DOSE:		oral	Alcohol
		oral	MDMA
		insufflated	MDMA
		oral	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

13 st

A Year of MDMA

Not being an experienced drug user, and sceptical that the highs would outweigh the lows, the first time I took MDMA (aged 35) was an astonishing, liberating experience .

Having dealt with a number of close losses, I undertook a year of counseling and spent thousands trying to get a better understanding of my actions, behaviours and relationships with others. It was a difficult experience but gave me some insight into myself.

This was nothing, a drop of water, to the tsunami that overwhelmed me with my first experience with MDMA.

At a music festival we had taken a hit of MDMA on the first morning (not that clever an idea in retrospect, but made for a unique experience). We had already had a few drinks at this point too. Being apprehensive and a little bunged up with a cold, I opted to orally take it with a little juice, whereas the other three insufflated the first hit. Not feeling anything for the first hour I was pretty underwhelmed by the experience, I was starting to gently (but not noticeably) come up, and we all took another bump – this time, I insufflated, and combined with the rise from the first hit still nowhere near peaking, I felt an overwhelming rush. I could feel all my neuroses and anxieties drift away, and leaving me with a flushed sense of life – if a little jittery. One of our group had taken this before, and sat with me on the campsite, just telling me to roll with it, go with it, bounce with it, bounce with it. Combined with the music (now suddenly a full symphony from tinny ten pound speakers), my senses were completely lit up like Vegas lights. Looking at the grass in the campsite was an unforgettable sight. All the longer strands of grass were identical and swaying as one across the whole field, it was the most incredible, beautiful sight.

I felt so uninhibited for the next 6 hours, sailing around the music festival taking in all the sights, people, humanity around me. Normally, it’s head down and pick a way through all the drunks, scallys and the like, and try to tune them out, but this time it was like they were all old friends, not my friends, but seeing them with theirs was enormously comforting.

I came down pretty hard, and by 10pm I was back in the tent, trying to sleep – fitfully, at best. Next day was exhausting, had no idea how much MDMA takes out of you physically. No drugs, just lots of booze. Final day of the festival was torrential rain, and if the physical lag was bad yesterday, then that was nothing compared to the emotional comedown on the final day, huddled in a field with thousands of idiots, idiots like me. What were we doing?

One of my favourite quotes about absinthe is Oscar Wilde’s “After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not”. On a much grander scale, that’s the come up and the come down on MDMA .

As a first experience the key learns were that:
a) Ideally have someone there ‘sober’ or who has experienced it before to guide to the top of the high.
b) Be cautious about your surroundings, the high level of empathy you feel for those around you may not be reciprocated, and you will expect the best of people – probably at a time they may be at their worst, if drunk, coked up etc.
c) Prepare for physical and emotional comedown, plan nothing for the next day, and keep hydrated and warm, think of the cosiest place in the world and spend a day there.
d) Avoid alcohol. MDMA isn’t a social after dinner drug, to be brought out after everyone has had a massive amount of booze. Booze dullens your senses at the same time as MDMA is trying to brighten them all up.
e) Make the most of the high – the sensory effects are incredible, and even though you can see beauty in everything (even a muddy campsite) go somewhere where you are visually/aurally stimulated – doesn’t need to be a rave or anything, could be a gallery or festival or anything, but watch everything get amplified. It’s incredible.

The second time was a little more irresponsible. At a friend’s stag weekend, my friend (not the stag or groom) had talked about my festival experience and were planning to do this weekend. We limbered up with a couple of spliffs during the afternoon, and once we found a late bar club that we knew we would be staying in for a while, we insufflated the first hit. The same familiar rush, and feeling everything brighten up, more so this time with the added music and lights in the club. This was partially offset with an added paranoia about being caught in possession, and high. I feel drugs speed up where my mind is going anyway and it was difficult to ‘box up’ this paranoia and not let it overwhelm what was warming into an incredible sensory experience. In the bar we took a bump after an hour or so. By this point my friend and I were obviously high, and standing still was impossible, the dance floor was empty and I was nowhere near high enough to fly solo on there – I still kept some inhibitions. So we jittered about near the dance floor, looking like two of those dancing sunflowers from back in the day. Security didn’t throw us out, but we were high enough and the place was closing quite early. Back at the house we’d rented for the weekend, we were still wired and still pogoing around the kitchen listening to music and smoking a couple of spliffs. Adding cannabis into the experience added another level of visual stimulation and threw up a mystery too.

I started experiencing dancing moving patterns in front of my eyes, like a patterned, moving sheen was covering everything. Mostly these visuals were more common when there was a deficit of detail – on a plain painted wall for example. My brain would then fill in the big empty space, with hexagons or running dotted lines. Try to stare at one and it disappears. Staring at the back of my hand I could see the same shifting hexagonal patterns, pulsating.

Every time since seeing those, they have become my favourite part of the experience. Although, not a clever part to focus on as it rarely happens on the first 125mg hit, so only working at higher levels either means opening a deeper door to perception, or doing much more damage, or both.

When combined with cannabis, either before taking MDMA or smoked whilst high, but coming down, these visuals have twice appeared in a different form , in the form of odd runes and symbols – not from any alphabet I’ve ever seen (or maybe from reading Stel Pavlou’s Decipher ten years ago, that’s the closest I can describe it).

These symbols were not like the shifting hexagons I saw filling in the detail on blank space, these were like wearing lenses with them printed on, like staring at a blueprint, they were everywhere. Still baffles me, don’t believe in much bigger than mankind so this idea of some sort of blueprint, or a language imprinted into us was astonishing. Could equally be my mind wanting to believe it and providing a visual answer, or just the misfirings of my brain, which was a lit up pinball machine by this point.

Trying to combine the best of both experiences – the safety of the campsite with the sensory overload of the club is key to fully experiencing the positive aspects of this drug. From the past year where I have taken it about ten times, I try to minimise the external variables, plan the time in properly to ensure a good, safe, positive high and gentle comedown. I know the positive effects won’t last forever, and when they outweigh the downsides this is when to stop, but I’m not there yet. The confidence boost, the empathy, the visual effects, the lost (or loose) inhibitions, albeit temporary (and each with an opposite debt to pay once it’s over) are worth it for now.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 97399
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 35
Published: Feb 15, 2020	Views: 762
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MDMA (3) : Combinations (3), Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)