Oxygen Thief

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.