Confessions: Your first time taking drugs

Your first encounter with drugs is never pleasant, but for most it’s part of growing up. Whether you freaked out, poured too much MDMA into your single vodka and mixer or threw up on your mates’ parents from smoking too much weird, it’s always embarrassing.

George

The first time I did MDMA, I didn’t start the evening expecting to be taking MDMA. It was only meant to be a fairly average night out at the same average nightclub with the same group of mates. While out, I bumped into Sarah, a girl I quite liked, got introduced to another of her friends I ended up liking even more (let’s call her Ellie) and proceeded to ignore my actual friends for the rest of the evening. Sarah had (and probably still has) a reputation for being extremely flirty which for a young guy with low self-esteem is great, even if you know it’s not going anywhere.

So, the idea of going back to hers with her boyfriend, Ellie and another girl called Alex for an after-party sounded like the kind of “anything could happen” proposal teenage boys dream of. When we got back to hers, the mandy came out. I did my best to act nonchalant and pretend this wasn’t a brave new world to me. For a while I was convinced that maybe I had a super-tolerance for drugs because I couldn’t feel anything. The only discernible change I could describe was “feeling more alert”. Gradually it escalated but never to face-chewing levels (that would happen the second time I took mandy and would catch me completely by surprise). It was probably really shit mandy.

The next couple of hours were one of the weirdest nights of my life. The girls locked themselves in a bedroom, stripped to their underwear, said it was “Girl World” and no boys were allowed. I chilled in a reclining armchair in a bid to be purely horizontal. Sarah’s boyfriend started playing Randy Newman songs on the piano before trying to impress me with his “own compositions”. Later on I ended up in a bed spooning with Ellie while Sarah shouted at us not to have sex because Ellie had a boyfriend. A friend of Sarah’s boyfriend came round and told me how depressed he was because a friend of his had committed suicide recently. It was all a bit too much to take in. The next morning we all went to the park, lay down cuddling each other and fell asleep in the sun. We thought we were so fucking cool.

Daisy

The first time I properly did drugs I was on a sixth-form holiday to Thailand with a group of 10 friends. I’d met some other people so lost them for a while, and found them 40 minutes later on mushroom mountain, which was literally a mountain with a bar on that sold shroom shakes. They’d been there for hours and were all out of it, and I felt really sober so I went and got a shake. They said it kicked in quite quickly, and after 15 minutes I still felt nothing so went and got another.

Half an hour later I went to get my third one, and couldn’t finish it when I realised how strong they were once they actually kicked in. I’d taken way too much, and had no idea how long they lasted for. Because everyone else had theirs so much earlier, they were back to normal after a few hours so I was left tripping by myself for most of the evening while they watched.

Cat

The first time took mdma was on a night out when I’d started uni. I’d gone with this guy from halls that I really fancied, and he told me he’d ran out but had some leftover on his gums if I wanted some. So I did.

Mark

The first time I took MDMA was with my best mate from university. I was living in a dull home counties town; she was in London – so obviously we went to London. We were going to this night in Vauxhall with all her cool south London school friends, but we went to her Dad’s house first and he cooked us some dinner and we started drinking. I was 18, and pretty rubbish at drinking, so was already feeling peaky by the time we ended up in a Camberwell flat. I couldn’t snort it as I kept getting the co-ordination of nostril and note wrong, so I bombed it – which on a stomach full of mash and vodka, was a risky idea.

Nonetheless, the first few hours were the usual, dreamy Mandy experience until later, with absolutely no warning at all, when we were standing in the smoking area, I projectiled all over my mate’s arm. Usually, you know when you’re going to be sick – saliva swills in your mouth, your stomach hurts – but I honestly remember being as shocked as she was. It was orange and she was totally, totally covered in it. It really killed our buzz.

Will

During a lock-in in a pub in my sleepy market hometown, I took coke for the first time. It was about one in the morning and people were pulling their own pints and smoking inside. The jukebox was blaring Oasis and I mate and I went to take a piss. While we were in there a stocky bald guy in his forties came up behind us and gruffly said: “Do you lads want some coke?”

He wasn’t really asking and he wasn’t really telling. We were quite intimidated and smashed what I now know to be fairly large lines off the only toilet in the pub. The three of us took it in turns to shuffle around the Armitage Shanks and then out. I didn’t really feel anything all night and it put me off cocaine for the whole time I was at uni.

