Someone Wrote Their Name and Number on Their MDMA in Case They Lost It

This weekend, police stopped a man at an Australian arts festival after a police dog sniffed some MDMA on his person. Once arrested, the drug cops found his gear which was sealed in a sandwich bag, and labelled with his name, and the words “MDMA – if found call 04…”

He wrote his name and phone number on his baggy in case he lost it. Again? He wrote his name, phone number and the letters “MDMA” on his bag of drugs, in case he lost it. Thank you, good night.

Look. We’ve all gone through the outer-body agony of losing a baggy. There is nothing like it. Those first pocket-pats, the panicked gasps as you start asking everyone else if they’ve got it. You burrow your sweaty index finger deep into your sock, you thrust your hand down your pants, you make a ring of fifteen people turn their phone torches on in order to conduct a full aerial search of the surrounding area. “Fuck’s sake,” you keep saying, hands on your head, “that was forty quid.” People try their best to convince you that you can have a good night without drugs – but that’s beside the point, you tell them. Sure, it’s totally possible to have a good night without drugs, but only if that’s the plan from the offset. Tonight you thought you were and now you can’t and that has ruined everything and can we just call a taxi I want to go home.

Yet – and it’s a big yet – as annoying as this is, don’t write your phone number on the baggy. Don’t write your name on the baggy. Don’t write “if found” on the baggy. Most of all, don’t literally write “MDMA” on the baggy. Does it really take that much to remember what is in the bag? Come on mate. It’s not Himalayan rock salt.

The way I see it, there are two possible causes here. Perhaps he genuinely doesn’t know MDMA is illegal. Maybe this is his first big night out – and he’s never been on the internet or spoken to another human being – and he thinks this is just a perfectly reasonable way of keeping tabs on his expensive bag of sparkly silly powder. This, however, seems unlikely, leading me to settle on my second explanation: his mum packed his gear from him.

She’s been doing this to his packed lunch for years, sewing little labels into the back of his rugby shirts, printing sheets of little labels out at the start of term to cover his school books in. She came down into the kitchen, saw him fumbling around with a wrap, tutted and said “give it here.” She decanted the dizz into a big old sandwich bag – sealed for freshness – and scribbled “If found please call…” on the side. Then, after checking what it was – “not ket, is it darling?” – she wrote the letters M-D-M-A on the side in capitals, like it was a jar of home-made damson jam.

Scroll back up and look at the size of that sandwich bag. Only a mum would send you off to a festival with a baggy that size. It’s every time she sent you to swimming lessons in your dad’s old trunks all over again. Every birthday you asked for a North Face puffer and got a Peacock’s own anorak instead. Why am I the only boy at the leavers’ ball with an ASDA George suit on? Why do I have to wear the optional school uniform? Why does our car always break down when you pick me up from parties?

IMO: arrest the mum.

@a_n_g_u_s