antlion

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

2F-DCK (Oral)

 Age: 25

Weight: 130 lbs

Dosage: 200 mg oral in gel cap

Setting: My house

 

T0:00- Dose taken.

 

T0:22- Onset, feeling a tad dizzy and numb in my extremities, a bit of tingling down my nerves.

 

T0:28- I’ve been trying to respond to some reddit comment about structure/activity relations and hypothetical molecules that would fulfill certain receptor affinities. It’s like a puzzle, and I am frankly not informed enough on the subject to create anything meaningful but its fun to play with. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly difficult to type and concentrate.

 

T0:30- It’s hitting more and more, I feel breathless, I feel like my mind is floating to the top of the room, trying to contain it is like trying to hold a piece of Styrofoam on the bottom of a pool. I am at once rising and sinking, being steadily submerged in heavy grey water. The sensation crawls to my toes. There are flashes of visuals on my computer screen, pastel symmetrical arrays of little iridescent bubbles. My tongue and teeth are numb.

 

T0:36- This is coming on surprisingly fast- the visuals rise and pulse, almost synesthetic, seething and dancing to the steady breaths of the house around me. I am sailing on big cold grey-blue waves, undulating like great breaths of the ocean. My limbs become more and more disjoint, feeling as though they are in places they really are not, as though they have taken up sizes and shapes and consistencies that don’t belong to them. I find myself losing my train of thought a lot. I am still steadily sinking deeper and deeper, everything is flowing around me and I am empty and lightheaded.

 

T0:45- My partner is downstairs taking a nap on the couch. I am upstairs, and though I know I am sharing this house with a human presence I feel so isolated, like I am the only person in the whole world, like no world exists outside of what I can see. I am perpetually sinking.

 

T1:02- It’s hard to walk, I am dangerously clumsy and everything seems to be shaking and rocking more. I don’t feel massively dissociated or incapacitated though, not the sort of deep hole of dissociation like I’ve just been dropped into a void, the type that 2F-DCK imparts when insufflated. There is no rush or acuteness to it, it’s simply there, matter of fact and quietly working in the background. It’s noteworthy that I am still incredibly uncoordinated even though I don’t feel it. Sitting down I imagine I can walk perfectly fine. Yet when I try to put it into practice I come close to tripping and falling down the stairs in just a few steps. I must be very careful.  It is not the usual flash flood I have come to expect from this chemical, rather it is the water steadily rising around me.

I am dizzy and my body feels stuck in one particular direction, like I am being oriented by a magnet. My fingertips are entirely numb at this point.

With my eyes closed there are vivid images of discrete contained spaces, little cells and rooms, tight and shrunken around me. There are lots of vivid and discernible photorealistic insect images, perhaps after images left behind after a workday of identifying insects under a microscope for hours. Great detailed magnified visuals of tiny little beetles creep and flow across the confined landscape of little tunnels and hallways.

I am so used to the simple cause and effect of snorting this drug, feeling a brief and acute discomfort from the mounds of powder, and having a brief and acute experience. It is an added layer of dissociation to have this feeling imparted by a single painless oral dose.

 

T1:10- I relocate to the bedroom so I can lie down and sprawl out on the bed while listening to music.

My fingers are sponges, every letter I type feels like they are being pressed in several inches. Open eyed visuals present as patterns of spots, drifting in perfect vertical synchronicity with gentle steady trails of tracers behind them, against a backdrop of concentric melting warbling textures. I close my eyes- more images of insects. The sensation with my eyes closed meanwhile is phenomenal- my body just melts away, turns to a puddle of melted ice cream, melted ice cream cannot feel, it has no sense of proprioception, no solid body to hold in relation to itself or the space around it, and that is me. It is so disorienting to lose any sense of where my body is relative to itself, to anything. I still feel as though I have a body, but it is an odd an alien thing that occupies a different state of matter.

I see basic interlocking polygons with warm colored lines, their faces occupied by dark voids that bend and shape around nuclei of swirling chaos in the vast distance. Everything is ultimately symmetrical across a larger field. No more vivid images of bugs, just abstraction now. I am content to be swept away into this vast abstraction, I am content to not exist beyond this darkened space, both impossibly vast and intimately concise. It feels like bubbles are rising and passing through me, juggling my consciousness on their soupy gooey buoyancy.

 

T1:24- This is odd- while it came on gradually and steadily, it seems to have just quickly left. While listening to music and trying to sink into the closed eyed visuals, I notice that I just suddenly am not able to anymore. The physical dissociation and anesthesia has also faded entirely. Open eyed visuals are barely a step beyond my baseline HPPD. I stand up and my movement isn’t clumsy at all. I would expect an oral dose to be more drawn out and have a longer duration than an intranasal one, but that does not appear to be the case. I feel like I am close to baseline- the only sign I have done a drug is a persistent cognitive dissociation, a sense of feeling out of myself and detached from the world, reminiscent of feeling very fatigued but without the discomfort of physical sedation. I am content to just exist, I am lucid and heavy and neutral and walking down the stairs, it turns out still just a tiny bit uncoordinated.

