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Ecstasy, Euphoria, an Orchestra and Being 40
MDMA
Citation:   LondonGal. "Ecstasy, Euphoria, an Orchestra and Being 40: An Experience with MDMA (exp116889)". Erowid.org. Jan 2, 2023. erowid.org/exp/116889

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
  oral Vitamins / Supplements  
  T+ 0:00 120 mg oral MDMA (capsule)
  T+ 1:35 90 mg oral MDMA (capsule)
  T+ 3:00 90 mg oral MDMA (capsule)
  T+ 3:00   oral Cannabis - High THC (edible / food)
BODY WEIGHT: 110 lb
8:10pm 120mg MDMA
9:45pm 90mg MDMA
11:10pm 90mg MDMA
11:10pm: 12mg THC gummy

Our vitamin schedule:
1 week before: Vitamin C, NAC, Ginger, and a green vegetable juice.
6 hours before: Magnesium Glycinate, grape seed extract.
2 hours before: Ginger, Magnesium Glycinate, grape seed extract and vitamin C.
During our roll: ALA, grape seed extract, acetyl-L-carnitine, magnesium glycinate, green tea extract and vitamin C.
On the comedown: green tea extract, ALA, Thianine, Magnesiums Glycinate, vitamin C and acetyl-L-carnitine.
1 day after: NAC green tea extract, acetyl-L carnitine.
The week following: NAC, acetyl-L-carnitine, 5htp, and green tea extract

To know a little bit about me:

I’m a 41 year old female and my husband is 43. In our early twenties, before getting married and having kids, we spent a few years raving, clubbing and indulging often in MDMA sessions. We tried a bunch of different drugs but nothing ever compared to MDMA so that was always our drug of choice. It was magic but we decided that we wanted to settle down and live a normal life and that we would go back to it every few years. Well, life happened and I think we did it three times over 18 years. The last 2-3 times we did, what we thought was MDMA, was 10 years ago and after knowing something wasn’t quite right we found out after testing it was actually methylone. Close, but just not the same. So, I think it’s been about 15 years since we’ve had real, actual MDMA.

Health wise, we lead very healthy lives. We exercise regularly, eat very clean and haven’t had any alcohol since 2011.

We were able to get some crystals, regent tested them and knew that this was going to be the real deal. Now that we had this we wanted to find a perfect set and setting. We love an intimate setting and thought for sure that’s how we were going to do this going forward but something caught my husband’s eye. We still really love EDM but know that clubbing, raving and even music festivals are just not our thing anymore. Mostly because our kids are late teens/young adults and we don’t want to be partying with people who remind us of our kids. Also, when we’ve tried to see a DJ in the past, it’s really annoying that they don’t come on until 2-3am and for us, at this stage in our life, we’re just not doing that. We essentially had given up on the party/dance scene until we found something that looked really unique. DJ Pete Tong was doing a concert with an orchestra in an arena. And, to make things even better, the concert ended at 11pm which meant we didn’t have to stay up all night to have a good time. Right, so we booked tickets.

The next part of the set and setting was the fact we didn’t want to come home after so we wanted to book a hotel so after the event we could just go somewhere nice, snuggle in, watch a movie and drift off to sleep. We splurged on the hotel and upgraded our room. This hotel was class - sauna, steam room, robe, slippers. The vibe was unreal. Perfect. If anything, a nice date at this hotel would have been amazing too.

So leading up to the event was an event itself. I had gone back to find out Bluelight and Erowid still existed. Reset my password for Bluelight and read some of my old stuff. What a trip. We did a ton of research and started taking all the pre-load vitamins. The reason I wanted to write this trip report was because, what really helped me, leading up, was reading all the trip reports here on Erowid. Since it had been so long, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. And hopefully this trip report may help someone too.

So on the day of the event, we started the morning with our first round of pre-load vitamins, ate some breakfast and had an event my son was doing for school to attend. We did that, came home and had a chicken salad for lunch, another batch of pre-load vitamins and headed out.

We decided that once we left, we would put our phones on Do Not Disturb except allowing our kids to call if they needed us. We didn’t want to take the chance of someone else calling with good or bad news and ruining the vibe. Unless it was one of our kids, anything could wait for 24 hours. We stopped by the store to grab some essentials and then checked into our hotel. And wow. At this point I was most excited about the hotel - we spent some time in the steam room and sauna, chilling and then went back to the room, showered and got ready for our night. The excitement and energy was really starting to build and the nerves were kicking in.