Amelia

When I was at Glastonbury we bought a weird space cookie off some crone in the Healing Fields. I told my mates I was a bit edgy around weed as I’d spent my entire teens whitey-ing on it and so I hadn’t taken any since then. I also assumed this stuff would be hyper strong. Then someone told me to stop being a total pussy and eat the cookie. I did; nothing happened and I felt vindicated by it being a waste of money. Then, a few hours later, I suddenly felt ravenous and ate an entire family bag of nuts from the tent, though didn’t think much of it.

We were walking to meet the rest of my group, and everything started sort of sliding at an angle; I assumed I was really tired. But by the time we met everyone in our extended group, I was having a total meltdown (I was hot, clammy, convinced I couldn’t breathe, everything was spinning around and around) while everyone else said they hadn’t felt a thing. I kept asking if it was going to stop and someone remarked that it hadn’t even started for anyone else. Then I wailed: “I can do class A but please don’t make me do class B ever again” and everyone laughed so I started crying my eyes out.

Tegan

There was a guy in halls that I really fancied. He was the polar opposite of my ex-boyfriend (a straight-laced rugby boy), and I had spotted him on my first day of uni. We arranged to go out to this dive of a club, and at around 3am he was fucked and I was tired. I had been putting in some serious groundwork and it would have been a shame to let it go to waste – and I also felt like if we got together I would be taking advantage. So my best friend gave me a couple of keys of MD (I did that “Oh my god let me give you some money please” thing that all people do when they take it for the first time). We spent the whole night when we got back awake talking, listening to cringe deep house and telling each other how much we “rated” each other.

Marisa

One of my best friends from home had been selling pills since sixth form and I’d watched my mates take those blue androids hundreds of times, but for ages I was too afraid to it. During a particularly busy summer after the first year of uni, I had decided that no one had died taking these pills and everyone just looked like they were having the best time, so it was probably about time I saw what I was missing. We’d been drinking in my hometown and the night was shit, so me and my mate who sold them got in his car to go to McDonald’s.

The pills were in the glove compartment and, since both of us were disappointed the night was so boring, eventually I just asked him whether we should drop a pill. He said sure, pulled one out, split it in half and we both ate it. I literally had no idea what to expect and as we drove to ASDA to get a pizza I was asking him, but he said he couldn’t explain it and I would know when it hit. On the drive back he started to panic because he was getting high and we weren’t home yet, but we arrived at his safely, pizza in hand never to be eaten. I don’t remember the drug coming over me, but I do remember how good I felt, how I couldn’t stop talking, and how I tried to draw out tattoo designs for him.

Alfie

My friend had been going on about how fun acid was for ages, and that I was the sort of person who would suit it. I agreed, even though I didn’t really know what it was or what would happen, so when he came to mine with a tab each I thought, great. It was about 4pm and I had a party to go to that night which I could not miss since it was my guy mates’ over the road who had been planning it for ages. Anyway, I asked my friend if it would be over by 10pm, he said yes.

I asked what we would see, he said “Wavy lines.” We dropped the tab, which had come from New Zealand via the Silk Road, with no idea on the strength or what micrograms even were. For two hours nothing happened, and then I started to wonder why the buses outside were crying and we couldn’t stop laughing about “What are hands?”. 18 hours later and both of us had stripped to our underwear, neither of us had left the room, and my friend tried to do a line of coke to “sober himself up.” Nothing worked, my mates were furious I had missed the party and I had no idea where the hell I’d just been.

Josh

Yeah, so this is a little story called ‘The First Time I Ever Had Coke It Was Cut With Baby Laxatives Or Something A Lot Like Baby Laxatives’. I’m from London, where most boys have their first puff of skunk before their first kiss (guilty) but I’d never knowingly done more than that. I’d made it through the big dramas of individuation, drank a lot of Stella and honked on some biftas. I was ready for something more, something harder, something cooler. I was working in a pub kitchen, where, of course, coke was a big deal. I wanted to try it but I didn’t want to do it sober like the chefs. So after eight pints after work, we decided to go out to Aquarium, where I found myself keying coke out of a baggie in the toilet. And for a time, things were good.

