DOSE: T+ 0:00	75 mg	oral	MDMA	(powder / crystals)
T+ 2:45		smoked	Cannabis
T+ 6:15	0.5 tablets	oral	Pharms - Lorazepam

BODY WEIGHT:

214 lb

For some context, I am a 23-year-old female living in the USA. I was always an awkward, cringey kid and never fully grew out of it, but my upbringing was well within acceptable parameters. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 8, and from around 13 onward I experienced moderate to severe depression until very recently. A few months after I graduated from university, I faced a significant personal tragedy, and less than a year later, I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (unrelated to the personal tragedy, obviously).

Before MDMA I had tried alcohol, marijuana, Adderall & Vyvanse (prescribed), caffeine, and psilocybin. I strongly dislike alcohol and caffeine makes me feel like I have a cold so I currently abstain from both. I smoke marijuana a few times a week and find that it greatly enhances my mood, alleviates my anxiety, and helps me think through problems from new angles. I took Adderall daily with no break for many years but now find the effects to be too intense. I am now prescribed Vyvanse for my ADHD which I take rarely due to difficulty relaxing during the day and insomnia at night. Since MDMA is a stimulant and I have a long track record of disliking stimulants I thought there was a chance I wouldn't enjoy it, but this was not the case.

My first "real" experience with drugs happened at the beginning of this year, 2024 with a series of psilocybin trips that I had planned for months beforehand. I read as much about the substance, preparation, and expected effects as I possibly could. I had also read lots of promising studies about the effects of psilocybin on improving depression symptoms, and long story short, it was very successful. I have come out of the experience with more energy and self-compassion, as well as a slew of new habits such as exercise, meditation, and eating healthy. But, that's all a story for another report. Basically, I was very impressed with what psilocybin had managed to do for me, and I found myself curious to see what other substances could help me with my problems.

My interest in MDMA began about a month ago when I read that it had been used in clinical trials to help ease social anxiety in people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This is a problem that has affected me strongly my whole life. I find it very difficult to let my guard down around others, and it usually takes me years to even start considering someone my "friend" (For example, on one occasion I asked someone I knew if we could be friends -- to my surprise he became very offended, saying, 'I thought we were friends this whole time!' I had known him for two years at that point!). I have also learned that as an autistic person I have "masked," a.k.a. hid my autistic traits from others, 24/7 for as long as I can remember. Apparently this is terrible for your mental health and can cause a whole host of mental health issues, but unmasking is much easier said than done, especially when it's become second nature. I've ended up with a painfully small circle of trusted people which consists of only my girlfriend and my mother, as well as a string of acquaintances I don't know how to act around.

One of these acquaintances is someone I wanted to "befriend" as we had a lot in common and he seemed like a safe person, but I sensed an invisible barrier preventing me from getting any closer to him and I couldn't figure out why it was there. Lucky for me, he is one of the few people I know who shares my interest in drugs, and when I told him about my plan to take MDMA he told me he happened to have a single ecstasy capsule lying around that he got for free along with a few tabs of acid that had since gone bad. He gave the capsule to me with no strings attached and said that if I liked the effects we could try it together at a later date. The MDMA was in the form of a clear capsule with white powder in it. I purchased a three-in-one test kit online and it turned out to be 100% pure MDMA.

Another reason I decided to take MDMA was that it amplifies your ability to analyze yourself. I had broken up with my girlfriend of 5 years just days before the experience, and my feelings about the decision were constantly changing. I couldn't decide if I'd made the right decision or not, let alone why I even did it in the first place. All I knew was that something felt very wrong, I had a vague idea of what it was, and I felt I needed to leave immediately. My friend and I decided, with his consent, that he would trip-sit me and listen to my musings on my ex-relationship. I didn't do much to prepare for the MDMA experience in the days leading up to it, aside from reading up on the potential side effects. I admittedly was very much looking forward to the "euphoric" effect it has, as I was in a less-than-stellar mental state due to the breakup. Many people suggested taking supplements like ALA, magnesium, and 5-HTP, but I decided not to buy any. They were expensive, I'm skeptical of the usefulness of supplements in general, and I was pretty sure the dose I had was small enough not to cause any major issues.

