HXE

Age: 25

Weight: 130 lbs

Dosage: 150 mg intranasal

Setting: My house

Introduction: HXE is the MXE-adjacent name applied to another novel arylcyclohexylamine, which does bear a passing similarity to MXE only with a hydroxy group in place of the methoxy group. HXE had been conjectured years ago, appearing prominently in the collections of some online research chemical vendors, though it was never for sale. There were few to no reports of anyone who had actually encountered or ingested this chemical for many years, until early 2021 when it was first seen for sale on the open market. It is likely that it will remain a rarity and a one-off curiosity owing to difficulty in synthesis, despite being a very natural direction to go in arylcyclohexylamine design.

I attempted a few trials with this chemical before this one, at 50 and 100 mg, all intranasal. 50 mg yielded threshold effects, a distinct dissociative stimulation, while 100 mg was more intense though still manageably lucid. Overall it is an interesting dissociative, very cognitive, physically sedating, warm, with a confusing and elusive headspace. It is homely and cozy, heavy and slow. It is assessed in full in the conclusion. What follows is a description of a trial with 150 mg administered intranasally.

 

T0:00- I weigh out a large pile of extremely fine, chalky powder and cut it into several lines. I snort them one by one, pausing between each to recoil and brace for the next. This chemical is incredibly uncomfortable to consume- the flavor is rancid, bitter and vile. It stings on contact with my mucus membranes and the powder fluffs into a cloud in my sinuses, coating every surface. Each draw into the snorting straw makes me flinch and recoil, the stinging forces tears from my eyes and I involuntarily retch at the flavor. This is not enjoyable in the least. Thankfully the stinging subsides fairly quickly, though the bitterness and discomfort continue to rage.

 

T0:10- Finally finish taking down all of those lines. No effects to note yet other than a continual unpleasant drip.

 

T0:27- Onset- feeling a bit faint and wobbly, something is definitely happening now. I am dizzy and lightheaded and my fingertips feel a bit numb.

 

T0:32- The drug overtakes me more and more. The intensity at this point is akin to that felt at the peak of my 100 mg dose. I feel like I am being compressed and tightened as my breath grows shorter and shallower. This is a tight and constricted dissociation, a sense that the boundaries of my physical body are no longer aligned with my sensory perception of my own size and shape- namely, the actual body is smaller, denser, pulled tighter than the perceived body. There is a cooling bubbling dissociation that burgeons now, an unease that travels from my core down to the tips of my extremities, something amorphous and indistinct growing larger by the second.

 

T0:44- I am sinking deeper and deeper by the second. This is not a rushing dissociation, there is no sense of floodwaters buffeting me and streaming my essence into the void. It is as though I am in a chamber that is rapidly flooding with water, water eager to fil the space even before it has displaced the air, growing denser than one would think possible, exerting an immense pressure on my body as it rises around me. I feel trapped, tightly bound, locked into my current position and pose, I am folding up, becoming smaller and recursive. It quietly beckons me into its core, I sink into its inky bed as its waters crush my bones with weeping frigid pressure.

;

In pitch-black waters under crushing pressure the pitch-black skin of the earth stretches and ruptures, open wounds that ooze with glowing molten blood, a primordial heat generated from an entire planet’s worth of atoms bearing down on each other. The great dense salty waters that creep and crawl across the earth trickle into the planet’s crackling skin, churning into the great heavy fires below the crust and exploding back out into the ocean as impenetrable black plumes of chemicals.

;

That which beckons me to sink deeper is still, stoic, glowing and warm like the core of the earth burning under its own pressure amidst the tumult of the mantle and the raging vibrancy of its crust. It resides in a realm still and dark and impossibly heavy, fluid but steady. It casts its glow into the abyss, its warmth crackles at my skin and seeps into my bones, a respite from the infinite cold that surrounds it on all sides. The cold sloughs off my shoulders like a reptile shedding its skin, falling into loose ruffles around me. I have turned off all of the lights and am sitting in the glow of my computer screen, there are patterns churning and seeping into the shadowy surfaces cast in blue and teal, quiet and pensive and watching me like timid hagfish scouting out a fresh ocean floor carcass to burrow into.

