Tried MDMA and Found Out my Friend Knows my Blog
One of my friends led me by the hand through the crowd
That sounds like an insignificant detail but it really wasn't
It was Nightmass at Dark Mofo and I was there with two friends (S and F) who are married to each other
Dark Mofo is a winter arts and music festival in Tasmania, Australia
Nightmass is one of it's major events. A mix of clubs, performance art and strangeness as you go from one interconnected building to another just exploring the rooms
Images/videos included in this post are from my experience of Nightmass 2026. They may all look unrelated or like it's from separate events but they were all accessible in the same area. That's the fun of Nightmass
All three of us had taken MDMA and for me it was the first time
Under the influence of MDMA I was able to spend a few hours feeling like I'm not a burden
I danced without thinking about how I looked, I drank water and loved it, I held hands while dancing and I talked about being trans without feeling like I had forced the topic
I felt happy
Not fixed or like MDMA had revealed some ultimate truth about my life
Just happy
It's hard to write about this without making it sound bigger or stupider than it was but it really was one of the best nights I have ever had
My memory of the night is not perfect. In addition to being high I was emotional and am writing this all afterward while still dealing with the weirdness and anxiety so take some of the timeline and wording with a grain of salt
Before MDMA
I had already been to Nightmass the previous week but it was new for both S and F
I was also there with two people from a different friend group who had been with me the previous week so I felt this pressure to manage both groups
Nobody had asked me to do that but I still felt like I had to keep checking whether everyone was having fun, whether the two groups were mixing properly or whether I needed to show people somewhere else
I was not really just enjoying the experience
I was anxious about the MDMA too
I had never done it before and I was worried about how I would feel or whether I would act embarrassing, like someone who gets way too drunk and does not realize how bad they are coming across
There is always a part of me trying to stay small enough to be easy to keep around, that part was still there at the start of the night
I didn't want to become a problem or the person everyone had to manage
MDMA kicking in and dancing
Then it started to kick in and it's like the music put me in a trance
I stopped being stuck in my head
I was dancing and enjoying the music without caring if I looked weird. I was not checking whether I was taking up too much space. I was not checking whether I was allowed to enjoy myself
I was just dancing
I usually feel like I'm watching myself from outside, constantly thinking if people find me annoying, am I blocking the view for someone behind me, is my dancing embarrassing, etc
For a while that night all those thoughts stopped
Even drinking water felt good. Not in a deep symbolic way, it just felt physically good
There was also physical contact that meant a lot to me:
- Holding hands while dancing
- Being led through the crowd
- A kiss on the cheek
I want to be careful writing that because I don't want to imply something romantic or sexual
It wasn't anything like that
But it mattered because I often feel physically disgusting, like everyone else views my body with the same revulsion I do and that night made those feelings quieter
For a while I didn't feel like something difficult to be near or like contact with me was something people had to politely endure
Being led by the hand through the crowd is probably the image I will remember most
I know that does not sound very gendered and I don't think anyone would explicitly say men lead through crowds and women follow
But I am used to being a relatively tall and big guy (or at least being perceived that way) so in most situations the common-sense thing is for me to lead
So being the one who followed felt different. Having my hand held by a friend instead of my partner felt different
It felt femme
Not because there is some rule that makes it femme but because it let me forget/ignore one small thing that tied me back to my pre-transition self
It also just felt like someone wanted me there and enjoyed my company
It gave me an embarrassing amount of gender euphoria for something so simple
I think part of why it mattered is that I never got to experience any small femme things earlier in life so now tiny things mean more than you'd expect
Going outside
After dancing for a while we went outside to cool down and breath
Unprompted (AFAIK) S and F became concerned about me. They said they were worried about my mental health. They said I could reach out to them and wanted me to know that I didn't have to handle everything alone
It felt like they were touching one of my biggest anxieties directly
That I am a burden who's only being tolerated
That if people saw too much of what is actually going on with me they would regret letting me get close
They didn't make it feel like that
I struggle with reaching out for help because I don't want to drop a grenade into a normal conversation. Suicide, self-harm, gender struggles are all stuff that's too big to say casually
Those feelings are also frequent enough that talking about them every time I had them would turn every conversation into a crisis intervention or a conversation where people feel pressured to comfort me and focus their attention on me
That night made it feel like maybe I could say some of it without detonating the room
Where people don't have to treat it as a crisis every time, just as a part of my life the same way I've grown to manage these feelings
At one point I had to explicitly clarify that I was not going to kill myself even if I have bad coping strategies
I think I was trying to protect them from panicking, I didn't want them to feel like they had to walk on eggshells around me
S kept trying to remind me that shit gets better
Logically, I know he's right. Feelings change, it's gotten better before and simple statistics suggest it will get better
But the problem is that my brain at some point will do the cost-benefit analysis on how long I'll suffer before it gets better
Still, it mattered that he was trying
Even if it didn't quite get to the core of my feelings the fact someone cared enough about me to try and help meant a lot
There was another moment outside that I keep thinking about too
At one point S called me out for saying I wanted to tattoo my eyeballs when we were around other friends a few weeks prior. I don't remember his exact words but it was something close to him saying he "didn't have the patience for that"
Although I do think it looks cool, he was right. I wasn't coming from a good place when I said that
If I think about it for any longer than a second I don't think I would ever actually do it. Logically, I know it would mess up my life. It makes no sense for me to do something that visible when I already have so many anxieties about being visibly trans to family
But I don't think I fully understood at the time why I said it
Looking back, I think it might've been the self-destructive mindset I was in at the time. Not necessarily wanting to hurt myself physically but wanting to look strange enough that it distracted from everything I already hated about my body
