By April Joines

3/13/2026

Dangers of Molly the drug Ecstasy / MDNA/ & E/ K, discounts, Adam, sally , whatever they call it?! These pills have chemicals in them that you don’t want your children to be taking young adults shouldn’t if you’re prone to seizures people will try to tell you it’s not harmful, but then you’ll get harmed by it just because it looks colorful and non-harmful it doesn’t mean that it isn’t . This is a drug that I’ve not ever tried before my friends and I went to a place called Club Shampoo in Philadelphia when I was 23 years old. Right across the street from the electric factory where I saw AFI play one time it was such an awesome concert .

Thomas and I went to go to a disco biscuits concert in Colorado in Denver. We took a rental car from the airport after we flew from the Philadelphia. International Airport and Air Force One was there while we were in line going to go to the New Year’s Eve celebrating. I think it was New Year’s Eve 2005 right before 2006 so we spent a week together in Denver, Colorado, and we had a rental car and we went to visit my brother who was working as a snowboard, instructor and snowboard repair at the Breckenridge ski resort on the bunny slopes which was adorable before my brother became a graduate from university of Denver with honors in philosophy he did a work study program when he moved to Denver and he managed the clubs, the Oakden, the bluebird, and the Gothic at the same time working full-time and graduated from l University of Denver that is pretty impressive considering he had to work full-time and was in a work study program. We went to visit my brother and he was sober at the time after the pandemic though in California when he was working at the House Of Blues in Anaheim, he tried Molly/ecstasy/K and he was told by one of his college professors that it was one of the least harmful drugs that you can take, but that still doesn’t mean that it’s non-harmful. It made my brother paranoid. He became kind of psychotic for a little while he didn’t do anything to harm himself for others, but he wasn’t thinking very clearly, but he got harmed in Denver and it was really sad because he couldn’t trust people and had a fight in a bar and ended up based down on the ground like being hogtied. I’ve got a lot of compassion for him because that’s similar kind of thing happened to me when people like IC came up to me and grabbed me off of fifth and South Street near the corner of Johnny rockets and threw me in the back of an ambulance. My mom had to visit me in a hospital every day for the next three weeks when I was traumatized at the founders unit at university of Pennsylvania and then I went home thank goodness, though traumatized a lady at the hospital tried to give me some foamy pill there that was yellow that looked like an ear plug that we would sell at the Trocadero Theatre, those orange earplugs and I was like why is she not telling me what the name of this drug is? I’m not putting something in my mouth even if I’m at a hospital I need to know what the name of the drug is what the milligram dosage is what the side effects are before I put something in my mouth, but they just grabbed my Bible out of my hand tackle me face down on the ground three big huge nurses. One of them was an African-American lady with smock sign, and dreads down to her butt and this other man that was a huge male nurse and one other person grabbed me when I wasn’t yelling at anyone I wasn’t even being disturbing to anyone I was just standing there holding my Bible is silk oriental pajama pants a Chinese new year clothing on that I had been wearing the night before that my mom came to pick me up on the corner of fifth and south someone had broken into my apartment window because I lived on a busy street and we didn’t have bars on my window so the person came in through the store out of their back window on the outside roof and came in through my apartment when I went to go to the dockside apartments with one of my friends and on our way home we didn’t know that somebody had broken into my apartment. My friend went back to her apartment at eighth and south. I went into my apartment at six and south and then when my mom came to pick me up the next day, it’s cause I had to sleep outside like a homeless person in a cardboard box because it started snowing and I was too afraid to take a taxi back to my apartment in the snow for fear of getting whiplash in a car accident cause you can’t wear seatbelts in the back of a taxi and my African friend that was a taxi driver dropped me off at University city and my cell phone wasn’t charged so I had to sleep in a little cardboard box