Despite this sense of depth and space and impenetrable void dominating my mind, when I force myself into lucidity it is quite manageable. Standing up and moving around, I have little loss in motor skills or coordination. I doubt I could hold a coherent conversation right now, but I very likely could walk down the street without giving a stranger the impression of being intoxicated. This is an odd sort of functionality.

 

T1:00-

I am enjoined with this drug’s light and its warmth, I am entwined with its molten core as its fire courses through my veins and steams off of my skin. In its glowering light I can gaze out onto the infinite watery abyss that expands on all sides of me, frigid, unforgiving, and unimaginably vast.

I take advantage of the optional lucidity to run and pee real quick. Sitting in the dark in the bathroom feels like being encased in a flooding submarine, the rushing currents painted with impressionistic strokes of maroon and turquoise reflected light. The writhing wriggling pressure bears down on my skull.

Back downstairs on the couch in the dark, the subterranean waters flow through me, like the tendrils of frigid ocean seeping into the Earth’s crust to do communion with the fires of the mantle. All light is hazy and diffuse through a deep blue filter. My fingers feel blunt and gooey like I am a gelatinous creature of the deep, my body feels like it is being rolled up with wads of abyssal mud and bioluminescent mucus. The world is spinning away from me like a twirling pebble descending down a water column. My feet are twisting around themselves, my body is giving way to diffusing into a softness that it sinks into, a softness that swirls and churns with convection and turbulence, mixing its essence with the glowing liquid heart of this chemical.

;

Deep under the ocean, incomprehensible and colossal masses of frigid salty water creep along the seafloor, heavier and vaster than anything we can comprehend on the surface. The eternal march of these great masses, step by step along the midnight bottom of the great seas, drives the circulation of water around the earth.

;

The drug is fearsome in its power, fearsome in its scope, yet- still and matter-of-fact. If one were to sit at the bottom of the ocean, surely it would be fearsome in the vastness, it would be difficult to comprehend the immenseness and the sheer volume of impenetrable water in every direction. It would be near impossible to consider in the abyssal dark but its presence would be heavy and distinct. The pressure the entirety of the ocean exerts would turn a person to liquid, pulverize them and churn their essence among looming deep sea currents bearing down on them. Yet one would simply be there, in place, among something that surely exists and surely contains so much power, regardless of our petty existence. That is the grip of HXE, fearsome like a mighty glacier, fearsome like an shroud of all-consuming fog, fearsome like the span of the night sky over an empty plain, vast terrible and awesome and completely indifferent to human existence like so much else that is vast and terrible and awesome.

I am incredibly warm and sweaty. I feel considerable nausea, moreso than I typically experience from dissociatives. I am enraptured in this drug’s magmatic embrace, its convections flowing in streams around me, pressing down upon my soft flesh. Its breath is at once warm like opening the maw of an oven, like a lover fervently exhaling on my neck, yet cold and breezy like the wind before a thunderstorm. It is like being pinned under a heavy mass of warm seaweed, great slimy undulating curtains that hold me to the ground, steam rising from their blades.

 

 

T1:26- Its currents and flows run over mid-ocean ridges, the prominences of seamounts and the skyscrapers of black smokers. Like great drapes being dragged across a stony riverbed, it bends and works its way around angles and edges and points that it obscures, protrusions and penetrations into an eternal inky flux. And thus its ribbons and vortices trace around my bones, the odd vertices of my body like an infinite sheet of black silk is being pulled over my form. With my eyes closed I seep into a world of shadowy obsidian forms, fractalizing and self transforming into illusions, presenting inconceivable dimension and perspective, gripping me in its heavy gaze. It is a storm of volcanic sludge, warm and impenetrably dark, and always in steady, heavy, unstoppable and indifferent motion. There is an uneasy pull, like a great creeping current has taken my tiny body and tossed it into the great blue dark. I plug in headphones and decide to listen to music- a compilation of B-sides and demos from one of my favorite musical projects, Julia Brown, it’s lo-fi, nostalgic, and intimate music that is deeply entwined with my life. There is great comfort in something familiar, there is great comfort at the bottom of the sea.

