![]() ![]() ![]() In my memory, John left the bathroom feeling better, and so did I I remember that conversation as a turning point in our friendship. When he confessed his anxieties, we tried to validate and reassure him. Some key elements of therapy were involved: we listened, with focussed attention, while John told us what was bothering him, and we asked why the remark had hurt so much. Still, I’ve always thought of our encounter as a sort of informal therapy session. John’s dorm-room bathroom didn’t have much in common with a therapist’s office. We got to work trying to help him sort things out, reminding him what a talented musician we knew him to be. At the time, I thought of John as a friend but not necessarily a close confidant-but I was on empathy overdrive, and it felt intolerable to see him hurting. Her comment, I sensed, had pricked a tender spot in his idea of himself. As he told us about it, he started to tear up. He was a serious musician who played in both an orchestra and a rock band he said that, earlier that day, a friend of his had asked why he bothered with the band. John closed the toilet lid, sat down, and began to talk. Was he sure that everything was fine? Did he want to tell us what had happened? But we were on MDMA, which has been called an “empathogen,” because it intensifies feelings of empathy and connection, and we were curious to the point of pushiness. On an ordinary day, we probably wouldn’t have inquired further. When we asked him what was going on, he told us only that he’d been hanging out with some friends. But something about his demeanor made us think that he was upset. He seemed unfazed to find us staring up at him with the big pupils you’d expect from an anime character. We were blissed out on one another’s company, deeply appreciating the cool, smooth nature of the wall, when John, the roommate of one of my friends, opened the door. We weren’t really rave people, so we piled into a dorm-room bathroom and sat together on the floor. It was 2002, and we thought of the drug as Ecstasy, or Molly, and associated it with raves. When I was in college, I took MDMA with a few friends. ![]()
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