a Streamwood, Ill., house, watching movies and texting his girlfriend.

Place, 23, an aspiring restaurateur from Kenosha, Wis., had a rough time that night, throwing up continually, his friends told police. He fell unconscious in the morning and an hour later was pronounced dead, felled by a combination of the drug and a heart condition he never realized he had.

Surveys of teen drug abuse have noted a steep recent decline in the portion of young people who see great risk in MDMA, the proper name of molly and its chemical twin, ecstasy. But that is a dangerous misconception. The Tribune has found that MDMA, usually mixed with other drugs, has been linked to 10 deaths in the Chicago area since 2009. Experts say that despite rumors of increased purity, the drug continues to be mixed with toxic adulterants.

"People think there are chemists in white jackets in a sterile lab producing this," said John Riley of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago division, whose agents have found rat poison and pesticide in MDMA they’ve taken off the street. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

Even so, the drug is having a cultural moment, getting name-checked by singers from Rihanna to Miley Cyrus and becoming a staple of the booming electronic dance music scene. Some of the area’s biggest concerts have been plagued by dealers, including one man who was arrested after allegedly touting his wares at Lollapalooza, shouting, "Who wants molly?"

The drug’s popularity is holding steady among young people — the latest Illinois Youth Survey says 5 percent of high school seniors took it at least once the previous year — even as Chicago-area emergency room visits associated with MDMA have risen sharply, totaling more than 1,000 in 2011.

MDMA is an amphetamine, and like other forms of the drug it raises a user’s body temperature. But Dr. Patricia Lee, chair of emergency medicine at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center on Chicago’s North Side, said that’s just one of the problems doctors see with MDMA overdoses.

Users come in with high blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, vomiting, seizures, agitation and signs of psychosis, she said. Doctors treat whatever organ system is under stress, but there is no antidote to reverse the drug’s effects.

MDMA’s addictive potential is a matter of debate. Craig Riehle, who oversees intake at the Rosecrance treatment center in Rockford, said the teens he sees tend to use MDMA as a social drug, but they come to rehab primarily because of other substances — everything from alcohol to marijuana to heroin.

That doesn’t mean that regular MDMA use is free of consequences.

"It can create, for some, a kind of short-term problem with sleep disturbances, anxiety, confusion, paranoia," he said. "Because there is a hallucinogenic component that some experience, it can create some short-term problems that might lead to hospitalization, especially if person has co-occurring mental issues."

Marie, a 19-year-old from Wheaton, said she favored molly, the powdered form of the drug reputed — incorrectly, experts say — to be purer than ecstasy pills. She started taking it at 15 to enhance her enjoyment of electronic dance music shows.

"You felt you were like one with the music," she said. "It just made your body feel this crazy sensation."

But she took it so often that its effects dulled, leading her to try harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine even as she kept up her molly use. She finally entered rehab at Rosecrance in January, she said, and has been sober for almost 10 months.

It’s unclear how often MDMA use results in death across the country — federal agencies don’t keep that statistic — but experts say it is relatively rare.

Dr. Una McCann, a Johns Hopkins psychiatry professor who studies MDMA’s toxic effects, said the problem isn’t so much the drug as the behavior it provokes.

People who take MDMA and dance at sweaty, crowded nightclubs or festivals often overheat, which is dangerous enough: Two young people who died at the Electric Zoo music event in New York over the Labor Day weekend had fatally high body temperatures, according to the New York City Medical Examiner.

But another hazard comes when people try to compensate for their spiking temperatures by drinking copious amounts of water, McCann said. That can lead to hyponatremia, or a lowering of the blood’s sodium level, a potentially lethal condition.

"The brain swells up and there can be total body organ failure," she said.

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Chicago-area coroners and the Cook County Medical Examiner counted 10 MDMA-related deaths since 2009 — four in Chicago and one each in Joliet, Lake Zurich, Libertyville, Naperville, Plainfield and Streamwood.

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Most of the Chicago-area deaths were complicated by the presence of potentially fatal substances such as heroin, cocaine and prescription drugs. Scientific papers, though, contain many examples of people who died after taking untainted MDMA.

In the case of Alex Place, an undiagnosed medical condition played a tragic role.

Place was an artistic and adventurous young man, alternately outgoing and melancholy, who grew up in Kenosha aiming to become a pastor. He later redirected his ambition toward the restaurant business, and had just made a career breakthrough by landing a job at a white tablecloth restaurant in Gurnee, Ill., when he left work the night of Feb. 12 to party with friends at a house in Streamwood.

Place’s sister, Faith Hodge, said she knew her brother had experimented with MDMA, though he typically limited his substance use to marijuana and alcohol. According to an account two of Place’s friends gave to police, the group at the Streamwood apartment used all three that night, though Place spent much of the time vomiting water.

Just before 2 a.m., he sent an affectionate text message to his girlfriend, Lisa Edwards, saying he was cuddling a stuffed Marvin the Martian doll and missing her badly.

"You’re the best," he wrote. "The very best."

That was his last message to her, Edwards said. According to the police report, Place awoke around 11 a.m. and went into the bathroom. After about 15 minutes, one of his friends knocked on the door but received no response.

The friend took the door off its hinges and found Place lying on the floor, unconscious and unresponsive. Paramedics took him to St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, Ill., where he was pronounced dead at 12:36 p.m.

The Cook County Medical Examiner discovered that Place had an enlarged heart, something Place hadn’t known about, his family said. That and MDMA intoxication were ruled to be the causes of his death.

Place’s death plunged his family and friends into a misery that has yet to recede. His sister said his absence makes "pieces of my heart feel like (they’re) rotting." His stepfather, Carl Hodge, grieves for all the things he won’t be able to teach Place. His girlfriend said Halloween, Place’s favorite holiday, was especially painful, knowing he could no longer take her niece and nephew trick-or-treating.

And his mother, Krista Place, said that despite leaning hard on her faith, she still feels numb and uprooted.

"It’s different now," she said. "I’m not the same. You don’t think about that when you take a hit of (MDMA). What is it going to do to your family if you do die?"