 

T1:43- Lying down and surrendering myself to music in the dark has brought about the typical dissociative hole sensation- this sense that I am being enclosed in an inconceivably soft cocoon, that my body sinks into its silken plush and becomes amorphous and malleable, that this new vehicle for my body enters a steady motion, in this case a sense of sinking and plummeting into a swallowing and crushing and undulating pressure. I would consider this to be the peak effects of the experience.

The world turns to dark, my cocoon swirls and stirs with its surroundings, everything is cast in palaces and arches of sea glass stained in the darkest teals and deepest blues, self-generating structures in illusion and abstraction, taking a distant, warm, muted light through their crystalline structure. The organic and cryptic motion and process of this geometry seems to suggest something organic, something alive, and yet this vast dark ocean floor is devoid of anything that could be considered biological. This is an ancient sea, one that persists even when all else does not. Perhaps it was once inhabited but the liveliness of this experience is like a fossil, traces and vestiges and signs of what once was but is no more, preserved for unknowable eternities. My cocoon gives way to a thick, deep glass sarcophagus, nestled among the shifting currents, a great heavy thing subject to a great pressure. There are tickles and ripples and trickles of electricity crackling through the space where my body lay.

The music is comforting, at once familiar yet impossibly alien, my brain can register that this is something it has heard before but it can’t quite grasp what it is exactly, it is like feeling the form of some familiar object in total darkness. My thoughts trace around the words, the melodies, but don’t seem to drift or engage with much else. All I can think about is the darkness, the blueness, the pressure, the ripples of sound waves in a viscous void. The visuals do not appear to be synesthetic, they don’t dance or shift or change their appearance in response to the music, they simply exist as they need to, flowing and shifting and swirling like any body of water would.

 

T2:00- I spend the next half hour or so sinking into the hole, opening my eyes and inflating myself to rise to the surface, ad nauseam. I enjoy the relative lucidity of this substance, how it can only overtake me when I allow it to, and then it bears down with the weight of the seven seas. Fine motor skills are compromised, attributed to a total numbness in my fingers. Standing up and walking still presents no issue. Attempting to use technology or communicate with people digitally or read information on a screen presents a challenge, owing to a heavy mental dissociation that scrambles focus and coherent lines of thought. I am dulled to only really being able to perceive the sensations I am currently being subject to, which is frankly quite pleasant and peaceful. It is a cozy and homely drug, akin to dozing off next to a fireplace. Chains of association have become cryptic, obscured in a vast blue dark, I can only hope to grope around to make sense of things the way I can while sober.

The latest sensation to overtake me when I close my eyes is a sense of my body melting into a puddle of slime or liquid or perhaps a heavy flow of voluptuous lava, glowing seething and steaming into the cold night, slimy and radiant. My body droops and sags and sinks into the ground, becoming amorphous. It’s novel for the experience so far and fun. I love taking delight in the little flourishes and touches that dissociatives can have. I feel like I am exuding heat, my skin feels hot and sweaty to the touch (though perhaps with the general sense of anesthesia my ability to assess temperature was not accurate). I wonder what my body temperature would measure as right now.

 

T2:19- Aspects of this experience seem to be traveling in great deep sweeping sine waves, such as a sense of pressure rising and falling. The beginning of the peak had my in its heavy grip, and that sensation has returned, I close my eyes and I feel cocooned, tightly wrapped in a smooth membrane, pulling tighter, shrinking around me, bounded on its other side by an infinite softness like the abyssal plain. But there is no world to be had beyond this high-pressure bubble that contains me, there is the infinite recursive void within my skull, where I fall into yet another high pressure bubble bounded by an inconceivable nothingness that extends in directions I cannot perceive. There is no point to perceiving a world beyond this sinking infinite light, radiating heat from my body.