Like if I could make myself weird on purpose maybe the parts I felt insecure about would matter less
What surprised me was how S seemed to read that correctly. Maybe not in exactly those words but close enough that I felt seen in a way I was not expecting
Not gently, but accurately. In an important way
At one point F mentioned that I play with my hair when I am anxious or uncomfortable, I didn't even know I did that
That could have felt exposing but it mostly felt caring
After that, the conversation moved onto being trans
They asked a lot of questions and at one point F apologized in case the questions were uncomfortable or too much but I said I was happy talking about it
I meant it
Usually it feels like any time I mention something trans related I'm somehow forcing it into the conversation. Like I have to wedge it in and then deal with the awkwardness of having made the room aware of it
This didn't feel like that, it felt like I had rare permission
Being trans is not the only part of who I am but it is one of the most outward-facing parts. A lot of the time, talking about it feels either too heavy or too artificial
That night it didn't feel artificial, nobody treated it like a problem
At some point I talked about how I feel like I need to fight for every little bit of femininity
S asked something like why I care so much about strangers acknowledging me as my preferred gender or recognizing that I'm trans. I cannot remember the exact wording or example he used but I remember him giving some kind of comparison, something like how he knows he is a cool person and who cares if other people don't see that
This is a bastardization of the much more specific, well spoken example he used which I've since forgotten
I think I tried to explain that being seen as trans gives me freedom to express and act as myself
I don't think I explained it properly at the time but the best way I can explain it now is this
If I am presenting masc and I compliment a girl’s outfit that can be interpreted as me hitting on her or I at least have to worry that it might be interpreted that way
If I am presenting femme the same compliment can be something else. It can be more casual, more normal and more like the thing I actually meant
That is just one example but it gets at the feeling
I cannot just act how I want in the world, I have to act how I present
Being seen correctly is not only about vanity or wanting strangers to approve of me. It changes what kind of person I am allowed to be around them
It changes what my actions mean before I even explain them
At some point I also said something I don't usually say so directly
I said that maybe identifying as non-binary transfemme is partly a compromise because I don't think I deserve (or could accept) the label of woman and having the shield of identifying as non-binary gives me a defense for when I suck at being trans
I am not saying non-binary transfemme is fake or that MDMA revealed the truth. I was saying the ugly version of my own insecurity out loud
There is a part of me that does not know how to accept being called a woman
I started late, I don't pass, everyone in my life knew me before I came out and calling myself a woman would require a level of confidence I don't have
F said directly that she sees me as who I am now
She used my preferred name as an example to sorta state how even her old memories of me are replaced by who I am now
That landed hard
All my friends knew me before transition and that makes it difficult to know whether they actually see me now or they are tolerating the old version of me with changes attached
Someone can use the right name and still feel like they are mentally translating you back into the old you
That night felt different because they saw some of the ugly parts of my transition, not just the surface level things people have to deal with
Mental health. Insecurity. What being trans feels like. The fear around labels. The difficulty accepting myself
It felt less like I had to put on a character to make myself easier to understand and accept which I have only really felt with my partner before
Somewhere in that conversation I explained "ewwwphoria" which is the idea of finding some gross happiness in experiencing sexism/misogyny (cat calling, etc) because it validates your gender
After that F joked about wanting to get closer and calling me “bitch” affectionately which sounds silly but unlocked something I didn't really know I'd been missing before
I have always been more involved in masculine social banter due to how I've lived the majority of my life so the “bitch” comment felt like I was rediscovering feminine social banter
Even as a joke it felt like an invitation
A way of saying that the version of me from that night might be allowed to exist again
The contrast of inside and outside
We kept moving between inside and outside
Dancing-talking-dancing
Inside, I didn't have to worry about my existence
Outside, I could feel comfortable talking about my existence
The heavy conversation didn't ruin the night or make everything serious forever. It didn't turn me into a problem that had to be managed for the rest of the evening
We could talk about suicide or gender dysphoria outside and then go back in and dance
One of my fears with being honest is that once I say the difficult thing I will become something difficult, that night didn't work like that
The blog reveal
At one point while outside, the blog came up
We were talking about being trans and I said something like "remind me when we are sober to consider sending you a link to my blog"
I was thinking of one specific post that explained parts of my trans experience better than I could in the moment, but even while high some part of me knew I should wait until sober before actually deciding to send it
Then S said he had already found my blog
It wasn't really a "gotcha"
More like a "don’t worry about it, I already know"
He said he had found it a few months ago and had only read the first post or two when he first found it and hasn't looked at it since
I want to believe that especially since he repeated it again when I asked the next day
But I also cannot stop thinking about how he said my domain off by heart without missing a beat
Maybe that does not mean anything. Maybe the domain is just easy to remember. Maybe he really did only read the first few posts months ago and then left it alone
But now I know he knows where it is
And now he knows that I know he knows
That changes something
I am not pretending this blog is private. I put it online. I mentioned to some people that I created a blog and I knew there was always a chance someone in my life could find it
But knowing something is technically possible is not the same as being ready for it to happen
The blog felt public in a distant way, like shouting into a room where the lights are off. Someone could be there but I don't have to imagine their face or ever see them again
It let me write about things I don't always know how to say out loud. Sex. Shame. Hospitals. Transitioning. Self-harm. Wanting to die. Pain. Small social moments that meant too much
All those things become strange to write about if the person reading is also someone I might see next weekend. How much of our interactions have been shaped by what they read?