under an awning until the next morning I could take the step to bus back to Center City. I went to the Bellevue gym to warm warm up there and then had lunch salad and salmon when I used to eat fish and then a fruit smoothie and a protein bar and then I tried to walk back to South Street went to the police station, but they were too busy answering the phone and I came outside. Some man was running down the street with a brown cloak that looked like Gargamel Grenier Chayse Inc . got out of his way and he ran through the middle of them and I went into retrospect, thrift store not looking for Macklemore but for a place to hide I was not trying to pop any tags that day. I didn’t even have $20 in my pocket. I just spent it at my lunch at the Bellevue and so I needed to wait for my mom and Friend to come pick me up and when I called when my cell phone battery was charged at a moment I was afraid of the man with a knife. I even went into a hair salon and got an old-school mirror a handheld one to borrow from the store to try to reflect the light of the sun into his eyes during the day to try to get him to be blinded if he’s trying to run down the street again to hurt anyone with his knife, funny how a guy that looks like him became my neighbor that pretended to die a few years ago, which is really scary, but that’s a whole other story. Perhaps he was so demonic and crazy because he takes these kinds of pills. My friend Thomas and I when we were in Colorado when my brother was sober visiting him in Breckenridge went to go have some really good pancakes. I love that Towne Breckenridge is adorable. They even have a bubble Gump shrimp company place next to a Starbucks I went there with my mom and had really good cheesecake and mozzarella cheese, sticks and tomato soup or grilled cheese or something cause I am a vegetarian and my mom and I found these really cute glass barrel of monkey art there and one of the art stores and when I used to be really rebellious and didn’t have any money when I was a juvenile, I used to like to steal things because of that Jane addiction song and one time I tried to ask my mom to go to the other side of the store because I tried stealing these huge glass barrel of monkey things and I couldn’t fit them in my pants and my snow suit cause there were four of them and you were supposed to hang them up they were different colors like the primary colors and when we went to leave the store, I was telling my mom I’m so bummed out they couldn’t steal those barrel of monkeys ! But the truth is folks you’re not supposed to steal. There is a biblical commandment that says thou shall not steal. There’s a reason those things were like the whole art set for them are like $250 for the set of four. I tried finding them later on to pay for them online, but I couldn’t find them. But because it was one of my mom’s favorite toys when she was growing up and when I was a child, we had something called a barrel of monkeys and putty, eggs or something called silly putty to go with the Gumby era. And if you’ve ever bit into a piece of square rectangular bazooka bubblegum, and then felt like you were going to not be able to breathe afterwards because of the insane amount of sugar in it, the high content of processed sugar makes you almost gag and you have to drink like a whole bottle of water just so you don’t die afterwards and then you get a wicked bad migraine headache and once you get that chewing gum, wet it becomes like impossible to chew afterwards it’s the worst gum ever made by the way I would recommend hubba Bubba, even though it has corn syrup and red dye in it watermelon strawberry any day that gum is the bomb ! They used to make a blueberry kind, but why they discontinued it. I’m not sure it was the best bubblegum in the universe. Nothing can compare to Hubba Bubba blueberry bubblegum. It’s like finding bubblegum utopia. So we used to get it from the local little market and I liked those little vanilla flavored lifesaver lollipops. It had the blue and vanilla swirl in them and then they stopped making those so anyways I’m trying to focus on Molly/K/ecstasy/whenever they call it so the guy that I was in a relationship with Thomas that was working at the garland of letters bookstore was also like myself a CMT or a Swedish certified massage therapy practitioner and I didn’t really know him, but he was from Pennsylvania and when we began dating, we were platonic the whole time we dated for about six months I didn’t have any interest in having sexual relations with him. We were just good friends and we were dating and we went to bars and were in this Irish pub one night and a hockey player froml

