MDMA, Benzos, and a Total Psychedelic Meltdown

I used to take drugs like a fucking champion. Well, most of the time. Throughout the vast majority of my many drug benders, I was usually pretty well composed, on my best behaviour, reasonably inconspicuous and undoubtedly having the fucking best time ever without managing to deteriorate into a deplorably unruly mess. That being said, when you abuse a superfluous medley of drugs as frequently and over-indulgently as I used to, then a cataclysmic narcotic meltdown was an impending inevitability. I managed to fuck up so immensely on this particular occasion that I was left clutching at my rapidly diminishing sanity as if I was hopelessly clawing for purchase on a cliff face I'd already hurtled myself off of. 

It was the first Friday of the New Year, 2016. I had been working for an infamous party hostel in Melbourne, Australia, where I had spent nearly every waking minute either absolutely shitfaced or woefully hungover. This was partly owing to the strategic positioning of the sole exit from the staff dorm rooms, which funnelled you out into the bar like cattle through an abattoir before you could escape. You could bet your ass that every time you attempted to sneak out through that door, there would be at least a handful of dipsomaniacal staff members getting hammered at the bar, diligently surveying that dorm room exit waiting to snatch any suspecting colleagues wandering anxiously out from it so that they could peer pressure them into another intense drinking session. It was fucking relentless. Honestly, if you'd managed to avoid drinking or taking drugs for a night or two throughout any given week, then you were doing exceptionally well.  

I was wearily perched in the bar area early that afternoon with some friends from the hostel, despondently waning off a vicious hangover from the night before with a few Australian lagers and a sorry-looking bar-menu burrito. We were cosied around one of several long, raddled wooden benches positioned adjacent to the dorm’s door, systematically abducting passing staff members like a pack of predatory delinquents and coercing them into drinking with us. Then, as I nauseously abandoned eating the remaining half of my soggy burrito, something joyous and unexpected happened. One of our closest friends and former hostel colleagues, Theon, gormlessly shuffled back into the bar completely unannounced after a lengthy trip up the East Coast of Australia. 

Theon was this incredibly popular and charmingly bizarre Scottish guy who resembled how you'd imagine Harry Potter's less accomplished, mildly dishevelled older brother would look if he also had borderline alcoholism. He was genuinely one of the most inoffensive, hilarious and wonderfully odd young drunkards I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Everyone adored him, which is why we all roisterously lost our fucking minds as he casually strolled into the bar. After we all giddily pounced on Theon like maniacal fans to a heartthrob celebrity, we all slowly meandered back towards the bar together where a rousing plan to celebrate Theon's surprise homecoming began to formulate amongst the group. I knew at that moment that I was going to spend the rest of my waking day ingesting an inadvisable melange of drink and drugs. What I didn't know, however, was that I was about to unwittingly catapult myself into an unhinged psychedelic horror show.  

Some hours later, after dark, I found myself obscenely drunk at the far corner of the bar alone with Theon… and drinking with Theon was always a perilous ordeal. He would incessantly purchase rounds upon rounds of Jagerbombs every single night for anyone he even vaguely recognised who happened to be standing within spitting distance of the bar. Honestly, he must have been a secret millionaire or something to afford the inordinate amount of drinks he would buy for everyone. On paper, that sounds like a great problem to have, but he was fucking ceaseless. You had to keep a tenaciously attentive eye on him whenever he was left unattended within close proximity of the bar. It didn't matter how morbidly shitfaced you were; that outrageously generous bastard was probably surreptitiously buying you and any other nearby acquaintances more Jagerbombs than you could ever want if you'd lost sight of him. Despite once loving the glutinous pool of delightful fuckery that is Jagermeister, I now instinctively react the same way to the taste of it as I do to the smell of putrid shit, and I solely have Theon to thank for that resentful paradigm shift in my beverage preferences.  

As Theon and I begrudgingly finished off yet another fucking Jagerbomb each, he gracelessly dropped his empty glass onto the bar, wiped a viscid Jager residue from his upper lip and then asked: 

Theon: D-did you find the benzo [benzodiazepine pill] I left for you in your cupboard?

I looked back at Theon like he had just farted gold dust. 

Me: What? A benzo?! Really? Where?!