We arrive at the arena and head to the American Express lounge. We ordered an orange juice and got situated. We had a lot of stuff with us and I kept feeling like I was losing our capsules. We had measured them and made a specific schedule to follow. We had a plan A and a plan B.
I kept feeling like I was losing our capsules. We had measured them and made a specific schedule to follow. We had a plan A and a plan B.
We weren’t sure if our tolerance was going to be lower or if we were going to pick up where we left off so we brought enough to pick up where we left off or, if we felt like 2 capsules was enough we would stop there.

We decided to go to our seats and get situated. We get to our seats at around 7pm. My biggest fear was that we would be the old ones there and we would be surrounded by kids but it was the exact opposite. At first, there was nobody in our row. Then as people started to pile in there was an elderly couple to our right and then a bit older couple to our left. When I say elderly I mean they were in their late 60s or early 70s. I thought, well, this could be awkward. Also, we couldn’t get aisle seats when we booked because we waited too long so I was a little nervous in case my husband had to puke, would he make it out in time? All these scenarios kept running through my head. We had initially planned to take the first one at 7:45 but the place was still quite empty so we decided to wait until 8:15. My husband and I usually space out by 10 minutes between us because his starts earlier than mine.

Capsule number one, down, there’s no turning back. We knew Pete Tong was coming on around 9 so around 8:40 we went pee so we wouldn’t have to go while he was on set. While in the bathroom I could start to feel the first, oh so familiar effects. My skin was tingly and soft, I had a heightened sense of sight and things were starting to come on quite nicely. We headed back to the arena and the DJ that was opening for Tong had stopped. All the lights were on and we were both like WTF. Well this is going to be awkward. We headed back to our seats and we were like great, how are we going to hide this? We just sat quietly and stared at the people trying to pretend like nothing was happening. But it was coming whether we wanted it to or not. Luckily this only lasted for about 10 minutes, the lights went out, the orchestra was setting up and the concert started.

And oh my god, oh my god, what the fuck is happening? If you’ve never seen a DJ with a real live orchestra, you must do! This was fucking intense. The music was electrifying, the vibe was unreal. Everyone, young and old was up dancing, moving and just loving life. I looked around and thought, I was so annoyed at myself for being so judgemental about the elder people next to us. They were dancing and genuinely having the time of their lives. The clarity, the euphoria, it was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life. Everything I was nervous about literally did not matter. I could hear the violins, the piano, the cello, every beat was pulsating through the arena and looking around at 18 thousand people singing and dancing, loving every minute just made it all so beautiful.

My husband and I had this thing where we would ask out of 5 where are you? He was at a 5+ but I was at a 4. It was amazing but I think the dose should have been just a tiny bit higher. It didn’t matter though, it was still pure bliss.

At 9:45pm it was time to take our second one. We had a checklist to make sure we were on the same page about taking a second. Could we see our phones in case there was an emergency? Could we hold a conversation? Could we walk to the bathroom if needed? Were we happy? If we both answered yes to all questions then another one was good to go. If not, we knew we would need to wait. Well, we could answer yes to all questions and said yes to number 2! Cheers.

And the next hour was pure ecstasy. Holding hands, singing, dancing, oh fuck this was amazing. The orchestra made it almost spiritual in a way. I had never heard anything more beautiful in my life. I wanted that moment to last forever.

We didn’t want to but knew we had to leave 5-10 minutes before the crowd because if you wait and leave when it’s over it could take 2+ hours to get on a train. Leaving 5-10 minutes early means you can pretty much get on a train right away. We forced ourselves away from the music - the last song was epic though, I can’t get no sleep. There was something funny though about gathering our belongings and making sure we didn’t forget anything. We had hats, gloves, coats, my purse, our phones, etc. That was not easy.

Walking out of the arena was just a vibe. So many people were buzzing because it was a great show. We got right on a train and then had to switch trains after the second stop. Once we got on the second train, we squished into this crowd who were also rolling. There was this guy with a speaker who my husband and I were face to face with. This may sound weird if you don’t live in a big city like New York or London but this is very typical of the London underground. During busy times you squish and are often face to face with people. Normally it’s annoying and you just can’t wait to get off but this guy looked at us, at our eyes, we looked at his, pupils dilated and just all smiled at each other. He asked, “Are you on mandy?” And we just nodded. We all smiled at each other and continued to bob and sway to the music from his speaker until our stop. What a vibe that was and how lucky to have to not kill our mood (although, nothing at this point could have killed our mood.) We got off the train and started walking back. It was 11:10pm and time for our last one. I dropped one and luckily there was nobody around so I was able to grab it real quick and just like that, we took our last and final. That was a bit messy. The walk back to the hotel was smooth and the cold didn’t impact how we felt at all. We also took our half of our gummy weed.