The music sounded better, I felt assertive and confident, I thought it was a great idea to tell people in the smoking area to follow me on Twitter (hindsight: you looked like a cunt). It got to around four and we decided we wanted more coke. But there was none left… Where would we get some coke? Luckily for us, it just so happened there was a man in a black vest, cargo shorts and sandals, walking a bulldog around outside the club. The dog’s lead was just a piece of chain. So we bought another gram of coke off him, obviously. It was cut with a laxative, a very powerful laxative. I didn’t find this out for about six hours. I was in the bath, reading Darkness at Noon, when I thought I did a safe, bath friendly fart. I didn’t realise I’d shat myself until a little bit of feces sailed past my head. Out of the bath I went, practically flying and I realised what had happened. The shitting? Oh, it carried on for about a week, thanks for asking.

Frank

I’d smoke weed before but never got into anything harder for most of uni. Then one New Year’s Eve I’d tagged along to a big rave with Joy Orbison at a rave in Elephant and Castle in London. It was rogue. My friends offered me some MD they’d bought off a skinhead in the smoking area. And by skinhead I don’t mean EDL nutjob. I mean manbag across his chest, Stone Island jacket, Airmax and Gucci hat. I took a bomb and that was it. The night was flying and everyone wa hugging everyone at the countdown. By 4:30 we decided to leave. I’d somehow acquired a few things. A business card for an interior designer with a trippy owl drawn on it, a pair of 3D glasses and two really sore middle fingers. I got back to my tube stop, and ran the two miles home.

My route had lots of lampposts lit up, and determined to keep my 3D glasses on, I continued running all the way home, falling over and most lights because with the glasses I was practically blind. I woke up in bed the next day after little sleep, and couldn’t feel my legs. I was exhausted from a full rave, and a two mile run. I saw my shoes at the end of the bed with a hole in the bottom – they were only two months old. I looked at my hands, remembering the ache on my fingers. The inside of both my middle fingers had centimetre long blisters on them where, I’m told, I’d be clicking to the beat like a scat singer for pretty much the whole night. I was also in a shit load of trouble with my parents, as when they emerged to ask me how my night out was, in my half asleep stupor I simply replied: “I took too much.” The rest of the christmas break was a bit tense.

Josh

I drew the short straw and ended up picking up MD for myself and four others for a Big Night Out at university. I had the number of a guy called Art, who in a thick Eastern Europen accent asked me what my “favourite number was”. I replied 47. He said: “No, how many grams do you want?” He then arranged to meet me in his car down a secluded side street. He promptly arrived, and asked me to get into his car which I thought was weird. I got in, anxious and sweating. In the fact was a baby seat, and the domestication put me slightly more at ease.

I tried to make small talk about his kid but he was having none of it, telling me to “never talk about my family again”. I didn’t. That night we went to a rave and had a great time apart from one of my friends who, for some reason, did some mystery lines with a stranger in the toilets and got thrown out within 15 minutes. He disappeared until the next morning. I never saw Art again.

Ben

I’m really not a drugs person, but when I was faced with the prospect of a 2pm-6am terrace party I knew I was going to need more than £6 Red Stripes to keep me going. I broached the subject by tentatively asking how strong a “bomb” of MD is, and once one of my friends who had never taken any had some, I decided to pinch some off my mate and really go for it. One hour and one quarter of a gram later, my friends were having a fag on the outside stairs of the club after having lost me completely.

When they finally caught sight of me I was power walking, and I mean power walking, from one end of the smoking area to the other: they just couldn’t grasp that I actually had a rainbow trail coming out of the back of me like a Super Mario character. They finally managed to make me stay in one place, and immediately regretted it – I was so sweaty and so close in peoples’ faces that at least two people credit me with ruining their nights completely and sending them to dark places. The final straw came when my girlfriend introduced me to her really fit mate, who I proceeded to hold gently by either side of her head and peck on the forehead, followed by whispering: “You’re lovely.” My girlfriend had to tell her I’d taken acid.

Phoebe

Most weed experiences are a bit boring, but when I was handed an enormous water bong when I was extremely inexperienced it ended up being far too exciting for me. Me and some friends went to an “evening in” at some apparently cool people’s house, and I didn’t feel as though I could refuse the bong. The first couple of times it came around the circle I took one or two small hits, and then by the next round, not wanting to seem inexperienced, I took four consecutive enormous hits, leading to one guy commenting “Wow, you’ve done this before.” I hadn’t. For about a minute I felt a bit proud that I hadn’t let my lack of experience show, and then the world went a bit dark.

