The Time I Almost Died at a Phish Show

2011

It was summer, Phish was playing their 9th festival at Watkins Glen, NY. My friends and I arrived, ready to have a great time.  We certainly had a blast, except for the first night, when I almost died...

On our way into the first set, I was approached by a friendly face offering me some molly for the show.  I figured that this guy seemed trustworthy, as everyone had always been at the dozens of Phish shows I've been to over the years.  I'm not particularly fond of MDMA myself, but we talked it over and decided to get a bag to kick the weekend off.

I keep it on me, and we start dipping our fingers in as we walk towards the stage.  My friends have a little, but I was amped up and ready for a great night, so I have a little bit more than them over the next hour or so before the show.  I was relatively well-versed in what I was doing, I mean I had done ecstasy a few times before, so I just assumed I'd be good to go.

The music starts, the crowd goes nuts, and I look up to realize that I am not next to my friends anymore.  They are now a few rows of people ahead of me, as everyone around us moved closer towards the stage.  All of sudden I notice that I am sweating...profusely.  It's hot.  Real hot.  It actually wasn't that hot, some people even had sweatshirts on, but I was burning up.  I reach out for my friends and tap them on the shoulder and point to the back where the concessions are, they give me the thumbs up while starting to jam out with everyone else.

I turn to walk away and realize that something is horribly wrong.  I can barely breathe, I can barely see, I can barely walk.  I make it to the first clearing I found in between the masses of people and collapse.  I roll over on my back and stare at the sky.  A couple people check on me at first, thinking I'm on God knows what, but no one seems that concerned.

Meanwhile, things are getting worse for me.  I need to get back to the tent.  I was soaked, like I just got out of a pool, and I started shivering as the chills crept in.  It took all my strength to get myself up, but finally I did.  I made it about 40 more feet, before having to lie down again.  At this point, the people around me surprisingly got mad and even made fun of me.  I distinctly remember many different people talking shit about the guy who can't keep himself together at a Phish show.  There was a group of girls right next to me, literally laughing at me throughout this.

Now, this was not a hallucination.  This was all clear as day.  I have been a Phish fan practically my whole life, and I have been around some of the nicest people in the world at practically every show I've ever been to.  I have literally never experienced this sort of reaction to anything in my life before, and the one time I do, I happen to be around the douchiest Phish fans ever.

My heart races and pounds like I had just ran a marathon, my body got colder and shook and shivered, I needed water, desperately.  I didn't have any.  I couldn't control my body to actually get up and buy one.  Was this it?  What the fuck did I do?  Why the fuck did I do this?

Before this festival, I had just started dating @missjessica, who couldn't attend the show that weekend.  We had been together probably less than a month in that sort of per-official phase.  I remember looking at the night sky, and just thinking of her and how much of an asshole I was to choose a stupid bag of powder over a potential life with her.  I cried a couple tears, but finally I found some deep inner-strength that had gone missing for the past hour.  I angrily said "NO!" and walked like a cripple the quarter mile back to the tent over the next half hour.  I bundled myself up in my sleeping bag and slept for about 14 hours.  I recovered the next day, and made better life choices the rest of the weekend.

Now, you may be saying, come on, you didn't really almost die.  You probably just had a little too much molly.  Well, I happen to have a friend who is an expert on this topic.  He wasn't with me that night, but we talked in detail about everything that occurred.  He knew exactly what I had.

It's called M-1 or methylone.  It's a recreational drug, when used "responsibly", but when sold as something it's not, and ingested at a higher than recommended rate, this is literally a potential death sentence.

 Severe Effects of Methylone

These effects could turn into a severe medical emergency and hospitalization, with effects like these being noted:

Panic attacks

Seizures

Muscle breakdown

Organ failure

Death

There are already a growing number of deaths from this drug. The user may have taken too much or may have been overly sensitive to its effects. Deaths finally occurred after effects like multiple cardiac arrests, fevers up to 107 degrees and combativeness that required the person to be strapped down. Along the way, the skeletal muscles began to break down because of reactions to the chemical or the stress of the person fighting police or restraints. Livers and kidneys also collapsed. 

Source

With molly, the fun can last a good while, but M-1 gives you about a 50% similar experience for about 50% of the time.  This leads people to continually go back to the bag to get that molly high that they think they are getting, leading to a potential M-1 overdose.  It looks very similar, and even tasted pretty much the same, but it's some of the most dangerous shit you can take if you unknowingly abuse it.

As for the fans who didn't care, well I am now the guy who brings waters into the show, or buys them from concession, and then keeps a vigilante eye open throughout the show for anyone in need.  I have helped a lot of people at shows since.  One kid at Magnaball looked like he was going through exactly what I went through.  @missjessica and I got him to the shade and filled him up with water, while calming him down, ready to run to get medical help if he didn't improve.  We stayed with him the whole set and he was very thankful by the end. This happens more than you realize at shows.

These sort of experiences can be avoided.  If you insist on using drugs, don't take stuff if you aren't 100% sure what it is.  The better option is to just enjoy and embrace life without them altogether.  This is how Jessica and I live now.  We don't need drugs to have a good time, just like we don't need alcohol.  Don't let everything you hold sacred in life slip through your fingers because you wanted to have a good time, and didn't think things through.

This was a tough lesson for me to learn, and I have clearly changed many patterns in my life as a result.  I hope this story can get people to think twice the next time they are offered a white powder from a stranger at a concert, no matter how cool the "vibe" is.

@derekareith