Most People Take MDMA Wrong
Article by Simon Doherty
MDMA is the undisputed champion of electronic music culture. The centerpiece. The essence. The electricity that keeps the lights on. In the 1980s, it exploded like a nuclear bomb onto the party scene transforming music, fashion, and culture forever. And not much has changed since, if I'm honest. Right now (in 2025 I mean, but possibly literally right now depending on the day of the week you’re reading this) people with bowling ball eyes, chattering teeth, and grotesque facial expressions, are still spending their weekends gobbling ecstasy. They’re still pinging around soundsystems––abandoned warehouses, under motorway bridges, in fields––like manic spirographs. In fact, over the past 30 years, this type of activity has become as quintessentially British as the phrase, “I’ll pop the kettle on.”
It’s understandable: You can’t help but fall for MDMA with all the hugs and dancing and magnificent nights out. But, as with all drugs, we must respect it. It’s an empathogen, but also a powerful stimulant. You must know the rules of engagement. All drugs have the ability to be dangerous, of course, and if you mix multiple substances at once the risks are likely to increase. But, if you’ve decided you’re going to take MDMA anyway, here are some things to take into consideration.
Photo: South Wales Police Press Handout
Don't Go In Blind
Test your drugs, always. When I first started writing about drugs ten years ago, usually for Vice’s website, people weren’t sure if they were taking PMA, PMMA, MDA, a cathinone, weak as piss MDMA, or just caffeine and food colouring. Testing the drug back then was essential, and it still is now, although the concerns are slightly different. Now the problem is that it is so fucking strong. Due to our geographical proximity to the source country, the Netherlands, MDMA (whether it comes in pill or crystal form) is very strong and pure right now. Last year, 78 people tragically died in England and Wales from MDMA overdose. The year before it was sadly 79. These are people who overdosed on MDMA, not anything it was cut with. There’s a misconception that you can’t overdose on this substance, that’s bullshit, you can.
You need to know what you’re working with. That means testing. You can get EZ Test kits to test for MDMA itself and an EZ Test kit for MDMA purity.
The Golden Rule
Once you know that you do indeed have MDMA and roughly how strong it is, you need to acknowledge the golden rule: that more does not equal a better night. With MDMA, there's two different effects that you’re looking for: Firstly, the stimulant effects. That’s what allows you to do 35,000 steps around and around a small dark club, like a lost marathon runner. That’s what keeps you dancing and dancing and dancing until you leave and see people plodding to work in a suit and tie. (Are they looking at me weird?) But the thing that sets MDMA apart from cheap speed is the pro-social, empathogenic effects. This is the part that makes you feel exceptionally happy, like you discovered the very concept of happiness and transformed the entire club into a heaving slab of love in the process.
Say you take 120mg of MDMA, you wait three hours then you take a further 60mg, there’s no point in taking anymore. Anything over that amount and you won’t feel the emotional effects more, just the stimulant effects. If you keep taking more trying to chase that initial love-y rush, you risk more of the potential side effects––overheating, crippling comedown, chewing your face off, etc.––without any benefit. People don’t realise that. Do you know what else people don’t realise? That if you take coke or ket (and to a lesser extent, booze) while you’re high on MDMA it turns off the emotional effects and, again, you’re merely left with the stimulant effects. Which is basically the same as £10-a-gram speed. To get the most out of MDMA, don’t mix it with other drugs (with the exception of weed which seems to intensify its effects for some).
Regulate Your Temp
When you’re pinging (high on MDMA), you want to take on the right amount of water; too much or too little isn’t good. It’s all about regulating your body temperature. A general rule of thumb is to consume ½ pint of water an hour if you’re in a hot, sweaty environment. That’s about two of the average-sized bottles of water served in a club (500ml) per hour.
Also, take breaks from dancing to cool down and wear loose clothes that are going to keep you cool. That’s why all the ravers from the acid house era dressed like children’s entertainers. I remember once meeting a man in the changing room of a fetish club. He was half way through peeling a full body latex suit off his limbs in the same way someone would peel an orange.
“Pass me that, please, mate,” he said gesturing towards an empty pint glass on the side.
He then began to wring the suit over the glass, almost completely filling it up with his sweat in the process.
“You can’t take pills if you’re wearing this,” he told me.
“Far too dangerous. You’d get too hot.” So, there’s that.
Lower the Dose
Most of the issues people might have when taking MDMA basically track back to taking too much at once. If you spew up while you’re coming up, for instance, you probably took too much. A huge amount of serotonin receptors in your body live in your gut. When you take MDMA you are opening the serotonin floodgates, more of these feel-good neurotransmitters are rushing in than the receptors can handle, hence feeling sick when it’s kicking in. The receptors are overloaded, like the Glastonbury website on the day they release the tickets. And remember that guy who rang his parents at the rave to tell them how much he appreciated them? Yup, he took too much. That person was me. Remember that? That was weird.
(If you’re stuck in the toilet all evening because you can’t piss. Again: Took too much. Remember the golden rule of MDMA: Less is more. More does not equal better. Lower the dose to maximise the enjoyment.)