Theon: I left it for you in the back of your cupboard before I left for the East Coast, man! I thought I’d t-told you about it, but I… but I guess I forgot!

I paused for a moment, fervently staring at Theon for a few seconds before I excitedly declared:

Me: I'll be right back!

I immediately darted across the bar, through the dorm room doors, up the stairs and right-turned into the corridor. I barged into my abominably squalid staff dorm room like a firefighter into a burning building and then feverishly gutted everything out from my cupboard onto the floor. In hindsight, it was behaviour quite indicative of a man with a drug problem. Benzos aren't even remotely considered to be some kind of party drug, to my knowledge. They just make you feel relaxed, but if it could alter my brain chemistry to any degree, then I was on it like a fly to shit. Once cleared of random debris, I peered eagerly into my cupboard and, sure enough, covertly nestled at the back right-hand corner of the cupboard in all its glory was Theon's small pack of benzos. I felt like I had just successfully navigated an antiquated treasure map and unearthed a long-buried chest of pirate loot. I immediately peeled the last remaining tablet out of the pack, scoffed it without a moment's hesitation and then ventured back down to the bar. I didn't know it then, but eating that Benzo pill was the catalyst that would atrophy my sanity like an ice cream cone in a microwave. As I merrily hobbled back into the bar area, Theon greeted me with more Jagerbombs and then asked: 

Theon: Did you find the pill? 

Me: Yeah, man! ‘Already ‘ad it, thanks!

Theon paused, glaring at me with a look of sheer bemusement and shock. 

Theon: Ahhh, man… that was a pretty fuckin’ strong benzo... I was gonna see if you wanted to halve it!

Me: Ohhhh, shit! Ohhh, sorry, Theon! I thought you left it for me! I d-didn’t realise you wanted any! 

I was riddled with guilt for inconsiderately eating Theon's drugs, so I apologised profusely and then made a token effort to alleviate his disappointment with yet another fucking Jagerbomb. After a while, I began to feel the languorous caress of the benzo begin to kick in. No sooner than it started to hit me, though, I was suddenly beckoned outside by some of the other hostel staff to grab a taxi to a club. We drove a short way out to a strip of clubs along Chapel Street, which was somewhere within one of Melbourne's peripheral suburbs. Many of the big bars and clubs along that street were absolute drug cesspits - incredibly fun nights out but drug cesspits nevertheless. Some of the establishments better catered towards heavier drug users usually stayed open until at least 7.00 AM. One or two of the clubs didn't close at all over the weekend, and absolutely everyone partying in these places was categorically fucked out of their frazzled young minds on all manner of class A's. It was like walking into a rave of narcotized zombies every time we visited one of them. Without fail, there would be at least several shady-looking drug dealers loitering within the smoking areas all night without as much as a hint of impediment from the security. Even if you weren't a regular, you could always tell exactly who was pushing drugs and who wasn't because the one's selling were literally the only people within the entire venue not chewing their fucking lips off. 

Once we arrived at our chosen venue, we hopped out of the taxi and staggered into the club through the main entrance, reaching a dead end at a bookcase that was being intricately inspected by a cluster of perplexed clubbers. Fortunately, I had frequented this fine establishment a great many times before, so I pompously pressed against the bookcase, which opened up like a fantastical secret entrance onto the club's bustling dance floor. Once inside, I immediately beckoned Theon towards the men's toilets to divvy up a large bag of MDMA (or "Mandy" as we called it in Aus), which I had opportunely procured earlier in the week. As we walked into the dingy latrines, we were met by multiple long cues of drugged-fuelled men all mustered together in small groups of twos or threes. Each group was irritably shuffling outside of every toilet stall, impatiently waiting for their turn to squeeze into a tiny cubicle so they could covertly consume their drugs together inside. I swear those toilets never got used to actually shit in. Every time one of those filthy doors swung open, several men bulldozed out from it, dusting off their noses and snorting like a choir of flu patients. The club staff would even casually wander in every now and then to clean up around everyone racking up lines like nothing was fucking happening. 

