Season 1, Episode 15 - Jagged Little Pill

Original Airdate - March 3rd, 2002

Okay, friends, buckle in. It’s the season finale. It’s a jam-packed 22 minutes, and everyone gets a hand on the ball. The set up: Ashley and Toby’s parents are going on an overnight trip and leaving them alone. One friend each. No parties. Kate isn’t worried about her daughter. Ashley is so responsible. In fact, everyone thinks Ashley is so perfect. It’s starting to get to her.

Toby can’t get over his crush on Emma. But with her and Sean on ice, JT thinks it’s the perfect time to strike. Both of the Kerwin/Isaacs break the one friend rule. JT invites Sean to join them that evening, hoping that Sean can teach them his bad-boy, girl-catching ways. They lie to Sean and say Emma will be there also. He agrees to come.

Ashley tells everyone that her one friend for the evening will be Terri. Paige is kind of bummed. Of course boring Ashley doesn’t want to have fun. But Jimmy takes it in stride. Ashley is a little shook. Shouldn’t he want to spend more time with her? Things just don’t feel quite right between them, and her instinct is to pull him closer. Paige makes another comment about Ashley’s following ways, and Ashley says fine, if Paige wants to come over that night, she should.

And then the only other context you need is basically everything else that’s already happened this season.

Paige brings Hazel and Ashley is like cool, that’s cool, I’m cool. The girls watch 3D horror movies with silly red/blue glasses. Ashley and Toby realize they’re both breaking the rules and make an unspoken vow of mutual protection. Sean shows up, and JT and Toby start grilling him about getting girls. He says all he does is be himself, which they think can’t be all there is to it. JT has big plans to be badder boys. He bought ecstasy from his cousin.

Sean takes the pill to the kitchen and runs into Ashley. He tells her about the drugs, and swaps the pill for a vitamin tablet. The boys will never know the difference. Sean asks Ashley to flush the E. Paige walks in and tells Ashley that their movie night is a little lame. Paige says that Ashley is cool and fun when she lets herself be, so she should let herself be. Call Jimmy. Ashley does, and, trying to be impulsive, takes the ecstasy.

JT and Toby are fake high and Sean is laughing at them. He pushes JT to call Emma over. Ashley is real high and being a little much. Emma, Manny, and Liberty show up, and Ashley is so glad to see Liberty. It’s a classic high moment. She tells Liberty she understands her, and drags her inside to dance. Ashley breaks a vase.

Emma and Manny head upstairs as Jimmy, Spinner, and some unnamed extras show up. Jimmy is not impressed that Ashley took drugs and she thinks he’s being lame. No one is providing the kind of gentle care a high friend needs. It’s scold city. But Ashley feels great and isn’t going to let anyone get her down.

Emma and Manny are chilling with a very weird JT and Toby when Sean walks in. Emma is not happy and storms off. She does not want to talk to him. Sean starts crying in the upstairs landing when Ashley finds him. She pulls him into her room to comfort him. She gets him. People are always telling them stories about who they are - he’s the bad boy, she’s the good girl. Both of them are more than that. They start making out.

The Grade 7s come downstairs. JT parties with the Grade 8s, and Liberty and Manny disappear from the episode. Jimmy corners Toby and tells him he’s an idiot and that Ashley is the high one, not him. Toby says Sean must have switched the pills. Jimmy is pissed that Sean is there and goes upstairs to find him. He sees Sean coming out of Ashley’s room, followed by a disheveled Ashley. Uh oh.

Toby goes outside to find Emma and make his move. She’s crying and cries even more as Sean leaves, which Sean sees. She hugs Toby for comfort and Toby realizes it’s not going to happen.

Ashley tries to calm Jimmy down and is brutally, excruciatingly honest. Her experience with Sean was incredible and helped her realize some things. Jimmy tells her it’s just the drugs and she’s like, I don’t think so! She says she should have broken up with him on his birthday, they are just not right for each other. And that’s fine! No one has to be upset about it.

Jimmy is hurt. Terri tries to calm Ashley down, but Ashley won’t stop. Paige calls Ashley a hag, and Ashley tells Paige she’s a tacky bitch. Ashley keeps twisting the knife and Jimmy storms out. Everyone but Terri follows.

The next morning, Ashley feels like shit. She’s blaming the drugs for what she said, plus the house is a mess. Paige won’t return her calls and she’s afraid to even try calling Jimmy. Spinner shows up and gives Ashley all of the stuff she’d given Jimmy during their relationship. Jimmy doesn’t want to speak to Ashley again. Ashley breaks down crying as her parents return home and see the mess. Ashley’s life as Miss Perfect is definitely over.

MDMA. What a substance. I definitely am not about to post publicly that I’ve done illegal drugs. Everything else I say here is a cool imaginative exercise. What if I had done molly? What if I had things to say about that? That would be wild.

My first experience with molly came through my now ex-boyfriend. We weren’t even technically together at the time. We’d broken up due to some bad communication and lack of consideration, but pretty quickly returned to each other’s orbits. Did we really talk through the underlying issues? No! But apologies were made, perspective was gained, and I certainly knew what I wanted.

And what I wanted was to be boyfriends again. By that point, we’d been acting like we were together, but neither of us had broached the topic of being officially back. I think I was scared. Putting a label on it again felt like it was opening us up to the return of fears, insecurities, and disappointments. Yet I craved the security of definitions and labels.

