Hello again,
I had written a post a few weeks ago that some of yous may remember. I had ended up in a coma in 2013 due to MDMA. I showed the post to one of my friends recently, and they thought it was a bit too raw; apparently you shouldn’t talk about death and tell people to move on when they have acute stress disorder (who’d of thought it).
I thought I would write another post with some clarification and also just rant a little bit in general. Everything that I write about is just purely my take on what has happened to some of you, why it has happened, and what some of you could do to get better. Given what happened to me, I’m quite emotionally involved in the topic and I also feel like given the right information everyone who is suffering due to MDMA can get better.
Firstly, to get better you need to know what has actually happened to you. I recognise and I understand that what a lot of you are experiencing is very real and very scary, but I think that for most of you (if not all of you) it is a psychological issue and not a physical one. Obviously, after being broken down mentally, overtime, you will start to experience physical issues, but I feel like the route is psychological.
Most people on here will have seen the famous PSA of the guy at the rave who is dancing and having fun and then things go horizontal; he becomes scared and paranoid. I don’t know if this PSA was about MDMA per say, but it was definitely about stimulants in general. What a lot of you are experiencing is not a new thing; it is as old as stimulants themselves. What goes up must go down or sideways in some instances. I feel like the ‘LTC’ is not a result of MDMA abuse, but rather the result of one bad drug experience. Granted, if you take MDMA everyday you are going to experience problems the same way a drinker would, but I feel like what a lot of you are experiencing is psychological trauma.
I also don’t think that what some of yous are experiencing is an uncommon thing; yous probably all know someone who has clearly been affected by stimulants, but the only difference between you and them is that they don’t think that there is anything wrong with them or at least they lack insight and don’t necessarily attribute their issues to stimulant abuse. They think that they are on a journey of self-discovery.
This leads me to why I don’t think anyone on this forum is brain damaged, and that actually the ‘LTC’ is something that happens to intelligent people. If you were dumb, you would just be like ‘that was crazy, it’s over’, and you would go back to being your usual drugged up self and not learn from your mistakes or dwell on your experience. Most of yous know deep down what’s wrong with you and that valium could cure this in the short-term, but hardly anyone is choosing that route. There is something to be said for that. Valium addiction will ruin your life. Most of you are taking the hard route and just know that ultimately you will be a stronger, smarter and better person as a result of this experience.
People who are brain damaged are not able to articulate themselves and, based on the posts that I have read, a lot of you appear very smart and can converse with people with ease. Also, people who are brain damaged tend to not worry about how brain damaged they are. I have read over some of the posts here, and some people have had every medical test going which have all came back fine.
Furthermore, this may sting, but yous are all functional; yous are all able to engage in activities of daily living. There is very little evidence that MDMA causes physical issues, but it does affect emotions; therefore, logically what you are experiencing is most likely psychological. I think that what a lot of you are experiencing is chemically induced PTSD or depersonalization/derealization disorder. You should watch the derealization manual on YouTube as I think this would help a lot of you.
For the first in your life, you became so overwhelmed that you could not psychologically cope. Whether you panicked during your roll, directly after your roll, or a week after, two weeks etc. The moment you thought your life was in danger or that you had permanently damaged yourself, a chain of events unfolded that lead to the ‘LTC’. On the surface, you know that the event is over and that you are ok, but your unconscious mind did not get the memo.
Your unconscious mind believes that this event was the worst thing that has ever happened to you or that it is still happening. To prevent the same thing from happening to you again, your unconscious is fighting to make sure that you are constantly aware of this life threatening event that it thinks has happened or is always happening. This is why you keep focusing on it, because you are always receiving information telling you that something is wrong. Your flight or fight response is keeping you in or throwing you back into the experience.
The moment you thought that you had fucked it, you created a paradox in which every negative experience after the MDMA event leads back to the MDMA event. It’s human self-preservation at its finest, but it can be problematic. If you had been in a car crash, you would understand why you are panicking every time you see or hear a car or get in a car, and you could actively work towards getting better. However, when the cause of trauma is unclear it’s difficult to recognise the route and work towards overcoming it.
Everyone on this forum has been through experiences in their lives that have changed them. I feel like a lot of people on this forum turned a bad experience into a bad day, into a bad week, into a bad month, into a bad year, and so forth. For the first time in your life, you realised you had limits and an expiration date. You became aware of your own mortality on a scale that you had never experienced before. Your sense of self and your reality crumbled.
It’s easier to believe that there is something physically wrong and to keep yourself in an anxious yet manageable state where you feel as if you are working towards something, than it is to learn the art of letting go. How many people have irreversible brain damage one day and then anxiety the next? Have you ever wondered why you seem to recover one week and then are back at square one the next? It’s because you are not recovering from a physical issue.
If you keep waiting for recovery, you will be left disappointed. Why so few recovery stories? This is because the day you recover is the day that you let go. It’s the day that you realise that nothing has changed and that you were being ridiculous. They say that it normally takes people 6 months to 24 months to recover. Coincidentally, this is roughly how long it takes to get over a traumatic event.
Forums like this one can be helpful in the short term. There is something soothing about someone else telling you ‘I know how it feels, believe me, I’ve been there’. But the only problem is that everyone on them is experiencing a similar thing. It becomes anxious people helping other anxious people.
You had a bad experience and before you know it your balls deep in a ‘LTC’ and on a recovery program that involves a cocktail of supplements that can be dangerous if you take too many of the wrong ones, exercising to the point of exhaustion, fasting, treating yourself for mercury poisoning and doing all sorts of ridiculous things to ‘recover’. Some poor 18 year old may read a post from someone who says that they have been experiencing the ‘LTC’ for 20 years, but this person may fail to mention that they are 50, unemployed, divorced, and that they are a recovering heroin addict. Then that 18 year old will get themselves into a panic, believing that they will never recover from the dreaded ‘LTC’.
After my bad MDMA experience, I had a lot of physical symptoms that went away quite quickly, but I also had psychological issues that went on for much longer. Because I had taken physically unwell due to MDMA, it was easy for me to distinguish between what was physical and what was psychological.
Before the ‘LTC’, how many of you got so drunk that you passed out/had to be hospitalised? How many of you didn’t care? Can you imagine if you put the same effort into researching alcohol poisoning? You would have diagnosed yourself with all sorts, e.g. hepatic encephalopathy. The only reason that yous didn’t put the same effort into researching alcohol is because yous didn’t feel like anything was wrong. When you have severe anxiety you can’t see the woods for the trees. If you take a step back and ask yourselves what’s really different, you will realise that it’s just a feeling.
This whole thing reminds of the Scooby Doo movie.
Velma : What's the problem, exactly?
Mondavarious : I believe somebody is casting a spell on the students. Now listen and look around. Can you notice any difference between those arriving and those departing?
Daphne : They look like sober, well-behaved college kids.
Mondavarious : Precisely. And they didn't before they came. They've changed. In other words, a magic spell.
We need to find the Daemon Ritus.
Baby, you’re going to be just fine.