 

T1:30- I come down and find my partner is awake now. We decide to have a second dinner as our earlier meal was pretty light. I just eat a big salad with tons of veggies and homemade vinaigrette. I talk to them about how weird this experience was and how I already seem to be out of it. Indeed my appetite seems fairly normal now, as opposed to how many dissociatives can make food seem like an alien concept. My sense of taste is normal. I find it is somewhat difficult for me to converse- I am having a hard time articulating my words when speaking them out loud, as though there is some kind of strange obstacle impeding communication between my brain and mouth. My short-term memory is also still affected, and I find myself sometimes losing track of what my partner is even saying. Its not the empty blank dumb feeling that I sometimes get from dissociatives, it is just a subtly and neutrally shifted baseline.

I notice as time passes that it feels as if the experience is slowly on the rise again. I close my eyes and find the visuals have returned. I narrate them aloud to my partner as we sit at the table, covering my eyes with my hand to block out ambient light. I see beetles again, images of them in photoreality, appearing as they do under a scope, those images flipped and reflected radially as though they are facets of a kaleidoscope. I see their faces up close, I see them crawling, various click beetles, leaf beetles, bark boring weevils, lady beetles and ground beetles. I am also greeted by flowing rivers of color in darkness, glyphs and swirling patterns. Another sojourn yields a great inverted glowing red wireframe pyramid, spinning around in the black nucleus of a dark, spiraling mountain range.

 

T2:00- We finished our pseudo-dinner and I have now become enraptured in playing with their cat, awkwardly running about the house with her favorite toy as she chases after me. While I love her cat and playing with her, there was an ulterior motive here- the drug had come back in force by this point, a great wave welling through the glassy gelatinous depths of an endless amethyst ocean, pushing me steadily into the stratosphere. I found myself increasingly unable to hold conversation, my short-term memory failing me at every turn. I keep getting distracted, wrapped up in the sensations returning to my body, or rather draining from it, and the gentle but markedly burgeoning numbness in my extremities, my limbs and bones turning to jelly. It feels like I am hovering just a bit above where I really am.

I wasn’t even sure how to get this across to my partner, words in general were failing me more and more. I decided I could make a graceful exit by engaging with the sweet and adorable cat, a fun nonverbal activity that could innocuously capture my full attention and interaction for a bit. She needed the exercise anyway.

 

T2:34- My partner settles into the living room as I play with the cat for longer. As I engage in this task, my faculties already seem to be returning. A second wave of this drug had welled up, though of lesser intensity and duration than the first. The best way to monitor the retreat of the trip is through gauging the physical effects, which were indeed receding. Feeling, balance, coordination, and stability returned to my body. Mental effects meanwhile, lingered on through the waves, though they too gradually descended in intensity. I can hold conversation again, I feel jovial and slightly manic. I am reading about a bunch on the internet and giddily sharing information with my partner. I begin to notice my inflection and behavior and realize I must be coming across as cocky, arrogant, overconfident. I feel like a jerk but I also don’t feel like I care too much, it’s hard to care too much about anything in this state. It feels nice to just let things pass. Visual effects also seem as though they have been on a constant and steady downturn since the peak, not vacillating in waves like the physical dissociation.

I feel like I keep making awkward gaffes, I am hyper aware of my own actions and speech, I need to distract myself and stop myself. I feel dumbfounded, like I have been smacked in the face.

 

T3:26- It’s been going up and down in waves for a while now. I’ve just been playing my current (and old) favorite game, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. It’s a nice way to pass the time, especially as a low-commitment nonverbal task to keep me going as a third wave rose up and receded. This wave passed after about 20 minutes.  

 

T3:42- After another 30 minutes, a fourth wave bubbles up but quickly fizzles out in about 15 minutes, segueing to a long, steady, and constant comedown. Typical of non-manic arylcyclohexylamine comedowns (Ketamine, for example), this end of the experience is fairly boring and irritating in how it is mildly incapacitating with 0 worthwhile returns. Just a wasteful inhibition of my mind, a waste of time, a residual dissociative burnout. I feel dumb and tired, but there is still a bit of stimulation that tickles through me ensuring I can’t sleep. I mostly just hang out with my partner now, both of us on our respective devices quietly sharing space. It’s a comfortable domestic and intimate existence. I smoke a bit of cannabis but at this point it seems like it only gets me stoned instead of stirring the dust of the dissociative remnants. I do notice the open-eyed visuals briefly become brighter and more prominent before fading down the drain with the rest of the experience.

 

T5:26- I am back to my baseline. My partner has gone to bed and I am awake alone now. I play videogames and smoke more for about an hour before I too go to bed. I fall asleep quickly without issue.

