neartonone
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2013
- Messages
- 1
This experience report might seem humdrum at first - a mere one and a half pills and some joints - but really this is a report on returning to old substances after several years, and how ecstasy isn't one of those drugs which can magically change you from a depressed person into a happy one, which I think lends the report some legitimacy and uniqueness.
I did a lot of E in my youth; between the ages of 18 and 23, I was at one point taking ten in a night, taking them over multiple days, triple-dropping and so on. Your basic puerile stupidity. Anyway, I stopped when I was able to acquire piperazines more cheaply and easily than I could acquire E, and after that I didn't take ecstasy again. After a while, the horrible piperazine comedowns started happening, so I stopped taking all "illegitimate" stimulants (i.e. I would still drink coffee and cola). I am experienced in quite a few substances, all pretty much taken during the same period of my life; speed, coke, shrooms, acid, oxy, tramadol, LSA. I hadn't taken anything stronger than tramadol in the 5 years preceding this experience. So I guess I'd class myself as being moderately experienced overall, at least outside the hallucinogenic/dissociative field. I am a regular cannabis user and have been for about 12 years, off (rarely) and on (usually).
So, with that in mind, the pills I got were heart-shaped and kind of light brown (I might be wrong on the colour as I'm colourblind). I have no idea of the purity, but the pill itself was extremely dense and resistant to cutting/crushing. The weed is not really the subject of this report, as such, but it obviously has an effect so I felt it necessary to include it. I crushed and bombed (wrapped in paper and swallowed) the first half, but the subsequent halves were taken whole, as it were.
The reason I bought them, essentially, was that I have had a number of things go wrong in my personal life recently and have been experiencing quite severe depression. I have been feeling very isolated and have forgotten, pretty much, how it feels to be happy or carefree. I surmised (wrongly) that a pill might give me a glimpse of this - something to hope for, I guess. I say this only because it clearly had an impact on the experience and on the subsequent days; to feel something like happiness again. So the experience was essentially doomed from the start - I've always found E to be a mood enhancer, rather than a sacred and holy happiness-inducer, so it's not a surprise that what happened was unsatisfying. On the day, I had eaten an apple, and pre-loaded with a multivitamin and 1g vitamin C, as they were the only things I could afford at the time for pre-loading.
6:00pm: I take the first half, crushed and swallowed, and wait to be magically cured of my depression. I am extremely nervous and agitated as soon as I take it, as I always was. I am in my own room, just sitting at the PC. I always used ecstasy for this purpose, by the way; I used it to feel good, and to chat with people honestly about myself, but never to go out and dance. It was usually a solitary/small group experience and the drug, in this instance, was both the means and the end.
6:50pm - I am still extremely restless and nothing seems to be happening. I remember E acting more quickly than this.
6:55pm - I swallow another half. I always used to start by double-dropping, but that was such a long time ago, and I've since lost two stone, so I started small. At this point, though, I assume I haven't taken enough. I've had a couple of joints by now.
7:10pm - I am now rolling quite gently and have come to realise that I took the extra half way too soon. I am talking to someone on Facebook, feeling extremely energised, but not happy, as such. I actually sort of feel like I've had a coffee and taken 200mg of Tramadol. Talkative, and honest, but not really feeling love for anyone or anything.
10:00pm - I look at the clock and it is somehow ten o'clock. I've done nothing but talk to someone on Facebook for all this time and have no idea where the time has gone. I feel incredibly... chemically. My overwhelming thought is that I haven't felt any happiness at all. Speedy, talkative, certainly intoxicated but not empathic. I enjoy tactile sensations, like lying in bed, and I can ignore the issues which revolve constantly in my mind, but I'm not happy. I just feel like I've taken a bunch of chemicals and they've done something to my brain. Almost a truism, I suppose, but when I was younger they provided genuine joy - now I just feel drugged.
