4-HO-MET

(This one has been published by Erowid!!!!)

CW: Depression, suicide

Age:20

Weight-120 lbs

Dosage: 30 mg oral in gel cap
Setting: My apartment

T0:00-Dose after a light meal (a small bag of chips and some wafers)

T0:40-Not feeling anything other than some nausea

T1:10-Drink a lot of water. This seem to break the capsule. Am suddenly hit with a burgeoning comeup, like a bubble inflating. Ho boy. No sensory effects yet, just nausea and lightheadedness.

T1:30-Am feeling euphoric, very nice and euphoric. Bodyload is really setting in, but its whatever. Music sounds really nice, it’s the sort of pleasantry that comes from listening to music while stoned. The euphoria is very warm, in fact everything is very warm. I feel sweaty. This is similar to 4-AcO-MET, which is pretty sweaty too. No sensory effects really, although it feels like my mind is being reeled out, that I will reach them eventually.

T1:40-Begin to notice CEV’s. I feel like I am treading water above an incredibly deep abyss. I have subjected myself to an experience with unlimited depth, that I was about to be forcibly plunged into. The CEV’s are abstract and formless. They don’t seem to be patterned at all or following any sort of mathematical or fractal structure. It’s as if I am seeing a grand random swirling that then gets cut up and warped, each chunk of it shifting and transforming as it gets excised. Emotionally, the euphoria gives way to very clear and neutral critical thought. I begin to feel an overwhelming sense of shame. I am ashamed of who I am, I am ashamed of what I’ve become. I’m ashamed of how I was once a source of pride to my parents, how I was charismatic and bright and now I’m a drugged up loser who is too anxious to leave his room. I’m ashamed of how ive drifted from all of my friends, how I avoid social contact just to trip alone in my room. I’m ashamed of how I’m a depressed weirdo, how I can’t contribute anything to anything, and how it feels like I’ve just trapped myself in a dead end. This isn’t accompanied by spiraling despair, rather it jut feels objective and matter-of-fact, without really dragging my mind anywhere dark. My mind is already somewhere dark, and its just going to simmer there, forever.

T2:00-I am tripping extremely hard now. I am wandering into the cosmos, I am past the point of petty humanistic introspection. I am going so far beyond human that I can no longer recognize these body parts. I am an ambient mind. What are these strange tan chunks in my field of vision? (They are my limbs). This is a familiar feeling that I recognize from experiences with Psilocin and 4-AcO-MET. Auditory hallucinations become overwhelming. Oftentimes It will seem like ambient noises are simply reverberating and trailing off more than usual. Now however, they are not just reverberating and trailing off, but rather completely transforming into strange new sounds, turning my existence into an utter cacophony. Each sound has transformed into something else entirely, and they all dance and play in the air around me. My sense of perspective is annihilated.

T2:30-It continues. I feel like I am drifting into the borders of ego death. I cannot completely let go, and a part of it is my heart, the sheer psychosomatic anxiety that makes it feel like its about to explode. It is certainly beating rapidly, and with my eyes closed I fall into dissociation. The only part of my body I can feel is that raging, hammering heart. I feel like I am about to die. I am to cowardly to approach ego death, too anchored to myself, and this world. I have failed again. This reminds me of my experiences with experimenting heavily with acid in earnest last year, where I was constantly taking absurd doses. There was this essence of constsantly pursuing something, a tiny point, a convergence of the fractal landscape my existence had become. But whenever I tried to attain this point, it was pulled away from me in a most heinous Tantalan hell. Something would always pull or push me out of the way, or move it. Perhaps attaining this was the complete dissolution of self, and I simply had too many anchors keeping me just out of reach. Whatever. I lie down under my covers and listen to music. I am still pretty uncomfortable. I feel on the verge of vomiting and my limbs are buzzing with electricity and restlessness.

T2:50-I begin drawing to ground myself. I cover an entire page in a sort of abstract bubbly drawing. It looks pretty good. I decide to make a grand spread, to mirror it on the other page. The familiar sense of delusion confidence and grandeur creeps up. I feel like I am creating a great art piece, something iconic that will have a grand iconic name. I fuck up almost immediately, failing to mirror it, drawing the lines way too askew, also drawing a huge and decidedly… yonic…shape on the other page. Nothing wrong with this, but it’s not my intention at all and doesn’t sit properly with my perpetually failing sexuality. Whelp. I decide this will be a test of will though, I will finish this drawing, no matter what, I will not rest until its done. I cannot rest anyway, I have to keep shifting position to feel remotely comfortable. I take a break to step outside for a bit. It is really really pleasant out here. I return to my drawing but just can’t finish it. I just can’t. I have failed. Again. I am always failing. Whatever.

T3:30-I return outside. It was pleasant out there. A light euphoria still sits there. Despite my failures and shame I feel ok and optimistic and warm. I guess that is a pretty punctuated and delusioned euphoria, just like 4-AcO-MET. I work on the web in my backyard- a literal web I have made over it, descending from my window. When spring comes, vines will grow on it and make a canopy. The entire time I’m out there I keep thinking police cars are driving by, because my peripheral vision is flashing blue and white. I run out of string and go back inside, I am kinda concerned this will piss off my neighbors.

T4:15-I am back inside. I run into my roommate and talk to him briefly. Socializing is awkward as hell for me, but less so than I was expecting. He’s a nice dude, I can feel the essence of his warmth. I lounge around being a useless shit for a while. I decide to order food. I suddenly wonder why I did this, I’m still nauseous as hell. I take some nausea medication and smoke some and take a shower.

T5:30-Eat food. Manage to do it without throwing up. Feeling mostly down now in terms of visuals and mental aspect. Bodyload still raging.

T8:00-Baseline except for bodyload. No smart feeling afterglow or anything.

T15:00-Hahaha what the hell I cannot sleep it is 7AM. Bodyload still raging. This is fucked. I take a datura seed, some hydroxyzine, a handful of Benadryl and smoke a bowl. This knocks me the fuck out. I wake up at 1 the next afternoon, having completely slept through both my first class and my therapist's appointment.

CONCLUSION: I am trying to settle the debate as to whether 4-AcO tryptamines are active on their own or whether they get completely metabolized into the 4-HO variant, with the experience owing all of its effects to this 4-HO metabolite. Honestly you can’t really settle any debate on the subjective effects of psychedelics though. The psychosomatic effects of set and setting alone can honestly make two experiences of the same drug vastly different, not to mention that whole thing with my declining health from nutrient deficiency. But for me, it was completely different. It lacked the emapthogenic effects of 4-AcO-MET, it lacked the warm euphoria and the delusions of grandeur and confidence only slightly touched upon me. It was substantially more powerful and drifted more towards ego death, while 4-AcO-MET seemed to be entrapment and a total descent into ego. Next up is to compare mushrooms with 4-AcO-DMT. About to tap back into mushrooms wooo, I hope the psychological block of them won’t interfere. I haven’t written about my hellish mushroom experience and it happened so long ago that I really can’t effectively anymore. I almost killed myself though. 

Anyways, 4-HO-MET felt kinda like mushrooms, but without the overwhelming-ness or the destruction of autonomy. I was in control, it was like neutered mushrooms, (not necessarily a bad thing), that was also devoid of the emotional aspects of mushrooms that can very easily spiral out of control.