August 28, 2005
Titsup!
The night out at Ministry claimed another casualty: the South West Four festival.
As soon as we started to recover from Ministry, Noriko, SJ, Hideko, Stephen, Dave and his brother Stephen and I all met up in the J pub in Soho. It's not a real Japanese pub - there are no such things - but it is full of Japanese, mainly given its proximity to two Japanese supermarkets, several Japanese restaurants and Piccadilly Circus. We go there principally because it's cheap, as are my friends; the eye-candy is always disappointing. Anyway, we met up there and talked about the comedown in action, which seemed particularly severe for all concerned: many of us had night sweats and interrupted sleep, difficulty getting to sleep and lethargy during the day. Of course, the infamous black tide was present, suffocating the poor cormorants of joy. I talked to Dave about SW4, and he obviously wanted it intellectually, but it was too soon to be enthusiastic about anything.
He bottled it. He called me on Thursday and said he was going camping, and that his body was telling him not to do any more drugs for a long while. Of course I was disappointed, but after Ministry I didn't want to do any drugs myself, and honestly how else does one survive a 17 hour dance music festival. Noriko also bottled it. She had bought tickets for her and Yoko, her clubbing friend from Tokyo, but Yoko couldn't get the standby flight tickets she wanted. Norichan's having visa and money problems so she didn't think she'd be able to enjoy herself and really didn't want a comedown like last time to add the her problems. With my clubbing friends dropping like flies and with the night out at Ministry having really taken the fire out of my desire to go at all, I was seriously tempted to flake myself, and fuck the 40 quid. My problem was that George's friend Chris was coming down from Norfolk, and I'd hyped the idea massively to him, sold him on it and promised him a big one. I really didn't feel I could let him down so I kept schtum about my misgivings and arranged to meet him there.
Now it turns out that Chris, who'd just got back from Tokyo where he spent an incredible couple of clubbing weekends with George, was feeling much the same way. He'd been on a 2 day drug binge which left him feeling pretty shaky. I think if he or I had told each other in advance about how we felt, we'd probably have called the whole thing off. But we didn't and so we arranged to meet at the festival's day party. Also along was the recently-discovered-to-be-not-actually-unstoppable trybius and Annie, colleague Nik and Sarah and another girl, who may have been called Sanice or Shanice or Gary Sinise, who took care of Nori and Yoko's evening party tickets. I really enjoyed the day party: the atmosphere was very cool, lots of people were dressed up there was of course dancing everywhere and the rain held off all day.
As the afternoon rolled on we had some more nitrous (9MB) and then it was time for Zabiela (6MB). I really like James Zabiela's recorded stuff, and his live mixes that I've got rock, but he's never really done it for me in person. There's always a sense of something crucial missing, possibly the low end. His mixing is very clever and subtle and innovative, but the tunes simply don't cut it. It was the same again this time, although a pissed up twat stamping on a piss bottle sending it jetting all over my legs didn't help at all. Amazingly, i was wearing trousers with detachable bottoms! After Zabiela, the master: Digweed. John Digweed is without a doubt an incredible DJ. I was yet to drop but it just wasn't an issue - the guy's choice of music is jaw-droppingly good. It makes me wonder to what extent the mass market for pills is supporting a clubbing industry full of mediocre DJs, because there aren't very many DJs I'd happily dance to straight. Digweed definitely qualifies.
With an hour of Digweed to go, I dropped a couple of weak pills, enough to get me rolling and up for Sasha, who also definitely qualifies. I met up with Chris and dived back into the crowd for Digweed. As he finished, I started to come up and my evening started to go to the dogs. I came up, but without any joy at all. No warmth, love, anything. I just felt a bit mashed. I didn't want to dance because my legs were jelly and I couldn't sit down easily because I was in the middle of a massive crowd. I made my way out of the crowd, and so unfortunately missed the majority of Sasha, but by then I was seriously thinking I should turn back and not press on. After the show was over, we made our way out and I decided to leave Chris in my friend's hands and head home. The idea of getting really mashed held zero appeal, and it was only loyalty to a friend that had kept me in the game at all.