We got to the room and turned on our music and visuals on the TV. It was great. We talked for a bit and just sat cozied up on the couch. But the experience we just had made us feel like we needed to go out for a bit longer so we said we would go out until 1am. We walked over the river and it was just so freaking amazing. It was me and my husband looking out at the River Thames, the lights at night, magic. This is when things started to get a little weird. I’m not sure if it was the third or the weed, probably the weed, but we started to hallucinate a bit, which was fine, but my husband could not hold a conversation for shit. I didn’t care though, things were still so fucking great.

We went back into the hotel and noticed the lounge was playing house music. And we're like whoa what’s this? We headed into the lounge and they had these really nice tables with chairs and couches. And wow, again, what an amazing little after party. However, it was all very confusing. My husband tried to order us some cranberry juice with sprite and the bartender just was not understanding what he wanted. He thought at one point he may have given the bartender a 111.00 pound tip. (He didn’t) and was just feeling a bit weird. Nothing felt not good but we were both starting to feel stoned. I was trying to get him to focus on me and not stare at people randomly but he was so confused about how to do that.

At 1am the DJ started to wrap up and we decided to head back. My husband thanked the DJ and shook his hand - still being ultra friendly to everyone. Things were still going hard at this point but we knew we needed to try and get some sleep as check out was 11am.

When we got back to the hotel, things got even weirder. We did manage to get a later check out although I’m not exactly sure how we were able to ask for one but somehow it worked so that was a relief because at this point I thought there was no way we were getting any sleep anytime soon. We took our post roll vitamins and those were hard to get down.

We decided to take showers to see if that would help relax us. I took my shower first and I knew time was feeling quite slow and distorted. I asked my husband to time me as time was really confusing. He set the timer and I headed in. I had no idea how to shower. I was confused on how to take off my pants, what to use to wash my face, where the soap was. I was like what is happening? I literally thought I was in the shower for 45 minutes. Turns out I was in there for 12 minutes. My husband did the same thing - he thought he was in there for 15 minutes and his shower was 6 minutes.

Okay so he decided we were going to watch a David Attenborough nature documentary on the deep sea. And holy shit this just made everything even trippier. At times we had to pause the movie because we kept hallucinating shit. The visuals though really intensified things.

When the movie was over we were like yeah we’re not tired so what do we do? We decided to put on a normal movie in hopes that it would help bring us back to a normal state. It sort of worked. It was still so trippy. We headed into bed and drifted on into blissful sleep at about 4:30am.

The next day was a bit rough. We were up around 10am and thank goodness we got a later check out. My husband did throw up around 11 after drinking a green naked juice. I think it was all the vitamins messing with his stomach. I wasn’t too hungry either. We stayed in bed, watched cheesy Christmas movies and then got some lunch, went back to the steam room and sauna and checked out at 3pm.

Here are my after thoughts:

I don’t remember having such an afterglow. Maybe when we first started over 20 years ago but nothing like this. We spent the whole time on the way home, talking about it. It was literally, one the best nights of our lives. The intensity of the afterglow emotions were also unlike anything we’ve had in memory.
The intensity of the afterglow emotions were also unlike anything we’ve had in memory.
I’m strongly led to believe that the NAC helped tremendously.

I think next time we would dose a bit differently; a higher initial dose and less on the 2nd and 3rd. Also, we would skip the weed. It took the clarity right out of it and I didn’t enjoy that as much. I like the clearheadedness that MDMA brings and when I add weed it just makes me feel a bit stoned. Not that great. But other than that, 11 out of 10.

The days after were really emotional. In a good way. We would both get a bit teary eyes thinking about what a magical experience it was. I couldn’t stop watching Pete Tong and the Heritage Orchestra videos. We did some research and found that quite a few Dance music DJs are starting orchestras. We cannot wait to do this again but for now, we need to head back to regular life and cherish this memory forever.

My advice to anyone in a similar situation:
Don’t wait 10 years but 9-12 months is a must
Don’t give up on the music. There are places for people over 40!
If you want to have a good time you must be in a good mental space.
And please always test!! We found out years later that some of our stuff was not actually MDMA.
Take the vitamins, protect your brain.

Exp Year: 2022ExpID: 116889
Gender: Female 
Age at time of experience: 41
Published: Jan 2, 2023Views: 1,281
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MDMA (3), Cannabis - High THC (598) : Combinations (3), Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), Various (28)

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