 

T2:43- Stimulation and sedation are another feeling that have cycled throughout this experience, in broader waves than the undulating sense of pressure. The mental stimulation of the comeup and peak has crashed into an all consuming quagmire of sedation, suddenly my limbs feel like lead, my eyelids creep shut in a steady downpour, I am yawning and nuzzling up into the couch, wishing I could sink deeper into it than is physically possible. I would love to sleep but my brain still feels too jarred to get rest- it in fact is not a relaxing sedation but a heavy, forceful one.

The experience seemed to plateau and lag in a steady intensity for the last hour or so, perhaps steadily turning down, but it feels as though it has just peaked a great deal. Perhaps it is the anti-rush of being swamped with a sudden sedation, of drowning in a bog. Soon the fatigue gives away to a distinct alertness, a raw intensity. The drug has shot into the sky before burning out and fizzling before the glistening moon, one last peak before a sudden downturn in all of the effects. What an odd timeline for an odd compound. I wonder if this timeline is a result of metabolism and physical interaction with the substance vs. an inherent property of the compound. Further experimentation is required! I still feel slow, melty, sluggish, I am taken with an exhaustion like I am floating on the surface of a deadly still pool. I can force myself to stand up, move around, interact, but I just don’t feel much energy or drive to do so. It is functional on paper, but not in practice at this point.

Visuals are formed into regular harmonic grids, constructed of a deep translucent glass, overlaid subtly on surfaces, catching a light with no discernible source.

 

 

T3:21- Still a buzzing presence in my mind. I have been absentmindedly playing videogames as I am unsure what else I should do. My mind feels blank and empty. MXPr is a drug that I consider to be distinctly lackluster because the comedown is so inhibiting and dull. Drugs like DMXE or MXiPr meanwhile, feature a stimulated and introspective comedown replete with curiosity and a degree of cognitive enhancement. This drug falls in the middle, though more towards the inhibiting side. There is just enough stimulation for it not to be a dull experience, I simply exist in the present and process my senses rather than being able to think myself down rabbit holes and ruminate on whatever catches my interest. It is a state of Zen, one in which I am mostly too adrift to recognize it as such, and also too adrift to recognize that I normally don’t enjoy this kind of state.

One interesting cognitive effect that has been setting in during the comedown is that I am finding it difficult to fully process or comprehend things that are entirely normal and familiar. Things like objects around the room, reading about world events, basic house appliances, all are suddenly alien and foreign, I can’t quite wrap my head around why I know about these things or why I simply accepted them before, now they are incomprehensible objects and concepts that are pared down to their basest sensory information, bereft of all meaning and association. This is most striking when trying to read- while I can mostly read okay, certain words suddenly become near-incomprehensible, in that what was once familiar letters have become indistinguishable glyphs, divorced from my knowledge of the Latin Alphabet. The sensation is fleeting, I will stumble on a few words in a sentence before they realign and I can piece it together. Taking in that information and processing it into something coherent is a whole challenge that follows. But I do not mind, I find it to be novel, interesting, almost funny. There is a calm acceptance of all of these effects that should otherwise be jarring or annoying.

 

T4:00- The confused haze has given way to a bit of that motivated psychedelia- another flash of stimulation, another flash of cognitive enhancement peaking through the receding tide of the sedative ocean. Besides this sudden glow, most other effects have fade- there is very little physical dissociation remaining, feeling has for the most part returned to my limbs and extremities. The sense of melting and of sinking proprioception has for the most part faded. This is certainly primarily a cognitive experience at this point. Hyperthermia lingers but is definitely fading out. The night gets darker.

 

T6:00- The last two hours have been the comedown stimulation fluctuating with an overall sense of dazed sobriety. I am absentmindedly playing videogames still, I can’t find much else to do really. I am cozy and content. I smoke some more cannabis but it hardly stirs the dust, beyond making me more curious and more motivated to pursue topics that strike my fancy.

 

T6:30- Almost entirely back to baseline now, the final state of this is a residual neutral stimulation. This happens to keep me awake for a few hours longer than I intended, though I don’t really feel dissociate during this time, just weakly stimulated.

