Ecstasy

Have you ever taken Ecstasy? Is that what they call “Molly”? I never have, never wanted to, figured I never would, but now I’m wondering.

I have a friend living in the boonies far away from here who mentioned that he’d sure like to get some, had been looking online, found that most of it was from Amsterdam, but how can you trust that a drug is as advertised when it comes from the dark web, the regular web, or even from some guy who says he has some?

(Is Ecstasy what I need? Is it like an acid trip where you don’t freak out, because all my psychedelic experiences were freak outs, bad trips man, back in the seventies when I was in my twenties. Whether it was Peyote, mushrooms, mescaline, or LSD, I just wanted them to end, and I finally realized why: If you don’t like and/or accept yourself the “mind-expanding” drugs intensifies that feeling so I didn’t enjoy the experiences and just wanted to come down and go to sleep.) 

I didn’t take his request seriously, had no idea where to find it, but when he mentioned it again a month or so later I decided to ask around. None of the few friends I asked had that connection although one, who knows lots of people, said he had a stash of some six-year-old stuff. He was saving it to take with his child bride, okay, she must be thirty by now, at the Northern Lights music festival this summer and said I really should go. Umm, right, well, I’ll go with you and Jenny maybe I said, and he said sure, but wouldn’t give up any of his stash for my friend marooned in a cold red state under six feet of snow.

Drugs scare me, when I told him I’d ask around I mentioned that if it ends up having Fentanyl in it then it could be the last goodbye, who knows?

After a week or so I struck out and gave up, but then I saw a friend in the parking lot with his fake arm candy, his woman friend thirty years younger than him, drinking coffee and talking and watching the girls go by. (Old guys like us like to have at least one young woman to hang out with, why? I dunno, keeps us young? Gives us hope? She was in her mid-forties and seemed like a lot of fun, whereas my pet Millennial was usually stressed out and not very upbeat, but Boomers can’t be choosers, right? She does loosen up sometimes after we drink a glass of wine, smoke a joint, and then sometimes we’ll dance around on the deck.) 

I had a flash and said to her, “Hey, you seem like a ‘with-it’ kinda gal, do you know where I can get some Ecstasy? It’s not for me, I don’t want to do it, it’s for a friend.” 

“Sure!” she said, and started telling about an experience she had recently: her Ecstasy stash had been mixed in with her vitamins in her purse and she took it by mistake. It was about ten times the normal dose, she was “knocked on her ass,” and sweated profusely all day. 

She called a friend who came by to check on her and wanted to take her to the hospital when her eyes started rolling up into her head, but then she threw up most of it and recovered. (I tried to make a joke about maybe just sending my friend her urine to drink and she said she could have bottled up her sweat instead.)

“We’ll give you the ‘bro deal,’” my friend said, which was interesting because when I asked him weeks ago if he knew anyone with X he had said no, which is typical as he’s never willing to put himself out unless there’s something in it for him. 

“Okay, great!” I said. “I’ll ask him how much he wants to spend and get back to you.” I called him up to go over the details, he was elated that I had found some.

“Do you know how much a gram costs?” I asked. He wasn’t sure but his online research had come up with about a hundred bucks. He wanted $500 worth and I had no idea how much that was, how many trips, sessions, or whatever they call it, doses?

“Okay, I’ll put it out there so they know what they’re dealing with,” I said. “Don’t get too excited, these things can fall through at any moment.” He said he understood completely and I made the call, ordered the stash, and a few days later met them at the parking lot to make the exchange, as the money order made its way down from the cold snowy North.

I took the small brown grocery bag over to my car, opened it up and looked at it, and just then two cop cars rolled in and parked. They went into the store to shop or apprehend a shoplifter and I found two white chunks in the plastic bag, one large and the other small. 

I went back to their car and said, “Did you look at it? It’s two solid chunks.”

“No, I didn’t see it,” she said. “It’s very pure, make sure you tell him.”

“You can tell it hasn’t been stepped on when it’s like that,” my friend said.

“How do I store it?” I asked. 

“Probably a cool place, up in a closet would be best,” she said.

I took the stuff home and waited for the money to arrive, wondering if I should send it all up there and be done with it or keep the small chunk for, I dunno, party favors for visitors? Gifts for friends? Or what if I took an Ecstasy trip myself? Could it change my life? (I had been going through some high anxiety and wondering if I could tear down my life and start over.)

The money arrived, I seal-a-mealed the Ecstasy, put it in an envelope between two books, put a fake return address on the package, and shipped it off. I had told my friend that all the risk would be his if the money or the stuff got lost in transit and he readily agreed. Then we waited.

* * *

I got the call a week later: he had taken too much. He hadn’t believed me when I said it was pure, so used to stepped and stomped on drugs, although it had been years since he had taken anything like that.

He had a scale, carefully measured out eighty milligrams of powder from the bottom of the bag, even subtracting the weight of the mini bag, and swallowed the capsule. After about forty-five minutes he felt nausea in his stomach, which was to be expected he said, and the lights started to get a heightened glow. He could feel the amphetamine beginning to kick in and was beginning to enjoy the effects of Ecstasy, or MDMA. 

He took a drug which I had just seen featured on “60 Minutes” and “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver, which showed people using it to help deal with PTSD, alcoholism, and other psychological issues, often with a couple therapists watching over and guiding the subjects (all men, incidentally) carefully through the experience. 

He was groovin’, listening to music and watching videos in his comfortable chair, very cold outside, and after an hour and a half he decided to take another eighty milligrams. Big mistake. (I never look at any screens when high, already on a powerful drug, usually weed, why would I want another one blaring at me?) 

It was much too strong, knocked him on his ass for the rest of the night and he could barely move, just waited for the effects to wear off. His roommate came into his lair, his man cave, to check on him, asked if he needed anything, and he told her he had taken too much but he’d be okay. (I wondered why he had taken more when it was going well, and it reminded me of the coke days in the eighties: more more more, the sweet seduction of the white powder.)

His hangover lasted two days, on the second day he stayed in bed all day recovering, it kept snowing, and the roof was in danger of collapsing. On the third day he felt like cancelling his appointment for major dental surgery but knew he had to go through with it, having finally found a dentist he could relate to. 

For two hours he sat there still hungover as ten teeth were pulled, the dentist scraped away a lot of infection from his jaw, gave him oxycontin and antibiotics, and encouraged his plan of going to Mexico to get implants when he could afford it. (He had also been wondering if the infection had contributed to his disturbing dreams.)

A codger of nearly seventy, he never did get to the ecstatic/lovey feeling, doesn’t know if he’s even able to any more, has plans for further experimentation, and recommends a very small dose with this particular batch. 

When I finally confessed that I’d kept a small chunk of the rock he was glad to hear it. “Just make sure you get a milligram scale and only take forty mg to start,” he said. “Tell your friends again thanks so much, it’ll last me the rest of my life.”

So now I have my accidental stash and don’t plan on taking any but ya never know, it could affect my life in a positive way, or mess me up for good.