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I was a second-year law student. It was Halloween, and my friends and I were at a basement rave in Philadelphia. We went to raves all the time, as was the custom of the era. I knew a lot of local DJs and musicians, and always enjoyed a good party. This was an era of my life where I wasn’t just “flying by the seat of my one-size-too-small pants,” as my friend Lexi once described me doing. I was flying with no pants or underwear while rolling my brains out on Molly and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. But I was with friends, and everyone was doing it. We were young — living with the reckless abandon that only youth may impart — and incredibly careless and stupid.
We were about an hour in, and the Molly was really starting to hit. I felt the familiar rush of energy, coming in waves, and the crescendo of euphoria that accompanies it. Everyone was having a blast, until I felt a strange sensation. I knew, instinctively, that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Now, I don’t believe in clairvoyance or anything supernatural, but for whatever reason, I knew that I had to leave immediately. Something felt off, like the feeling you get when you leave a door unlocked, or when you’ve forgotten your wallet. I told my friends what was happening, and they graciously agreed to depart with me. So we decamped to one of our friends’ home, and everyone tried their best to get me to calm down.
About twenty minutes after we arrived, I got a text message that would change the course of the next several months, and indeed the next several years of my life. But before we get into that, it’s important to know that at this point in my life (like every point in my life), I was severely depressed. This episode was particularly bad, though, and I had been non-trivially suicidal for a month or two. I had spoken to several people about it, who voiced concern and tried their best to cheer me up, to no avail. I can’t quite say what precisely had me in this mood, as aside from the parties and the few tales told in this book, I don’t remember much from law school at all. That being said, it was a low point, and that text message was about to bring me even lower.