We took bad ecstasy pills! How can we determine what drug was actually in it?
We took bad ecstasy pills! How can we determine what drug was actually in it?
I only do so called 'hard' drugs once or twice a year. This was it.... me and another person each took two star shaped 'supermario' ecstasy pills. It was NOT ecstasy. It was some sort of hallucinogenic. We are experience LSD trippers, so luckily we knew how to deal with it. (I can't imagine if a novice got their hands on these...) Anyway, after a while it just became too much. We couldn't sleep for almost 24 hours! The actual hallucinogenic effects lasted for about 8 hours (yikes!). The symptoms/'feelings' were this:
- distorted vision, slight hallucination
- pink/orange translucent 'film' over vision
- tunnel vision
- LSD-like moving patterns, colours, etc.
- extreme audio distortion, loud buzzing in ears, hearing things not there
- hot and cold (goosebumps all over, a minute later sweating and fanning yourself back and forth over 8 hours...)
- extreme dizziness when standing or walking
- didn't want to move at all
- nausea
- constant clenching of teeth/jaw
- loud and frequent swallowing
- inability to drink 'enough' water (we controlled ourselves, know about water intoxication)
- inability to fall asleep during and many hours after hallucinogenic effects gone
- extremely dilated pupils.
All in all it was extremely incapacitating and scary, although we made the best of it at the time. Nothing like real MDMA. The symptoms above were experienced by both people. We feel lucky to be alive. And we will NOT be doing anything for a while (won't even ever try ecstasy again until I get a MDMA testing kit.) The other person thought it might have been a cocktail containing a concentrated dose of DXM. I think it might have been PMA... If you can determine what drug it was by the described symptoms please let me know. Thanks!
Sorry but the symptoms list didn't help much because many of the effects you described are associated with anxiety, sympathomemetic effects of various compounds, and toxic/side effects of several drugs.
If it helps, there have been several reports of star shaped "ecstasy" tablets (including one that looks like the "invisibility star" from Super Mario containing piperazine compounds—both yellow and pink tabs). The piperazines are common substitutes for MDMA. They are used medically to kill intestinal worms and other parasites (they paralyse them so your body can excrete them), but essentially they are stimulants, like amphetamines, but not very popular as a "recreational" drug because they have a lot of unpleasant side effects.
Another pink star has been reported as having very high levels of MDMA. Since most eccys have quite low, or even no MDMA in them, even an experienced user could be in trouble if they took these in the doses they normally use. Remember, ecstasy has both stimulant AND hallucinatory effects, so it could well have been the dose you took, rather than the kind of drug you got. If that is the case, a test kit is of only limited value.
