DOSE:

1 tablet

oral

MDMA

BODY WEIGHT:

118 lb

Happy, happy, happy! Pure happiness. Now I know why they call it Ecstasy. This is all I can say to describe my first experience with MDMA —I didn’t lose my E-virginity until I was over 40.

There were so many opportunities to take it that I passed up. In the early 80s when it was little known and still legal, my then live in lover became the first journalist to write about it. He could not stop talking about how incredible, how life altering his experience was. He changed so dramatically after those early trips that we eventually split apart – I loved him, but I felt that I was holding him back on his journey of self discovery. I later tried LSD a few times – wonderful, positive, spiritually life altering high. But then a really bad trip in my early 20s with psilocybin left me terrified of ever losing control. For the next 20 years – 20 years! – I never, knowingly, took drugs again (with the exception of some pot smoking now and then). I eat a pure Organic mostly vegan diet, never take antibiotics, and won’t take Ibuprofen or prescription drugs. (Unless I’m lying unconscious in the hospital ER and they’re injecting it into me.)

So for the next 20 years, even though I’d been to countless parties and raves, I always stayed sober and picked up the Ecstasy vibe as a contact high. I love going to these events because the energy is so accepting, so gracious, unjudgmental, so loving. Friends and strangers offered E to me many many times, but I always declined out of fear of … what? Brain damage? Overhyped media reports? I just personally knew people who seemed to emerge from their experiences opened up a little too far – and I saw too many friends spiraling down into uncontrollable depression after their bursts of euphoria. I cherish my brain cells.

I have for most of my life been on a purity high – preferring to explore consciousness and open my kundalini with meditation, yoga, sex, adrenaline, sweat, high places – not what I’ve always felt was the lazy, drug-induced way. But recently I had been making a lot of connections in my mind between positive changes I’ve been observing in culture and society and what I felt must have been the positive influence of this slightly younger than me generation and their drug of choice – Ecstasy. I wanted to understand it.

Set and setting

I was with my new lover/friend Casey. He’s experienced in all things psychedelic, I knew he would have very pure E. We were going to an event that would be a safe and familiar place to be, with incredible bassalicious dance music. I knew I’d slept enough the past few nights, and I drank a lot of water that day, so I was hydrated. We had a super healthy vegetarian dinner and I passed on the booze.

In the car, outside the club, Casey said: “Ok, I’m taking it now and fished out a white pill. And I said: “I want one too.” He looked at me surprised. “No, I’m ready. I’ve been thinking about this.” “Are you sure, I don’t force things on anybody,” he said. “No. I’m ready,” I said. (I felt like a 40 year old virgin having sex for the first time.) We each ate one pill, and then walked past the velvet ropes and into the club. I am a petite woman with hardly any body fat, and so incredibly clean and pure that drugs really hit me harder than most people. Within 15 minutes, I was starting to feel like the floor was undulating a little, like the way the earth moves in an earthquakes. “Wow, this is why they call it rolling,” I thought. I grabbed on to some handrails and waited for Casey to come out of the men’s room.

I was wearing a really skimpy costume and men were sort of leering at me, the first room in this club was dark and the energy was negative, the ceiling too low, the music too throbbing and downbeat, and I was feeling really glad I wasn’t alone for this moment. Casey took my hand and we walked into another room and then the warmth started to hit me, everything felt and looked red, sensual. My stomach started rumbling and I felt a little nauseous. “That’s your intestines, they’re dumping serotonin into your bloodstream,” Casey said. We were introduced to several people, and I felt that I was really being accepted in this amazing way, by both the women and the men. Everyone looked exceptionally young, no matter if they were under 20 or over 40, vibrant, healthy. I didn’t see one fat person in the room, and it clicked why people are so healthy in the rave scene – there are healthy drugs and this is one of them. The consciousness expansion makes people stop eating meat, and start treating their body like a temple.

My vision got really sharp and clear, almost unbearably clear, a lot like what I remember from early LSD trips. The colors got hyper-saturated, almost as if I could see the infrared heat generated by them as another spectrum of light, and I could see beautiful steams of light where the lights sliced through the haze of smoke and body heat in the club. When I closed my eyes, I could see light visuals, sort of a dot pattern like a close up of a monitor screen. I got really really hot, and Casey started sweating so much that his hair was soaking wet. I was running my hands through his hair and wringing out the sweat.

