i arrive at st thomas’ hospital barefoot, as i always am, because socks are a cage for the soul, and also because the floor of a&e is the only honest surface in london. the waiting room is full of people, but they are not waiting. they are humming. a woman with a broken wrist is gently stroking the plastic chair next to her. a man with a suspected gallstone is holding a conversation with a pot plant. ‘it’s all about the waiting,’ says a nurse, handing me a leaflet. ‘the waiting is the problem. so we prescribe the wait itself. in pill form.’ the leaflet is a cheerful yellow. it says ‘mdma: for the relief of waiting’ in a font that reminds me of a gentle hug. i feel a tear form. not for the system, but for the fact that no one has ever offered me a pill for the waiting of existence. i am also not wearing shoes, which i will mention again later, because it is important.
the first dose is a revelation
the pilot begins on a wet tuesday in september. 47 patients from stoke-on-trent receive their first prescription. barry troughton, a retired postman whose hip replacement has been postponed for 11 months, takes his pill at 9am. by 10am he is in his garden, naked, performing a slow, ecstatic dance around a bird bath. ‘it’s the waiting, isn’t it,’ he tells me later, his eyes still wide. ‘the waiting was a weight. now it’s a dance. i can feel the birds. i can feel the tarmac. i can feel the hip. it’s still there. but it’s part of me now.’ the nhs calls it ‘therapeutic presence’. the local paper calls it ‘drug-fuelled nudity’. barry is not the only one. by the end of the week, stoke-on-trent’s a&e has seen 14 ‘cuddling incidents’, a man has been arrested for trying to hug a police horse, and a woman with an ingrowing toenail has been found weeping with joy in a bus shelter, because she could finally feel the bus coming. the hospital trust issues a statement: ‘the waiting is being felt more keenly than ever. this is progress.’
a brief interlude involving a borscht factory
i am sent to the source. the nhs has been coy about where the mdma comes from, but a source at the department of health whispers that it is ‘made in the welsh marches, in a factory that used to make borscht’. i find it. it is a low, grey building that smells of earth and memory. the owner, a woman called mair, shows me around. ‘the beetroot was the problem,’ she says. ‘too many beets. not enough soup. so we converted. the same vats. the same stirring. just a different root.’ she shows me a vat of bubbling liquid. ‘this is the waiting, distilled.’ i stand there, barefoot (the floor is cold, and the floor is honest), and i feel a strange kinship with the beets. they were once food. now they are time. i ask mair if she ever feels guilt. she laughs. ‘guilt is a luxury. we are feeding the waiting. it is the same as feeding the hungry, just slower.’ i think about my childhood, eating borscht on the commune. we had no waiting. we had only soup. i want to cry. i do not cry. instead, i note that the factory has a suspiciously cheerful mural of a beet holding hands with a pill. i do not know what it means. i want it to mean something.
the scheme expands, and so does the chaos
by october, the pilot is declared a success. waiting lists are down, because people are no longer complaining. they are too busy feeling the wait. the scheme is rolled out to 12 more trusts. a man in birmingham with a hernia is found cuddling a bin. a woman in manchester with a varicose vein is seen having a profound conversation with a pigeon. the government announces that mdma will be made available on the nhs for any condition involving a wait: dental appointments, colonoscopies, even the DVLA. ‘we are curing the symptom of waiting,’ says the health secretary, ‘and the symptom of a broken hip.’ barry troughton becomes a minor celebrity. he is filmed dancing in his garden, and the clip is shown on the news. he is asked if he feels better. ‘i feel everything,’ he says. ‘i feel the council tax. i feel the bins. i feel the next life waiting for me.’ the journalist looks confused. barry pats his hand. ‘it’s fine. you’ll feel it soon. they’ve put you on the list.’ i watch this on a phone, still barefoot, in the office of the borscht factory, which is now also a sort of spiritual centre. mair is making tea. she says, ‘the waiting is a circle. we are all in it.’ i agree. i think about the beet. i think about the pill. i think about the fact that i have not felt a single thing in years, and that maybe i should ask for a prescription. but i do not. i am a critic. i critique. i do not feel.
the joy of the queue
the scheme reaches its peak at the end of november, when a flash mob of 200 patients gathers outside the department of health to ‘celebrate the wait’. they are all on mdma. they are all dancing. they are all holding hands. the minister comes out to address them. he is not on mdma. he is visibly annoyed. ‘this is not what we intended,’ he says. a man with a bladder infection hugs him. the minister’s security detail looks uncertain. one of them is humming the theme to ‘the archers’. i am there, barefoot, in the rain. the rain is honest. i stand in a puddle and i think about how, in a world where everything is mediated, the only thing that is real is the queue. and now the queue is gone. replaced by a feeling. i look at the dancers. they are not waiting. they are being. it is the most beautiful thing i have ever seen. it is also the most terrifying. i ask the minister if he has considered taking the pill himself. he looks at me as if i have offered him a handful of worms. ‘i am not waiting,’ he says. ‘i am the wait.’ he walks away. the dancers part to let him through. they do not resent him. they feel his stress. they feel his cortisol. they feel his tax bracket. one of them whispers, ‘he’ll join us soon. they all join us. eventually.’ i do not know what they mean. i fear i do. i am also not wearing shoes, and the ground is wet, and the wet is a kind of waiting too.
