We all have our vices, but what leads to this type of drug overload?
Photo: digitalbob8
Drugs certainly hold the possibility of being mind-expanders, at least for some people.
And many travelers have had the opportunity to partake in an illegal drug or two while visiting spiritually-enhancing areas, which also hold the potential of many years in an extremely scary foreign prison if caught.
But this guy goes above and beyond what few have done, or would ever contemplate doing. The British man, ‘Mr. A’ is reported to have taken 40,000 ecstasy pills over a nine-year period. The previously heaviest lifetime intake was 2,000.
Whoa.
Can’t imagine that was good for the brain, body, or spirit. According to doctors from London University, it wasn’t. The man stopped taking pills seven years ago, but still suffers from:
…severe physical and mental health side-effects, including extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression. He also suffers from painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw which often prevents him from opening his mouth.
And it seems like many of the symptoms are permanent. His short-term memory loss, including “the time, the day, what was in his supermarket trolley,” makes living life on a day-to-day basis a frighteningly hard task.
The Dark Side
Photo: azrainman
I think that most who have taken ecstasy, ranging from just once to more times than they would like to count, can still agree that 40,000 is a bit over the limit and would naturally cause trauma to the brain. But I’m a bit more interested in the why of choosing to ingest that massive amount.
Some people might just call this man crazy, off, mentally-deranged. Yet, something in me wonders if this is just an extreme example of what is happening for people all over the world.
A lack of connection – be it to community, self, or the spirit – pushes us, consciously or unconsciously, to search for that connection. For some, this can be a very positive experience, and as Jennifer Blair writes, can lead us to our soul place:
A soul place is an island, a building, a city, or a natural vista that speaks to you in a language unheard. It opens up a space within that you didn’t realize was closed.
For others, the drive may be toward darkness. From a traveler’s perspective, dark tourism, or “the practice of visiting sites related to death and suffering,” can put you face to face with the underbelly of humanity: genocide, natural disasters, terrorism, slavery, the effects of drugs on a community. These are the ugly parts of history that on certain levels, we all share.
And there are many things out there that can make us spiral further into the darkness, including drugs, alcohol, work, sex, TV – the list goes on. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but it is when we come to depend on them to catch a glimpse of connection that we disconnect from that which we are searching for.
The key is that we must fully and deeply look at our shadow, lest it take over.
The key, according to many who are spiritually-inclined, is that we must fully and deeply look at our shadow, lest it take over. By shining a light on the darkness that is within each of us, it is no longer dark.
So I wonder, for this man and his 40,000 ecstasy pills (who has since dropped out of his doctor’s care), what shadow was he running from?
What do you think is behind this man’s ecstasy binge? Share your thoughts below.
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ugh. i previously held the record at 39,000!
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Ok, I just did the math on this one. He would have had to have taken 12.17 tabs of Ecstasy every day to ingest 40,000 tabs in nine years. What the heck is the point of that? I mean, after a couple tabs you don’t even get high anymore. Once you blow out all your serotonin, it’s blown, that’s it – you can’t go higher. Plus, your body adapts and you build a tolerance. So he was just doing irreparable damage to himself day in and day out for nine years without the benefit of a high?
I don’t get it.
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What you say about looking into your shadow resonates with me. We all have dark streaks through our being, individually and collectively.
But I can’t agree with “By shining a light on the darkness that is within each of us, it is no longer dark.”This is actually something my intuitive counselor and I were discussing the other day, I asked ” Does it reason that the brighter the light the deeper the shadow it casts? So the more positive, conscious energy is released it will be countered.” A kind of spiritual 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Under your being is a clean; pure landscape, no ripples, certainly no mountains, then a bright light will obliterate darkness. But these people are rare, I have never met one if one has ever existed.
To me it is about, like you say, looking deep into those shadows, but not seeking to displace them completely.
Why did this dude take 40,000 pills…my short answer (and my long answer) is that he is a poster child for ‘too much of a good thing’. Our time is a time of obscene excess.
