If you are reading this, you may have already tried MDMA, also known as ecstasy or Molly, in your twenties. The illegal party drug first hit the public consciousness through the late eighties and early nineties rave scene. It has been experiencing a bit of a comeback of late. Not me, though I have done lots else—I am in my early sixties, after all.
Perhaps it’s because I’m a control freak—and anything too mind-altering has put me off (even the tiniest bit of pot makes me paranoid). Perhaps more likely, I was never actually offered it. It’s the same with my partner of more than three decades. Until now.
The impetus for our little chemical experiment so late in life took shape at the new year, soon after my other half got down on bended knee in front of the entire family and asked me to marry him. I said yes, obviously. It’s about bloody time, what with three of our four children already having tied the knot and us becoming grandparents, but inside I couldn’t help feeling slightly fraudulent about the whole idea.
Ask anyone who knows us and they’ll tell you our relationship is nauseatingly robust. We are, to the outside world, a paean to how it should be done. We still sleep in the same bed (albeit with an anti-snore wall of pillows down the middle of it), we still laugh at each other’s jokes and we still nod dutifully through each other’s boring dinner party stories. We have never had a row in public and we often, when out and about, hold hands.
In private though, it’s a little less golden. Not that we hurl insults at each other all the time or fantasize about having affairs (not on my side, anyway)—more that, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, we are really nothing more than roommates. Bite-y roommates at that. As for sex? Oh, please.
We Needed a Reset
But it’s not just about the sex. (More of which, I promise, later.) It’s about the physical connection. The cuddle we always had in the morning before getting out of bed; the hug after either of us had been away; the way we used to sit next to each other on the sofa when watching television. The way I used to crave the smell of where the nape of his neck touched his shirt. Not that he smells of anything bad, you understand, more that nowadays he smells of nothing. Of course we’re going to stay together; we’ve built an infrastructure around us and we’re far too old to go out looking for anybody else.
However, there was a point in January, after yet another night of sitting at our opposite ends of the sofa, with our separately prepared suppers on our laps, him watching football with his headphones on, me feeling murderous about the sound of his chewing, when I suddenly decided positive action was called for. If we were to say our vows and mean them, we needed a reset. A massive reset. We needed a glimpse into the way it had been before, if we had any hope of getting whatever “it” was back. Luckily my partner, who it turns out might have been having some relationship doubts himself, was game.
Enter Jan, a big, burly bear of a man originally from Brussels who describes himself as a somatic therapist/life coach and has been running these underground “day retreats” for five years now, administering medical-grade MDMA to affluent middle-class folk like us all over the U.K. I’d found out about him through an old friend, a successful, dynamic entrepreneur who nonetheless had been grappling with depression, triggered by a childhood trauma, all his adult life. After three sessions with Jan (the last one also using psilocybin), not only did his depression disappear but so did his dependence on alcohol, and he’s become an evangelist ever since.
All Communication Is on Signal
Jan, my friend says, is “the man,” but he’ll have to check with him that it’s OK to pass on his number. MDMA may be hailed by the psychopharmacological community as the new Prozac—in the UK it is being used in clinical trials to manage treatment-resistant forms of depression and severe PTSD—but it is still an illegal class A drug.
Thus far all communication with Jan has been on Signal, the encrypted app preferred by terrorists, drug dealers and, apparently, the U.S. Defense Department. Given how hard he is to pin down, and how long in advance we had to book our day, he is obviously not short of business.
After checking that neither of us drank coffee this morning and that there is plenty of water on hand (because of the rise in body temperature, sensible hydration is a key safety issue), Jan unzips his backpack and takes out some homemade soup (for when we come down), a stick of sage to clear out the negative energy and, of course, the goods.
Sage burnt and niceties over, he sets up his weighing scales on the kitchen table and carefully measures out two separate amounts of 98 percent pure MDMA crystals—a far cry from the adulterated stuff one gets on the street—which he then funnels into two tiny tissue paper packets (100 milligrams for me, 125 milligrams for my partner) and explains that, in around an hour or so, depending on how we react, he will give us each a booster dose.
I had our own playlist sorted, but he insists it is better to use his, which is “carefully curated” and contains no words to distract us. God, I hope it’s not too spa. His suggestion that we might like to do some interpretative drawing with the coloring pencils he has brought along has already got my “woo” radar flashing. But as my friend kept telling me, to get the best out of it, I need to lean in rather than resist. Here we are, then, two Senior Railcard holders lying on our bed with blindfolds on about to, as the young folk call it, “roll.”
Good to Go
MDMA works by simultaneously bathing the brain with the “feel-good” neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine (with a side of oxytocin, the hormone mothers release when breastfeeding), while also quieting down the amygdala, the part of our brain that registers fear and initiates the fight or flight response.
If I am at all put off by the word “hallucinogenic,” I shouldn’t be. It’s rare to “trip” and, according to Jan, the possibility of either of us freaking out (as we have both done on pot) is minimal.
We have taken all the precautions you are meant to take, and then some: three weeks ago I had an elective MRI to check my cardio health (any pre-existing heart issue makes MDMA a hard no-no, because of its stimulant properties) and I have (reluctantly) stopped taking my Prozac for two weeks (in rare cases, the combination of the SSRIs in antidepressants and MDMA can cause a potentially fatal condition called serotonin syndrome). We have a new blood pressure machine that I just bought on Amazon and the hospital is a mere 15-minute Uber drive away. We are, in other words, as “good to go” as it gets.
