It's probably 1998, though I'm not entirely sure, and I'm at Burning Man. When my friends and I first started going to this desert festival (an event that, despite articles like this, is not mainly about taking drugs), we might have taken Ecstasy once or twice over the course of four or five days. Now, we're popping E once or twice a night, almost every night, over the course of a week or more. Chemically, it makes no sense to do this -- once you've shot your serotonin wad, it just can't return to levels at which MDMA can affect it. (This is why people like Alexander Shulgin don't do the drug very often, nor advise others to.) More serotonin in your system means more happy and relaxed feelings, so you sort of want to keep serotonin around. But I don't know this yet. And if my friends do, it's not a hot topic of discussion.

My third day in a row taking E: It's still daylight when I take a pill and at first it feels pretty good. It's somewhat speedy, which is not ideal but also not surprising, given how the quality has been slowly but surely deteriorating over the past few years -- leading to a slippery slope of delusion. ("Maybe this time it will be good. Maybe if I just take two hits it'll work like it used to.") My girlfriend couldn't come this year, and at first the pill is kind of fun, liberating even -- "Look, Ma, no girlfriend!" Then I start to miss her. A lot. I feel lonely and sad and scared. And then sick. I puke all over the dusty desert floor. Others have taken this same batch and are fine. But my body didn't want MDMA, or whatever else might lie in this little powdered pill someone got from somewhere and at some point gave to me. Collecting my disgusting self, I drink some water and join some friends who are enjoying another perfect sunset. Nigel, a graphic designer I met during my first "real" job and the person who introduced me to the desert a couple of years before, notices that something's wrong. He puts his gentle British arm around me and asks me if I'm all right. I say I'm fine. He brings over a few more friends and tells them that he thinks I am missing my girlfriend and so they need to keep me company.

That wasn't the worst trip I've had, not even close. The worst experience on E was the night six of us decided to take it together, including one E virgin. We all took a pill that I had personally procured, and after 45 minutes it kicked in. But the virgin didn't really feel it. We decided to take another half each. A few minutes later, the first-timer had a seizure. He flopped on the ground surrounded by his terrified, panicking wife and a bunch of tripping, totally freaked-out friends trying to figure out what the fuck to do. A few minutes later, he came to, explaining that he had a history of seizures. That night it became painfully clear to me that a guy handing out drugs ought to be more acutely aware of its possible side effects. Days later, two clicks of the mouse taught me that people with a history of seizures aren't ideal candidates for E. Had he died, everything would be different. Among other life changes, there's certainly no way I'd ever take E again, and I would probably be traveling around the country telling high school kids about the dangers of drugs. But he didn't die. He soon felt better and stayed up most of the night happily talking. He'd done his last pill, sure. But the rest of us hadn't.

Few of the trips since then weren't what I'd call bad; they just weren't all that good. We were doing it too much, feeling it too little.

"When you do it twice a month it starts to get boring," says Pippi, now 35 and a marketing executive at a software company in Silicon Valley. "You get into an E rut, the same E friends doing the same E thing. You feel like hell. Why I am taking this and where is this taking me? That's the depressing side. I think it comes with age, too. You need to go to higher highs as with any drug to be happy with the high."

With each trip, the downside seemed to be getting more down.

"It stopped being all sexy and friendly," says Robert, a 31-year-old carpenter whom you could count on to do anything and everything, usually all at once. "It started being a hassle, an ampy, nasty feeling that had become more of a ritual than a choice. And by the way, I don't really like to dance. It's like, how come when I'm sober you can't get me on a dance floor, but when I'm all hopped up on the goof, I'm out there flopping around like Rerun from 'What's Happening?' That doesn't make sense at all, but I was trying to force it to work, force it to be fun again."

For Nigel, 39, it worked reliably for a number of years. Then it stopped working. "Not abruptly," he explains, "but over a period of a couple of years. I'm not sure if I've done too much, or if the X is too speedy, but often I feel depressed two days afterwards. More than that, while I still have a good -- though not great or mind-blowing -- time, I'm conscious of the fact that I can see through the artifice of the drug. While before I could easily suspend disbelief, nowadays I'm aware -- naggingly conscious -- of the fact that I'm being tricked into thinking I'm happy. My brain tells me: You're happy now. But that's 'cause you're on drugs. Just wait till tomorrow."

I had to ask, like Carrie Bradshaw tapping out another obvious yet irresistible column: Was the X getting worse, or were we getting too old for it?

Coming Thursday: Monkey gone to heaven: One primate expired during a landmark Johns Hopkins medical study. How are the four other monkeys -- and less furry Ecstasy users -- doing?

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