Eventually, Theon and I slipped into one of the toilets and quickly locked the door. I eagerly pulled my stashy bag of Mandy out from my jeans pocket, then promptly emptied its contents onto a grimy shelving unit, which had been haphazardly mounted onto the cubicle wall. I carefully crushed the crystallised rocks into a fine powder under a banknote with my debit card and then injudiciously eyeballed hefty portions of MDMA into two cigarette rolling papers, which I wrapped up into small drug-filled balls often referred to as "bombs". We then each promptly scoffed our bombs, barged out from the cubicle and then stumbled out onto the packed-out dance floor, where everything went to utter shit. 

I was dancing quietly by myself sometime later on the edge of the dance floor when the drugs finally began to take effect, and I came up like an absolute fucking rocket. I was rushing my fucking balls off and began to hallucinate vividly, which - if you didn’t know - is not a common side effect of MDMA. Something was not right, but I was too fucked to discern that for myself at that moment. For whatever reason, I thought I had physically transformed into a man-sized maraca and was now just a huge percussive rattle, presumably acting incredibly peculiar on the dance floor as I continued dancing to the best of my rapidly waning ability. I could vividly feel millions of tiny beads shaking around inside my entire body like torrents of orgasmic slush. It felt like my body was now completely devoid of bones, organs or blood, and my entire innards were now nothing but millions of maraca beads sloshing around within my body. Every time I moved, I could feel them swishing and clashing erratically inside, making a "chikka-chikka-chikka" rattling sound as I sensually swayed side to side. Being a maraca was pretty fucking sweet, and at that time, I naively thought that my trip had reached its peak. Unfortunately, though, I wasn't even close to hitting that psychedelic ceiling. 

The next thing I knew, a dull rainbow haze settled permanently over my vision like a dark, grim photo filter of purples, greens and yellows, which blurred out my peripheral vision like I was looking out from the inside of a fish bowl. Suddenly - and I shit you not - the entire club became the inside of what I steadfastly believed to be an actual fucking alien spacecraft. Anyone further than around twenty or so feet away from me appeared as these lanky, jet-black, faceless aliens with long, slender arms and stringy fingers. I was now feeling extremely fucking anxious, indeed. I nervously surveyed the techno-spacecraft, cautiously observing the aliens, which were outlandishly dancing around to what was now just a numbed-out, humming-like drone of music like my ears were filled with wax. My dancing had been reduced to a nervously lethargic shuffle whilst I hopelessly attempted to process the sheer lunacy of what I was experiencing. Everything I looked at seemed to flood through my vision like a torrent of overwhelming information, which I just couldn't process at all. My mind was being so vigorously pervaded by this deluge of psychoactive nonsense that it felt like my brain was about to violently implode in on itself at any second. Then, out of nowhere, I had this insanely vivid "memory" flash into my mind, which never actually happened. In the illusory flashback, I was being coaxed into a laboratory-like room by several aliens. The room was impeccably clean, its walls - a blinding hospital white. It had tall ceilings that seemed to stretch endlessly upwards into a black oblivion. Once inside, they forced me to lay down on my back on top of this metallic slab-like table with a huge dish-shaped light hung above like I was on an operating table or something. I glared up at the light, proverbially shitting my fucking pants, helplessly observing these creatures looming menacingly over me as they poked, pulled and prodded at me, performing what I interpreted to be some kind of operation on my paralysed body. Then, I gradually began to snap out of the "flashback" and slowly found myself back in the alien nightclub where my anxious shuffling had now come to a complete miserable halt on the extraterrestrial dance floor. At this moment, I distinctly remember thinking: 

"Oh fuck, they’ve operated on me… these fucking aliens have done something to me… what the fuck have they done?!" 

My heart started thumping violently within my chest like a tribal war drum reaching a crescendo as I was relentlessly permeated with a level of dread that I hadn't experienced since I hallucinated being chased by a demon on Nitrous Oxide. Then I felt it. My arms began to feel indescribably strange, which quickly led me to think: 

"They've done something to my fucking arms; they've operated on my fucking arms, haven't they!". 