 

Conclusion: It’s amazing just how much changing the ROA can change a drug. This frankly felt like a totally different substance than when it is dosed intranasally. Firstly, there was absolutely zero rush of any sort with this ROA, it was a steady and certain immersion into the experience. While 2F-DCK has less of a rush than ketamine, an intranasal dose is like a headfirst dive into an icy lake relative to the overall sensation with the onset of an oral dose. It was reminiscent of the diarylethylamines (Ephenidine, Diphenidine etc.) in that regard in fact. The comeup was swift but smooth and gradual. The peak was highly visual, as 2F-DCK often is for me, though there was a glut of photorealistic closed eyed visuals that was certainly unique. Perhaps most interesting however was the duration- the experience came in waves, with seemingly 4 separate peaks and an interstitial near-sobriety between them. Each wave was less intense with a shorter duration than the last. The overall nature of 2F-DCK in being smooth, fairly gentle, visual, cold and blue, and overall neutral and mentally incapacitating was retained. The potency seemed to be about the same as an intranasal dose, just with less of that aforementioned rush. It is worth nothing that I am not sure if the wave effect is something that is consistently reported or if perhaps that was a pharmacokinetic aberration that presented from the ROA.

3-MeO-PCP + MXPr

Age: 24

Weight: 130 lbs

Dosage: 12 mg 3-MeO-PCP intranasal, 40 mg MXPr intranasal

Setting: Around the city

 

This report is more narrative; if you would like to just know what the combo is like, skip to the conclusion at the end. It’s more me recording my memory of a very pleasant night.

Preface: This is a report from an experience I had back in January, don’t worry this is not me tattling on myself about what would be extremely irresponsible behavior in the age of Coronavirus. I had meant to write a report on this but kept procrastinating until I just forgot to do it entirely. I rediscovered my notes from then however. I find this to be an excellent and functional combination for socializing at night (whenever that may be safe again).

I am going to see my best friends play a basement show, they play Emo/Pop-Punk under the banner of “Twin Beds”. Afterwards I will be going to a Lunar New Year celebration with my partner in our city’s Chinatown. I have been looking forward to this night- house shows were always a fun excuse to dress up nice and put on excessive makeup and be around my best friends and flirt with people. And here I am- dolled up, with my patched-up painted-up battlejacket, Gerogerigegege t-shirt, ready to feel cooler and more confident than I normally do. Of course, I can’t do it alone

 

T0:00- I measure out 12 mg of 3-MeO-PCP and snort it in a line before leaving to catch the bus. I have also measured out a dose of 40 mg of MXPr that I intend to dose later, as it has a shorter comeup.

 

T0:05- Oh bummer, I missed the bus. I decide to bite the bullet and pay for a rideshare- the next bus may not get me there before my friends play.

 

T0:10- On the ride over I start to feel the first notes of the 3-MeO-PCP as they usually present. A bit of numbness in my extremities, a slight sense of weightlessness and lightheaded dizziness. Though I am sitting still in a car, I can sense a loss of equilibrium. My heart rate begins to creep up.

 

T0:30- My ride arrives. I awkwardly thank the driver and step out with a buoyant spring in my step. My limbs are at once heavy and light. I feel faint like I’m viewing the world through a screen. I am bubbly, energized and confident. I spot one of my friends in the band outside the venue, pay my cover and go in. The house is absurdly crowded inside, it’s difficult to walk through it. I navigate my way to the basement where there’s a little more space, I find all my friends there and greet them with hugs and pleasantry. It feels like my head is rising and my limbs are drooping. I feel fantastic and can’t help but smile and joke, yet I also I feel awkward and slightly inhibited, like I can’t get my thoughts straight. The lights go out and another friend’s band plays first, I hang towards the back in the dark, taking in the creeping swirling visuals that are beginning to form, dazzled by the little flecks of laser light that dance around the space. The basement grows steadily more crowded as they play, in the dark I feel more confident and self-assured, I want to talk to strangers and make new friends but it’s too loud to hear anyone talk and that’s okay.

 

T0:55- The first set ends, my sweetest dearest friends are going on next. I decide now is the time to dose the MXPr. I am not sure how the college-aged ex-suburbanite DIY emo kids feel about some punked out freak snorting drugs in plain view so I opt to find some privacy. Friends I see in the full light compliment me on my makeup and outfit, it feels good, I feel vain but I don’t feel guilty about it. Sometimes it’s nice to feel nice about yourself. The bathroom is occupied. I opt to go out to the backyard, where I can smoke some weed too. My best friend’s parents have arrived- they have known me since I was 6 years old but we haven’t interacted in a while. They are fairly conservative. This is really funny to me. I sneak around to the back and take my dose. It is chalky and uncomfortable, but that quickly passes. I take a few hits from my one hitter to round things out.

