DOSE:		oral	MDMA
	repeated	insufflated	MDMA
	repeated	buccal	MDMA

BODY WEIGHT:

67 kg

I’m not really sure why I’m writing this now. It was ten years ago and I’m in my 30s now - married with children. Some closure? Maybe. But I think it’s mostly in the hope that it might help anyone who goes through something similar.

Cutting to the chase, what follows describes an accidental MDMA overdose and a multi-day depersonalisation-derealisation comedown.

Saturday evening in a UK City… I’m going to a house party at some friends of my girlfriend. I don’t know any of them, but my girlfriend says they are a chilled out bunch and not the types to object to some drug-taking, so I decide beforehand to take a gram of MDMA with me.

After starting on a couple of beers, I dropped my first bomb at 9pm - around 170mg. Thing would have played out a lot differently had I just left it at that.

On coming up, I decided I really wanted to amp up the peak, so headed to the bathroom to snort a line of probably ~30mg. I had been taking MDMA on and off for around 3-4 years, and familiarity had bred an irresponsibility that I was about to be taught a lesson for. Around 15 minutes later I went back to the bathroom to snort another couple of lines of ~30mg each. Around a quarter of a gram so far in total…

I was rolling super hard at this point and it was obvious to everyone at the party. “Where did you get pills?!”, people asked as I gurned away at them.

My girlfriend was busy chatting with friends but was also taking time to show me some affection, knowing how buzzed and loved-up I must have been feeling. She had done MDMA a few times too together with me, but was not on this night as had recently gone on SSRI antidepressants. She always trusted my judgement when it came to things like drugs, and wouldn’t have thought to question how much I was taking, and whether I was in control…

I drank another couple of beers at the party, taking my tally to around 4 cans by this stage. Around 10.30pm, everyone decides to head out to a reggae bar in town, so before leaving on the 15 minute walk, I dropped another bomb of ~100mg (350mg total). I didn’t stop to think whether I needed this. It was just standard protocol in my mind to re-dose.

On the walk to the club my steps started to stagger and my speech become more incoherent. My brain was still surfing, but the high was getting messier. One of my girlfriend’s friends noticed that I was looking a bit out of my depth… “Hey, sit down for a minute and talk to me,” she said. “Look in my eyes…. Oh man, you’re pretty messed up - there’s no way you’re getting into the club like that! Let’s take a breather for 5 minutes and then carry on.” I felt reassured that someone was looking out for me, but still didn’t actually realise the state I was in myself.

After sitting down for a few minutes, we continued and arrived at the club around 11pm. I managed to hold it together past the bouncers and got in ok, where I drank a few more beers and vibed out to the music. I no doubt felt great, but at the same time, the high felt so heavy that I could barely even think or recognise my feelings. There’s a sweet spot range for an MDMA dose, and I’d already well exceeded it.

One of my girlfriend’s friends asked if she could dab some crystals from my baggy, and I gladly obliged her. I was happy to have someone to be sharing with. After she dabbed some I instinctively shoved in my finger too and rubbed a gum-load of crystals. This continued for around the next hour or so at the club: I would give her the baggy to dab from, then dab some more myself - likely in much larger scoops. Looking back, this reckless dabbing was the mistake that turned what would already have been an excessive session, into something much more dangerous.

By the time we left the club around 1am or so, I had virtually nothing left in my gram baggy. If the my girlfriend’s friend had dabbed at most 200mg (which I doubt she had), then I strongly suspect I’d done about 700-800mg over the course of that night. I’d also drunk at least 6-8 beers, which I would never usually come close to doing when on MDMA. Combined with the excessive dose, the alcohol was exacerbating the confusing dysphoria I was beginning to feel on the ~30 minute walk home to my girlfriend’s flat.

I don’t remember much of the walk home apart from when we went inside a kebab shop for my girlfriend to get some food. I went to use the toilet as she ordered and, looking in the mirror, for the first time started to to realise just how messed up I was. I felt no real euphoria anymore - just confusion, verging on delirium.

After walking the remaining 15 minutes home, I told my girlfriend that I wanted to walk a bit longer as my head was still rushing and there would be no way I could sleep for a long time. Despite her tiredness and longing for bed, she reluctantly agreed, and we set off again. This was where my confusion really peaked. Whichever road we walked up, I would think that we were walking the opposite way along it. I thought we were heading back home while we were actually still heading out. And then when we finally turned around to go back, I thought we were walking further away.

I don’t remember getting back to my girlfriend’s flat. All I remember is waking up sat on the floor next to the bed she was sleeping on. I checked the time and it was 5am. I figured I must have taken some etizolam (a benzo-type anxiolytic/sedative that was legal at the time), because I felt the calm sleepiness I was familiar with from it. Confused, and without thinking too much, I got up, popped another etizolam, and got into bed alongside by girlfriend, where I fell asleep until the morning.

In my memory of all this, the part where I woke up confused and on the floor is one of the scariest for me to recall, as I suspect I may not have been far off waking up with some permanent damage, if at all.

When morning came around I got up and felt a strange feeling around my mouth and cheeks. I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and saw that my whole mouth area was hugely swollen, with bloody bruising. I realised I must have chewed into my cheeks and lips with excessive gurning the previous night, which likely continued as I slept. I laughed it off with my girlfriend and her flat mates, trying to make light of the situation but really feeling pretty guilty and stupid. I felt very fragile mentally, but not obviously different to a typical heavy-ish comedown.

That afternoon I caught the train back to my home town - about a 4 hour journey - to prepare to go back to work the following day. Walking from the train station to my house, I kept having what felt like strange zaps of electricity go from my head through my neck and down my arms. I think they call these ‘brain zaps’ and I’ve felt them since when coming off SSRIs - it’s clear they’re connected to serotonin depletion.