((Also: Probably extremely niche, but don’t order things online during that twilight zone between getting home from the rave and crawling to bed. I used to live with a guy who would do that and never remember what he ordered. He was astonished one Wednesday afternoon when a small potted tree arrived for him. He insisted he didn’t order it, but he had indeed, at 9AM, on a mad one.))
The Comedown
A comedown is essentially suffering from clinical depression, but for one day only. It typically occurs on the Tuesday or the Wednesday, depending on if you consumed MDMA towards the beginning or the end of the previous weekend. Many people assume that the dreaded comedown is simply a fact of life. Here’s the secret: it’s not necessarily. Okay, it is largely dose dependent. If you take way too much there is more chance of being whipped into submission by a comedown so bad that it feels like the Devil himself has leased out your brain. Keeping the dose sensible is important to avoid that as much as possible.
But other major factors also include getting enough sleep before and after the sesh, not throwing loads of booze or other drugs into the mix, and eating at least some healthy food. That’s why you see the most elite sesh heads in techno clubs on a Sunday with a Tupperware box containing healthy snacks. They don’t want to eat right then, sure, but they know it is going to save them from getting fired from the tech startup they work at.
You can roughly measure how bad your comedown will be based on how many times you changed clothes over the weekend. If it’s Sunday evening and you haven’t eaten or slept or changed since Friday, for instance, your comedown is going to be fucking dire. If you have important shit to do during the week and you can’t be doing with a comedown, design your sesh around that. You can steal this strategy from me (but I want to be credited): Get an early night on Saturday, then get up on Sunday morning, eat a healthy meal (slow releasing carbs), head to one of those clubs that opens first thing and goes all day, get on it, stay hydrated, leave the club at midnight, and go to bed. The comedown could be largely mitigated.
It’s tricky if you live in Berlin or Ibiza or somewhere else that exists in one of those weird sesh vortexes that makes it socially acceptable to bounce around different clubs, in varying degrees of chemical befuddlement, all week. Like a broken pinball machine. I do respect the commitment––they’re heading out when civilians are heading to work in a suit; they brush their teeth to industrial techno; if those people get cut it bleeds mephedrone. These folk live on the very precipice of the sesh, which can be fun, but it has a shelf life. Because if you spend the whole weekend pouring chemicals down your throat, like it’s water in a desert, your Tuesday morning is where happiness goes to die. If this is you, just remember that that empty echo in your soul, or that whiny internal monologue that insists you question every major life decision, is simply because you are on a comedown. Remembering that actually makes it a lot better.
A common pitfall is forgetting you are scheduled to be on a comedown and thinking you actually have depression. Then you remember and think, “Oh yeah, I’m meant to feel like a mouldy potato today.” At that point, power up Uber Eats, get Netflix on, and chill the fuck out. It’ll be fine tomorrow. Oh, also remember not to book anything important or stressful (like a job interview or Sunday roast with your gran) around this time, because you will be running at 61% social capacity. Some people take supplements after the sesh (5-HTP, for instance, which can ONLY be taken 24 hours after the effects of the MDMA have worn off and never before). This will help your body replenish lost serotonin receptors, but it’s no more effective than eating high-protein foods like eggs, cheese, fish, and poultry.
Take Breaks
You can’t take MDMA every week, so how long should you leave it before you can take it again? It depends on what researcher you ask. Some say you must leave it at least three months, others say two months. But for sure you need to leave big breaks in between taking this drug in order to give your body the time to replenish the serotonin receptors. If you take it every week, you’re heaping more serotonergic chaos on the receptors while they’re still regrouping from the last hammering. And it won’t work anyway. If you have a treat too often it’s no longer a treat, and you wake up one day and you’re the guy who ate McDonald’s three times in a week. The longer you leave it between the sesh, the more you’ll get out of it when you do get on it. You can thank me next time you’re standing on a dancefloor with your eyes oscillating, your arms stretched out to the side, fists clenched, a Popeye gurn marching across your face, and nothing in your life actually matters anymore other than the tunes.
Antidepressants
You can’t take MDMA if you are on many antidepressants (including ones from the SSRI, SNRI, MAOI, and TCA families) because it can fuck you up pretty bad. Same with many ADHD meds. Sorry. This sucks––I know, I know––but it’s also something people often don’t know. If you go within 100m of a doctor’s office in the UK, they’re flinging antidepressants at you like people chucking confetti at a freshly married couple, so maybe it’d be useful for the docs to give some harm reduction advice too. But for now, if you’re on any medication, it’s on you to research if that could have nasty interactions with any recreational drugs you’re planning on taking.
The Real Golden Rule
Look out for mates, look out for anyone around you, this is a team sport. If you’re even considering if someone might need help, it’s time to get the medics. There’s some misconceptions around this too, sometimes people think that they will get in trouble if they do this (you won’t).
Photo: Vincent Gallagher
MDMA has a relatively low risk profile compared to many other drugs including booze, tobacco, and coke. But because the drug has been placed into the context of prohibition we still get deaths. Unless the law catches up with the reality of the situation (introducing a regulated market where users know what they are getting and in what dosage) the ravers will have to remain vigilant: test your drugs with EZ Test kits, start low and go slow, research potential interactions, and look out for each other.
Photography, taken at secret locations in London, by Yushy.
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