When the Drugs You Take Aren’t the Ones You Paid For

I was studying at university and I would've been 19 or 20. I had recently discovered drugs—I hadn't done many as a teenager, hadn't tried any until I had left home. It was the third or fourth time I'd done ecstasy. And that was the only drug I had tried outside of marijuana and speed at that time.

We were going to see a DJ and we got some ecstasy before from a friend, who got it from a dealer. This was definitely a trusted source. There wasn't any question as to whether this would be ok or not.

My girlfriend at the time and I coordinated when we would take them—at about one, in the club. We were no doubt drinking as well. That feeling when ecstasy comes on, and you slowly start feeling elated and blissful etc—I remember feeling a bit panicky this time and a bit faint. It was quite a different experience, one I wasn't familiar with, and I thought that I just needed some fresh air.

I think the difference this time, was that slightly uneasy feeling I have when I start out—I never know quite where it's going to take me—instead of that subsiding and giving way to euphoria, it just kind of surged and became the defining component of my experience.

I can remember thinking that I should probably check in on the other people that I was with, but the desire to get out of the club overrode that concern. As I got towards the entrance, I remember the entire corridor just narrowing into a pinpoint and, as I fell, I remember thinking oh fuck.

I collapsed, and I came to with the security guard, who luckily I knew quite well. He had taken me downstairs and sat me down and given me water. He asked what I had taken and I told him ecstasy. At that point, I saw down this alleyway, my girlfriend was there with her head in her hands, vomiting. I was like, fuck, we need to see if she's ok.

From that point on, it's a blur. An ambulance came, and my girlfriend was vomiting a lot and she kept blacking out. I became very withdrawn and was really concerned for my girlfriend—I just felt totally inside myself. It was a totally foreign feeling.

I'm laughing about it now, but at the time it was totally serious. I was like fuck, is my girlfriend going to die? Am I?

I told the medics we were on ecstasy. I can remember one of the nurses asked, "What's it like? I've never had it." I was like, "I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be like this."

We arrived at the hospital, and we got put in a room. I remember being very apologetic to the doctors and the nurses, apologising many times over. And then I just kind of started tripping. I became obsessed with this idea that there was a fly in the room, which seemed peculiar because I thought the hospital should be clean and sanitary. To this day I have no idea whether there was a fly in that room.

What was really concerning was just watching my girlfriend slipping in and out of consciousness. Somebody—I don't know if it was a nurse or a doctor—had talked about heroin, and how it seemed like we were on it. Which is not a drug I would've willingly taken to party with.

Maybe it was way more speedy and it was just a huge adrenalin hit, maybe it was just a bad pill.

We were discharged in the morning. Throughout the night, my partner continued to throw up and was slipping in and out of consciousness, but by the time we checked out in the morning she had managed not to for a while. I was feeling slightly more human and we went home and tried to sleep. We ordered pizza.

I think we talked to the dealer about what had happened and he might even have given us a freebie as an apology. What's the advantage to the dealer in selling bad drugs, you know?

If you felt like there was a way of doing it without drawing suspicion upon the fact that you obviously have drugs on you, then I'd 100 percent use a pill tester. There are festivals around the world where you camp and then in the morning there's free breath-testing onsite. It's not a police breath-tester. It gives you the choice, without being judged, to educate yourself. Different things, drinking and drugs, but why wouldn't you want to find out?

KnowYourStuffNZ is a harm reduction organisation that tests people's drugs at New Zealand festivals to make sure they know what they are taking. It needs another spectrometer so they can cover more ground this summer. Donate to their PledgeMe campaign here.