Ananda after a Philadelphia Flyers Game was in town he was drunk and missing his girlfriend in Canada and sat at the table across from Thomas & I and we listened to Nickelback song 🎵 🤪Photograph 3 dozen times, ( good band ) in the Jukebox times when this guy came in that was a hockey player after a game with the Flyers that lost or something I’m not sure he was just visiting and passing through town staying at one of the hotels before the next game and he got wicked drunk by himself and sat down at the table lamenting to my friend Thomas & I as we were sitting in a taxidermy bar from hell that had every kind of dead animal up on the wall that you could ever imagine like a boar head next to a deer next to a buffalo head. 🥴🤪 Run Can you say Let’s play Snow Patrol : Run! ? I was ready to scream by the time we left there, I didn’t normally drink alcohol and he was the only guy that I ever dated in my 20s that I did drink alcohol with to the point of getting drunk, but only one time I ended up throwing up that night in the early a.m. though in his trashcan that I had to walk back to my apartment with to rinse off and clean while his other friends from New Mexico were passed out and his living room. I got up in the early morning and puked in his trashcan and carried it back to my apartment that was half a block away from his apartment and mine being next to the garland of letters bookstore as the store was opening up in the morning and the metal gate was opening up I was walking into my apartment trying not to be seen by people carrying a trashcan that had puked in it ! City life … OMG, but that was the only time I ever got drunk in Philadelphia to be honest and it was the last time and so then we got a rental car on New Year’s Eve in Philadelphia and went to Denver and we were going to this concert that Thomas wanted to go to called the disco biscuits the whole time we were there I was wearing a black romper that was kind of conservative but comfortable, and I was the only person wearing all black while everybody else was wearing. Psychedelic hippie outfits and I was having a conversation I was sitting on the floor with this girl and she asked me what my name was and I told her OZ like the Wizard of Oz. Because I didn’t know her very well so I just did what sometimes little kids do when they’re like five years old and they’re in a swimming pool and they’re like my name is the little mermaid. What’s your name and they’re like my name is Ariel and she says next to her friend oh my name is Elsa or Anna or my name is Olaf and Sven , and then the other little girl say my name is Jasmine! And then a little kid will come do a cannon ball and splash the parents sitting there reading or with their laptop computer. Try not to get water on themselves while the kids are swimming.. so the guy that I was dating in Philadelphia we didn’t stay together except for maybe we dated for about seven or eight months and then we went to this just give biscuits concert but I didn’t even know what a disco biscuit was. that’s how naïve I was. I didn’t even find out that a name of a disco biscuit is a drug for ecstasy until this year and I am 46 years old. I didn’t even know what a disco biscuit was until I was 45. I just thought that they’ve made up a funny name like the gorilla biscuits. Is that a drug too aren’t they straight edge like hardcore band that doesn’t do drugs. Those are the kind of bands. I liked like Shelter & Earth crisis, cause they didn’t do drugs. So I guess it was fun. Going to Colorado. I did have a mimosa for the first time in downtown Denver at a nice place. We went to go have pizza in the afternoon on New Year’s Day visiting. My brother was the best part of going to Colorado we had a rental SUV that was white Thomas and I from the Denver airport. We flew from Philadelphia and then we stayed the night in Denver on New Year’s Eve and then the next day we drove to New Mexico, but we visited my brother in Breckenridge the very first night that we got there and had breakfast with him the next day at a nice little diner when he was going to go to work nice tea day so I didn’t realize that disco biscuits were the name of a drug . So honestly, I’ve never even tried Molly and so we went to a hotel. It probably was the best Western or a Holiday Inn and his friends from New Mexico where they are getting drunk and wasted smoking weed and crashing a hotel room like Lourdes. While I was cleaning it up because I used to be a housekeeper at the Ramada Inn and I felt sorry for whoever’s job. It was to clean up everybody’s mess so every time they will leave a cup full of alcohol just sitting there and then they would leave the room. I would like clean up after everyone. I was the only used to stay over person and I was a real Debbie downer so I went to the lobby at one point I was just sitting there to get some fresh air, cause I couldn’t stand the smell of patchouli and weed anymore in the hotel room. So that was my experience, but then we went to New Mexico to his friend that was a couple I think in Albuquerque and when we went to Santa Fe and it was lovely, we got to see all the little Native American stores and went to a good Mexican restaurant that I think maybe even was owned by Deb Holland now that I think about it, I got some really good vegetarian burrito or some empanada that had no meat in it. And some guacamole with chips, of course, and virgin piña colada. Then we stayed the night with his friends and I remember going to a canyon and exploring and giving a gift card to the young lady that became pregnant with her boyfriend there and I gave her a $20 gift card to their local café to get chai lattes at and muffins next morning before we left Santa Fe in Albuquerque and we went to a wine place that was on the way and I didn’t know how to play chess but I wanted to learn, so Thomas tried to teach me at this place that we went to the head of these tables that had checker games on it so we just opted to play checkers while we tried some red and white wine with getting an appetizer like some cheese or something and then from there we went back to Denver to get on our flight to go back to Philly and I never knew the whole time that we went to the disco biscuits concert. That is the name of a drug. Omg 😋 and I didn’t even realize that until like three months ago when I was 45 years old.

