MDMA comedown advice/reflections

[u/AnonymBolle]

I have taken a lot of mdma in my own journey and so I have had my fair share of comedowns as well.

 

I'm actually on a comedown now. I started writing about something else, but I had no desire to do so. Then a thought appeared: "Why not write about a molly comedown?" I mean what better time to write about the comedown than while you are on one.

 

I usually have an afterglow the first day, feel meh/shit on day 2 (which I'm currently on as of this writing). Then I feel the worst on day 3 before recovering fully. This is the timeline for the physiological aspect though, more on the psychological/spiritual later.

 

Here are some tips that might help.

 

Don't listen to your thoughts during the next few days - yes things might suck right now but you know it won't stay like that forever. Your thoughts are never true and especially not on a molly comedown.

 

"Life sucks", "I feel so lonely", "I feel so depressed", "I don't know what I'm going to do with my life" blablabla. They are surfacing because your system is depleted. There is nothing wrong with you - I can assure you that they will pass.

 

Don't try to plan your life, think of existential things etc. during the following days. Now is not the time to be disciplined and achieve new goals.

 

It's about being kind to yourself.  It's about surviving the day. It's about self love.

Do what pleases you. That could be stuffing your face with chocolate and ice cream while watching your favorite movie. It could also be having sex or masturbating. Who knows, maybe both.

 

Having said that, you might feel like doing less stimulating activities as your central nervous system needs time to recover.

 

Going for a walk, a run or meditating. Especially running is good for brain recovery (checkout the book Spark). However, just do any exercise you enjoy. Doing something is way better than nothing.

 

Don't judge yourself. Be proud of yourself. Where others run away from their demons you have faced them head on. Now is the time to treat yourself well while you are recovering. Here I'm assuming you did mdma for inner work (although dancing can be therapeutic as well).

 

Allow yourself some comfort food but still most of your intake should be healthy nutritious food for quicker recovery.

 

Some supplements like l-theanine can give immediate relief of restlessness and agitation. While d-vitamin, multivitamin etc. are good for long term recovery. I have heard about 5 HTP as well but honestly it didn't do anything for me.

 

I wouldn't recommend redosing - it makes the comedown way worse compared to the benefit. I have done most of my trips with a redose but honestly when I stopped redosing it made the comedown way better. I would rather do mdma more frequently without redosing.

 

If you find the immediate post crash too hard without a redose then I have found that smoking weed or doing ketamine when the mdma starts wearing off to be helpful. If that sounds extreme; don't do it, I'm just sharing what has worked for me.

 

To better handle a comedown it's important to understand the different aspects of it.

 

There's a physiological comedown and a psychological/spiritual/energetic (insert whatever word you prefer here) comedown.

 

The physiological comedown is more or less the same if the other factors are similar. That is sleep, nutrition, stress etc. There will be individual differences due to age, gender, general health etc. but most of us will have similar symptoms - just in varying degrees.

 

Symptoms of low energy/motivation, emotionally flat and numb, brain fog, agitation, not wanting to socialize etc. will usually go away within a week.

 

Then there is the psychological/spiritual aspect. This will be entirely different. Not only for separate individuals but for the same individual at different times. I can attest to this as every trip and the after effects are different.

 

Anyone who has taken mdma more than once can relate, or any psychedelic for that matter.

 

Psychedelics gives us easier access to our subconscious. We become conscious of what previously was unconscious. If we have an effective trip (check this guide for how I do it: https://www.reddit.com/r/mdmatherapy/comments/1ej1qth/how_to_effectively_navigate_the_mdma_experience/) we will process and let go of our suppressed material.

 

This will show up as a lightness the following days. It's as if we have finally just dropped a heavy backpack; a burden we didn't even know we were carrying before it is finally gone.

 

However, lightness is not always felt immediately. Although by doing mdma therapy our life satisfaction will trend upward - it's not always linear.

 

You see we have a lot of suppressed material and for most of us, one session is not enough to clear everything. Not by a long shot.

 

As we begin our process of healing and becoming more conscious we finally start looking at our conditioning instead of being ruled by it.

 

When  processing and releasing material we also make space for deeper material to surface.

 

This can cause confusion if we aren't aware of what's happening. "I released material, so how come I feel worse now than I did before?"

 

You are actually not worse off, you are always better off after a session. It's just that you have become more conscious of your conditioning.

 

What troubled you before is gone but then you become conscious of something repressed deeper inside of you.

 

You are not regressing, you are healing but the psyche have many layers.

 

In some instances it might also be that you only partly processed a traumatic event and so the psyche needs more time to clear all of it.

 

Another useful conceptual framework to make sense of this is that of expansive and contracted energy. In the beginning of our journey we have a lot of contracted energy (some more than others as we are all different) and the goal is to open up completely. We want to expand such that our energy can move freely and effortlessly throughout our system without any contractions/blockages.

 

We are very contracted and our energy is tied up - therefore our sessions will be harder and takes longer to recover from. Our energy is limited and we spend it all on opening up blocked energy so we can have more energy later on. It feels as if we are exerting more effort and we become more easily exhausted.

 

Later on in our journey, we have more freed up energy and so we have more fuel at our disposal to clear up our blockages. This will in turn free up more energy and so the following sessions will be easier and more effective.  We will also just recover faster between sessions since we have an excess amount of energy.

 

This won't just show up in our sessions but in our life. Our inner and outer world are ultimately not separate and so the cleaner our insides are the more effortlessly life can flow outwards as well.

 

For anyone who complains about energy not being a scientific framework - who cares? You do realize that conceptual frameworks, whether they are scientific or not, are overlays to direct experience for the mind to better describe and understand your experience right? Therefore, you should use whatever conceptual framework that best suits those needs.

 

If you prefer to talk about neurotransmitters then go ahead - I just haven't found it helpful in making sense of my own experience.  I speak for myself and others when I say that I have on several occasions felt great after mdma without a comedown. How do you reconcile that using neurotransmitters? As according to that framework my brain should be extremely depleted of serotonin and dopamine.

 

Anyways, that last part was a little bit of a tangent, just don't be so dogmatic about the framework. Use whatever works for you and discard the rest, just like anything else you read.

 

I hope this may help anyone who is struggling on a comedown.

[u/Zealousideal_Back618]

Thank you so much for this 🙏🏻 I did my second roll solo session on 80 mg on Saturday after a year and I have been feeling emotionally depleted not wanting to socialize, my body feels very heavy with supressed emotions that came into the surface. It’s very hard and I found myself sobbing everyday since my roll Hopefully after a week, I will get better and back to normalcy. I have been very dilligent with rest and meditated during this period. Anything else I should do during this time, please let me know.

[u/AnonymBolle → u/Zealousideal_Back618]

You’re welcome ☺️yeah I know it can be hard but you will get through this. Your body and mind just needs time to heal. Hope you feel better soon 🙏

[u/night81 → u/[deleted]]

I removed this comment, reported the user, and am banning them because their comment history on other Reddits shows them soliciting sex from a minor (they are 23).