11:20pm - I feel a cold, trickling sensation which creeps slowly down my spine and experience a sudden realisation that the "magical" portion of the evening is over. I panic, and take another half. But I already know it's over - all I'll be able to do now is prolong the insomnia. I stop chatting on Facebook and stick on a series of QI, then roll and smoke joints in a constant cycle. As long as I keep my hands working, I can ignore the fact that I suddenly really want to be alone, and kind of revel in the physical activity.
2:00am - The experience is pretty much over. I just sit around, feeling vaguely regretful that I now have hours of insomnia to look forward to but still smoking.
I was awake for another few hours, rolling and smoking, and eventually drifted off at 6 or 7am. Felt some residual crappiness for the next couple of days, but oddly quite enjoyed not feeling like myself for a while. Until day three, that is, when all of a sudden I was the most depressed I have ever been. I'll spare you the specific details of this day, but suffice it to say that I very nearly made a big mistake. Since then, my mood has been up and down more; how much of that is related to my body's recovery and how much to my general depression, I don't know. But I have felt worse since the experience than I did before it, if only by a small margin.
I suppose the reason I felt this was worth posting is that it's not beyond the realms of imagination that someone like myself might look to ecstasy as something which can help their depression, if even for a day. But generally fucked-up brain chemicals are not likely to be solved by further fucking with your brain chemicals; at least, not in some way which hasn't been empirically tested (i.e. antidepressants). I realise that there are so many variables in this experience that I cannot definitively say ecstasy can't help, but one thing I can say for sure is that for me, I was using it for something which it isn't in its power to give. It can tell your brain to tell you that you're crazy happy... but you've got to believe it, too. If you go into it with a mind full of turmoil, it's not likely to sort that out for you; all you'll be left with, ultimately, is a mind full of turmoil and a forced depletion of the only resources your brain has which might keep you alive long enough to sort your depression out.
I tried to adhere to the Trip Report Guidelines as accurately as possible, but if I made any mistakes, I apologise.
I also apologise for the length of the report, and the general banality of it, but this experience was an important wake-up call for me. One I have yet to answer, I suppose... but at least I can hear it ringing.
I did a lot of E in my youth; between the ages of 18 and 23, I was at one point taking ten in a night, taking them over multiple days, triple-dropping and so on. Your basic puerile stupidity. Anyway, I stopped when I was able to acquire piperazines more cheaply and easily than I could acquire E, and after that I didn't take ecstasy again. After a while, the horrible piperazine comedowns started happening, so I stopped taking all "illegitimate" stimulants (i.e. I would still drink coffee and cola). I am experienced in quite a few substances, all pretty much taken during the same period of my life; speed, coke, shrooms, acid, oxy, tramadol, LSA. I hadn't taken anything stronger than tramadol in the 5 years preceding this experience. So I guess I'd class myself as being moderately experienced overall, at least outside the hallucinogenic/dissociative field. I am a regular cannabis user and have been for about 12 years, off (rarely) and on (usually).
So, with that in mind, the pills I got were heart-shaped and kind of light brown (I might be wrong on the colour as I'm colourblind). I have no idea of the purity, but the pill itself was extremely dense and resistant to cutting/crushing. The weed is not really the subject of this report, as such, but it obviously has an effect so I felt it necessary to include it. I crushed and bombed (wrapped in paper and swallowed) the first half, but the subsequent halves were taken whole, as it were.
The reason I bought them, essentially, was that I have had a number of things go wrong in my personal life recently and have been experiencing quite severe depression. I have been feeling very isolated and have forgotten, pretty much, how it feels to be happy or carefree. I surmised (wrongly) that a pill might give me a glimpse of this - something to hope for, I guess. I say this only because it clearly had an impact on the experience and on the subsequent days; to feel something like happiness again. So the experience was essentially doomed from the start - I've always found E to be a mood enhancer, rather than a sacred and holy happiness-inducer, so it's not a surprise that what happened was unsatisfying. On the day, I had eaten an apple, and pre-loaded with a multivitamin and 1g vitamin C, as they were the only things I could afford at the time for pre-loading.