On Monday morning I still felt extremely mentally fragile and decided to take the day off work. I was pretty sure that one more day chilling out would be all I needed, but would be proved very wrong on that. I went for a long walk outside to try and feel better, but instead only felt increasing waves of paranoia. At one point I was convinced that a helicopter I saw flying overhead was out looking for me. I even tried to hide beneath the tree line as I headed back home…

The next day I still didn’t feel great but decided to pull myself together and go into the office for work. The morning was difficult. I found it hard to think and was stumbling my words in meetings and calls, but I was just about holding it together. At lunch I went out to call my girlfriend. I felt my emotions wobbling as I grappled to think more positive thoughts.

Once back in the office, I was at my desk only 5 or 10 minutes when my eyes just couldn’t focus on the screen. I felt a surging wave of panic and something just snapped. I got up, told my colleagues I was feeling ill, and walked straight out. I walked for about 5 or 10 minutes in the midst of a full-blown panic attack before sitting down on a park bench and calling my girlfriend again. I told her what had happened and that I needed her to come and look after me. Thankfully she agreed to drop everything immediately to come and stay with me at my house until I felt better.

I got the train home and in a couple of hours my girlfriend was there. I told my parents that I was suffering from work stress and had experienced a panic attack. They were naturally very concerned for me but didn’t for a moment suspect anything different. Meanwhile I told my brothers the truth - they were both familiar with drugs and I didn’t want to lie.

This was the start of 3 days feeling completely out of my usual headspace. I find it hard to describe the feeling, but it was like being a stranger in my own body - looking out from my eyes but neither myself nor the world seeming the same. I felt detached, lacking any warmth or connection. It felt horrible. The worst part was that I had no idea what - in a medical context - I was experiencing, how long it would last, and whether I would go back to normal. There was very little information I could find online that really described my condition, and those that did had wildly differing prognoses…

I figured, perhaps ironically, that if drugs got me into the mess, then drugs - at least more medically constructive ones - might help get me back out. With that in mind, I went to the doctors and grovelled my way to a prescription of SSRIs. I knew that these would take a few days to take proper effect, but it sure felt good psychologically to be getting something inside me that might re-up my serotonin levels. I also had a small stash of pyrazolam - a legal benzo similar to xanax - and decided to try taking one in the evening. Wow… it felt like magic. I felt the tension, stress and paranoia lift, and for as long as the effects lasted, felt maybe 70% of the way back to my normal self. That gave me a huge confidence boost that the real me was still in there somewhere, and that eventually I’d get back to normal. Benzos are rarely the answer, but in this case they were… giving me just enough release to restore hope.

The next morning I woke up, desperately hoping that I might be feeling better. But no. The same feeling… detachment, hopelessness, fear. Again I set about going through the motions of a day. I went for a bike ride with my girlfriend and, while cycling with the wind in my face, I felt slightly more normal. When I stopped though, the feeling would return. In the afternoon, my Mum asked me to drive to the train station to pick up an Aunt who was visiting. I didn’t want to admit just how bad I was still feeling, so agreed to the request. Trying to make social small talk with my aunt, whilst feeling like I wasn’t even there in my own brain, was a serious struggle…

That evening I took another pyrazolam and again felt like a weight was lifted. We starting watching Twin Peaks as a family. I remember not quite following it, but enjoying the more relaxed version of detachment brought on by the benzo. Again, it gave me hope that the real me was in there and I would get through this.

The next morning - same as the one before - I woke up, blinked a few times, and tried to check how I was feeling. Back to normal yet? Nope… that same detachment that was becoming unsettlingly familiar. I sat outside in the garden eating breakfast next to my cat, trying to pinpoint what exactly was different with my brain. It felt like the world in front of me simply ‘existed’, but without the warmth and depth that normal consciousness brings to it.

Again I spent the day trying to do normal things. Nothing in the way I was feeling changed though. That is, until… the mid afternoon. I decided to take a shower around 3pm and, as the warm water washed over me, I started to feel something lift in my mind. Over the course of about 10 minutes I felt a growing reconnection to the world, and a reassurance that I was heading ‘home.’ It didn’t snap back instantly, but happened gradually over the next couple of hours. Later on, I went for a walk with my girlfriend up the lane behind my house. I felt the late-summer sun on my face and, with relief, declared that it was a “nice evening to be back.”

I stayed off work another two weeks and would continue to feel mentally sensitive for quite a long while to come. In fact, I’d say it was probably 5-6 months by the time I felt properly mentally robust again , and another couple of years before I finally weaned myself off the SSRIs I’d started taking.

Despite this, I have actually found that the tools and techniques I’d learned to manage my periods of heightened anxiety have helped me over the longer term. I consider this a silver lining, though it certainly doesn’t offset the feeling of guilt for the self-inflicted damage. I wrote at the beginning of this report that I still - 10 years on - feel a sense of shame for the recklessness that put myself in that situation. However, I also recognise it to have been one of the most formative experiences of my life, and one that perhaps gives me greater appreciation for everything I have today.

Afterword:
I never truly understood what I’d experienced in that ‘comedown from hell.’ It was only several years later, after reading about depersonalisation-derealisation disorder, that it clicked into place. The symptoms matched my experience exactly. As I wrote at the start of this report, I sincerely hope that my sharing this story might offer help and support for anyone who goes through something similar.

Hang in there - you can and will get through it.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 117676
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 24
Published: Feb 28, 2025	Views: 14
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MDMA (3), Alcohol (61) : Combinations (3), Overdose (29), Post Trip Problems (8), Health Problems (27), Large Group (10+) (19)