 

T1:10- I am back inside while my friends set up for their set. The drip is starting to crawl down my throat, acrid and unpleasant as usual. I am feeling bubbly and affable, floating around the room like the upper quarters of some restless spirit or a bee flitting from flower to flower. I make small talk and joke with people, whenever I say something it feels as though it’s clattering off to some void but I don’t care enough to follow up. I push my way to the front and do my best to avoid my friend’s parents, I am not in a state to talk to parents right now. I’m buzzing with energy and anticipation, the MXPr feels like a shot through my limbs that turned my bones to viscous liquid, crackling and glistening with colors like an oil slick. The lights shut off and as my eyes adjust, swirls and spirals play in the dark while the spots of decorative lights seethe and expand into the world around them like an inquisitive mold. I’m dizzy and I feel like I am living fully.

 

T1:30- There is a bit of chatter and small talk as they tune and check their instruments, flick on their amps- a sizeable crowd has shuffled in behind me, dimly lit faces all moving and talking and melting and contorting, at once flat alien visages, but at the same time full of vibrant expression, decidedly warm and human.  As they get ready to play and step up to the mic, the crowd’s energy pauses for a moment. I feel like I have the tense energy flaring down my spine and radiating into my limbs, a flicker of turquoise flame. The snap breaks, they break out into the first song, I am dancing and moshing with so many of our friends, shouting along the lyrics. It is so lovely to be so carefree, tossed around, sweaty, and given in to the music, it also feels awkward to occupy this space with my body, to try and gauge and respond to the energy of the crowd- that system seems completely out of commission. I am content to just let my extremities seep and sag, glowing at the edges with luminous haze, I am so sweaty and breathless but the music continues, I know every word and shout them along, as if my being has expanded through my skin to encompass those around me and for the time being we are all one collective set of flickering synapses  basking in the unifying electrifying energy of the love my best friends have for making and playing music that they love to make. I am captivated, a blurred void figure in the dark, shifting around as the walls shift color. I love how visual this is. The combination has really brought our prismatic flares at the edges of everything, I feel like pieces of me are turning to light and rising to the sky, yet I am still all lucid, all in control, a bit uncoordinated. They know how to keep a crowd happy, they know what the people love, it is a brief moment of fiery sweaty and dense exaltation.

 

T1:55- The lights come on, they turn off their amps, I step in to be the first to give them very sweaty hugs, they have to know how hype I’m feeling. Hype is absolutely what I’m feeling, it’s the mania and confidence of the 3-MeO-PCP morphed into a cocky self-assuredness from the energizing sensory experience I just had. I feel awe at this sense of confidence. I am exactly who I need to be where I need to be. The MXPr charges the experience with the fluttery love of novelty, of some extra dissociative weight and flares of visuals in the dark. I socialize more I flirt with people as if they really want to keep correspondence with a manic dissociated gremlin who infodumps about the drugs they’re on or whatever the hell this patch on my jacket means or whatever the band on my t shirt is. I am blurring through this, smiling, nodding, not taking in information but feeling good about talking to people anyway. It’s hard to string together coherent sentences and articulate my thoughts out loud. I have to leave soon anyway. One of my best friends told me I looked like a wastelands raider and it was a huge compliment. I look at my phone to coordinate my next move, the letters rise and sink in the screen and the bright light has absolutely absorbed my focus, as though beams of light have shot forth like ropes to bind to my eyes. It’s just me and the screen right now, no more world. I break out of its spell, bid adieu to all my sweet dear friends, I wish I could’ve stayed the rest of the show or gone to their afterparty but I already had something else planned for this night.

 

T2:20- It’s very cold outside. I’m at the subway station now after a brief walk through the tree lined streets at night. It felt like the world was closing in on me, that outside and inside didn’t really matter anymore. But the 3-MeO-PCP gave me a spring to my step and I burned through the world like a flash of ball lightning. I am dolled up in makeup in my jacket alone in a subway station. I forgot about this part. Some strangers keep casting glances but they mostly leave me alone. I puff my one hitter on the platform and find love in the filthy ceilings, faint dizzying forms unwinding into its apices, of my body shifted askew bit by bit, bounced on the buoyancy of the energy radiating from the surfaces around me. The platform is cold and quiet and still, the only density in the air overtaken by a haze of luminosity of sterile subway platform lights. The ride is delightful as ever, curled up in a seat while people mingle or interact or mind their own business- I catch visuals still swirling on the mottled surfaces, meandering patterns in faint relief. The sounds of the subway as it roars through the tunnels turns my being to gentle warm twisted metal when I close my eyes, my airy dissociative body at the mercy of the currents around me still. I get off at city hall and step into the gaze of the towering night skyscrapers, winking with flecks of light. The ambient light all around flares up with color, shifts off its source and dances and refracts, I am cold and bundled and every step feels as though a luminous gust is carrying me along ever so gently. I am absolutely manic, I want to stop and talk to the first street resident who seems like they might want to make conversation. This doesn’t happen thankfully and I shuffle into the darker more residential tangle of streets. The prismatic light play of before has passed to still swirls and textures breathing in the darkness, their apices blessed by a St. Elmo’s fire. Where at once I felt like I was skipping through gardens of crystalline light and cold concrete and the weight of the winter sky, now I was simply a hooded dirty figure slithering through the emptying streets, cloaked in the shadows and content to be ignored. My partner was at their parent’s house for the night so I go to pick them up there. It’s late, I am still a bit unsteady on my feet and still can’t fully articulate sentences. I feel like I am indoors, contained within my clothes, I feel like I must focus my energy on maintaining this sensory field of pulsing colors around me- I am in no state to stop in for tea or anything. I slink off around the corner and wait for them to come out and meet me.