The day of the roll I started fasting at 11:30 AM and hadn't eaten anything since. When I arrived at my friend's place I set up a milligram scale I had bought and weighed the contents of the capsule, which came out to about 75mg. In retrospect, I probably lost a little powder in the testing process. I was disappointed that the dose was less than 100g, which was a more "standard" dose from what I'd read, and considering my above-average weight and size I thought it would have little to no effect. Thankfully, I ended up being wrong. I knew I couldn't get the powder back into the capsule so I scraped it off the scale into my water bottle, swirled it around a little, and drank it. There was still some left on the scale which I ended up licking off in an act of brazen desperation. It had a very strong chemical taste that's hard to describe, but it wasn't as bad as I'd read online. We sat on the couch, put on some music, and waited for it to kick in, if at all.

I took the dose at around 5:45 PM. I didn't start feeling anything until 20 minutes later at 6:05 when I felt a subtle shift in my state of consciousness. I felt my heart rate rise noticeably, but not enough to concern me. My face also felt a little flushed. I felt antsy, like I wanted to move around, so I used the bathroom and we went out for a walk at a popular lakeside spot that he lived close by. I noticed I had become very chatty, and once we had left the building I started talking about the contents of my childhood diary, and how a lot of what I wrote was surprisingly cruel. We talked about how kids can be assholes for no reason, and I concluded that the more sharp-edged side of me helped me filter out potentially harmful people, so it wasn't a totally bad quality to have.

By the time we got to the lake at around 6:15 the world around me started to feel very different. It was an unseasonally warm, sunny Friday, and the lake was packed with people. Everyone seemed like they were having a great time and were happy to be there. I usually feel stressed out in crowds, but they didn't bother me at all this time. Everything I saw had a "shining" quality to it , like I was in a postcard (I remember commenting, "I feel like I'm in the Windows XP background"). We walked by a woman playing the violin for tips, and I noticed I had a huge Truman Show grin on my face, just thinking about how beautiful it was and how much the sound resonated with me. I was aware that I was on drugs and that MDMA has very, uh, distinct effects, so I tried to hide my excitement a little but didn't do a very good job of it. I also noticed that there was a "wavy tunnel" effect in the center of my vision which I experience when I take other stimulants as well.

I talked about my relationship with my ex and started thinking about the memories we'd shared, her face, and all the qualities she had, good and bad. We came to a bench facing the water, and the sky was shining beautifully. Everywhere I went things had a perfectly choreographed movie-like quality to them. At this point, I was hit by the weight of the end of my five-year relationship, and the sadness and grief started to flow freely. In the days before I felt like I was suppressing these feelings, but on MDMA the floodgates had opened. I cried what felt like the best cry I'd had in years. I crumpled over and leaned on his shoulder and sobbed, talking about how difficult our last year together had been and all the tragedies that had befallen us. I expressed how I still loved her strongly and how, for all her faults, she was a wonderful, caring partner, and how that only made things even more confusing. I talked about my codependency, and how at the end of our relationship it had gotten so bad that I no longer knew who I was, what I liked, what I wanted, or what attributes I had. I felt like I had melted into her and only thought about her, all day, every day. I felt like I wasn't living my own life, but rather I was spectating hers, and this was the internal experience that had driven me to break up with her, seemingly out of nowhere, because I lacked the courage to tell her about all the problems I had. Codependency became a major theme of our conversation that night, as this is something my friend also experiences. I felt like I had made a breakthrough in understanding myself and my former relationship.

It's also interesting to note that in my friendship with this guy, I'd often find myself feeling awkward because we were a man and a woman who were each attracted to the opposite sex. As much as I love being friends with men and at times prefer their company, I get very anxious thinking about gender expectations, as if there's some silent rule that a man and a woman can't be friends without secretly wanting to bone each other. Before I took the MDMA we had an agreement of "friendly touch only," which we both stuck to the whole time with no issues. Even when we hugged or he let me cry on his shoulder, I didn't feel the invisible barrier of discomfort that was usually present. I felt like I was able to trust him in a way that I was unable to before, and that there was no gender boundary separating us. He wasn't a "man," but rather, "just a fellow human being." I really enjoyed feeling the gender boundary dissipate, and wish I could feel that way all the time.