Still, my heart is fluttering in my chest like a caged parakeet. “Professional Couple in Their Sixties Die of Heart Failure after Fatal Ecstasy Trip”—how dumb would that look? The only person I’ve revealed this to, and I probably shouldn’t have, is our eldest, most sensible son. His WhatsApp response is immediate: beware of the killer comedown two days afterwards and do not, under any circumstances, call him while we are high.
All I Want Is to Hold Him As Tightly as I Possibly Can
Thirty minutes in and my nerves are finally settled. In fact, I’m feeling pretty relaxed. But not much more than that. An hour in, I feel a little tingle, as if I’ve had a glass and a half of champagne, but surely this cannot be the extent of it? If it is, I think I will ask for some of our money back ($1,300 for the pair of us, all in). Jan, who is sitting in the corner of the room with a notepad, suggests we take off our blindfolds so that we can look into each other’s eyes. But neither of us can hold the other’s gaze without getting embarrassed and turning away. Ninety minutes in, still no change and Jan makes a gentle suggestion. Would we both like our booster dose now?
After we swallow it with water, we lie back down. Nothing. And then suddenly, oh my goodness, WHOOSH. It hits us both at exactly the same time. It’s quite extraordinary, the vibrational switch. All judgment, resentment and egoism have left the building. In their place, a well of compassion, connection and pure unadulterated bliss. Imagine orgasming without sex, that’s the best way I can describe it. Another way to put it? I have got out of my own way. Without the filter of my overly mindful, utterly solipsistic self, and constantly trying to gauge what the other person is thinking of me, all that is left is pure, unconditional… Well, how many different ways can you say the word “love.”
My overriding desire, right now, before anything else, is his happiness and well-being. Suffused with gratitude for his mere presence, all I want is to hold him as tightly as I possibly can and never let him go. Why would anyone want to waste this exquisite feeling of connection surrounded by strangers in a sweaty, noisy club?
A Splitting Headache and Waves of Nausea
And why can’t every living being experience this just once? Eventually disentangling ourselves, we stroke each other’s faces and gaze wordlessly into each other’s eyes and then it all comes tumbling out: how we’ve grown apart, how we need to share stuff and be with each other every moment of the day. At some point I find myself apologizing for being so rotten about his mother, suddenly understanding why she was the way she was, with a compassion I genuinely thought I wasn’t capable of. At another point we even start talking about sex. MDMA is not an aphrodisiac per se (although it lowers inhibitions it is also associated with a decrease in sexual performance, especially in men). But suddenly the idea of picking up where we left off all those years ago sounds alluring. Why not? It would be a natural extension of the way we feel right now.
I have no idea how long this lasts—four, five, six hours? But at some point, by which time it is dark, the pair of us very slowly come down. The bliss is still there but it is increasingly overlaid, in my case, anyway, with a splitting headache and waves of nausea.
While I lie in bed trying not to puke, my partner says goodbye to Jan and takes possession of the magnesium pills, 5HTP (a naturally occurring amino acid) and vitamin C that Jan always recommends post-rolling. Hopefully it will restore our fast-depleting serotonin levels and offset that killer comedown our son told us to expect. After vomiting a few times I eventually, thankfully, fall into a sleep deeper than I’ve enjoyed for ages.
The next day we are a little shaky (and hungry) and emerge outside like newborn mice. Unlike after a night of hardcore partying, I remember everything and keep getting vivid flashbacks of the sensation. The water on our riverside dog walk sparkles in a way it didn’t before. The sunset filtering through the trees is more poignant. We spend the evening in a cuddle puddle on the sofa wanting to keep the last embers of yesterday going for as long as possible.
The Aftermath
A month in and can I say we lived happily ever after? Sort of.
Just as my son predicted, the crash was spectacular. Not so for my partner, but this may have been because, unlike him, I have been on Prozac since the nineties—and without any serotonin in my body (having weaned myself off it to do this I couldn’t go back on it for at least a week), I found myself feeling as low as I have ever felt in my life—and in my case, that’s saying something.
After two weeks, with Prozac back in my system, I began to return to normal, but there were moments during those 14 or so days when the cons way, way outweighed the pros.
Nearly a month on and, now I’m properly out of the woods, I can see how subtly yet profoundly the experience has changed our relationship for the better. Maybe this is partly because the memory of those blissful few hours and what pure love felt like hasn’t disappeared and can still be summoned, with a little practice, at will. Maybe some actual neural rewiring took place during that short critical period and has stuck? Whether it’s psychosomatic or not, we are definitely giving new habits the time to, as it were, bed in.
Every morning now before we get out of bed we make a point of lying in each other’s arms, even if it’s for only five minutes and the dog’s yowling to go outside. Now, sitting next to each other on the sofa and/or greeting each other with a kiss when either of us has been out all day feels almost automatic.
And now to the big one. Sex-wise, OK, we are not quite there yet—this still feels slightly incestuous, given how we’ve not looked at each other in that way for so many years. But on the morning of our wedding as I watched him put on his cufflinks and noted the way his hair still curled so sweetly above his collar, the way his eyes crinkle at the side when he smiles, the way he has a slight boxer profile, which I’d forgotten so attracted me in the first place (and goddam it, he has a tan)… Well, let’s say, as they do in The Thick of It, the kraken definitely awakened.
I don’t know if I’m brave enough to complete the course (i.e. do it twice again, with a space of at least a month in between, the final time with psilocybin). I can’t stress how anxious, depressed and hopeless I felt until my Prozac kicked in. But perhaps now I’m prepared for it, it’ll be less of a crash. My partner, who was so wary at first, is up for the full course, but I remain undecided. Part of me is fine to keep things as they are—the needle has definitely been moved. On the other hand, am I really going to die without having sex again? I’ll let you know before the middle of next month, when we are penciled in to see Jan for the second round.
