It happened a little less than a year after the first time I smoked weed. In that time I smoked weed 20 times1 and started hanging out with this guy E2. How did I meet E? It happened through a series of events that began when I was around 6 years old. I walked up to a kid, and said hello. We became friends instantly, and almost a decade later, he invited me to play Pokemon GO, as it had just been released3. One time, I went out to play the game without my friend, noticed a group of teenagers, who were all on their phones, and decided to approach them4. We spent the day playing the game together, and became friends on Facebook. The friendship was dormant, apart from a reaction to a shared meme here or there. Until, a couple years later, I commented on one of E's posts. It was a stupid shitpost comment, something about soup, if I recall correctly. For some reason, E decided to invite me to hang out, under that comment. It was weird, we basically did not know each other, but I went, we had some pizza, and the topic eventually landed on weed. E was a weird dude, but he was friendly, and so we started hanging out regularly. We smoked weed almost every time. Then, not long after, he invited me to his birthday party, where I got to meet a lot of his friends, who later became my main friend group, and with some of them, I am friends to this day.
It was the first weekend after the New Years Eve, and E decided to invite a couple of us for a sort of after party. We rented a room in one of our city's hotels, and E told us he had some ecstasy pills we could share. It was a late winter evening, cold and dark. I remember asking E, as we were walking to the bus stop, about what was ecstasy like. My main question was "how does it compare to weed?" The way I imagined it was, that it would be roughly the same, but stronger. I guess I thought I knew what being "high" meant, and that all drugs were just slight variations of that feeling, primarily in strength. E was confused by my question, and told me that ecstasy is nothing like weed. I disregarded his answer, and stuck to my view.
We arrive at the hotel5. We go in, and finally leave the coldness of the outside behind us. The check in was quick, and we get to our room. It was a small room, two single beds, and not much else. There were five of us: me, E, his girlfriend and two other girls I had met at E's birthday party. We took the pills, or actually, half a pill each, as that was all that he had. I was the only person there taking MDMA for the first time. To be fair, the other people weren't all that experienced either. We were barely adults. But I was met with lots of advice: chew gum, drink water, have a good time. Someone brought some fancy lights, so we turned off the room lights, and created a nice party atmosphere.
I remember the moment I finally felt it. I was sitting on one of the beds with my legs crossed, E and his girlfriend were sitting in front of me. I couldn't believe it - it was nothing like weed. I felt, so happy. Maybe happy is not the right word. I felt love. I never felt love this strong. I loved everyone, and felt loved by everyone, both in the room, and in the whole world. The girls had to stop me from texting all my family members how much I loved them6. Then a realization hit me - if ecstasy is nothing like weed, and E was right, that means every other drug is also nothing like weed. All the names of drugs I had heard from movies, songs and other media started floating around in my head. Cocaine, meth, speed, ketamine, DMT, mushrooms, LSD, whatever. In that moment, I decided that I wanted to try as many of them as I could. I wanted to feel all the different feelings. Experience all the different states they could bring in me.
We went dancing. The music was stupid, but I didn't care, it sounded so good. Being with people felt good. After a while our group kinda split into two: E and his girlfriend, and me and the girls. I don't remember exactly when this happened, but I remember we went outside for a smoke, and I told someone that in my head I had considered two options for this weekend: killing myself, or coming here. This memory is weird, it's unlike the rest of this story. It's not happy, but perhaps it is grounding to what life was actually like at the time. I was depressed.
Back inside. E and his girl are sitting on one of the beds, while I am on the floor opposite, with my back against a radiator. The two girls sit down on either side of me. They start touching me, my legs, my shoulders7. It felt so good8. But it wasn't just physically good. Like I said, I was depressed. I often felt rejected, I didn't have many friends. The relationships with girls that I had were pretty short, and there hadn't been that many of them. Suddenly, I'm living like a rock star. Two girls that I barely knew are feeling me up, and I am actually enjoying it. I'm not anxious about anything at all. Was this what life was like when you take drugs? Did all the people lie to me, when they said that drugs are bad? I don't feel like I am a danger to society, I don't even feel like I am a danger to myself. There's nothing bad about this. We actually spent quite a bit of time discussing this that night before9.
