DOSE:

repeated

oral

MDMA

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

100 lb

I have a mild case of bipolar type 2, for which I do not take SSRIs or mood stabilizers (I prefer to seek non-prescription alternatives, and think the current resurgence of interest from the psychiatric community in the area of “psychedelic therapy” is very promising). I have some state-dependent anxiety, but do not normally experience panic attacks. My long-distance boyfriend and co-tripper, E, is 25, around 70 kg and 178 cm with no psychiatric diagnoses, though I sometimes suspect him of having Asperger’s tendencies :D I take 200 mg of caffeine in pill form each morning, though by the time of the trip in question this had surely been metabolized already. According to my gene scan (23andme), I’m a fast metabolizer of certain drugs, especially stimulants, and have a high likelihood of treatment resistance with many SSRIs, which is relevant here, as MDMA may have a similar mechanism of action to SSRIs.

E and I took MDMA at 1 am in my apartment approximately half an hour after dinner. We had no scale, so we carefully separated the gram we had obtained from a domestic seller in the EU on one of the dark markets, a seller we had used previously and been happy with, by sight into 5 doses of 200 mg each. I removed roughly 15% from mine, which I pushed to E’s portion, and dissolved the remaining 85% in a couple tablespoons of juice in a shot glass, and took it as a shot. E dissolved his into roughly 200 ml juice and ingested it more slowly.

I didn’t have to wait long - within perhaps 15 minutes my vision and spatial perception began to distort; my body became very warm and I had extremely vivid closed-eye hallucinations, like lightning on the back of my eyelids. I became very afraid, as this was not how I remembered the climb feeling on x (more of a “wave” of pleasure), and I feared we may have taken something else (just writing this is making my hands sweat). I stood and felt a burning sensation in my head as if my brain were on fire. I opened the window and began taking off my clothes slowly, and asked E, making sure to keep my voice very calm and measured, if he had his phone handy in case we had to call the emergency services. I was convinced at this point that I was going to die (though I was not outwardly in hysterics). E was evidently also beginning to feel it, as he began talking very quickly and moving with jerky motions. At least, I believe this is the case, though my time perception may have been skewed and only made it seem that way. I asked E to talk more slowly and laid down on the floor, closing my eyes and breathing deeply. (EDIT: E says he was not feeling the effects by this point; my perception was simply distorted enough to see him as if he was in fast-forward.)

After feeling somewhat less panicky I stood again, and E and I laid down against the wall on top of a blanket and some pillows. The panic faded, and I was convinced that we had, in fact, taken ecstasy, as I suddenly felt overwhelmingly good and very cuddly. My time perception and memory from the trip are somewhat skewed, so some events may be missing, and the ones I present may not be in the correct order.

At some point we examined our pupils, and they were extremely dilated. E told me about his best friend’s obsession with recording trips scientifically, which I thought was a very good idea, so he grabbed a piece of paper and put a pencil in my mouth for some reason (he has since claimed it’s because I said I had no hands, but I don’t think that really happened). I wasn’t filled with energy - while I wasn’t tired in the least, throughout the entire trip I felt content to remain in one spot (cuddling with E) and was incredibly placid. I didn’t feel the need to move quickly or sharply. When we did walk around, our muscles felt weak and silly.

Open-eye hallucinations began early in the trip and persisted throughout the entire thing. The things I saw were mostly amusing - E’s face composed of tiny jigsaw puzzles, red dots floating across his hair, etc. All patterns contained themselves to one discrete area, and never changed or repeated themselves in other places. We talked for many, many hours about things we normally would never think to share, or wouldn’t feel comfortable with. E told me his entire life story, and I spent a lot of time playing with his limp dick (in large part out of tactile fascination) and, when prompted, gave my own life history, broken into pieces that my diminished short term memory could handle.

When we began coming down, E asked if I wanted to extend the trip, and I was a bit apprehensive about overdoing it, especially in light of a recent mood episode, and the uncertainty of comedown effects, but I said I’d do more if he would. We split one of the 200 mg doses evenly and went again, and I felt a slight bump but had no extreme climb like the beginning. Some time later we decided to extend it one more time, but to do full doses this time to see if we could get a full effect. As I recall, I had a slight bump without feeling too different, but remained in a state of connectedness and tranquility for a long time.

The high faded very, very gently, almost so gradually I that I wasn’t aware of it leaving, only the progressive onset of sleepiness. For several hours we had been grinding our teeth constantly and had ruined a couple of E’s cards with toothmarks. In all, the trip lasted around 8 hours over 1 gram split between two people. We climbed into bed and slept a while, got up and had some food, then slept a few more hours. I felt the afterglow the entire next day, and was filled with new optimism and felt a dramatically closer bond with E. Physiologically, I hadn’t regained much appetite and was still very shaky.

When I woke the following day at 3 am (E was out of town at this point) I felt very weird in a general way. I was very dizzy and had an acute lack of balance. I’d had difficulty going to sleep the night before, experiencing uncontrollable twitching every few seconds as well as auditory hallucinations of a crowd of people and music that grew louder until they were deafening and I was forced to sit up (whereupon they vanished). Within an hour of waking I’d begun feeling actively bad, and for several hours I had a racing heart, was trembling very noticeably, had impaired motor control, was very nauseous with mild lock-jaw-type symptoms, and felt a sense of encroaching dread. I tried to calm myself, but after a while I became increasingly convinced that I was going to have a heart attack and die, as my heart rate went through the roof despite my lying down and performing breathing exercises. I didn’t know what to do, so I called E and woke him up and told him about my symptoms. This had a slight calming effect, and I was able to lie down and read while he went back to sleep.

The nausea and elevated heart rate/delirium with movement persisted for a couple days, though the other effects (panic, etc) did not. These were clearly overdose effects; E didn’t experience anything similar (nor did he hallucinate at any point).

As for mood effects, the trip has resulted in more than just a (very) nice memory. Besides the panic attack, I have had an elevated mood for the past five days and have felt much more capable of handling stressors and my workload. I feel a stronger connection with E, and less of the feeling of emptiness that usually occurs immediately after his visits end. I haven’t had any hint of a mood event, and am not scared of another one occurring anytime in the near future. In all, I feel like a much calmer, more reflective version of myself.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 104960
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 21
Published: Apr 30, 2019	Views: 521
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MDMA (3) : Hangover / Days After (46), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)