6:00pm: I take the first half, crushed and swallowed, and wait to be magically cured of my depression. I am extremely nervous and agitated as soon as I take it, as I always was. I am in my own room, just sitting at the PC. I always used ecstasy for this purpose, by the way; I used it to feel good, and to chat with people honestly about myself, but never to go out and dance. It was usually a solitary/small group experience and the drug, in this instance, was both the means and the end.
6:50pm - I am still extremely restless and nothing seems to be happening. I remember E acting more quickly than this.
6:55pm - I swallow another half. I always used to start by double-dropping, but that was such a long time ago, and I've since lost two stone, so I started small. At this point, though, I assume I haven't taken enough. I've had a couple of joints by now.
7:10pm - I am now rolling quite gently and have come to realise that I took the extra half way too soon. I am talking to someone on Facebook, feeling extremely energised, but not happy, as such. I actually sort of feel like I've had a coffee and taken 200mg of Tramadol. Talkative, and honest, but not really feeling love for anyone or anything.
10:00pm - I look at the clock and it is somehow ten o'clock. I've done nothing but talk to someone on Facebook for all this time and have no idea where the time has gone. I feel incredibly... chemically. My overwhelming thought is that I haven't felt any happiness at all. Speedy, talkative, certainly intoxicated but not empathic. I enjoy tactile sensations, like lying in bed, and I can ignore the issues which revolve constantly in my mind, but I'm not happy. I just feel like I've taken a bunch of chemicals and they've done something to my brain. Almost a truism, I suppose, but when I was younger they provided genuine joy - now I just feel drugged.
11:20pm - I feel a cold, trickling sensation which creeps slowly down my spine and experience a sudden realisation that the "magical" portion of the evening is over. I panic, and take another half. But I already know it's over - all I'll be able to do now is prolong the insomnia. I stop chatting on Facebook and stick on a series of QI, then roll and smoke joints in a constant cycle. As long as I keep my hands working, I can ignore the fact that I suddenly really want to be alone, and kind of revel in the physical activity.
2:00am - The experience is pretty much over. I just sit around, feeling vaguely regretful that I now have hours of insomnia to look forward to but still smoking.
I was awake for another few hours, rolling and smoking, and eventually drifted off at 6 or 7am. Felt some residual crappiness for the next couple of days, but oddly quite enjoyed not feeling like myself for a while. Until day three, that is, when all of a sudden I was the most depressed I have ever been. I'll spare you the specific details of this day, but suffice it to say that I very nearly made a big mistake. Since then, my mood has been up and down more; how much of that is related to my body's recovery and how much to my general depression, I don't know. But I have felt worse since the experience than I did before it, if only by a small margin.
I suppose the reason I felt this was worth posting is that it's not beyond the realms of imagination that someone like myself might look to ecstasy as something which can help their depression, if even for a day. But generally fucked-up brain chemicals are not likely to be solved by further fucking with your brain chemicals; at least, not in some way which hasn't been empirically tested (i.e. antidepressants). I realise that there are so many variables in this experience that I cannot definitively say ecstasy can't help, but one thing I can say for sure is that for me, I was using it for something which it isn't in its power to give. It can tell your brain to tell you that you're crazy happy... but you've got to believe it, too. If you go into it with a mind full of turmoil, it's not likely to sort that out for you; all you'll be left with, ultimately, is a mind full of turmoil and a forced depletion of the only resources your brain has which might keep you alive long enough to sort your depression out.
I tried to adhere to the Trip Report Guidelines as accurately as possible, but if I made any mistakes, I apologise.
I also apologise for the length of the report, and the general banality of it, but this experience was an important wake-up call for me. One I have yet to answer, I suppose... but at least I can hear it ringing.