 

T2:50- It is not but 2 minutes in that they ask me if I am on dissociatives, to which I reply affirmatively. They know me well. I suppose my awkward gait and disjointed speech gave it away. We first head back to my house to drop off our bags, it’s a lovely walk full of dark shadows and immensely bright lights, a constant battle between the two for who can exert their breath on the concrete and steel around them. As we walk I can feel the experience receding more and more, and I find conversation flowing smoothly and more naturally. The night is far from over however, and I want to be in the right state for what’s to come.

 

T3:10- We reach my house, hug and kiss just a little, recharge and have snacks and warm up for a second. I decide to take 2 gravity bong hits in succession to get me back to the proper sensory place for this experience. Midnight approaches and we must reach our next destination. The weed stirs the dust a bit and I set back out in the cold night, taciturn with a vortex of colors swirling about my head. Outside still feels a bit inside and there is still a spring in my step. It is a short walk from my house to Chinatown, we can hear the sound of fireworks and firecrackers and drums as we approach, a large crowd is visible in the distance.

 

T3:30- The entire street is awash in jubilant drunken throngs dancing and reveling in explosions. The residents of Chinatown are poured out onto the streets, joined by masses of what look like college students looking to party. People everywhere are on their balconies or leaning out of their windows, cheering the crowd on or setting off firecrackers. Lion dancers representing various local martial arts schools and their accompanying retinue of students and drum companies occupy the middle of the street, dancing in a frenzy under a constant shroud of small explosions. Everyone is joyous, everything is chaos, I am immediately taken into a sensory daze, the world swirling and spinning around me, its currents picking up the flares of energy that saturate this place like lightning bathing in a whirlpool.

I absolutely love loud noises and acute stimuli. I love sounds that I can feel in my bones, blast waves that rattle their gelatinous trabeculae and vibrate through my softer flesh. I can feel it in my jaw, I can feel it as pulses of tightness around the crown of my skull. The toothy smiles of the people around me rise as standards into the air, joined by the standards of incense smoke and the great standards of every light around me projecting up into the tessellated night. My face is locked in a grin, all I can do is drift and smile. The sky above is so cold, the January breeze spirals off the rooftops, capping the hermetic glow of the windows and apartments below them, red and gold decorations on their awnings, and yet below that swirls of people bathed in smoke and ringed in pillars of sharp noise, the most thunderous and cacophonous of them being an epicenter which we all swirl around, a base chaos of the cold blue asphalt, the bodies in their yellow clothes marching in unison, creeping ever upwards towards sensory excitation like a plant yearning for a thousand suns, the  single heaving breath of light slicing the night into the sky, we are a single mass of fire and revelry, detonation and destruction and the embers that still glow, glittering under the cold violet night, a great length of something strung from our spirits and pockmarked with pops of black powder wrapped in red paper.

I’m in a dizzying awe, I wander the streets aimlessly with my partner in tow, the police failed to block the streets so a number of cars are just trapped in the crowd that creeps through like a lava flow, fire adorning its leading edge. There is a huge box of fireworks for anyone to pick from, I kick myself for not bringing a lighter or some more weed to smoke. All I can do is watch all the older drunken men who live and work in the neighborhood take pleasure in making a great big fiery mess in the busiest intersection in Chinatown. The firecracker strips shake my bones, I am constantly climbing things to get a better view and remarkably, I find that my balance isn’t too impeded. The drugs are wearing off, I wish I had timed things so I would be peaking in the midst of this experience. I still feel like my extremities are glowing with a dim light like a dying lightbulb and I still feel a lightness and a spring in my step. I wish I knew this was happening every year so I could immerse myself in it, but I’m glad I discovered it for now. (With the eventual burden of the COVID-19 pandemic though, I am doubtful an experience like this would be had for years).

 

T4:40- It’s very very cold outside, given that it is late January. My partner (who doesn’t enjoy loud noises as much as me) offers that we go home. I agree, I am underdressed for this weather. We walk home, I’m quiet and am ruminating on the lovely experience I just had.