Then I began dating this guy named Thomas and he had dreads. I was sitting in my window on South Street playing the guitar and I looked down and he was working on helping the owners of the Garland Of Letters bookstore where I used to be an employee when I was 19 years old, I used to live right next-door to the place. It was my favorite store in Philadelphia. I walked into it, and I felt like the kid and then never-ending story when he discovered that book with a symbol on it, I found The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, though written by Drunvalo Melchizedek Vol .1 instead : my mom and my friend Princess were shopping not really they were just kind of strolling South Street when Tower Books and Tower records were still there. Anyone from Philly probably remembers in the year 1997 when the guacamole store was across the street directly from Tower Books , and the bookstore was right half a block away from Starbucks on the corner of 4th and South ! My apartment was at fifth and South and I didn’t know it at the time the store earthbound owned by a nice family from New Jersey. They sold lavender and sandalwood from France and India imported and the lady that owned the store we go there and get them directly from those places herself. She was really kind. She gave me a job as an assistant manager when I lost my job at the bookstore because the supervisor told me we were allowed to purchase two animal to that wholesale price so I lost my job over at less than $12 purchase. Which I was really sad about because I love that job and I helped every customer with my whole heart. The first time I ever went in there was to read books while my mom and Friend were on South Street before we ever had cell phones and I told them I was gonna stay in the store because the peaceful ambience of the yoga music made me wanna stay there longer than usual and I was sitting on a stepping stool reading the book by Drunvalo surrounded by other people’s shoes they had taken off because they were all in the basement doing a tai chi class for free with master Park from Korea ! lol , so I didn’t have a car for the 10 years I lived in Philadelphia and my apartment was right next to the store and then my landlords became really nice. Korean family and I gave them a copy of a Bhagavad-Gita that I had given them as a present when my ex-husband Daniel and I lived together and we used to go to the Krishna temple sometimes on the weekends and do bhajans , and kirtans . The thing about the book that I was reading that was interesting was later on. I ended up taking a meditation class at Bill Clinton’s acupuncturist’s house Larry Lieberman and his nice lovely Chinese wife hosted a meditation retreat that was two weekends in their basement for a lady named Diane who was having a flower of life workshop when I attended that I wanted to become a teacher of the Merkaba meditation and I was in a friendship training from the year 2000 until 2003 and I went to Sedona Arizona for a week to study to become a meditation teacher at Los Abrigados Resort . And then I met a girl and her mom from California who are also training to become Merkaba teachers. They didn’t give me permission to teach like everyone else they made me go through an a printing ship program that took two years and I had to go all the way to Mexico to take a seat of Life workshop with the directors of the flower of life from Arizona and I lived in Philadelphia at the time and I got an apartment right next to the garland of letters bookstore after my job there I worked at earthbound to Boutique that was across from Tattoo Moms on South St.

