dirty pills: "trip" report

[ramjet]

SWIM went to a top gig with some really inspired music the other night. It was in a small, but cosy, psychedelic room full of friendly people who were just there to enjoy some music, find some new friends and have a good party. The only thing that slightly ruined it for SWIM were these shark pills he had. In case anyone is around in the West Midlands and gets any sharks I would probably recommend against taking them. I say "probably" because they weren't duds: they were fairly strong, but SWIM is fairly sure they didn't contain much MDMA. The only reason SWIM took them in the first place was that he saw the dealer take some the night before. Report as follows -

Dose: 2 1/2 pills (unknown substances). One at 8.30pm, one at 11.00pm and half at 12.00am

other substances: steady drinking from 12.30pm - about 3 pints, 2 double JD and cokes and a coctail.

setting: small, prviate venue, mixture of breakbeat, eletro old-school funk, disco and hip-hop, good vibe (Bill Brewster and Soul Mechanik), several friends around as well as friendly strangers.

Report: NB SWIM’s timings may be inaccurate given that SWIM wasn’t exactly sober at the time. SWIM came up fairly shortly after taking the pills at about 8.30pm. The buzz was quite nice, not side splitting euphoria, but feeling elated, energetic and like he wanted to dance. By 11:00 we were in the club and I had necked my next pill. SWIM was feeling slightly strange, definitely buzzing, but alos slightly uncomfortable and I had developed a horrible feeling in his stomach, pressure in my head and knotty, dry throat. SWIM couldn’t really describe it other than that his body felt like it had been contaiminated by dodgy chemicals. The feeling reminded him very much of medium-high levels of BZP (I’m sure there was at least SOME MDMA, but there could well have been BZP in there to, as well as . . . well who knows, read on).

Still, the high and the energy were there so he made the most of it and danced for several hours, with nice thoughtful friends supplying him with water. The other strange thing was that despite really needing drink, SWIM felt it extremely hard to drink anything. He had to force it down. The other pill kicked in about 12:00 and fuelled SWIM’s dancing spirit. SWIM necked the other half at 12:00am. He stopped for a break at about 1:45am and after then dancing was intimitent until he finally set off home at around 5:00am with a good friend who was staying with him, and the DJs girlfriend, who had had an argument with her bloke and wante somewhere to crash.

By 3:00am it was becoming quite difficult to maintain the momentum and SWIM was feeling pretty uncomfortable. SWIM’s muscles were aching, he was sweating a bit (nothing abnormal) and still had that feeling in the back of his throat and stomach. SWIM was retaining a .lot of water, because he desperately wanted to pee, but couldn’t for a while. Doesn’t seem so strange yet right? Well, SWIM went to the toilet to have a piss at one point and he noticed the distinct presence of hallucinogens. He should have noticed it earlier: his phone was a colourful, smudged, glowing pastel like colour. The urinal and the wall were definitely breathing (this was around 3:00am, I think).

The real fun started when I got home. From 5:30am SWIM and his friend were in fits of histerics. By 6:00am, following the smoking of a spliff, he had some really quite powerful hallucinations. They were unlike the halluinations he was used to with mushrooms: much more wavey. His wall is full of spectaculr photography and trippy modern art. He has this picture of a man jumping a large puddle, but the picture captures him mid-jump. It is a 1930s setting with 1930s cars and buildings in the background. The picture itself was moving around in waves like crazy: a bit like a flag blowing in the wind (in fact everything was doing this). The randrops in the puddle were moving about, the cars were moving along the road, the whole picture was coming out of its frame like a 3D moive, the trees were blowing in the wind and the lampost was moving backwards and forwards like it was made of plasticine. SWIM’s other posters were just as strange: a lonely man standing in a square was walking towards me and his shadow moving accordingly and the moon in another picture was going full cylce as the sky twinkled and glowed like the aurora borealis.

SWIM watched this crazy shit and philophised with friend about whether the guy in the picture was going to make it or not, before finally going to bed. SWIM felt like utter shit. Certainly with clean MDMA his comedowns are usually fairly gentle, even pleasurable, and greatly assisted by the smoking of weed. Took him a couple of days to fully recover.