Respect due… K.C.B.
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I encountered what was being sold as MDA recently. I have had many nights at the the hands of what what was sold as MDA in the past and I generally loved them due to their energetic and generally stimulant nature. I got this new pill tested and it registered as possible MDEA. Now I’m sure that I have had this particular arrangement of letters multiple times, but I gotta say it was a charmingly present and intellectually engaging job. No background crap precursor feeling and just a straight ahead clean uplifer. If this is MDEA, then I’m a fan at this point in the age/marketplace equation. But then again it might have been an aspirin and my fried nervous system.
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The ones knocking about on Saturday were pretty decent. Passed out in the hotel then got awoken by a fire alarm in the morning, not a strong look walking down the stairs with everyone else at 9am… 
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Red Donkey Kongs, anyone tried?
Any Donkey Kong I had were really good, Red ones we had were dark in colour and half was plenty each time…Got some Rick and Morty’ few weeks ago haven’t tried them yet but heard they are really good…
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Ha, funnily enough, The Face has just published an article about this:
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Very interesting. I’ve been guilty of assuming the change from Safrole as a precursor mean’t they weren’t as ‘empathetic’ anymore. Turns out it’s my knackered old brain and love of crisps and craft beer! 
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good article that. I guess our inner chemistry just evolves. There needs to be more neuro research though. The oldest ravers are still only really in their 60s so give it another 20 years. One area that hasn’t been nearly researched enough AFAIK is how MDMA changes people in real life, beyond terrible Tuesdays, I mean in terms of ambition, creativity, optimism, secrecy, relationships. I definitely think that the comedown from all those years had a more profound impact on me but how you disentangle that from general melancholy, ageing, disappointments that would have happened anyway, is something I don’t feel qualified to answer
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Great point as you said another 20yrs should tell alot.
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Interesting stuff in the Jesus and Mary Chain book re ecstasy… Love the thought of them getting lost in Yello or hugging strangers at a Boy’s Own party.
//
Jim
We never really worked out how much Iggy knew about what was really going on behind the scenes. Much as we wanted him to be completely oblivious, it was hard to avoid the suspicion that a performer of his experience must’ve had some idea. Those were the kinds of things me and William would brood on in a way that was definitely not healthy for us and probably not much fun for the people around us.
If you’re thinking 'These guys needed ecstasy to lighten them up a bit, you’ve got a point in one way, but not in another. Because on the one hand ecstasy did bring me and William a lot of good times, but on the other I would say that it was the first drug we ultimately had a problem with, in that it changed our brain chemistry in a negative way.
Towards the end of the eighties, in the music scene in general but especially for anyone around Creation Records, it was all about ecstasy, and William and I were no exceptions. There was one of those raves - I didn’t even know where it was, because I was just sitting in the back of the car, off my tits, basically - but it was somewhere by a lake in the countryside and there were about two or three thousand people totally out of it, in a field, by a lake, in the middle of the fucking night, somewhere in England. It was amazing and it felt like we were getting away with something, but we didn’t get away with it for long
As people who hadn’t always found socialising easy, you con see how it would’ve worked for us. I remember hugging complete strangers at raves and feeling a sense of empathy with everyone.
At the moment this was happening it felt like all the bad elements of your personality had been stripped away and all that was left was the bit where you actually gave a shit about stuff, but as time went on we started to realise that if it’s something that you pay £15 for and it only lasts a couple of hours, that hardly amounts to a revolutionary shift in human consciousness. In fact, it’s ultimately quite meaningless,
Unfortunately, in the time it took for that to dawn on us, William and I took too many of those fucking pills. I wouldn’t usually presume to speak for him, but in this case it’s something we’ve talked about and we both agreed that it burnt something out in our brains to the point where we didn’t experience joy or even just happiness in quite the same way after it as we had done before.
At first it was purely recreational and a bit of fun, but pretty soon it started to feel like if you went out and nobody could hook you up with any ecstasy then the evening was a failure. You’d end up just going home thinking 'Fuck, it never used to be like this - the point of going out used to be to hang out together or see a band or whatever. That’s not the point at which the alarm bells should be ringing, it’s the point at which they’ve been ringing for ages and you’ve not been hearing them.
William
Music sounds good for a few minutes on LSD before it goes warped - 'Oh, this is fantastic… oh my God, the record’s melting! Mushrooms are a wee bit better, in that you can listen for maybe an hour before it all gets too fluid and s-l-o-w-e-d down, but ecstasy is probably the best drug in terms of being complementary to music, in that it just pounds the songs into your fucking brain. I’ve never felt anything like that feeling you’d get after a couple of pills when the music would just go inside you, A lot of the early rave music was like punk in that it was made as cheaply as fuck, but it was amazingly powerful. It didn’t even have to be music you would normally like - I remember me and Jim going to a club after we’d played the Brixton Academy and this track came on by Yello, who I’m not normally a big fan of, but I was coming up on the ecstasy and everything in the music was so present it was almost like it had an extra physical dimension: you could touch it. This was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had in my life, but one of those ones you can’t tell your grandchildren about.
Years later, me and my ex wife had this talk to our kids where we both said 'Hey listen, if you’re gonna take anything, try and find out where it comes from, but please just don’t take ecstasy. I told them I used to be a really happy-go-lucky guy who had depression for maybe one week a year, but I always thought it would go away and it did. Then I took ecstasy for a couple of years and after that I had the same feelings of really horrible sadness - weird dreams that were violent - and they lasted for months. It’s a sadness that sticks to you and imbues everything with a sense of regret, the same kind of regret you feel when you wake up the morning after being drunk - not so much because of anything you’ve done, but because you’re dehydrated and you’ve no minerals and your brain is in a bit of a stew.
It’s basically that, but magnified and over an extended period of time. I think ecstasy kills a lot of the brain cells associated with our ability to experience pleasure in normal things. I know science has told us it’s impossible to use up your endorphins because they’re created in your body, but surely you could mess up the mechanism for making endorphins so it doesn’t work properly? It wasn’t just me and Jim that were feeling this way, a lot of our friends were having these weird depressions that lasted weeks.
Great book if you’ve an interest in them.
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They sound like a right laugh…
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Plays green velvet ‘la la land’ 
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Yes I think we can all remember people that came out the other end of worse off. I laid off by the the beginning '92 for about 8 years, I’d just been a weekender guy for a solid 3 years and felt that I was pushing my luck. By the time I started to get back involved, the experience felt quite different.
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Anyone got any gnomes?
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[quote=“Apiento, post:96, topic:4402”] ecstasy is probably the best drug in terms of being complementary to music, in that it just pounds the songs into your fucking brain.
a couple of pills when the music would just go inside you, A lot of the early rave music was like punk in that it was made as cheaply as fuck, but it was amazingly powerful.
[/quote]
So well put
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Watched the kneecap film last night which was fun. Thought I’d best find out some of what they are on about
3cag
3 Chonsan Agus Guta
3 consonants and a vowel
MDMA
Which is quite neat
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That one passed me by! 
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