I was beyond terrified but began to reluctantly raise my right hand up in front of my face to inspect what those bastard aliens had done to it. To my utterly horrified dismay, my hand was now made entirely out of sand. It was like a professional sand sculptor had crafted it. It was a perfect, dextrous hand composed completely of moist, pearlescent sand. I could feel every individual tiny grain lightly grinding against each other and could see every minute detail in acute clarity. Some grains were even sparkling as I moved my arm. Then, as if things weren't fucked enough, my hand began to rapidly disintegrate in front of my very eyes, forming a pile of shimmering sand at my feet, promptly causing me to figuratively shit myself with fear. I freaked the fuck out and frantically whipped my hand back down to my side and out of sight, assuming that if I couldn't see my hand, then just maybe… it couldn't crumble away. In a sheer state of panic, I tensed my entire body and stared apprehensively at the ceiling, thinking to myself: 

"Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, I'm made out of fucking sand! Oh, shit! I'm losing my fucking hand, what do I do?!" 

Then, I had another unhelpfully scary thought: 

"Oh, fuck… did they operate on both hands?!"  

I was terrified to look, but I had to be sure. I steadily raised my left hand towards my face to check that it wasn't also made of sand, which, much to my sheer horror, was. It immediately began to crumble into flurries of sand the moment it came into view, just like the first hand did. I instantly threw it back down to my side like before, desperately trying to avoid slipping into a full-blown panic over the sight of my limbs disintegrating before my eyes. It didn't work. I then made the grievous error of raising both hands to my face at the same time, which was evidently my breaking point. Upon seeing both upturned palms crumbling into sand from the fingers down, I officially lost all control of the situation. I began to frantically flick and swing my hands through the air in sporadic fits of panic, and as I did - long trails of sand flew off from my arms like grainy projectiles into the crowd. I desperately tried catching my crumbling sand limbs as they collapsed into miniature dunes on the floor, hoping that I wouldn't completely fucking disintegrate into non-existence and could somehow pull myself back together. Presumably, at this point, I looked fucking hilarious. As I teetered on a sanguine edge of sanity, I kept trying to reassure myself and regain control by repeatedly whispering to myself: 

Me: Just ride the lightning, Denny! You can do this; just ride the fuckin' lightning! 

But for the first time ever, my ordinarily comforting lifeline of a phrase just wasn't enough to ground me back to any reasonable level of reality. Then, amid my delirium, I somehow recognised my friend Karl, who was dancing behind me a little way back from the dance floor. I very quickly and sheepishly waddled towards him, watching my hands disintegrate into trails of sand at my sides as I bypassed the crowd of otherworldly rave-beasts. Karl, despite being very high on MDMA himself, noticed very quickly that I was immeasurably fucked and having an absolutely dreadful time.

Karl: Whoa, mate… Are you alright?!

I stared at him with intensely wide eyes for a moment, grinding my jaw like I was trying to chew through my own teeth as I piteously stammered:

Me: Can… c-can you… can you just, like, can you just hold my hand, please?

Karl: …What?!

Me: …P-p-please, dude… I just need someone to hold my hand!

Karl: Errrmm, yeah… sure thing, mate… 

I was now shuddering like a nervous wreck, holding hands with a man like a lost child, majorly tripping balls in the middle of a packed-out club, of which I was still very much convinced was some kind of alien vessel purposed on turning humans into sand men. After a few miserable minutes of dancing, latching tenaciously onto Karl's hand for comfort, he eventually turned to me once more and concernedly enquired:

Karl: Seriously, dude… What the fuck’s wrong with you?

I gasped back:

Me: I’m m-made out of fuckin’ sand, mate! 

Karl: …You what?!

I could barely speak. Words seemed to drop from my mouth as though my breath held physical weight. It felt unnervingly strange. 

Me: Karl… They t-turned me into sand! Every time I look at my hands… they fuckin’ disappear! D-d-disintegrate! They keep c-crumblin’ away onto the floor! 

Karl looked at me like I had suddenly become mentally disabled, which, to be fair, wasn't far from the truth.

Karl: Your hands keep “crumblin’ away"?!

Me: What?! Again?! OH, NO! Do I still have hands?!

Karl: What?!

Me: DO I STILL ‘AVE HAAAANDS?!

Karl: …OH SHIT, okay! Ummm*.. yes, mate*! …You still have hands… don't panic!

Me: Ohhhh thank, fuuuuck! Help me k-keep an eye on my hands, Karl. I don't want to lose 'em!

Karl: …You are next-level fucked right now, aren't ya!

Me: …Help me out of this fuckin' spaceship, Karl!

Karl: Riggght… you definitely fuckin’ need to go back home mate. Do you want me to take you back?

Me: …Y-yes… yes, please! Get me home!