 

T7:30- That has worn off too. I go sleep.

 

Conclusion: I apologize for the flowery extended and perhaps repetitive metaphor for being on the bottom of the ocean, but I really cannot thing of a better way to describe this substance at this dose. So much was reminiscent of the properties of the abyssal zones of the sea, the darkness, the blueness, the vastness, the immense pressure, the sense of currents and flows and swirls, the sense of being pressed and tossed about by immense masses of creeping fluid. The sense of viscous magma glowing and setting and sinking into the dark, casting a warmth and light that beckons me in. It is a cozy, homely substance, like being in a dimly lit house during a thunderstorm. It’s a heavy dissociative, one whose magnitude fluctuates between varying degrees of stimulation and intensity. The headspace is empty and confusing, but also accommodating, cozy and warm, to a degree where one doesn’t really care about the emptiness. It is a cryptic drug, like much of the deep sea- does it have the potential to unlock something deeper? Is there introspective potential? In my mind, it is like being adrift in the pelagic column, begging the vast ocean on all sides of you for answers and insight- I am in its realm, it simply exists here, it is not equipped to answer anything I dare ask of it. It is best to sit back and enjoy the ride, the lovely pleasurable and novel physical sensations.

It loses points for me for how exceedingly difficult administration is. But other that I think it is a worthwhile compound for someone seeking something somewhat novel, though I conjecture there isn’t much deeper to go in it. I would classify this one as immensely fascinating but not particularly enjoyable. Perhaps mixing in some manic dissos will overcome some of the lacking qualities and yield some truly fascinating experiences. Happy dissing!

3,4-DCMP (aka 3,4-CTMP) ++ Diazepam + Flualprazolam + Norflurazepam + Pregabalin + 2F-DCK

 Age: 25

Weight: 130 lbs

Dosage: 6 mg oral + 6 mg intranasal + 6 mg intranasal of 3,4-DCMP, a whole plethora of things later to mitigate the effects

(20 mg Diazepam sublingual, .5 mg Flualprazolam sublingual, 10 mg Norflurazepam sublingual, 300 mg Pregabalin oral, 80 mg 2F-DCK oral)

Setting: My house

 

Introduction: 3,4-DCMP also known (erroneously) as 3,4-CTMP is a methylphenidate analogue equipped with 2 chorines on the 3 and 4 positions. As it stands, it’s a fairly standard and long lasting stimulant- what makes it special is that it is extremely potent relative to other common stimulants, with a common dose purported to be in the range of 6-8 mg. While this experience overall became tainted with a battery of depressants, I tried to weather the high-dose stimulant effects as long as I could and write about them, as during my research I couldn’t find any information on the effects of a dose that high (especially for one with almost no stimulant tolerance like myself).

Why did I take such a massive dose? Am I not an experienced and responsible researcher? This is a humbling story of how no matter how experienced one considers themselves, it is still incredibly easy to make mistakes. I am lucky that this mistake only led to a great deal of discomfort and not serious physiological or psychological harm. This was simply due to insufficient research beforehand and impatience. I did not realize until it was too late that this drug has a long comeup, especially when taken orally, and that it may be more potent intranasally. Furthermore, what followed in my mitigation efforts was perhaps noble and useful in its inception, but quickly spun off the rails into the territory of compulsive dosing driven by severely impaired judgment. This should all have been common sense but it wasn’t. As an instruction- one can always take more, one can never take less- never redose when experimenting with something for the first time, one can always try again later.

 

T0:00- first dose taken as 6 mg orally in gel cap.

 

T1:00- No real effects felt, I am getting impatient. This is my first mistake.

 

T1:30- Still not feeling anything. I decide to snort another 6 mg. This may have been a good stopping point, this is already a fairly high dose by any standard, but I did not end up stopping here.