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I guess I think that looking deep into the shadows means it’s no longer dark – the darkness is not the problem in and of itself, but the fact that we keep whatever is it hidden from sight. Shining a light on that which we will ashamed, embarrassed, hurt, or pained by enables us to deal with it, which doesn’t necessarily include making it “go away.” Rather it gives a person a chance to make a choice, instead of being under the control of unconscious beliefs and desires.
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Clearly this man had some demons. And I think it’s interesting to wonder why someone would do this and to wonder what shadow he was running from….yet I can’t help but be completely fixated on the HOW of this situation. HOW in the heck did he pull this off? 12.17 tabs of E every day for nine years? That is not cheap! That must have cost him thousands of dollars a month. And how did he go to work on 12 hits of E? And how did he not die? I’ve seen people who took 5 hits of E in one night be rushed to the emergency room…
I’m picturing him as a suicidal trust fund kid who had nothing but time and money on his hands…and no sense of purpose. But I could way off.
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12 tabs a day for nine years or maybe he just guessed the largest number he could think of?
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40,000 is an astronomical figure and I’m still wondering why he’s still alive in the first place. Little is known about this guy, whether he has his family, still lives with his parents, or holds a job. I don’t know about you but I won’t give this guy credit. He is, or was, a drug addict and has zapped whatever soul is left by ingesting so many drugs. I don’t think that he’s looking for anything except to occupy a state of pure, unadulterated bliss. Once that end, there goes another pill popped into his parched mouth. I can blame his culture (materialistic, self-centered, and such) but I’d rest on his shoulders the full responsibility of his action. I would hold anyone in suspicion who thinks he is a victim. He was an addict who wanted to get going.
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An ecstasy trip can actually be sustained with a constant flow of MDMA, but i bet he thought it would be fun at least until he started skippin through whole days without a recollection.
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casey, not true.
MDMA, once you’ve passed ~200 – 250 mg’s, stops giving it’s serotonergic effects, acting more on norepinephrine once you’ve expended your serotonin reserves there’s no more empathogenic, happy, loved up feeling. It becomes more of a trippy, harsh stimulant ‘roll’, if you can even call it that.
My question is, why the fuck didn’t he pick a better drug to do that with, like meth or coke or something… something where more really IS more :/
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ive tripped for weeks on ecstacy you cant tell me that I lose the happy feeling and aweness cause i have sustained it but the you start forgeting how you got places and alot more so i had to stop. but weed helped my recover
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No offence to the above comments, but they have clearly never had to deal with a drug addiction.
Your mind has a way of convincing you that more is ALWAYS the answer. Deep down you know it’s causing damage, ruining lives, yet somehow the brain creates ever more exotic reasons for you to “quit tomorrow…”
This man wasn’t on a quest, wasn’t searching for any deep inner meaning, he was just another poor soul that got caught up in a hard drug addiction.
Oh and if you read the story elsewhere he admits that he usually took a lot more on weekends than he would on weekdays, making the daily average slightly more believable
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How does he know they were really even MDMA?
How do we?
Maybe he was just binging on Tic Tacs…↵ -
I’m calling bullshit. There is absolutely no way he could have sustained a 12 pill/day habit for 9 years. There comes a point where your body just outright rejects ecstacy. You feel absolutely no symptom of a high, instead the only sensation you get is a gut wrenching, flu-like feeling… Not to mention having the inabilty to eat or, at least, digest food properly for 9 years is impossible.
I can speak from some basis of experience because I personally knew of people that took 8 – 10 pills/day for two years. There came a point to quit because they were getting nothing out of ingesting any amount of pills except nausea. and headaches. Not to mention the inability to remember simple things like street corners and names became a huge motivation to stop using.
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He is unable to recall the date and time, but somehow managed to keep count of consuming 40,000 pills? Impressive.
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Not true. You wrongfully assumed I haven’t used and outrageously abused it. You DEFINITELY lose the lovey empathogenic feelings, you were probably getting something other than ecstasy if you were going for weeks, most likely amphetamine or something similar.
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