Karl then calmly escorted me out through the mysterious bookcase entrance and out of the spaceship, where the next four to five hours were a complete and utter blackout. I remember absolutely nothing. The next thing I knew, I came down like a rock dropped from a great height. Within literal seconds, I went from having no comprehensible understanding of reality or what was happening to being completely coherent. I suddenly found myself sitting upright, bracing myself in a wheelie chair inside of the hostel office with no clue as to how the fuck I got there. It was extremely disorientating. I perplexedly surveyed my surroundings to see a computer screen in front of me with my Facebook page somehow opened on it, only to discover upon further inspection that I had been trying to message multiple friends from back in the UK, informing them in largely unintelligible nonsense that I had been turned into sand and abducted by aliens. Fortunately, I had typed most of the nonsensical messages into the Internet search bar by accident, so only a few friends actually received my maniacal pleas for help. After a few moments, I wandered out into reception, where my friend Amber was cashing up the bar totals for the night. Amber was an incredibly lovely, proud lesbian friend of mine who wore giant, thick-framed black glasses and splendidly flamboyant baggy Hawaiian shirts.

Amber: Ohh, Denny, no! How’d you get out?! Go back in the office 'n' sit down, babes!

I confusedly stared at her for a moment before replying:

Me: What? No… Amber, I'm fine, I'm not high anymore…

Amber took a very deep sigh of relief and then giggled:

Amber: Oh good, you’re back with us! Finally! 

Me: What the fuck happened!? ‘Ow did I fuckin’ end up ‘ere?

Amber: …’You don’t remember?!

Me: Honestly, Amber, I've no fuckin' clue what's goin' on… 'ow I got 'ere, or why I was in the office?!

Amber: ‘My God, Denny, you were sooooo fucked! Karl brought you back in a cab, put you straight to bed and went back to the club. He said you tried to pay the cab driver over a hundred bucks! It’s like a twenty-dollar journey, Denny! 'Lucky he was with you!

Me: Noooooo! What the fuck!? I was soooo fuckin' high, Amber! 

Amber: Mate, you were a fuckin' nightmare. You woke everyone up in your room talking absolute shit nonstop whilst they were tryin'a sleep.

Me: NOOO!? 

Amber: Yeah! They asked you what year you thought it was 'n' you were convinced it was 1952!

In sheer shock, I gasped: 

Me: SHUT. UP. ‘You fuckin’ serious!?

Amber: Mate, you wouldn’t stop askin’ them who you were with, what the time was and then tellin’ them it was 1952 over ‘n’ over ‘n’ over! They got so pissed off with you ramblin' on so much that they dumped you down here for us to look after you cause you wouldn't fuckin' settle!

Me: Ahhhhh, shiiiiit!

Amber: I’ve been tryin’a to keep you in here for the last few hours 'cause you kept wanderin' off and screamin' at guests. That's why I locked you in the office and distracted you with Facebook. Luckily, you couldn't work out how to get out.

Me: AHHHH, SHIT! Wait… the last few hours?! What fuckin’ time is it?! Oh, God... what ‘ave I done?

Amber: Mate, you have been on one!

My time in deep space had evidently left me feeling adventurous. I am told that I had initially been put to bed in my dorm room and immediately woke everyone up, rambling about how I was abducted by aliens. Apparently, I was capriciously clambering around the room, convinced that I was in the year 1952 for some reason and maundering complete nonsense at everyone whilst they were trying to sleep. Once they'd had enough of me asking, "What's the time?" and "Who am I with?" and telling them it was 1952 repeatedly over the course of an hour, they furiously dragged me downstairs, through the bar area and left me with Amber. At this point, apparently, I made a swift escape into the bar, where I immediately tried to purchase more alcohol. As my friends tried to wrestle me back into the office, I fought them off, then began snatching any random person within arms' length of me and then screamed in their faces: 

Me: IT WASN’T MAAANDY! 

Before discarding them aside and continuing deliriously crusading through the bar, grabbing more hostel guests to scream at. The staff even chased me downstairs into the dining room/chill-out area, where I continued my rampage, boisterously disrupting every guest in sight as they peacefully attempted to watch TV or eat. After meandering around the rest of the hostel, assertively informing anyone I could get my hands on that "It wasn't mandy", I was eventually coaxed into the office, distracted with Facebook and locked inside for my own safety. 