I was still "rolling" once we started walking back. I was speaking much more eloquently than usual, as though I were drunk but with an uplifting effect instead of a nauseating downer effect. Everything that was happening felt like exactly what was supposed to be happening at that very moment. The emotional experience was also deeply moving in a way that's hard to express with words. I was experiencing the same feeling that I had back in high school when I found out the first boy I was ever seriously in love with liked me back and he asked me out. MDMA gave me those very same feelings of deep joy, self-assuredness, beauty, and bliss, all of which were reflected in the scenes around me. I saw joy in the people around us and assumed they were happy to be there, which was notable because I usually have a very cynical view of strangers, assuming that everyone else is as miserable and uncomfortable as I am. Some people asked my friend to take a photo of them, and I felt very comfortable making friendly conversation with them, asking where they were from and such. We walked into a liquor store where my friend bought booze for himself and I was desperately tempted to ask the cashier what it's like working at a liquor store by a popular tourist spot downtown, if he really enjoyed it, and what job he'd rather be doing, if any, but I held my tongue. I suspect on a higher dose I may be more open to talking to strangers, but I was still very self-conscious about seeming like I'm on drugs and making anyone else uncomfortable.

By the time we'd gotten back to his place, it was around 8:00, which surprised me as it felt like it hadn't been that long. I think I was peaking at this point. Surprisingly, what we talked about for the rest of the night was a toxic relationship he'd had with a former situationship. She was someone we knew mutually and I considered her to be a very toxic, even dangerous person. I probably spent 1/2 of my roll telling my friend in no uncertain terms that this person was using him, had a track record of using countless other people, and that he'd be far better off removing her from his life altogether. I was surprised by the persuasive power I had! I spoke to him about this very passionately, as this was another "block" that had prevented me from getting closer to him -- the fact that he was being used by a dangerous person, and that I couldn't be sure that he wouldn't spill my secrets to her if she said the right words to him. By the way, by "dangerous" I don't mean "subjectively bad" -- I mean, this was someone who I think is a real-life psychopath who had assaulted people in our friend group before, and had used me and my girlfriend for nefarious purposes in the past. I feel like on MDMA I managed to broach this subject with a perfect balance of tact and honesty, and by the end of the night he seemed to have changed his mind about her, and told me I'd given him "a lot to think about." Of course, there is the possibility that I could have made him uncomfortable or pushed too hard, but given how eloquent I was and how I seemed to sense how he was feeling, I think this had a good effect and it definitely brought us closer together.

At around 8:30, I decided to smoke some weed from my vape, as I'd heard that doing so keeps the conversation flowing. My feelings of euphoria had diminished slightly, but the conversational effects continued as I continued smoking until around midnight. We continued talking about anything and everything, and we listened to some music, which, maybe due to the low dose, didn't sound any better than it usually does. By the time I went to bed on his couch at midnight the effects of the MDMA had probably ended a few hours ago, but I still felt a little strung out. I took half of an Ativan as well, but sleep was rough that night, and I probably ended up getting 3 hours of quality sleep. I packed up my things, said goodbye, and headed back home.

The morning after the MDMA I experienced some afterglow effects, feeling a little more pep in my step, but the two days after that I felt I had fallen back into a state of depression. Although, I think this may be because I was in a negative headspace before the experience due to the breakup, and I was just settling back into how I was feeling before, which, compared to the feeling of literal first love in a pill capsule, was pretty shitty. In the following days I did a lot of journaling about the thoughts that came up during the experience, and I felt that the MDMA had helped me process my situation and gave me new insight into my traits and those of my ex-partner. Since then (this was all about a week ago as of writing this), I have decided to get back together with my ex-girlfriend and try to make things work with her. As for my friend, I feel much closer to him than I did before, like I've met someone who I can really trust. The "invisible barrier" is no longer there. During the roll we also agreed to never date or have sex, and he agreed, so that worry is out of the way as well. Men and women can, indeed, just be friends!

Overall, MDMA is probably my favorite drug that I've tried so far, as the combination of truly euphoric emotions and insight it provided culminated in an experience unlike anything I've had before. I will note, however, that ever since taking it I have found myself praising it maybe a little too much, and have been daydreaming about the next time I'll take it. Thankfully I have a strong sense of moderation when it comes to these things (and I also don't know how to buy more), but I can see how someone could develop a habit of taking it too frequently, especially if you're using it to cope with ongoing negative feelings. Too bad you can have "too much of a good thing." I think next time I take it I will aim for a dose of 120-150g to produce a proper "roll," and take it at a music event. I'll see if my new friend wants to join me!

Exp Year: 2024	ExpID: 118056
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: Nov 13, 2024	Views: 15
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MDMA (3) : Relationships (44), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), First Times (2), Various (28)