An Ecstatic Discovery

Life-altering realizations catalyzed through MDMA and friendship

Photo by Ahmed Ashhaadh on Unsplash

June 2020, sometime between the first and second Covid lockdown, Alex is sitting for my intentional MDMA session. We are super nerds about it. I’m sitting in bed, leant against a triangle pillow. Alex is facing me on the couch across the room. I have a psychedelic journey playlist on in the background, but it’s annoying me more than it soothes.

I also have an audio recorder running beside me. As the MDMA comes on, my calm, simply decorated bedroom slowly begins to feel brighter. The plain white walls gently glow, as though they were connected to a light-dimming switch that someone was sliding up. I’m feeling mildly enthusiastic about this act of just sitting in my bed, looking around my room, and also a little nervous that something unpredictable is about to happen, and Alex is about to witness it.

I’m not sure how exactly it starts to happen, but I start telling her the story of my life, from as far back as I can remember. Nubs of threads connected to memories I haven’t accessed for a long time feel they’re ready to be tugged at. And when I do, I find I’m able to put words to them when before they existed only as images, impressions, and emotions in me.

I tell Alex about the years in my childhood when my family had just immigrated to Canada from China. About how it was to arrive in a new country as a six-year-old with my mother, reuniting with my father who’d been gone since I was four. My first impressions of The West. Remembering a time when I didn’t speak English.

A memory arises about how a small incident involving me hiding my pink-striped toothpaste from my newly-arrived-from-China grandparents resulted in one of the worst shamings I ever received from my mother. How this action of me wanting to keep something of my own for myself was seen as me not being welcoming to my grandparents. How I was not permitted to have this kind of boundaries with family members.

One memory connects to another. The toothpaste incident connects to me remembering how when my grandparents began living more permanently with us, my parents, then beginning to integrate with English-speaking Canadian culture, were pulled back into the traditional Chinese culture we’d left behind. How my parents stopped going out to their English-speaking friends’ homes because they had to bring the grandparents with them every time they went out. How they slowly began only spending time with their Chinese friends because with them, everyone in the family could have a place to be. How this slowly kept them from fully integrating into Canadian society.

The stories travel between different chapters of the past. The most recent suicide attempt made by my grandmother in our home. Me finding her in the basement. Calling 911. Counting her breaths while on line with the triage nurse. Translating for everyone when the first responders arrived. Sitting in the ambulance. Giving the police report. Discussing intubation with the ICU team. Watching my family scramble to give support to my grandfather, but none to my parents, my sister, or to me.

Alex listens quietly on the couch as the words pour forth. I’m present to the curious feeling of never having told any of these stories to anyone, much less all together. Incredulous laughs bubble out from me as I hear myself share these experiences - such unbelievable things that if I hadn’t lived them myself, it would be easier to imagine it was fiction. I notice the effects of the MDMA as a kind of inoculation against shame. Many of the stories I shared with Alex previously felt too shameful to tell even to myself. With the support of the substance, I felt the curious absence of the sharp, stabbing contractions of self-judgment that I’d always felt in relation to the past. Not only was there no shame, but I also felt more space for compassion for the others in my memories - my parents, grandparents, and other actors who previously held more uni-dimensional roles in my memories.

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A few hours later, the walls start looking more their usual tone of eggshell white. Alex departs, and I am left with the feeling that something important had happened, but not sure what exactly. All I did was tell a few hours of stories of what happened. Alex only listened, asking questions here and there for clarification.

The realization comes a few days later. In the blue post-MDMA days, I re-listen to my recordings and put them through the transcriber to read. Hearing yourself can give the perception that you’re listening to another person. Something about the way your voice sounds different, and the fact of knowing that someone else is listening produces the effect of distance that you don’t get unless you know that something is being witnessed by another.

I text Alex: “I’m traumatized. It all makes sense now”