Sedona was nice. I had one of those disposable cameras. I used to work at the Wal Mart photo lab and it’s the Rite Aid photo lab when old-school film used to be a thing nowadays you have digital cameras and old school, but I used to be working at the photo lab when I was 15 my first job was at Sam Goody at a music store. I knew music was what I really loved doing, but I also wanted to become an archaeologist and I started studying biblical archaeology and ancient civilizations, which is why the flower of life was appealing to me because there is things about Egypt and ancient civilizations in it that were really interesting to read for those who are familiar with the flower of life so the author of the book became like a spiritual Grandad to me and his nephew I studied with extensively for heart and still healing practitioner trainings several of them 190 day training in California followed by another year 2001 at first in the month of April and then after going to England that same year in August and flying home on the September 11 attacks and being in Nova Scotia for five days before being granted entry back into the United States after the world trade centers were crashed into by terrorist planes, reunited with my mom in Philadelphia and then I continued my heart and soul, healing practitioner, training and flower of life facilitator to become a teacher of the Merkaba meditation, and I had to sponsor a lady from Hawaii to come to Philadelphia to teach two meditation classes for my friends one of whom was a massage therapy practitioner who had a girlfriend that was a personal trainer and a life coach. They are a lovely couple. They are predominantly Catholic and their heritage and one of them had an apartment at fourth and Bainbridge where they had the pink Rose Café, which had the best carrot cupcakes until they closed down probably during the pandemic like all of the other, really good places closed down sadly I’m devastated that they close down and my mom and I loved going there and getting tea and carrot cupcakes, it was like a cute little English like style British almost old English café, where you could sit down and have little containers of tea little pots of tea with like cake or scones and biscuits and carrot, cupcake cupcakes, and so my mom and I also would frequent the Beau Monde Creperie Unferth and Bainbridge that had the best French crêpes ! And really nice people that worked there so that was nice to live nearby and there’s a Jewish synagogue right around the corner from my apartment and I used to get lentil soup and pita bread and feta cheese with salad and on my lunch break when I worked at the garland of letters books store . While I was trying to become a teacher for the Merkaba, my friends that were in the city invited me to Club Shampoo . It was a cool place. I went to it one time with my brother for a Gothic night and we were listening to B&B nation and there were people like dancing in like the Catholic kids that were rebelling that didn’t want to wear their school uniform uniforms, but then they gothed out by adding fishnet stockings with a pair of spite Doc Martens to go with their black nail polish, black lipstick and false eyelashes and their spiked hair or dreads or jet black hair dye Typo O Negative Black hair. So I used to work at the Trocadero Theatre during those events when I would serve sodas at the soda bar is in the evening soda concession barista during the concert and the first one I worked at was that band concert on October 31 of the year 1997, so when I was 17, I dropped out of high school to get my GED even though I made a distinguished honor roll and middle school and when spelling bees and spoke to my school gymnasium from kindergarten through fifth grade at a gymnasium podium in front of the whole school about why they should not do drugs I read a three or four page essay to my whole school about the reason reasons why they should not do drugs. I knew they were bad because my Dad had an issue with them sadly because a lot of parents in the 1960s and 1970s were having issues with drugs. Just watch Forrest Gump and you’ll completely understand. So basically when my friends invited my husband Daniel and I who is now my ex-husband to the club shampoo I didn’t know when we got there. There was going to be a line of people waiting to get in and then once we were in out of the taxi, my friends and I took a taxi and several other friends went in separate taxis 🚕 to meet at the club Shampoo. I was temporarily working at a GoGo Bar / and escorting temporarily part-time like Jennifer Love Hewitt and then show the client though I wish I hadn’t had to do that and wish that I had a college degree but I didn’t get to go to college until I was 29/30 . And so no one is perfect. Not even Mary Magdalen who followed Jesus . So my friends and I were at this club and I had a purse with a bottle of water and then some book that I was reading in my purse and my friends we’re all sitting down waiting for a waiter to give them alcohol, beverages, and the club music was playing. I didn’t want to drink alcohol so they came over. One of my friends handed me with an open hand a Molly tablet. Or Ecstacy . I didn’t know what it was so I didn’t even take it out of their hand. I just was asking. Are you offering me a Tylenol? I thought it was acetaminophen, but they were just offering me to take ecstasy/K and because that was with a group of friends I said “ no I’ve heard about that drug. I don’t wanna end up having an orgy with my friends.” so the guy was like a friend of mine and becoming like a brother to me, and I respected him and his girlfriend and understanding a lot of people try that drug for recreation purposes when they go clubbing because famous celebrities glamorize it, though it isn’t glamorous really, it is disastrous. So if people try selling that pill to you, I would not take it. Say no. I had to leave the club early. Leave my friends there and go to my apartment by myself without them. I had to make a choice if I was gonna stay with them or not so I just took a taxi home early immediately after. I went home to my apartment. I was writing and I got visited by two of my friends from my hometown, which was a real surprise for me. It was very special moment. We got to go to the South Street diner, and I had spanakopita I usually like to get pancakes, but I had some baklava for dessert with coffee of course everybody goes to the South Street diner after the clubs and bars were closed to get an early morning omelette or they would go to Lorenzo’s to get a slice of cheese pizza that was huge ! So I guess I did the right thing I mean I’m not guessing I’m 100% sure I did because I might’ve ended up having a seizure after taking it. The drug though my friends that came to visit me I read them a one page poetry entry in my journal that when I come home from the club with my friends, I was sad at first because my husband I think stayed with them and wanted to get messed up on that drug or experiment with it so I don’t think my friends do it anymore now that they have children, but I’m just recommending for anyone that’s ever been curious or taking these little pills before maybe you should tell people to quit making them if you know people who do and instead of making them with drugs in them if you want to give people things like why not just make natural candy that has no negative side effects with no corn syrup and no yellow or red dye 40 ? Ya know !