 

T4:55- We hang out at home for a bit, they go to bed before I do as I am still feeling to stimulated to sleep.

 

T7:30- It’s very late now. I manage to get myself to sleep.

 

Conclusion: This is an absolutely lovely combo that I revisited a number of times after this experience. It’s not particularly valuable for one of those experiences where I’m just in my room doing nothing, however it really shines to enhance various settings, particularly at night. 3-MeO-PCP on its own is highly sociable, comparable to alcohol but with stimulation and visuals and psychedelia. It however is lacking in the physical dissociation that can be fun at parties and social settings or that which just makes moving and dancing around more interesting. MXPr on its own is fairly shallow and boring with a drawn out and unpleasantly incapacitating comedown, but it has nice visuals and pleasant physical dissociation. They fill in each other’s gaps perfectly- the MXPr mixes an ideal amount of physical dissociation into the 3-MeO-PCP, complimenting the 3-MeO-PCP’s headspace perfectly, so long as doses are properly matched. MXPr also flares up the visuals, making them brighter and more apparent. The long lasting mania and stimulation of the 3-MeO-PCP meanwhile overwhelms the blank and still comedown of MXPr. It’s a match made in heaven, great for adding some color and motion to a night out. Of course, as of this writing, social settings and nighttime parties are not something we should be worrying about.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Obscure and Unknown: Matrine and Allomatrine

*WARNING* The substances mentioned in this series have little to no record of human use, and thus the effects they have on humans are either poorly understood or entirely unknown. Much of what this information is simply hypotheses based on animal trials or very small human sample sizes. Very little information exists about their acute or long-term toxicity. Under no circumstances should any of these substances be ingested by a human outside of a clinical setting where psychological and physiological effects can be closely monitored and extremely precise doses can be prepared and TITRATED. DO NOT seek any of these out if you do not have access to those resources.

I recently shared my work to a wider community on reddit, both with the intention of making this actually feel worthwhile by having more than like 20 views for what would amount to hours and hours of work and research and doing more work than I ever did for school and digging up articles done in intense feverish working trances etc I digress, but more importantly, I hoped to open myself up to suggestions for new obscure drugs to research in. These suggestions came in almost immediately, however it was one, from u/wherethewavebroke, that instantly caught my eye. 

This drug was Matrine, an alkaloid from plants in the genus Sophora. The existence of Matrine elucidates all sorts of fascinating lines for further exploration and investigation. The skinny is: Matrine is an apparently hallucinogenic κ-opioid agonist, becoming another component in the growing puzzle that is this underexplored mechanism that can drive unique and fascinating hallucinatory effects. This potentially places κ-opioid agonists as a 4th category of hallucinogen alongside the traditionally known psychedelics (5-HT2A agonists), dissociatives (NMDAr antagonists), and deliriants (mAChR antagonists). For reference, the best known hallucinogenic κ-opioid agonist is Salvinorin A, the active chemical in Salvia. In my reading I also found the naturally occurring (from the same plant) analogue Allomatrine, which shows a similar pharmacological profile. 

(+)-Matrine (left) and (+)-Allomatrine (right)

Structurally, Matrine is a series of 4 conjoined, hydrogenated 6-member rings, interconnected at various angles. We will specifically be looking at the (+)-Matrine isomer. (+)-Allomatrine meanwhile, is a simple stereoisomer of (+)-Matrine.

Matrine, as stated before, is a natural alkaloid found in a variety of plants in the legume family (and some othes), though it is best known from species in the genus Sophora. Specficially the species S. alopecuroides, S. davidii, S. flavescens, S. griffithi, S. japonica, S. macrophylla, S. pachycarpa, S. subprostrata, S. toniknensis, and S. viciiflora1. Other species it has been found in include Daphniphyllum oldhami, Euchresa formosana, E. horsfeldii, Goebelia pachycarpa, Leontice albertii, and Vexibia pachycarpa1.

Sophora flavescens


The best studied species is Sophora flavescens, which has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries, where the ground dried root is referred to as "Kushen"2. It was traditionally used to treat eczema, dysentery, and pruritus2. Modern research suggests that Matrine may be useful in inhibiting the growth of tumors2

Kushen, the form in which matrine was traditionally encountered, is a potent cocktail of compounds, an amalgam pulled directly from the S. flavescens root material. Several analogues of Matrine can be found in Kushen and have been studied for the analgesic properties, suggesting possible opioid activity. Some of the ones that have been studied in depth are (-)-Sophoridine, (+)-Allomatrine, and (+)-Oxysophocarpine3. Sophoridine had a patent application as an analgesic, demonstrating analgesia through an acetic acid-writhing test, though its action was not inhibited by naloxone, suggesting some activity other than opioid receptor agonism (though naloxone primarily acts on the μ-opioid receptor, it also blocks activity on the other two to some degree)4. Sophoridine was also found to be a stronger analgesic than matrine5. Oxysophocarpine meanwhile, appears to also have moderate analgesic properties in line with various thermal and chemical pain tests, and it also appeared to activate the GABAA receptor, similar to the action of many depressant drugs6.

