DOSE:
1 tablet
oral
MDMA
0.5 tablets
oral
MDMA
0.25 joints/cigs
smoked
Cannabis
BODY WEIGHT:
350 lb
[Trigger warning for frank, but hopefully empowering, discussions of body image, food, and weight.]
I am moved to write this report because the experience I'll describe has profoundly improved my life. I am reluctant to devote so many words to my own very narrowly focused observations, when I know that others can grasp and explain what matters far better than I can. That said, if someone out there is struggling in the same way I was (or loves someone who is) I offer this data point in the hopes that some small part of it might illuminate a step your journey of healing and growth. The amount of detail that I feel is necessary will probably make this report boring to most, but that is to be expected. Since I don't know which variables were essential to my healing, I'll try to present them all for future healers to identify which ones (if any) feel relevant to their situation.
Priors:
I am 30 years old, approximately male, and fat. This experience took place in the first few days of 2021, during a dark period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the almost-year of pandemic disruption, I had been making small steps towards breaking out of some entrenched routines. In terms of experiences, my roommates and I had been enjoying some lighthearted mushroom and LSD experiences, and spending lots of sober time supporting each other through various rough spots. We had been marching in protests, but still spending much of our energy on conventional work. I had been listening to an almost-constant stream of podcasts and news, but also listening to a few books. �Why Fish Don't Exist� by Lulu Miller and �The Overstory� by Richard Powers were both very meaningful to me and the ideas were very much rolling around in my head when this report starts. I had very rarely been listening to music. Concretely, my roommates and I had moved into a new house, I was in the process of quitting my high-stress job of 7 years, and was making attempts to connect more intentionally to friends and family.
For most of my life, I had been struggling with my relationship to my body and food. Philosophically, I was aware of and invested in the body positivity movement, but with the benefit of hindsight I recognize that my behaviors at the time matched the clinical definition of binge eating disorder exactly. While I only had a vague grasp of it at the time, in retrospect I see that the secrecy, shame, and constant body discomfort had been woven into every facet of my life. In general, I saw my life as rich and good. I was very aware of how lucky I was in so many ways, but I had grown largely disconnected from joy and pleasure.
Over the past 10 years, I had had maybe two dozen experiences with LSD and mushrooms, all with close friends in relatively controlled recreational settings. I found the experiences both enjoyable and meaningful, but always returned rather quickly to the material world. For a number of reasons, I often found myself in a plus two state, wishing I was in a plus three state, and the experience was tinged with a sense of yearning. I had tried MDMA once before with a friend, but only a very low dose was available, we both ended up having a plus/minus experience. I was a regular weed user, smoking maybe 1-2 joints per week and occasionally partaking in a 10mg edible on a weekend night. I don't think it matters, but for sake of science: I take 450 mg of magnesium daily, and no other baseline medications.
The Cast of Characters:
S is my best friend of 13 years, 9 of which we have spent cohabitating. We believe in saying �I love you� and our hair is slowly turning gray in unison.
M is another close friend, and roommate of 5 years. We've been slowly growing closer over our whole friendship. M is deaf, but usually communicates in English, largely by lip reading. None of the rest of us speak ASL, which is his other language.
J is a new roommate of 1 year, but and old friend of S's and we have quickly become close.
E & D are a couple and have been good friends of the whole 'family' for quite some time, they are frequent house guests. They are around 5 years younger than the rest of us, and have knowing artistic souls. E's pronouns are they/them, but when we met they went by she/her, so my perception of them includes the safety and power that I associate with being around feminine energy.
Everyone except for M and myself had fairly extensive experience with MDMA in recreational settings. I don't think any of us would identify as following any particular spiritual school, but we certainly all believed that life is meaningful and tried to live by an ethic. While we all had our own individual practices, and nurturing relationships with each other, I don't think any of us would consider ourselves to be experienced in any form of healing. None of my relationships with any of these folks had ever been sexual.
The Logistics:
After some time searching, we had finally come into a semi-reputable source for MDMA and bought a number of doses. We tested the material with reagents from DanceSafe, and while it was hard to be 100% certain differentiating among the Mdxx family, we felt confident that we had ruled out dangerous adulterants and it was probably MDMA. For the record, I have done more research after-the-fact, and the pills were as described in the PillReports.net entries for �Orange Reddit Cp� (ids 38458 & 38406). Because some of us were having a rough time emotionally, we put the tablets away to be used at a time when we were all in a good mindset. While I was out of town visiting family J, S, E, and D had an experience with this material and reported subjectively that it was �good� and �pretty strong.� E & D also took tablets that appeared to be the same material at another event and had very positive reports. Based on all this data, I feel fairly confident that the material is MDMA and I certainly wasn't worried about its identity at the time when I took it.
At dinner one night, this group concluded that we would all like to have an MDMA experience together, and scheduled a night. As the night came around, the COVID risk in our household had gotten somewhat elevated, and E & D determined that they were uncomfortable with the idea of being together, so we all agreed that it was not the right time. Nobody made the move to reschedule immediately, but we did plan a weekend together in a cabin to celebrate the new year. We didn't explicitly make a plan for drugs to be a part of the weekend, but we brought all of the options we had around in case inspiration struck.
On our first day at the cabin, we spent time outside exploring the property we had rented, hiking in the foothills, and tending to logistics like firewood and water. During the whole trip, D & S cooked most of our meals, and we ate and cleaned up as a family. E & D were planning to take January off of drinking alcohol, and S and I don't drink much anyway, so I didn't have more than an occasional beer with dinner. At night after everyone was asleep, I would graze on some snacks I had hidden away in my suitcase. This wasn't related to hunger, but in the spectrum of my eating habits, it was comparatively mild and harmless.
On the day of the drug experience, we woke up and ate breakfast, then drove into Sequoia National Park. We went on some short walks, saw the incredible trees, and played in the snow for a while. The sights were incredible as always, especially with the tree conscience of �The Overstory� still heavy on my mind, but the park was crowded, which was especially distracting with COVID safety in mind. I enjoyed our time, but didn't feel the kind of serene connection that draws me towards nature. I suspect the others felt similarly. On the way back, we stumbled across a rocky pool in the middle of a river. Very few people were there and we each got to have our quiet moment with the earth. I mostly sat, reflecting on the discipline of the water, the way the rocks bore witness to all the forces of the earth, and the ways that the formation was sure to change as time marched on. S, E, and D explored around the rocks in ways that would have felt stressful to me because my balance and reflexes aren't so sharp. I noticed some dark feelings of not being able to participate in their experience, but quickly remembered that for me, the experience I was having held more meaning anyway. After an hour or so, we proceeded back to the cabin and ate sandwiches.
The Experience (Finally!):
After some discussion of which drugs to take (we had mushrooms and MDMA for everyone, and E had a bit of LSD), S made the decision that she wanted to do MDMA because M and I had not experienced it. She thought we would like it, and I'd learned long ago to trust her judgment. I was very excited to try something new, if also a little apprehensive about this particular one. I associated MDMA with the rave and club scene, a place where I felt deeply unwelcome on account of my body. I knew that I loved mushrooms, and had some concern that MDMA's effects might be lost on me as a person who lived mostly in his mind, not in his body. I loved mushrooms, and had some concern that MDMA's effects might be lost on me as a person who lived mostly in his mind, not in his body.