MDMYay or MDMNay?

Upon reflection, my entire life, and perhaps yours too (along with most citizens of the over-medicated West) has been an alarmingly constant binge, a towering list of one drug-addled rampage after the next. At age five I was the kid on a North West London street corner swigging Calpol from a brown paper bag. I’ve smoked enough weed to realise that I’m boring on it. I’ve blacked out drunk more times than I can remember. Most terribly, I’m also sorely dependent on caffeine. Then there are the painkillers: Ibuprofen, Tramadol and Codeine. Class acts, all of the above, but none of them Class A.

Then came a post-exams blitz, as a two-week slog of work came to an end and students began again to do what students do best.

At a night out, I took two doses of MDMA. This was my first ever contact with ‘party drugs’ but I wasn’t worried since I knew all my good friends were having it too. This is not a total damnation of the drug—for all I know the dealer mixed our stuff with Speed and Ricin—but merely a self-reflective exercise that will maybe make some people approach drugs like MDMA with more caution. After forty-five minutes I began to feel definite effects, and from midnight until three (roughly when I had more of it) I was convinced that I was having the best night of my life. I was a space Communist riding out into oblivion with my best friends and loving every second, in perfect harmony with the music (blatantly I wasn’t though) and my species. We stayed until the party broke apart and I felt pretty much fine.

From there I went to three separate houses, mainly because I wanted to be among company during the dreaded comedown I’d heard so much about. Sweats, shakes and paranoia were taking hold. Under the influence of this new and confusing drug I was consuming anything that people suggested would make me feel better, including beer, weed, serotonin replacement pills and herbal tea. None of it helped. I was pacing and stuttering like a cannibal. Long story short, myself and a friend ended up in A&E at around 2pm having not slept whatsoever, and I had blood tests and an ECG which revealed my heart rate to be a steady 160bpm. Most adults have a resting heart rate between 60 – 100bpm.

Pins and needles, facial numbness, uncontrolled limb movements, chest pains and incredible difficulty breathing were my main symptoms. Constant thirst, nausea and sleep-deprived delirium added to the horror. After several hours of attentive care from my friend and the hospital staff, who put me on a drip and did their best to sedate me, I was allowed to go home that night. After a spasmodic fourteen-hour sleep I was fine.

Since then I have carefully weighed up my two very different experiences of MDMA. Negative was considerably heavier on the scale, and based upon this I will never take it again.

Come back next week for ‘My First Ether Binge’, which I’m off to research now.