DOSE: T+ 0:00	75 mg	oral	MDMA
T+ 24:00	400 - 500 mg	oral	MDMA

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

MDMA Experience Possible HPPD After Effects

I am writing to you today to tell you about my fantastically horrible MDMA experience. I chose to phrase it as such because although it did offer me an unparalleled high, the after effects essentially rendered the experience null and void of any delight.

At the time I was seventeen years old and was hanging out with my friend at his house, playing some video games, fooling around, all that jazz. My friend and I smoked pot about 2-5 times a week and apparently he had picked up some MDMA and decided we should do it. It was a Monday afternoon and his parents were gone so we decided to test the waters, as it were, and take a small dose, like 75 mg each. So we did that, and went to see a movie in 3D. During the movie we both didn't feel anything, literally nothing! It kind of annoyed us but, hey what could we expect from such a low dose, right? But the second we stood up, we felt a SURGE of energy, almost as if sitting down for the last two hours had been a complete and utter WASTE of time, but it wasn't until standing up and releasing the energy from its static cage that we realized it as such. So instead of calling a taxi to drive us the 10 kilometers home, we decided to walk home, it was only about 6:30 at this point. We were more talkative than we had ever been before and yet we still had this funny feeling that the drug wasn't actually doing anything, and that it was just a placebo, because with weed we KNOW when we're high, but at this point we couldn't really be sure. So the next day after school we rush home and have about a gram of the MDMA left and we decide to split it evenly, and just parachute it all in one take. We go downstairs and start gaming while waiting for it to kick in, and here is where the 'fun' starts.

So about twenty minutes after our ingestion of the oh so fantastical drug, my friend starts saying nonsensical shit like 'is this reality? Dude... Did you see that? THE FUCKING TREES HAVE FACES LOL!' and I'm just sitting there like wow... My friend is a F#@%ing moron! This is going on for a while and I'm just sitting there being like welp, I guess it is going to be a repeat of last night, nothing will happen. So, TWO AND A HALF HOURS after my ingestion I'm still thinking this, when all of a sudden I start to feel this odd sense of elation. My skepticism feels like it is being lifted away from me, and I so desperately try to grasp it as it floats away, but to no avail. I sit down in a chair and start stroking it incessantly, it just feels TOO good. At this point I start saying things like wow... This feels good, this chair is just really nice, I like this chair a lot, I think we can be friends ha and our 'babysitter' starts to laugh at me as it is now evident I am slipping into my high, but he says he has to go.

It is now 6 o'clock and I am JUST starting to feel the effects of the drug kick in. I stare at the hardwood floor and see whisps of sand flowing across, as if I was standing a midst a dune. My babysitter says he has to go, and for some reason my friend has the odd notion that we have to walk him home, so that he is safe. Now I'm feeling really friendly right now and am basically up for anything, but at the same time I am rather freaked out by how hard I am tripping, and by that I mean literally tripping while trying to walk. With each step forward I feel about 5 steps behind, almost as if I am looking at myself from behind while also experiencing tunnel vision, it was the oddest sensation. The only reason I knew I was moving was A) because I physically saw my legs moving and every once and a while I would see a recognizable land mark further than where I started, and the more convincing of the two notions, B) my sober babysitter was walking next to me at a steady pace and I was talking to him the whole time. Now, come to a crosswalk and I see the flashing light signaling us to walk across the street, but I was so paranoid that I was wobbling, or no going at the right time, and similarly to my perception of walking, I saw a car turn right into me, and I saw trails of light stretch behind it almost as if it were the reversal of the souls in Donnie Darko. The walk back home with my friend was slightly blurry as it was quite dark and I think we were just talking about how amazing this experience was.

Now that we were back at home, to my surprise... The effects ACTUALLY started to kick in (7pm) and I thought it couldn't get any more intense. We remembered that water was key to... Well... Not dying of dehydration, so we drank about 7 glasses each. I started to get the strangest feeling at this point, my whole body tingled in ecstasy, and when I went to eat something I could literally visualize the colours corresponding to the tastes and textures. I remember eating a tostitos chip and it being very crunchy, and I closed my eyes in sheer delight and saw green purple and red triangles appear with each crunch of enjoyment. I then sat down and stared intently at my shirt, and to my surprise it started to become the center for my attention. Firstly, it should be noted that it was a black shirt, with a skull on it. This is where my hallucinations got very interesting, and where perhaps the cause of my unpleasant symptoms arises.

I'm sitting in the chair I previously made friends with, and I look at my shirt, and red lines appear to be popping up through the fabric, almost like when a volcano erupts and splits the land, filling the crevasses with red hot magma. Then, I started to see these red lines turn into some sort of pattern on my shirt, I can only imagine it to be something similar to bowser's head, or perhaps a teenage mutant ninja turtle? Something like that. I'm really interested at this point as to what's happening, and I'm only about 1.5 hours into my trip at this point so I am quite excited. Then I start to feel a swell of emotions, starting with good I start seeing everything in a shade of green, and I look at my hand which starts to morph into the claw of a dragon. Not only am I seeing this happen, but I literally feel the joints in my fingers being elongated and turning into claws, and changing to the colour green. I then picture dragons as mad creatures and get angry, almost as if I have become feral. I get up and start running around with my arms spanned like I have wings and pretending to breathe fire. I get overwhelmed with rage and my vision turns red. I start seeing these reddish-green bowser/TMNT heads cover my whole vision and slow down because I am concerned. I then think to myself that I can control my emotions and bring about 'pretty colours' by doing so, with each emotion brings a new colour :)

