Molly Was My Gateway Drug to Meditation

How taking the illicit 1990s psychedelic pill paved the way for me to get Zen

“I got the X,” Alex said.

“X,” short for ecstasy, or MDMA—known today as Molly—was the hottest new illicit drug in 1990.

“Great,” I said. If one was paying attention, they would have heard the tremor in my voice.

I’d experimented with some psychedelic drugs in high school and junior year of college, and despite having fun, the idea of taking them always made me queasy. What if I had a bad trip and went crazy? It happened to a college roommate of mine. I returned to our apartment one morning to find our beige phone receiver hanging out the window by its curly cue cord. While tripping on LSD, he realized that the telephone was the source of all evil (mind you, this was a landline—not even a smartphone!) and decided he had no use for it anymore. What he saw about humanity on his acid trip had radically changed him, and that scared me.

But ecstasy didn’t have a reputation for inciting psychosis. It was known as the heart-opening drug, and I was looking forward to tripping with my college boyfriend of two years, who was about to graduate and move to L.A. while I stayed in Chicago for my senior year. I wanted to say all the things and hear all the things about how much we’d meant to each other, and then have mind-blowing sex. I craved that kind of open-hearted contact, and I was embarrassed by just how much. In my vision of the trip, X would give us permission to luxuriate in sappy, soft-eyed gazes and in the amazement of our connection. We planned to take the X and play house one weekend at his parents’ New Jersey home during spring break when they were out of town.

Alex’s family home was quiet, with a brown kitchen that smelled like SpaghettiOs. At dusk, Alex handed me a pill and a peach Snapple, and we sat on the floor in the TV room with a bag of Doritos between us. We waited. And waited. The air started to feel stale, and I was getting antsy.

45 minutes later, I was coming back from the bathroom when I noticed a mild feeling of peace. Maybe it wasn’t peace. Maybe it was just the absence of the gnawing, gaping hole I’d learned to live with. A tensed jaw. The ever-present sense that something bad was about to happen, that had become so relentless I’d stopped noticing it. The X-fueled sabbatical reminded me of its constancy.

I turned to share this experience with Alex, and found him slumped on the floor, leaning into the couch.

“I’m not feeling well,” he muttered. He didn’t look good. He was nauseous, had a headache, and a greenish glow. I’d heard of this kind of thing with mushrooms and peyote, but not X; X was the happy drug, the love drug, and I hadn’t planned on or even considered the possibility of one of us having a bad reaction.

“I’ll be okay. I just need to stay here for a while,” Alex said. “I’m sorry.” He looked like he was trying to crawl into the couch.

“No problem. Whatever you need. I’m here,” I said.

And I meant it. Which blew my mind.

I wasn’t putting on a people-pleasing show to mask my disappointment; I was entirely content to just sit around and see what happened, clean up his puke if need be. While he tried to become one with the sofa, I kept feeling around for my resentment like a lost contact lens. Although we were nowhere near the lovefest I had envisioned or wanted, I realized that I could be okay, and he could be not okay; there was space for it all. What a revelation. He didn’t throw up, and we ended up watching TV and cuddling. I said to myself with all the agency I could muster: “I want this. I want to be this free without drugs, and I think it’s possible.”

These days, Molly is more available than X was back then, although according to USA Today, it’s reportedly gotten up to 50 percent stronger than in the days we used it. I’m now more aware of the medical risks, including severe dehydration, overheating (as it’s often taken in dance clubs), the possibility of complications from being mixed with other drugs like fentanyl, as well as electrolyte imbalance and kidney issues.

Still, Molly, technically known as MDMA, along with other psychedelics, is being used by psychologists on the down low to treat intractable psychiatric conditions such as PTSD. I can see why. To say a drug trip changed my life is not an overstatement.

Yes, it was my drug-addled mind that made that declaration about wanting to feel that free without drugs, but my straight mind that remembered it. Back then, I shared the experience with my Jungian therapist. “I’m so affected by others’ moods,” I said. “But when we were tripping, I wasn’t. Is that possible in real life?”

“Yes,” she said, adding, “if you can learn to quiet all the chatter, you can learn to let go of expectations and accept what is. Maybe not with that level of contentment all the time, but close.”

I started reading books on spirituality and trying to meditate, which I found nearly impossible to do. Then, six months later, I was drinking cappuccino in a hip coffee shop with my best friend, a graduate theater student, on a bright fall day.

“So, are you going to date anyone now that Alex is out in L.A.?” she asked. She had fallen in love with a gorgeous grad student and her blue eyes had a dreamy sparkle.

“Well, there’s this one guy I keep thinking about,” I said, fingering the foam off the sides of my mug. “But I met him almost a year ago. And we’ve never even spoken.”

She leaned in.

“He was the set designer for our show last winter. He’s not at all my type, but when he walked from the back of the theater to the stage, my heart flipped. The only thing I know about him is that his name is James.”

My friend’s face went blank for a moment, and then came to life with an expression of awe.

“Blair! James is my boyfriend’s best friend. You would love him! He’s so spiritual!”

She set up a couples’ date. And she was right, I did love him, though not in a romantic way. During our two-month affair, he introduced me to his guru and spiritual practice. I was skeptical at first, and thought it was weird, and we broke up. But then, when I found myself alone in Los Angeles and depressed after college, I tried some of the practices. Surprisingly, they had a similar effect to the X: I got a break from my constant anxiety, and for a little while after meditating, I felt buoyant and peaceful, much less bothered by things.

Two years later, I would move into his guru’s ashram, where, for 16 months, I trained. I chanted, meditated, became a meditation teacher, and felt a lot better about navigating life by the time I left, which I wrote about in my memoir about that time.

More than 30 years after tripping on X, I’m still working on being that free. The work is slower than slow, but also entirely rewarding. Even though the feeling of anxious dread still comes and goes, it’s no longer the underscore of my life, and I’ve learned to see it as a signal. Some of it is a result of age, but much of it I do attribute to regular practice.

A few years ago, my red-eye flight to visit a dear friend across the country was postponed due to weather. The departure time kept changing until they decided to put us on another plane in the morning. I wandered around the airport at night when most of the restaurants had closed. I felt annoyed and disappointed that my vacation was slipping away. But then, having nothing else to do, I decided to meditate. I found an empty corner of a gate waiting area and sat on the floor. It was deeply uncomfortable to sit there and breathe through it all, with my inner stress and the loudspeakers blaring departures and the beeping noises of various airport vehicles. But after about an hour, a feeling of calm washed over me. The flight ended up boarding earlier than expected.

When I arrived, I hugged my friend.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “What an ordeal!”

“It was,” I said. “But I’m here.” And I meant it.

Blair Glaser is an executive leadership coach and author of This Incredible Longing, Finding My Self in a Near-Cult Experience (Heliotrope). Her essays have appeared in Fortune, The Los Angeles Times, People, Oldster, and others, as well as literary publications such as Brevity and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. You can find more about her at blairglaser.com.