I went home, feeling a little wired, sexual but not especially happy. Around 2am I learned that Olly had had another blood pressure spike after doing a bit of MDMA powder, so he, too, decided to call it a day. Nik and the girls, non-druggies all, also gave it up around then, leaving Chris coming up alone in Brixton Academy. Poor guy. I let him know he could come back (and what bus to take) if things weren't going well but he stuck it out and turned up at 6:40am, wired and happy. It turns out he'd basically just sat in the balcony and zoned out for most of the night. Without anyone to dance with there had been no real impetus to get up and groove, and I suspect his recently chemical abuse in Tokyo is probably responsible for a large part of the pilled-up lethargy. It would've been me if I'd been there, and I'm very glad I wasn't. It would've been awesome to see Sasha and Digweed back to back in a club, because out on the Common had not been the ideal place to enjoy them, but the reward would've been nowhere near enough to pay for the chemical intake. I can easily take pills and put on the stereo if I want to sit down and listen to music on my own! Hmmm... there's an idea - it's been a while since I did that!
August 16, 2005
Overexcited
Having not been clubbing since Black Strobe in May, I was super excited to be going to Ministry of Sound for Nastydirtysexmusic last Saturday. I got the double CD, bought the tickets, told my friends, arranged the pre-club meet, assigned the correct amount of medical assistance to the various people coming and printed off the right number of concessionary flyers, saving us £75 as a group. I was pumped, jittery, and tremendously excited to be going out. My mistake was to feel the responsibility for people having a good time. I should have just taken them to the club and let them get on with it.
When I took my pills, I was so nervous I didn't even notice the effect. I took one, then one again after 30 minutes, as is my usual tactic. Then on one hour I noticed the usual light feeling in my legs but 30 minutes later still no rush, no feeling of empathy and warmth. My girlfriend was hit hard with her pill and couldn't stand up, but I was just agitated. I took another. Then I took 150mg of MDMA, but still nothing. I took another pill and went to dance anyhow. By now it was too late, and I'm not sure what order things happened in for the rest of the night, but I was sweating profusely and dancing nonstop. I was obviously up but something in my head hadn't clicked and I kept taking the drugs. another 100mg MDMA and a few more pills; the final count was six and a half pills and 250mg of the powdered stuff, which anyone will tell you is basically about 3 times what you need to have a very good time.
I had a very good time! My friend trybius had a less good time than me: around 4am he started feeling a bit off, with tingling lips and numb fingers. Inspecting his fingers he noticed cuts appearing on them, which I would probably have put down to excessive visuals, but he's got a wealth of drug experience and knows when things aren't right, so he borrowed 20 quid from me and got a taxi to hospital with his gorgeous and highly competent girlfriend. By the time he got there his hands were blue and he couldn't see any veins anywhere on his hands or arms. He said to the triage nurse, "I've taken 125mg MDMA, 3 pills and a quarter of a gram of speed." She wrote it all down, and asked, "Have you been drinking?" He doesn't like doing depressants and stimulants at the same time, and told her he hadn't. She wrote down, "Denies drinking."
It turned out his blood pressure, which is pretty high most of the time, was just about orbital, and his heart was also beating and insanely fast rhythm. They attempted to rehydrate him but couldn't bring a vein up anywhere on his arms. The doctor looked him up and down and he said, "You're not sticking that thing anywhere except my fucking arm!" They found a vein in the end. He was in work yesterday and doing OK.
And so begins the comedown, when the slightest little things are either frustrating, annoying, hurtful, scary, infuriating, depressing or just about any other emotion deprived of a shred of positivity. Sunday was OK: me and mine moped about my house, worn out and feeble. I live on the 3rd floor of a block of flats and climbing the stairs after we went out to get some fruit was very hard. I mostly just slept, but when I sat up I found myself comfortably hunched in a ball. It was odd to experience such a gross physiological after-effect, and reminded me of my University study: it is possible to diagnose certain types of brain damage from the postures, expressions or mannerism people exhibit, and here I was exhibiting a very unusual posture myself as a result of altered brain chemistry.
Sunday night I slept OK, but yesterday evening I managed about 10 minutes of frisbee with a friend before sitting down. Last night wasn't too good; I had the chemical sweats and vivid unfulfilled sex dreams, including a girl who was alternatively black and caucasian depending on which scene of the dream it was, and what's more when she was black she was twins. Another girl wanted to have sex very much but on approach she turned out to be menstruating so profusely I couldn't bring myself to carry on with it.
I got into work today to find 6 days of emails from one of the more important team members had arrived all at once. This was incredibly annoying. I couldn't be arsed to read them and I hope they're not important.