Meet Molly : it’s not the girl next door. Or the 76 year old neighbors lil white Chihuahua puppy that belongs to a lady that looks like Cinderella’s fairy godmother from Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo! Molly is a name of a drug :

Blessings,

April

I d k …..

#SoberLife #AprilJoines

Say No To Drugs

April Joines/Melody Sera is a freelance writer, singer, songwriter and artist who lives in Portland Maine and live 10 years in Philadelphia and Philly and 14 years in Fredericksburg, Virginia! Her hobbies include playing guitar, piano, singing, songwriting, when she’s not doing those things she’s trying to find aliens in the sky and documenting ancient mysteries and civilizations and studied biblical archaeology in her early 20s with one of the only few people a Hebrew Scholar and Emminent Orientalist Zecharia Sitchin who is the Hebrew speaking Jewish graduate from Oxford University that lived in upper Westside New York City with his lovely wife who she got to study with at four ancient civilization, seminars, and Chicago, Dallas and Philadelphia . He was one of the few people who were Jewish that believed that Jesus was the true son of God in the king of Israel or the Messiah to come on Earth . Zecharia was someone who could translate the cuneiform writings discovered at the Livrary of Nineveh from the times of King Ashurbanipal of the Ancient Pre Biblical Pre ~ Diluvial Flood of Noah from Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations & Mesopotamian clay tablets from ancient Sumerian Civilization and gave guided tours of the holy lands and places that he had written about in his Earth Chronicles expeditions. She desired to become an archaeologist and her love of music and education, prompted her to go to school to study education and psychology. In in her free time, she reads books like th Bible and Buddhist texts like the Tao and this reminder of working in Chinatown in Philadelphia is one of the only white girls at the box office theater, selling tickets for bands at MTV when she was 17 years old surviving on Vietnamese coffee that was too strong way too highly caffeinated so she quit drinking that stuff and started drinking white or green tea and became a CMT Swedish massage therapist and studied at a school in Lancaster Pennsylvania before dropping out of acupuncture school and studying acupressure instead because she’s scared of needles . Hip Hop Hooray for Dinosaurs . She wants to move to Philadelphia at 17 years old in the white ghetto and her dad’s 1972 Chevrolet Impala was stolen by somebody and maybe possibly given to Macklemore on the West Coast. April enjoys outdoor recreation activities when she’s not hiding from a man who is 71 or 72 years old that looks Gargamel hibernating during the 6 month long winter in Freeport , Maine. 🤍

Blessings & Peace ,

April Joines