Ravers score rare victory over Mondays

Medical

The Awakn formula to avoid notorious MDMA comedowns: peak early and don’t skimp on quality

Scott Houston, ‘Party Kids at Dawn’

In 40 years there’s been no single serious reaction to MDMA in clinical setting.

Doses taken are 125mg and up, about half the size of a respectable ecstasy pill. But “It’s 99.8% pure, and very expensive,” says Dr Sessa of his MDMA stash.

Alongside a 9:30am start time, measured hydration, and overnight stays in the chic surrounds of an Awakn clinic, the integrity of the substance is one of the many reasons why Dr Ben Sessa reckons MDMA comedowns don’t exist. Just like your mate, ‘Hardcore Mandy’.

Sessa didn’t exactly say ‘Comedowns don’t exist’ in his December 2021 report Debunking the myth of ‘Blue Mondays: No evidence of affect drop after taking clinical MDMA.

“Take it during the day”

In fact, like he does say in the proceeding war of words on the letters pages of The International Journal of Psychiatry (which is a pretty cool thing to be having anyway) after the article appeared:

‘We were not stating that ‘Blue Mondays’ do not exist in recreational user populations. Quite the contrary, they do. In respect of power: across 26 clinical MDMA sessions, we did not elicit one single report of acute comedowns. All participants reported no negative disturbance to affect at the end of the day after taking MDMA as the drug wore off. No comedowns. This is a highly significant outcome over 26 separate sessions with clinical MDMA.’

The notorious ecstasy ‘comedown’ where ravers feel considerably less clever on the morning commute than they did atop a riser earlier in the weekend, is likely due to sleep deprivation, over-exertion and dehydration.

“People often ask, what about comedowns?”

Plus combining recreational MDMA with whatever ravers can get their hands on at 7am, Dr Sessa told Vital students. 

“Every weekend, three quarters of a million doses of ecstasy are taken in the UK, yet our wards and clinics and outpatient departments are not full of ecstasy casualties. That is a data driven,” he explains, “People often ask, ‘What about comedowns? Recreational ecstasy users describe all kinds of flowery terms to describe this: blue Monday, black Tuesday [usually the worst I find], suicide Wednesday. We saw no evidence of this effect drop after taking clinical MDMA.”

“Not too quick on ‘Debunking the myth of ‘Blue Mondays’,” responded a team of Dutch psychologists in masterful pidgin english before going all n=17 on everyone and spreading a really heavy vibe over the whole session. 

‘For instance, were there multiple raters, and can the authors report inter-rater reliability?’ They wrote to the editor in the August 2022 issue of the IJP, ‘These questions also apply to the “list of representative questions and responses” included in Table 3. What does representative mean in this case, and how was representativeness assessed?’

The urbane Sessa parried, ‘We feel our recent Blue Mondays article contributes positively to the field by providing a clear report of the relative lack of adverse effects seen with clinical MDMA administration in contrast with the widely reported negative anecdotes seen with recreational use… This is especially relevant given the fact that we were studying potentially vulnerable patients with significant mental and physical illness. We appreciate the criticisms about the article’s hard-hitting title, which has certainly resulted in considerable debate.’

Dr Sessa’s valuable advice to recreational users?

“Take it during the day,” he told readers of hoary hedonism journal Vice, “I realise that is a bit unrealistic.” The rave scene adapts nonetheless: next-gen London nightclub Printworks is built in a former newspaper printing press for total soundproofing within a central north London location. DJs play all afternoon and evening to three generations of ravers, mostly on the younger end. Closing time on the Tube hasn’t been the same since it opened in 2017. While Printworks will be demolished to make way for… commercial offices, a successor has been announced.