Did ecstasy drive me mad?

It was December 1996 in Cape Town, South Africa, and it had been a typical weekend. I was with three friends and we had split an ecstasy pill on the Saturday evening, then gone to a couple of clubs. The "trip" wasn't great, and it wasn't the first time I had vomited after swallowing a pill, but that soon passed. My friends and I had gone to chill out in the forest. We walked around having profound conversations, then went home and crashed out. On Sunday and Monday we had all been coming down and felt a bit rough, but by Tuesday I was back to normal.

I had just turned 18, and was in South Africa on my gap-year, travelling, working and playing. My boyfriend, Adam, and I were out walking later that day when I felt an excruciating pain. I was short of breath, as if I were having a panic attack. The only conclusion I could come to was that I was still coming down from the drug.

Back at Adam's house, the anxiety and depression wouldn't go. I stayed in bed for two days, unable to stomach any food. The scariest thing was not knowing if the feeling would ever end. I thought that if it continued for a few more days I would have to kill myself - no one could live with such agony.

Everyone was sympathetic, but no one knew what had happened to me. My friends who had shared the pill were as right as rain. They wondered if I had been depressed when I took the E and whether the drug had brought it out. They didn't convince me. I was possessed by fear.

That pill was the tenth time I had taken ecstasy. The first time was a revelation: a feeling of instant euphoria I had never dreamed existed - and there was no comedown. I kept taking it - never more than a single pill on any occasion and usually much less - in an attempt to recreate that moment of joy. I never could.

Each time I took it the high was more mediocre and I started to have panic attacks and throw up. This happened about four times, but the sordidness of these attacks failed to alert me to the danger. That last weekend, when I took a pill, I had vomited in the club and panicked for ages.

I had never before experienced even a glimmer of what I later found out was clinical depression - complete with panic attacks - before I started taking E, although I had always been "a worrier". Later, I could rationalise it in terms of brain chemistry and a lack of serotonin (the chemical in the brain that makes you happy), but at the time my mind pictured the experience as a black hole where no one could reach me. I was very, very scared.

After two days of this terrible depression I felt I had no choice but to call my parents back home in Oxford and, with shame, tell them what was happening. Mum and dad had no idea that I'd been taking drugs, but were sympathetic. Luckily I have lots of relatives in Cape Town; otherwise they would have demanded I fly straight home. They told me to go straight to my gran's house. Sleep was the only respite from what felt like neverending panic. The next day the agony was still unbearable.

This stage of feeling so depressed I didn't want to get out of bed lasted for three months. I saw every specialist in Cape Town - psychotherapists, psychiatrists, GPs, homeopaths, naturopaths, even clairvoyants. Some suggested antidepressants and tranquillisers, but I now had a horror of taking any kind of pill. The betrayal of the so-called "love drug", as it showed its dark side, created a fear of all things connected with love and happiness. It was like inhabiting a horror film. The beautiful mountains of the Cape took on a threatening aspect. Friends showing me love were monsters in masks.

Then, one evening in March, I had a terrible vision of being eternally alone in hell. I think I was having a complete breakdown. Once again I called my parents and they asked my uncle to look after me. That weekend I saw a psychiatrist, who told me I was possibly "psychotic" and persuaded me to take antidepressants and tranquillisers. I felt it was my last hope, so I swallowed my first dose of serotonin-uppers. But after a few hours, my hands started prickling uncontrollably and my heart began to pound. My arms then became paralysed as I felt the familiar hot rush of a panic attack. I screamed, "I'm dying, take me to a hospital, please help me, help me!"

Thankfully, that was the last panic attack I ever had. I threw away the antidepressants and was prescribed a homeopathic remedy.

Gradually, between March and June, I started to feel less anxious, although I was still very low. One day in June I went for a walk on the beach and felt a glimmer of happiness. The next day I was about to leave for my new job as a waitress when I felt it again. There was a peaceful pleasure in getting ready and going out, in the colours and scents around me.

The depression I had thought might never end suddenly did. Within days I was able to enjoy things again: gentle music, drawing. By the time I came home to start university at Cambridge in October 1997, I was able to function normally.

It wasn't over, though. Halfway through my first year at college, I had a minor relapse. It lasted a month, and I was forced to go home to my parents because I was unable to work, socialise or eat. I was lifted out of this second bout of depression by taking Prozac for a month or two, something I could never have faced a year before.

Looking back, it was the worst six months of my life. None of the experts was able to explain exactly what happened to me, nor can anyone tell me if there are long-term effects - though, after four years, it finally feels over for me.

My case went down in the records as a rare allergic reaction. I would like anyone who is taking, or thinking of taking, the drug to know what could happen. When I was seeing doctors they invariably warned me not to take drugs again. To me this was like telling a person with a broken leg not to stand in the middle of rush-hour traffic.

Everything in me recoiled in horror at the thought of ever taking another ecstasy tablet.