But when I reach sadness, or melancholy; whatever you wish to call it, I see blue, and I start to think about Descartes' theory of the dream world, as I have just read his meditations 1-6 and am quite apt to interpreting his works. I start thinking rather hardly, however incoherent it may have been, about his writings and I think of depersonalization, and I turn completely inward. Instead of being social like the previous night, and not being able to stop talking, I just shut right up for fear of saying something while inebriated that I might have wanted kept lock and key. I basically do not talk to my friend for the next 6 hours.This leads me to start walking around his house thinking about the trivialities of everyday life, waking up, eating, going to work [school] coming home, sleeping repeat, et cetera. While thinking of these things I realize that I am literally doing them on repeat, and as I realize this, it starts to hasten, like my life has been put on fast forward. I literally go to my friend's bed, lie down, instantly stand up walk upstairs, go get food, go back down, get in bed and repeat! I feel trapped in this seemingly never ending cycle until my friend asks me some nonsensical question and I realize that what seemed to be my whole life flash by on fast forward was only 20 minutes. Now that I have seen a time recording device, I think of the relation between the seemingly arbitrary notion of space-time and the correspondence to living things. As a result, I look at the clock as much as possible, humming to myself TIME IS THE ONLY CONSTANT, TIME IS WHAT KEEPS MY SANITY!

Sitting down, I stare intently onward to my hand, trying to recreate the time when my hand turned into a dragon's claw not three hours ago, it is now 10:30. Instead, I see each fingertip turn into the head of an eagle, and a rainbow spread across my palm, to this day I have no clue why I saw that... Then, my friends parents came home.......... My friend was essentially off his high at this point, but as you can tell by me hallucinating eagle heads on my fingertips, and contemplating the meaninglessness of everyday life, I was not even close to coming down. After what was apparently an hour of his parents trying to convince me to leave his house (on a Tuesday night) they called my parents to pick me up. My parents are pretty chill, they bought my a pizza when they figured out what I was on.

When I tried getting to sleep, at about 1 am, I was definitely coming down, no legitimate hallucinations remained, but when I turned off the lights, the bowser/TMNT heads came back full force, covering EVERY surface, very bright. I figured hey, it just hasn't fully worn off yet, and I was fine with it, I just tried to enjoy it. I thought to myself that being on MDMA must be like what severely autistic kids must feel like, what with the bombardment of sense data and constant never ending thinking. I didn't get to sleep until 5am because I couldn't stop thinking!

The next day I was at school, completely fine, no hangover at all everything FINE AND DANDY! After school I take one hit of a bong and I get the MOST HIGH I HAVE EVER BEEN IN MY LIFE. My stomach started to vibrate with such extreme speed that I literally couldn't walk, I was pinned to my chair and thought that water from the bong had gotten into my lungs and I was drowning (I know it was stupid but I was paranoid from the weed). I started seeing the patterns again, but soon after greened out.

I tried weed a few times after that (November 12th is when I did MDMA for the first time) and I kept getting INCREDIBLY paranoid. I convinced myself, somehow, I'm not sure because I tend to think of myself as a rather intelligible being, that the weed was inducing another MDMA trip, and that my previous experiences (the other night's trip) was affecting my perception of a 'high' from weed. For months, I would smoke and it would feel amazing but then when I got introspective those same patterns would come up again, and I grew increasingly more paranoid about possible psychosis. I started seeing the same patterns when I woke up in the morning, when it was still dark , I would see almost a visual static, and I would try to look through the static, intently focusing on the wall, or a poster to lessen the effect, but then the patterns would come full force. I started to attribute these occurrences to panic, or anxiety attacks, and eventually stopped smoking weed in April, 2012.

On my birthday, April 2012, I decided that the only way to tell if I was psychotic or if the minor hallucinations were caused by MDMA was to take it ONCE more. So I did, and no patterns happened that night, I took an extremely lower dose, I took 2 ecstasy pills that were quite small, maybe 75-100mg each, and I had my wits completely about me, my sense perception was slightly skewed, but it felt nice, and I was extremely talkative, and I played a MEAN game of Starcraft2, I got promoted to masters league that night, hehe. Anyways, after this night I started to feel paranoid A LOT MORE about these occurrences, which started happening more often. I started thinking to myself, what if I'm a schizophrenic? I'm 18 which is when it would present itself, it could be possible. I'm hallucinating, kind of, and ever since I've almost been edging myself to have a full blown, elephant walking through walls-esque style hallucination to confirm my diagnosis. I know deep down, that I'm not a schizophrenic, but at the same time, my paranoia about it is really getting to me, and it's hard to enjoy life sometimes when always thinking about these random fucking flashing light patterns, which by the way happen almost always in dark/dim lighting i.e. bedtime.

So basically, I think I have HPPD, which may or may not fade with time, and I'm trying to cope with how one amazingly fantastic night brought about so much philosophical questioning about metaphysics and distinction between body-mind, and yet also tear apart my mind in the process. Although I do remember myself being a much happier person before doing drugs, I do not fully regret doing MDMA because of what it has taught me, and opened me up to experience. Since MDMA I have done dilaudid, which I HATED, I just threw up a lot and didn't even feel euphoria, and ketamine, once, which I really would like to try again, but am currently abstinent from drugs COMPLETELY.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 96539
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 17
Published: Mar 31, 2021	Views: 675
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MDMA (3) : Hangover / Days After (46), HPPD / Lasting Visuals (40), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)