Did they know I might have been sexually assaulted?
Did they know how much guilt, shame and regret shape my life?
Did they know how bad my mental health had been?
Did they know that a tiny interaction with someone can become important enough for me to write thousands of words about it?
Did they read something and then talk to me differently afterward?
Did they think I was unstable? attention seeking?
Did they think I was writing things in a way that made them responsible for me?
That last one is something I'm deeply afraid of now
I don't want the blog to end up pressuring someone to comfort me. I don't want someone to read it and feel like they have been handed a job. I don't want S and F to feel like they now have to be careful around me because they know too much
The blog felt semi-anonymous so I could organise my thoughts and be honest in a way I usually can't be around people but now I'm worried that's changed
I don't think S or F did anything wrong to be clear, it was always somewhat public and (AFAIK) I hadn't explicitly mentioned to S that I wanted to keep it private
They don't need to reasure or comfort me until I'm fine, I just want to be realistic with myself that I don't feel normal about this
I don't know how to write honestly now without imagining them reading it
I don't know how to write about that night without feeling like doing so might change our friendship
I don't know how I can write about wanting some small part of that night to survive when we're sober without making it come off as me asking them to do something
I think that's the problem I have with the blog now. It felt like I could be honest here
Now I'm scared it will be another place I need to perform
Another place I will overanalyse how someone could think of me and let that change the way I present myself
Some part of me almost wishes S would just say he kept reading because then at least I would know what decision I am making. I could decide whether to keep writing knowing he is there or whether I need to delete this blog to get some privacy back
Unfortunately his answer (which shoud make me feel more comfortable) is also the least provable one
Leaving and the next day
When we left the party the mood dropped quickly. We walked home awkwardly, not talking much. I was stuck in my head trying to unpack the blog comment
What had they read? What should I do now? Could I keep the blog? Should I delete it? Would anything I write now feel contaminated by knowing someone I know might be reading?
The night didn't become bad, it just left me with a lot of questions
The next day I had a “how are you?” check-in from S and I got an invite to join S and F along with their 2 friends for dinner
I don't think they owed me some sort of extra closeness when we're sober. I was not expecting the hand-holding or MDMA intensity to continue into ordinary life and I know that a lot of what I felt the next day is probably my own insecurity, negative self-image, anxiety as well as the MDMA comedown
But I felt like I was on the periphery again
Tolerated, but not liked
Conclusion
I had seen what my life could be like under better conditions and then I had to return to normal life with that memory still fresh
I should probably have been better prepared for that
I know the night happened the way it did because of MDMA. S was more chatty. F was more physical. I was less self-conscious. The conversations were easier. Existing was easier
I know that
I'm not expecting the same intensity sober. I'm not expecting the physical closeness to continue. I'm not expecting the night to become the start of a new chapter where everything was suddenly different
But at the end of the night I hoped there would be some small shift that continued. Some proof that the version of me that night where I felt happiest and the most comfortable was allowed to exist in future
A sober acknowledgement that they meant what they said
A joke like “bitch” surviving
I don't know what I am going to do with the blog
I don't know how much of that night was friendship, how much was MDMA, and how much was me wanting something so badly that I made it bigger than it was
But for a few hours I felt less like a burden. I danced without thinking about how I looked. I drank water and loved it. I was led by the hand through a crowd and felt wanted there. I talked about being trans without feeling like I had forced it into the conversation. I said some ugly, uncertain things and they were treated seriously
I think I will remember that night for a very long time
Even with all the confusion after, I am grateful I got to feel that version of myself for a night
