A life-affirming experience of inutterable genius

There's nothing more boring than listening to other people's drug experiences but since I find mine fascinating and since this is my blog, I'm going to write about it anyway.

My first e.

Becca, my best friend at the time, was also my drug buddy. We started with cigarettes and cider at thirteen, graduated to spliff at fourteen, acid at fifteen, and then we were like, what next? We couldn't afford cocaine and heroin scared us, so it had to ecstasy.

So Becca and I go to the local nightclub (along with practically everyone from our year at school - there wasn't a huge amount of entertainment in the area where we grew up) buy a bottle of water each (a bow to the drug awareness posters of the time) and smiling slyly at each other, neck our pills.

Standing on the edge of the dancefloor, we wait to come up. Becca goes, do you feel anything yet? I shake my head, no.

Then we start to feel it. An almost imperceptible fraction of warmth running through my neck. A shiver up my spine. A prickle swirling around my scalp. A looseness to my limbs. A trickle in the stomach. And then... intensifying, gathering strength, knees buckle, golden syrup pours through my veins, jack-knife of molten something rips through my head, spine spasms, neck melts, eyes refracting, tiny bubbles of joy zipping up from my toes to my groin to my face to my... FUCKINGfuckfuckohmygodfuckingHELL ... and the tide recedes, leaving me gasping, trembling, warm to the core, amazed.

Becca and I stare at each other, mouths open with pleasurable shock, then we laugh, jump up and down, scream, and tumble onto the dancefloor. The rest of the night passes in a blur of colour and bliss and love and pure fucking delight at being alive in this very moment and living and feeling and touching and the astounding delicious delightful sensation of experiencing everything as if for the first time.

I've had many e's since, some good, some bad. I've seen fur growing from the walls, sunsets at midnight, rainbows in the bath, heard a dog say hello, had blackouts, hallucinations, out of body experiences and seen the devil in the eyes of a friend.

But none have ever got close to that first time.