One of the girls, K, kissed me. I thought she had a boyfriend or something10? It didn't matter. The kiss felt good, and we started making out. Like a lot of making out. We sat down on the on the windowsill, behind the curtain, to get some privacy from everyone else in the room. I remember looking at the time on my phone, beginning to kiss her, and then looking again only after our lips parted. It had been a whole hour. By this point, we were all beginning to feel the drug wearing off, so I heard one more piece of advice from the group: drink hot water. Someone boiled a kettle11, and we all drank a cup of hot water. It was supposed to help the pill melt faster, and extend the duration of the effects12. The rest of the night me and K spent going out to the hallway to "admire the paintings", while we actually just sat on a couch outside the room, and made out. I'm honestly not sure if the drug was still having any effects. Maybe? It didn't really matter, as kissing still felt good, so we continued.
Overall, I'd say the experience lasted about 8 hours. I don't really remember how it ended, there's just a vague image of us all sitting in the room together again, talking. We did sleep in the hotel, but I do not remember the journey home the next morning. What I do remember, is not feeling hung over. I was warned that you can be very depressed the next morning after MDMA, but I was just fine13. I mean, not worse than usual. Maybe a little better? I had things to be excited about14. I did want more ecstasy, but I did not yet have a reliable source for it, so it would be almost a month until my next time.
1I counted.
2It's funny to introduce a character named 'E' in a story about MDMA, huh?
3It actually hadn't been released in the EU yet, so we had to download an APK from some shady website, but it worked. I believe we were the first people in our city to start playing the game. Apart from some person with the username Virbalas. I still remember seeing that name take over our gyms, as he was the only person who was higher level than us at the time.
4This was actually my favorite thing about the game. When it was at the peak of its popularity, if you saw someone outside on their phone, there was a 99% chance they were playing the game. I actually met quite a few people this way, but most of them I only talked to one or two times.
5It was a weird hotel. Standing on the outskirts of the city, it looked like this old soviet relic, both outside and inside. The main hall was this two story circular room, with doors to each room, and a huge staircase to the lower floor in the middle. The hall looked like it was fancy in the 80s, decorated with paintings, and plants. The walls were yellow, and the floors were covered in white tiles, white columns supporting the ceiling. It looked like something in between a hotel and a pool. Reminded me of those liminal spaces pictures you see online. It's not all that important to this story, but I just wanted to talk about what a bizarre place it was.
6I mean, it was probably the right call not to, but to this day, I am not sure if anything bad would have happened because of it. Later in life, I actually did do similar things, and it turned out alright. But yeah, this being my first experience, and like the first 5 minutes of the experience, it was probably the right call.
7I was never a fan of physical touch. I have memories from when I was a kid, where I cried because "dad touched me" or when I was a teen and got super angry at my mom for touching my back. I had been in a couple of relationships at this point, and they were physical. But still, until that moment, I wouldn't have considered myself a person who enjoyed being touched.
8I think this is one of the things that stayed with me from MDMA, even after I quit drugs. I always point to this exact moment, and say that it is when I started enjoying physical touch.
9I'm not sure how I feel about those thoughts and discussions now. On one hand, we were naive - drugs are not harmless. The world would not be a better place if everyone was high all the time. And lots of the things we said were so cliche, I can't help but cringe a little when I remember it. But I still think there is some unfairness in all of it. Even on that night, I felt like I was somehow judged by society for doing what I do. It's illegal, and I can't let anyone know about it. I can't let anyone know about what? That I am having a good time? That I love everyone? That, for what could possibly be the first time in my life, I feel loved?
10She kinda did, but they were going through a rough break up. And something she said later that night, stuck with me to this day:
The sanctity of my relationship is not your responsibility. It's mine. So you shouldn't care.
11I'm not sure if the kettle was in the hotel, or if someone had brought it.
12How does that work? Wouldn't melting the pill faster, make the effects wear off faster, even if they were stronger for a while?
13It later turned out that most of the bad effects of the drug do not happen the first time you take it. This gave me a false illusion of how innocent it was. Everything I heard about: the depression, the tiredness, the apathy to everything came a bit later.
14Me and K actually ended up dating. Not immediately after, she still had to go through that break up.