More detailed receptor studies were done specifically on Matrine and Allomatrine, and this is where it gets interesting. After all, I'm not here to write about prospective analgesics, the context of this blog is clear. The particularly interesting effect we're homing in on is κ-opioid agonism. κ-opioid agonism often exists among a cluster of other opioid receptor effects, but certain compounds seem especially selective for the κ-opioid receptor. κ-opioid agonism in my opinion, stands to be an entirely new mechanism of action to fit under the umbrella of hallucinogenic drugs, which normally just include psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants. κ-opioid agonism induces a totally distinct hallucinogenic experience that sets it apart from the rest, distinguished by a physical sense of dissociation coupled with intense visual patterning like psychedelics, with the dysphoria and clear coherent hallucinations of deliriants. This mechanism of hallucinogenesis is typified and best understood through Salvinorin A, the active alkaloid in Salvia. It has also been demonstrated as the likely culprit in the hallucinogenic effects of the Benzomorphans, which can be read about here. And perhaps Matrine (and Allomatrine) could also be added to this list, pending further study. 

The evidence that these compounds are κ-opioid agonists is strong. Let's see what we have before us. A study by Kamei et al. 1997 compared Matrine to Pentazocine, one of those aforementioned benzomorphans that shows broad activity across all of the opioid receptors, but particularly the κ-opioid receptor. The behavioral effects in mice in various pain tests between the two compounds was near identical, suggesting a similar mechanism of action7. To really narrow down what was going on however, a different test was performed. 3 different highly selective opioid receptor antagonists were prepared: β-Funaltrexamine (FNA), Naltrindole (NTI), and Nor-binaltorphimine (BNI). These antagonists specfically blocked action on the μ-opioid, δ-opioid, and κ-opioid receptors respectively- pretty much if these were administered with matrine and the analgesic effects disappeared, you could guess that that was a receptor matrine was normally acting on. This test showed that Matrine seemed to act primarily on the κ-opioid receptor, and to a lesser degree, the μ-opioid receptor7.
Another later study performed a similar test on matrine (yet again) and its analogue Allomatrine. This test clearly indicated the same primary κ-opioid agonist activity in Allomatrine too, though Allomatrine had seemingly no reaction to the μ-opioid antagonist8.

So if that jargon was too much, I will just say it like this: the evidence points strongly towards Matrine and Allomatrine being κ-opioid agonists. But the hallucinations you ask! It is clear looking at a list of κ-opioid agonists, there are many compounds that are clearly not hallucinogenic. Rather, we are looking for potent and highly selective κ-opioid agonists, which primarily target that receptor with little peripheral action. These show the most promise as being hallucinogenic, and this property can be seen in known hallucinogens like Salvinorin A or the Benzomorphans. Matrine and Allomatrine seem to follow this pattern, which shows promise.

But I'm not writing this piece because of potential, I'm writing this piece guided by a report from a brave redditor who had actually intentionally ingested Matrine to bring out these very effects. Of course, you should take a single data point of a single reddit report with a grain of salt but it should at the very least provide a platform for further investigation. 

Some excerpts from this report by u/wherethewavebroke are as follows:9

"Prior to my trials, I could only find a single other report of usage, from /u/kpinner in a since deleted post, where they claimed to consume a full gram at once. They reported long lasting effects and visual distortions, especially CEVs."

"4 days later, at 9pm. 
I mixed 250mg in with pickle juice again, although of a much better quality than last time. 
This stuff is fairly bitter, but easy to wash down if you chase it with water. Similar effects to the previous experiment developed, slightly more potent, although I wouldnt say doubly so. Took a walk outside and noticed some minor visual distortions, very occasionally. It was very slight bending of things, similar to with some dissociatives. Later on, when I was back inside, I had some very persistent afterimages. After looking at the lights on my ceiling for no more than a second or two, I had remaining afterimages of them where I looked, both with eyes open and closed. They moved a tiny bit, and faded after a couple minutes. No other visual effects were noticed."

As for Allomatrine, it has a similar profile in animal trials, particularly the observation that a specific κ-opioid antagonist blocks its action. It can be reasonably presumed that Allomatrine may have similar effects to Matrine, though of course this cannot be known for sure until it is tested in humans.

The observed analgesic doses in mice (equivalent to that of pentazocine) were ~30 mg/kg subcutaneous for both Matrine and Allomatrine, though other tests indicate that Allomatrine may be more potent8. This would be a dose of 2100 mg in a 70 kg human. It should be noted that the human trial above was only a fraction of that dose, and there were no noteworthy behavioral aberrations in mice at their significantly higher dose. I really cannot safely say what the dose in humans may be, especially accounting for the different route of administration and the ways in which we may uniquely metabolize the chemical, but it appears that 250 mg is at least a safe starting point, and perhaps a lower end of a dose. 