My ex is much more of a raver than I ever was and had had many experiences with dancing and drugs. I had 7 years in LA on him, but he’d been to more of the gay parties. Finally, he invited me along. I was incredibly anxious but very excited. I wanted the big gay dance and drug experience, and I was beyond excited that he wanted me there with him.

I loved it. Probably too much. I didn’t feel intimidated by the throngs of gay men with instagram-ready bodies. I felt just as hot and less scared of talking to people. I didn’t feel threatened by the attention my ex received or the fact that his other boyfriend was there with us. I felt compersion and delight that people saw how beautiful he was.

When I look back on the moments of our relationship where I felt the most locked in and connected with him, this first molly night comes to mind. We kissed and we danced and we kissed other people and we supported each other. And as the molly stripped away our hesitations, we talked. I asked him if he was my boyfriend again and he gave me a big smile and said yeah and this moment is the kind of memory that you feel more than you recall.

But we also talked about what had came before. Not well. Not enough. He admitted to me an outright lie he’d told me after months of downplaying and denying. I was so full of love and serotonin, I told him I forgave him instantly. I didn’t.

None of this was “the drugs talking.” The love and the support and the compersion and the joy were me. And the forgiveness was me too, but a me I could only access when the drugs washed away everything I was afraid of.

Molly and Esctasy are street name for the same drug, MDMA. They’re often cut with other substances (caffeine, ketamine, cocaine, fentanyl) and it’s that particular and unpredictable mix that can make them dangerous. MDMA itself, though it should be treated respectfully, is a therapy drug.

It’s a stimulant and a psychedelic. It’s a popular party drug, not just because the time and sensory distortion effects, but because it literally makes you feel good. It causes your body to produce an excess of serotonin, the mood regulating hormone that, to wildly oversimplify, creates good vibes.

As I mentioned, I would never come on the internet and admit to doing an illegal drug, but people have asked me what molly feels like in the past, and I do have an answer. Unlike some other heavy drugs, there is nothing dissociative about molly for me. I feel very in my body, and in a good way. I don’t feel like I’m acting like someone else, I feel like I’m acting like the most confident version of me. Want the sincere answer to the trite wellness question “what would you do if you weren’t afraid”? Do molly. Of course, it’s illegal, so don’t.

This effect is part of why MDMA was developed, and why the therapeutic field it was developed to support is couples therapy. When you strip away fear and anxiety and insecurity, you can get to the heart of the matter, unlock your full empathetic self, and say what you really think with less fear of your partner’s response. Under the guidance of a trained mental health professional, MDMA therapy can be extraordinarily helpful to couples in navigating interpersonal issues.

I was not under the guidance of a trained mental health professional. I was a lovesick novice who discovered that doing drugs with my boyfriend helped me bridge the gaps that often divided us. They made me less insecure and him more direct and we could finally, finally get somewhere when we talked. I didn’t even realize I was using molly to do lowkey couples therapy. I just liked feeling close to him.

Molly comes with a pretty wicked comedown. There are ways to minimize it, but flooding your body with all of that serotonin can leave you feeling empty and raw the next day. You shouldn’t do molly very frequently, or you risk messing with your body’s natural ability to release necessary hormones. I was smart enough, and mature enough, to realize molly was a sometimes treat.

But I was desperate enough to repair the relationship that I wanted that treat as frequently as possible. We set a three month cadence and I was constantly yearning for the next hit. Not of the high, though I liked that too, but of the connection. Under the influence of molly, I could be the social creature I wanted to be and he was the confident partner I wanted him to be.

But without the molly, we weren’t getting anywhere. My fear came back and my ability to forgive and trust got buried. I became hyper-vigilant. His fear came back and his concerns about my judgment and guilt returned. He became avoidant. A year of our relationship went by in this cycle. Drugs, connection, comedown, tension. Doing street-mixed drugs at warehouse parties, we lacked the guidance and support to bring our rolling revelations into our daily relationship. And I don’t think either of us wanted to admit the way molly was holding us together.

Molly doesn’t always mix great with mental health medications. It’s a big no-no for those on SSRIs. And when my ex started taking Adderall, he found that molly no longer hit in the same way. There were a lot of factors that heralded the long decline of our relationship before our break up. I hate that losing our ability to connect while on drugs was one of them.

The decline of Ashley and Jimmy’s relationship has been one of my unexpected favorite arcs this season. It’s slow and tricky. Neither character can quite bring themselves to admit that they don’t really fit. They don’t like each other quite as much as they should. They’re more bonded to the story of their relationship than they are to each other.

I do not think 8th graders should touch hard drugs, but, watching this episode, I did feel a surge of joy for Ashley. She can finally admit to Jimmy that she just doesn’t feel it with him. She can admit to Liberty that she really likes her. She can tell Paige to stop being such a bitch all the time. She can genuinely connect with someone over something real.

Ashley’s behavior on ecstasy feels pretty right to me, but I hate the way the show wraps it all up. I wish in the morning, instead of Ashley feeling like drugs took over her body and made her say and do things she didn’t want to, Ashley had to grapple with something more complicated. Everything she said and did were things she wanted to say and do, but never would have had the courage. That wasn’t the drugs talking, that was the real Ashley.

Admitting that, seeing that, knowing that is how we turn dangerous drugs into incredible tools. Not for a Canadian Grade 8, but for us adults. I wish I could have had the wisdom and honesty to express that I wanted my ex and I to be the molly version of ourselves all of the time, fearlessly and boldly in love. Then we could have actually gone down the road of getting there.