The computer graphics on the four monitors around the room danced with incredible dimensional intensity – they seemed to leap out of the screen, almost like a hologram or the way a graphic looks through three D glasses. As with most of my drug experiences, I felt that I had been here before, in this place – it felt a lot like the contact high I’ve gotten at raves when it’s early in the morning and I’m really in contact with the energy flow in the room and I’ve been dancing for hours. In particular, it felt like the energy I would have after calling in the directions and inducing a trance ritual, or after a particularly hard Vinyassa/Power flow yoga session, or maybe after several hours of really intense sex. But this was immediate access to that state of mind.

The whole room felt unified – this is a hard thing to describe, but I felt like I loved and accepted and understood everyone there, regardless of their age or race or whatever. And everyone looked exquisitely beautiful.

I suddenly understood a lot of things about life and myself I never quite got before that moment. Casey and I started talking, enthusiastically, free associating so many thoughts that came to the surface—a free ranging conversation about the interconnectedness of the art, culture, science and technology that has been sparked by substances like E in the last 20-25 years. As we peaked, the DJ played this insane mix of “Feel like makin’ Love” and I could feel the bass right inside my bone marrow.

And I was thinking, “Love, love, love.” It was so super delicious, absolutely pure living joy. FEARLESS. There was just absolutely no fear of harm, hurt, abandonment, of the otherness of other people, of rejection. In this moment of utter fearless, it is finally possible to experience pure love and accept the give and flow of love without blocking or resisting it with self doubt or cynicism. It was like being a baby all over again – like re-experiencing what life was like when I was much younger, not scarred yet by rejection and heartbreak.

We then said a lot of things that I should forget and will probably regret asking and saying, and I wonder now if the real danger of E is this – it can be dangerous to let a drug propel me into a level of intimacy that we might not be ready to handle yet as a couple.

I had this vision of Casey as a handsome, white haired sage, 40 years in the future, I had this uncontrollable desire to hold on and never let go. “I just had this incredible thought. It’s good, not bad” I said. “But I’m afraid to tell you.”

“What was it, tell me.”

No I am afraid to tell you, it’s too intense, it’s too much.

And he said, you should never be afraid to tell me anything.

“Will you be with me when I die?” I asked. “I mean, no matter what happens. Whether we are friends or lovers or whatever.”

“And he said, yes, and smiled, yes, I’ll be there with you.”

And then we had this moment, this amazing bond of what I can only call telepathy. For the next several moments he was thinking things, and I was answering, and we were just looking into each other’s eyes and communicating without a word. It was an exquisitely beautiful conversation.

Casey and I spent seven hours dancing and kissing, my bare midriff against his silk shirt. I later opened his shirt so we could be skin to skin. When the music ended, it seemed like only an hour had passed. I was still extremely alert and energetic, and while I definitely felt that the peak had subsided. I felt great, but the inside of my jaw was raw. (I grind my teeth as it is but this intensified it.)

We drove home and then spent the next 24 hours lying in bed, kissing, cuddling, talking, too exhausted to get up to even get a drink of water, but too energized to really sleep. The feeling was sensual more than sexual, though it was occasionally passionate. We slept on and off, getting up to eat juice smoothies and drinking water with a little sea salt in it to take away the headache.

The next day, we got dressed up and went to brunch, and I noticed that I was still incredibly elated, colors were still more intense, and my vision was still unnaturally clear.

For the next three days I was having trouble sleeping, and I felt very open (I had to catch myself around friends – I was being too honest and open with people at times.) On the 5th day, the dreaded Black Thursday, I came down with a bad cold, but still felt elated.

While doing yoga with my yoga teacher, a posture that opens the chest, my teacher said: “Imagine a window in your heart, and the sunlight shining into that space.” I could see this beautiful white window, with feathered wings opening from it like shutters, and a brilliant golden white light radiating from inside, outward, like a white ball of energy. I started crying. Something that had been blocked inside me for years was finally released. This must have been my fear of love. I suddenly understood what people mean when they say you have to love yourself. It always sounded like sappy new age BS to me, but I never truly understood how to love myself until this moment, and what a joyous feeling that is to finally accept myself the way I am. If I don’t love myself unconditionally, how will anyone else want to love me? No wonder why I have been holding myself back all of these years.

I started to understand why people in the yoga and meditation community tend to do a lot of E – it opens up the energy channels, especially the heart chakra. It’s definitely a sacred space that we entered that night, and that space stays with me.

Now my only fear of Ecstasy– that I like it too much! Maybe this is why I have consciously resisted it for so many years.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 50232
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 29, 2006	Views: 13,246
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Meditation (128), MDMA (3) : Rave / Dance Event (18), Relationships (44), Glowing Experiences (4), First Times (2)