Matrine and Allomatrine are just two components of the aforementioned extract from Sophora flavescens used in traditional Chinese medicine that is referred to as "Kushen". It is still available in contemporary times as a formulation called "Compound Kushen Injection" (CKI) (which also includes extracts from the plant Rhizoma smilacis), indicated for cancer treatment. Kushen is also available in oral tablets, indicated for a range of dermatological maladies. Indeed many alkaloids from Sophora show promise in slowing tumor growth2. So could CKI be used to achieve the interesting effects of Matrine and Allomatrine?

Kushen Tablets sold for acne treatment

I would say not likely- CKI is a cocktail of a huge variety of compounds, many of which have not been properly isolated and researched- their potential side effects are entirely unknown, though a selection of them seem to be analgesic or possibly opioids. The compounds included in CKI can be found in this table, taken directly from Zhou et al. 202010.

No.

Compound

1

5,6-Dehydrolupanine

2

5α,9α-Hydroxymatrine

3

7,11-Dehydromatrine

4

9α-Hydroxymatrine

5

9α-Hydroxysophocarpine

6

Adenine

7

Baptifoline

8

Isomatrine

9

Isophocarpine

10

Lamprolobine

11

Liriodendrin

12

Macrozamin

13

Matrine

14

N-Methylcytisine

15

Oxymatrine

16

Oxysophocarpine

17

Oxysophoranol

18

Oxysophoridine

19

Piscidic acid

20

Sophocarpine

21

Sophoranol

22

Sophoridine

23

Trifolirhizin


It's entirely possible that other interesting κ-opioid agonists may be hiding out among these active compounds. Understandably, most research around them focuses on their potential to inhibit tumor growth, which is of course much more important than their psychoactive potential. But the possibility is out there. A number of these in fact are simple stereoisomers or close analogues of Matrine.

Furthermore, as it stands I think it may be worth lumping in κ-opioid agonists as a 4th class of formally defined hallucinogen, alongside the familiar 5-HT2A agonists (Psychedelics), NMDA antagonists (Dissociatives), and mACH antagonists (Deliriants). As it stands, this group perhaps at least warrants the inclusion of Salvinorin A, the Benzomorphans, and Matrine/Allomatrine, among many possible others that have yet to be surveyed! A qualitative characterization of consistent hallucinatory effects across all the substances with κ-opioid agonist activity must be done too, and there simply does not yet exist enough data for that across multiple compounds. This is made messier by the fact that few compounds are exclusively κ-opioid agonists- many are very  non-selective and hit a variety of receptors for all sorts of effects. Nonetheless some commonalities appear to be a physical sense of dissociation or derealization, bright, patterned and vivid visuals, a lack of inherent euphoria (or even dysphoria), and vivid hallucinations that border on delirium. In sensory aspects it seems almost like the other three classes of hallucinogen rolled into one, but only further study will illuminate this picture better.

Sources and Further Reading:
2- Zhang H, Chen L, Sun X, Yang Q, Wan L, Guo C (2020) Matrine: A Promising Natural Product With Various Pharmacological Activities. Front. Pharmacol. 11:588
3- Liu XJ, Cao MA, Li WH, Shen CS, Yan SQ, Yuan CS (2010) Alkaloids from Sophora flavescens Aition. Fitoterapia 81(6):524-527.
4- Ju H (2001) Sophoridine and its application in analgesic CN1211083C
5- Zhang S, Li H, Yang,S-J.(2005). Comparison of analgesic effects between matrine and sophoridine. Journal of Jilin University(Medicine Edition) 31:561-563.
6- Xu T, Li Y, Wang H, Xu Y, Ma L, Sun T, Ma H, Yu J (2013) Oxysophocarpine induces anti-nociception and increases the expression of GABAAα1 receptors in mice. Molecular medicine reports 7(6)
7- Kamei J, Xiao P, Ohsawa M, Kubo H, Higashiyama K, Takahashi H, Li J, Nagase H, Ohmiya S (1997) Antinociceptive effects of (+)-matrine in mice. European Journal of Pharmacology. 337(2-3):223-226.
8- Xiao P, Kubo H, Ohsawa M, Higashiyama K, Nagase H, Yan YN, Li JS, Kamei J, Ohmiya S (1999) Kappa-Opioid receptor-mediated antinociceptive effects of stereoisomers and derivatives of (+)-matrine in mice. Planta Med. 65(3):230-233. 
10- Zhou W, Wu J, Zhu Y, Meng Z, Liu X, Liu S, Ni M, Jia S, Zhang J, Guo S (2020) Study on the mechanisms of compound Kushen injection for the treatment of gastric cancer based on network pharmacology. BMC Complement Med Ther. 15;20(1):6.