About 8:45 pm I ingested 90-100 mg mdma in a glass of water. At the same time my brother drank a tea made with 4 grams of shrooms. This tea did not agree with him, so after puking violently, he decided to go for a walk, leaving me alone with a friend of his who was visiting. I had met this guy, but didn't know him very well. I could already feel the mdma coming on strong, a mere 20 minutes into my voyage.
I sat quietly, thinking about (and worrying about) my brother, hoping he was doing alright. This friend of my brothers (we'll call him M) offered me some fresh jalapeno peppers in lime juice he had prepared, and I accepted. As I sat masticating his offering, I asked him if he had ever tried mdma before ( BTW, he was not then on MDMA or anything else). He told me had, but that it had been during a bad time of his life. This led to us (two near strangers) discussing our respective forays into the darker areas of our psyches for long periods of time, and our methods we had used to heal ourselves and move on. We both concluded that these experiences, while extremely unpleasant, had been valuable and important. I felt a real connection to him.
At this time, my brother returned, feeling much better for having taken his walk. He loaded a bowl of cannabis and we went outside to smoke it, while M went home for the night. We sat outside, my brother smoking and me just sitting there enjoying the beauty of the night. He told me he was feeling better and tripping now, and I told him the mdma was definitely working for me. I felt really good, really alive and keyed in to what was going on around me and inside me. The hyperaware feelings I get on 2cb were present. And while it wasn't precisely visual, I did get the odd "tracer" and everything looked really wonderful.
We decided to walk to a nearby park where my brother could play his drum. After the short and pleasant walk over there, we sat down on the grass to chill. Almost as soon as we sat down, I saw a brilliant shooting star. I was awed and considered it a good omen.
My brother started playing his drum and it sounded really cool. He claims to have no real sense of rhythm, but it sounded very evocative to me. When he would pause, we talked.
We discussed our relationships, past and present. Our parents, and their unfortunately narrow reality tunnels were a prevalent topic. I told him how lucky I thought he was to have such a wonderful family (his wife is the coolest woman in the world and he has a new baby). I even told him some things I had never been able to talk about (including one little piece of information I had not previously admitted even to myself, though as soon as I said it , I knew it to be true). Our discussion ranged over a number of topics, including my exwife, his trouble with coping with full on psychedelic experience, and my ambitions to write. It was an incredible, irreplaceable conversation and I have mdma to thank for it.
After a while, we got up and walked back to his house. The mdma was tailing off, but still had a definite presence. His wife asked me what I thought of the experience so far (she had returned while we were out at the park) and I proceeded to enthuse about it.
About this time, my brother asked if I would like to smoke a bowl. Although I like to try new things "clean", the trip had tailed off to almost nothing and I felt I had a clear understanding of what the mdma experience was, so I decided to partake. He loaded his small glass pipe several times as we all three sat outside and discussed life, the universe and everything. I noticed that the cannabis seemed to add a visual element to the remains of the mdma. In the moonlight of the porch I detected very prominent "patterning" over everything, and when I closed my eyes, I was greeted by visions of a very cartoonish nature. Bright colors, smooth textures. Maybe more like computer animation. I was pleasantly stoned and content to watch these patterns and shapes slide around behind my eyes.
About this time we all headed for bed. I lay in bed watching these cartoons and listening to They Might Be Giants, which seemed to go very well with the cannabis/mdma pictures, until sleep overtook me.
I found this experience to be very positive and enlightening. I found the empathogenic vector to be very pronounced, almost overwhelmingly so. I would be wary of being that opened up in inappropriate circumstances. Upon waking the next day, I was a little "wrung out", but not to the degree I had been warned I might be.