DOSE:		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)
	2 capsls	oral	MDMA

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

Drugs have swept through my life like a tornado. Pot led to shrooms, which led to Ecstacy, which led to coke and poppers. Coke and poppers weren't any problem, I never got an opportunity to do them enough. Ecstacy nearly fucked me up.

I had been on a two week schedual for Ecstacy. One week to come down to baseline, one week to live normal life, and then the cycle would start all over again. All in all I thought that I had things under control, and I did. Like all drugs Ecstacy is a tool for learning more about yourself. I found that it improved my life, but at a cost. Unfortunatly Ecstacy makes me depressed for maybe three or four days, and sort of ho-humm for another two or three days after that. That is why it took me a week to return to the state of mind I was in before popping a cap. Then I needed to lead a week of normal life so that I could maintain a foothold in reality. It is during week number two that I found the benefits of Ecstacy. I was in a better mood and feeling more socially confident. It was an up and down cycle and the learning came from overcoming the down. The benefits came from living normal life. I can't stress how important it is to lead a normal life when using harder drugs recreationally. I was concerned about my potential for addiction in the days following when I felt like I wanted more chemicals in my system. Pot helped me cope with that.

So what went wrong?

One night I smoked a session in a buddy's apartment and got more stoned than I had been in a long time. I went to a really bad house party where being on E would have been inappropriate. As a consequence it was 2am before I got to an E friendly venue. Unfortunatly my stone hadn't really abated that much. I had two caps that night and I knew that if I took them seperatly I would be stoned for two long (I still needed to sleep before I had to get up at noon for work). Stupid me. I took two STRONG caps of E ontop of a really heavy stone and I was flying high. It was probably the best high I have ever had. The crash lasted just under four weeks.

Seven days after taking the caps I was still fucked up. My mom had noticed (she knows about my drug use) that I wasn't still entirely back yet. A part of me had not returned from the high. I felt like a shell of a person. I couldn't think or concentrate. I honestly believed that I had lost a part of myself and that scared the shit out of me. Ten days later I hadn't improved all that much and I thought that I had done permanent damage to myself. To say I was scared shitless would be an understatement.

Two weeks went by and my usual Ecsatcy friday came around. I couldn't think about taking another cap of Ecstacy, not yet. I was just getting a foothold in reality and didn't want to mess that up. I was tempted to return to the venue just to explore it when I wasn't on E. I didn't go because I was afraid of what I would find there. I could write a novel on that place, but that is for another time. Two and a half weeks later my concentration was returning and the depression was lifting. I felt like I could breathe a sigh of relief. I wasn't all the way back yet, but as long as things were improving I knew it would be all right. That is when the paranoia kicked in.

I think the tremendous amounts of fear that I had generated from thinking that I had lost a part of my soul was still in me. The effects of the drug were wearing off but the fear that it had generated had woken up inside of me. On one particular stone I sat down and started thinking of all the what if's in life. What if (this), what if (that). Replace (this) and (that) with the worst things that you could imagine happening to you. I honestly thought that I had a demon in me. I thought I had let a demon get inside of me and I couldn't get it out. In a sense I had. The demon was my paranoia and it was real. I started to see things out of the corner of my eye and my fear that I was losing my grip on reality came back with full force. When I wasn't stoned and was thinking rationally I dismissed it as a bad trip. It wasn't just a bad trip though. It was many. Every time I got stoned I would go through the feelin' good part of it, and return to the fear and paranoia. Everytime I got stoned it decreased so I thought I was dealing with that as well. Until one night...

We had an enormous storm roll in and pass quickly. My paranoia hit me full force, as bad as a bad mushroom trip, and I hadn't taken anything. It was after midnight, the storm was mostly gone and I decided to go for a walk to clear my head. I walked down the laneway, which is very dark, to a forest that is close to my house. All along the way I saw a shadow to the right of me which disappeared everytime I looked at it. This was the most prominent hallucination my paranoia had thrown at me so far and it scared me because I knew it was evil. I finally reached a boardwalk that takes you into the forest and over a bog which sits in a clearing. The forest at night has always been one of my greatest fears and brought foreward fear in me for as long as I can remember. I figured the best way to deal with my demon was to confront it in this dark forest. What happened was different though.

Although I was very scared I made my way into the forest and came out into the clearing. I calmed my mind and tried to meditate. I visualized the forest clearing as a sacred space that was protecting me. It was, my paranoia was pushed to the back of my head. It was still there, but only in the background. I relaxed and started to enjoy the feeling of the slight breeze on my face. I watched as the remaining storm clouds slowly crept away revealing the stars behind them. My awareness was focused on my body, and it felt good. When I walked out of the bog, after about 45 min of standing there, my paranoia was all but gone. It was still in the back of my head, but it didn't have the power over me that it did before. That was three days ago.

It has been a month since my grand experiment with Ecstacy came to an abrupt end. I would have liked to play around with it for a little while longer, but I recognize that everybody has a different learning curve. My time with it was over and the drug showed me that by giving me my hardest lesson of all. I have fallen out of the scene and I think all in all I am done with chemical drugs for the time being. If later in life the opportunity to use them comes up again I may or may not depending on whether it feels like the right thing to do.

Finally I would like to state that I have enjoyed my time on Ecstacy and I think that given what I know I would do it all over again if given the chance. I almost feel like I have died and been reborn, a painful but worthwhile process.

I do not want people to read this and draw from it the conclusion that drugs are bad. I don't want this to be used as anti-drug propaganda. I write it because drug education is better than drug propaganda. Make your own choices on the drugs that you take and know the risks involved. The world of drugs is dangerous, fun, and mysterious. The only person looking out for your safety is you and that is why many people get hurt by it. Stay educated, keep your head on your shoulders, and you can minimize the risks involved. Play safe.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 13985
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 23, 2003	Views: 16,128
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MDMA (3) : Club / Bar (25), Retrospective / Summary (11), Post Trip Problems (8), Hangover / Days After (46)