This is the report of how a trip went absolutely wrong, and absolutely right. As a foreword: It was my second time taking MDMA, and my boyfriend's first time. I'm a daily cannabis user, I've taken speed. He doesn't smoke weed, or do drugs, but has a high alcohol tolerance.
7pm: We drop in a park. We're planning to do it in two doses: first 100mg, then 50mg later. The first capsule is swallowed. Excitement. We're with my best friend, a seasoned tripper. So we start shooting the shit. We walk to a giant ceramic lizard and sit there, watching the sun set.
7.15pm: My boyfriend's mother calls him, as I'm starting to feel the very first effects of the come up. We have to go see her, and take care of her rats while she's gone for a half hour to get groceries. I start panicking, but as I don't want to ruin his first time I say I'll come with him. As we walk into his apartment, it's about 7.45 pm, and I'm starting to come up. He still doesn't know. I'm freaking out at this moment, but keeping it together. I talk to his mother for 15 minutes, then as I start to lose it, we go into his room. I'm holding a rat. He's awfully, awfully soft. It's beautiful. I sit down on his bed, and feel heat radiating from the rat radiate into me. A few minutes later, we leave his place because he's starting to feel the effects and he gestures to me he can't talk to his mother in such a state.
I'm starting to come up really hard by now and I use up my last shreds of straightness to tell his mother that we'll be back late and to have a nice evening. As I'm walking down the stairs, I can feel every step resound in the staircase as if it was a cathedral, every footstep melding with the building. I tell my boyfriend I'm starting to feel it, and by now, so is he.
8.30pm: We get to the concert venue to meet up with our friends. This is where it starts to get hectic. We're dancing to acidcore, and I decide to take my second dose, as I want this trip to be intense at this point in time. I tell my boyfriend, and he says he's going to take his second dose. I try to dissuade him, as he's rolling pretty hard at this point. 'Are you sure you want to do this? You might want to wait.' He takes the second dose. We dance. We dance. One with the music, one in the wall of sound, head in the soundbox, the light hitting our eyes like so many glimmering rays. He's hugging his best friend, who has a hard time believing he actually took MDMA. He tells me he's feeling the 'universal love'. 'I'm so happy, so happy, it's all beautiful.' I'm enjoying my roll as well, but I feel calm, subdued. We go downstairs to smoke a joint. We chain-smoke. I have second thoughts about passing him the joint as he isn't used to smoking. Suddenly, he turns to me.
9.15pm: 'I feel sick. Can we go outside.' We go outside, and he's shaking, he says he feels everything. And everything feels like too much. He starts to retch, and says he wants to vomit. I ask him to describe everything he's feeling to me, to get it off his mind. After a few minutes, he calms down, and he tells me he's really been opened up to the beauty of the world, talking about the two sides of a single coin he's feeling, that the bad of this trip showed him the beauty of it.
We stay sitting down as he's rolling too hard to want to move, he's just nodding his head along the the sounds, looking everywhere, like a small child. We call his best friend to tell him he's fine, and we tell him we're really thankful, and he's a good friend. My friends come up to us, and we all sit outside enjoying the fresh air while smoking another joint. At this point, my boyfriend is still rolling too hard, and he's just in the moment. He tells me he feels the present, is in the present, and as I see him I hope he's happy and his friends won't blame me for his bad trip, and he seems to read my mind and says he doesn't regret it. We lose sight of our friends, as I stay with him because he's still too high. A guy in a white panama comes up to us and gives him a block of sugar. He's chewing on his bubble gum harder than ever. My teeth are grinding, but I only had one piece of chewing gum, and he needed it much more than me. Absolutely manic experience. Absolutely psychotic.
12am: It's midnight by now. We've come back inside, dancing. I'm starting to come down slowly. We go lie down on a slope that's covered by metal grills that have hot air coming from underneath them. We look at the sky, and the stars. As we let our eyes relax, it seems to be forming patters in the visual snow, spirals and the such. The air feels warm. I hold his hand, and it feels like where his hand is, there's an empty space in my fingers, and that it's part of both him and me. I walk him home.
1.30am: I am sitting on my windowsill, smoking a joint. Still coming down. He tells me he's made it home fine, and I look up at the stars and observe the remainders of the visuals. I think back on the trip with a new outlook. I feel exhausted mentally, but I feel refreshed, like coming out of a pool on a clear summer day. A memorable day.