The following morning, I woke up after only an hour or two of sleep with a viciously tense jaw, feeling like someone had pan-fried my brain into a decrepit paste. I dragged myself down to reception, where I was pointed and laughed at by nearly every hostel guest I walked by. I then wearily slumped myself over the reception desk, where I regaled my previous night's deplorable antics with some other staff friends who were working the morning shift at the front desk. As we were all having a jolly old laugh at my expense, I suddenly began to feel a grievous bellow in my gut. I unexpectedly let out a nauseatingly rancid fart, which could've dropped a horse at ten paces. Then I felt it… the irrepressible sensation of a perilous come-down-shit trying to explosively breach out of my arsehole. I had to find a toilet immediately. In a panic, I made a hasty retreat out of reception and through the dorm-room door towards my room. I hobbled into my dorm, tightly clenching my arse together whilst clutching my gut like I'd just been shot and then hastily weaselled myself through the bathroom door. Then just as I hurriedly ripped my shorts and boxers down to sit on the toilet, my arse shot out a shotgun blast of putrid, greenish-brown liquid shit all down my legs, inside my shorts and across the bathroom floor. I was literally a foot away from the open toilet bowl. I immediately slipped in my own aqueous bodily waste and then slammed back onto the toilet seat, where I continued to shit myself uncontrollably. After I had finally finished violently voiding my bowels, I shamefully leant forward to examine the malodorous wake of faecal destruction I had just created. It was an absolute fucking disaster down there. I spent no less than ten laborious minutes in a gut-wrenching clean-up operation, disgracefully trying to wipe my shit off of everything I had just pressure-sprayed it over. Once I had finished cleaning my own shit from the floor, I wearily shuffled back into bed and stuffed my shit-covered clothes behind my bunk-bed mattress to deal with later before passing out in disgrace. It turned out that excessive drinking and drug abuse did not mix well with soggy bar-menu burritos. Who knew?

If you thought my misfortune ended there, then you'd be sorely mistaken. Not only did I take enough drugs to think I had been kidnapped by space monsters, surgically transfigured into an organic sand-being and then literally shat myself during one of the most shamefully haggard come-downs I've ever experienced - I also had all but 33 cents stolen from my travel bank account. Over a thousand dollars - gone. I had stupidly kept my online travel account details written in the "notes" app on my non-password-protected phone, which I must have misplaced at some point during my space expedition. It had now been utilised by some lucky cunt to procure the vast majority of my remaining balance. I didn't even find out until I went to withdraw money from that account several weeks later. That night had now cost me dearly in nearly every conceivable sense of the phrase. 

I'm still unsure exactly what it was that got me so atrociously high, but according to a doctor friend of mine - mixing MDMA with benzos is outrageously dangerous and has immensely adverse effects. The same friend then informed me that mixing benzos with amphetamines is one of the leading causes of all overdoses and that I was extremely lucky to have avoided having a fatal reaction to it. I haven't conducted any other form of reliable research myself to support his claims with any certainty, but that regurgitated tit-bit of information seemed to at least track well with the sheer intensity of what I experienced. I have taken my fair share of acid, shrooms, salvia - you name it throughout my years and had never experienced a trip as profoundly unnerving or as vividly immersive as that one. However, I didn't know it then, but there was an immeasurable echelon of psychedelic highs I would soon experience that would turn out to be immensely beyond the intensity of anything I'd experienced up until and including this unfortunate trip. It was just a matter of time before I fucked up again and inevitably plummeted back down to the unforgiving bedrock waiting for me at the bottom of that perilous psychedelic rabbit hole I just couldn't seem to stay away from.

Side Note: I’ve actually been writing a book full of stories like this one - all true, all ridiculous, and mostly me getting karmically flattened by my own terrible life choices. It’s called Bad Sex, Good Drugs, and One Unfortunate Idiot, and it’s a collection of wildly inappropriate misadventures: drug trips that went spectacularly wrong, sexual calamities, and a long list of nefarious escapades that often escalated into extreme peril. If you liked this story, I’ve got plenty of others I’d love to share with you all. Just search “Denny King Stories” (I pop up straight away), or if you want a link or updates about the book’s release, just PM me. Cheers!