I was paralyzed by paranoia and couldn’t think properly. I had extreme shutter vision, as though I was in a club and there was strobe lighting. I was convinced that I was dying. I went to my friend who had driven us there to inform her that I was going to be the first person to overdose and die from weed. This was no easy feat, as I kept on opening my mouth, but the words took about five minutes to tumble out in a scrambled, shaky mess. She dismissed my claims and led to me a sofa, where she took the family pomeranian dog and plonked it on my lap telling me to cuddle it to feel better. I gripped that dog in silence for three hours, accepting my demise and convincing myself that my friends hated me anyway. Eventually I was taken home and I went to take out my contact lenses before bed. I wasn’t wearing contact lenses, I had worn glasses that night. I ended up damaging my left cornea digging around for a contact lense that had never been there in the first place and had blurry vision out of that eye for a week.

Holly

The first time you do drugs is the true uni coming of age scenario. Mine involved my housemate’s birthday at one of the biggest club nights at my uni, and as he was keen on the dust we all got involved too as a kind of birthday present. Luckily I was an onlooker as the pros handled the pick-ups, sorted the MD into bombs and distributed it among the group based on looseness. At the club my mate took it through the bouncers because I was a bit scared I’d get thrown out of uni if they found any on me, picturing the crying British detainees held in Indonesia you see on the news as my likely fate. In the club I sent the first bomb down and spent the next few minutes sporadically checking my heart rate to make sure I wasn’t about to be delivered to A&E and after my second bomb the feeling passed, I was now in euphoria mode.

However, I was also in trip mode. Necking beers for fun (no one had told me you usually drink water) and bopping to intravenous beats were being dropped through to the dancefloor, I was on top of the world. At around 5am and with my brain truly fried by the excessive beating of my feet and jaw, we planned on heading out. Short of gum but large on gurn, my mate spat out his chewing gum and ripped off half for me to have, such a sweetheart. Leaving into the hideous daytime that had emerged while we grooved in our basement club was a dirty feeling. We trekked past the suits, feeling like cretins. I dropped into a Maccy Ds on the way home to buy a drink, but it was incredibly hot and I didn’t realise that I’d burnt my tongue, which then hurt like shit for days.

Cydney

I waited until I was in my first year of uni to try MD and I’d only smoked a bit of weed before. It was at a big venue way outside the city so I had a long taxi ride to be nervous in. We were going to see SBTRKT who I thought was really, really cool at the time – just like spelling without vowels. I remember almost shaking as we went past the bouncers and practically sweating with fear when we went into the toilet cubicle to do the bomb we’d prepared in halls earlier that night.

We got the timing horribly wrong, but I refused to drink anything but water so had to dance around with absolutely no kind of buzz for about an hour and a half. When it finally hit, I learned that one – I pull some hideous faces, two – I was really into my course at that point and wanted to chat shit about poetry and English Lit to people who at that point I barely knew. They didn’t let me live that down. I think I even tried to kiss one of my mates in that deeply platonic way you get.

Megan

The first time I hit a bong, I was at my friend Mike’s house. I’d smoked spliffs before, and while it made me sleepy and I definitely felt something, it was largely underwhelming. There were about 15 people round Mike’s and someone got out the bong they’d bought from the shop that smelled like incense near the community centre in town. As I hit it, I felt it immediately.The sheer quantity of smoke knocked me onto a sofa behind me. I then had the weirdest 45 minutes of my life. I threw up in the sink. I googled how long it took to “stop being high”. I sat on the floor while everyone laughed at me. I cleaned up the clogged sink with my bare hands. I walked home petrified. After barely surviving the two minute walk back to mine, I walked in, ignored my parents and gently sobbed myself to sleep.

Sara

I was at Creamfields before uni. I was with my boyfriend and friends at the time and decided to drop some MD into my drink. I lost my shit. Completely. Apparently, I’m told, I kept running into moshpits and flying out the other side. It was really aggressive, but I was just skipping around and doing cartwheels in the crowd. When my friends found me, I’d spilt hot cheese sauce all down me when I was trying to buy some nachos. I’d decided I didn’t want them. It took a while to get off, but most of it rubbed off onto my friends as they struggled to pin me down.