 

T2:00- Still just only barely feeling it- in retrospect what I am feeling at this point may very well have been just the first dose. Why am I so impatient? I snort another 6 mg, for a grand total of 18 mg, 6 oral and 12 intranasal. I had errands to run later in the day- perhaps this was my way of trying to make them more exciting and give myself the energy boost I needed to go out? I certainly overdid it.

I find myself becoming more open and talkative, it's nice to talk about drugs with a good friend. It’s a pleasant sociable stimulant boost, one that isn’t quite yet overdone. I begin to read more about this drug however and begin to realize the gravity of what I have done. A certain anxiety sets in over what is to come.

 

T2:30- I've just been sitting in my room listening to music, feeling good, very euphoric and mentally stimulating without much push or motivation to do anything beyond what I’m already doing. It’s a nice alert high, I am chatty and jovial, this is something I could genuinely enjoy. I smoke a bit of cannabis.
Just as I was getting used to it and remarking on the lack of physical side effects, the consequences of my impatience come crashing down. My heart is racing, my muscles begin to tremor and twitch, my breathing becomes faster and shallower.

 

T3:00- Side effects have been growing- extremely fidgety and twitchy, every muscle in my body feels restless and unable to expend their newfound pent-up energy. I'm sure I look tweaked out to an external observer, every part of my body seems obligated to be in motion without pause. My heart is pounding furiously and it already hurts.

I am constantly swallowing, my jaw is grinding, it is hard to breathe or move right, everything feels uncomfortable and wrong, I am sighing constantly, it is like my body is doing every trivial motion it can to expend the stimulation. I am typing fast, though my thoughts aren’t really racing, I am mentally still lucid and my brain still proceeds at a normal pace. I would still consider the headspace to be pleasant at this point, this seems like it would be an enjoyable drug at a reasonable dose.

 

T3:10- Spoke too soon yet again- my thoughts are beginning to race now, this seems like it's becoming a tad untenable. While there was a brief island of focused, stimulated thought, I am now unmanageable, scatterbrained and distractable, far from land in any direction.

I am strongly considering aborting the experience for now. This doesn’t feel worth it to try and endure, The fact that the comeup can take 3-4 hours means that this is only going to get worse as time passes.

I am swallowing and sniffling and fidgeting a lot, getting some chills, feeling the tingle of vasoconstriction in my extremities. I want to try working on writing a trip report I had been working on, but I keep getting distracted. Everything is going so fast.

As there are no reports for this dosage of 3,4-DCMP and my life doesn’t feel in immediate danger, I decide to just weather the storm for the time being and see just how bad it can get.

 

T3:30- I meet up with a friend and pick up some Pregabalin. It is nice to be around a real person, I am predictably very chatty. Nevertheless he tells me I don’t appear outwardly stimulated or under any influence- perhaps a bit jumpy. We go grocery shopping together.

Any moments of silence feel particularly awkward and tense just because I'm so wired. It feels nice to get up and move and walk around, being outside and in motion takes the edge off of a lot of the uncomfortable effects. I walk home after this and settle back into stationary discomfort.

 

T4:10- Effects seem milder now, I do some housework that involves moving around so that helps a bit too. It feels like I'm already coming out of the storm but I know that that's impossible- it's only been about 4 hours. Nonetheless I do indeed feel like I am not breathing so shallow or fidgeting or shaking as much.

 

T4:30- Clearly was presumptuous in thinking the effects were phasing out already.  It all comes crashing back, lots of swallowing, lots of inane physical movement, lots of racing thoughts, lots of shaking, heart pounding and chest aching and shallow breathing. All the same. I am not enjoying myself but I still feel like I can hold out longer.

 

T4:40- Never mind that. It has only been about 5 hours and I already feel so strung out and worn out, I feel like I have run through a day’s worth of energy already. I have 0 appetite and a roiling discomfort in my gut that keeps me from refueling myself. This is wildly uncomfortable with no discernible gain and all signs point towards that pattern holding steady for the next several hours if not getting worse. I am not even sure if the later intranasal doses have reached their full effect yet but in my current state I am not particularly eager to find out. I decide to just phase the experience out with 20 mg of Diazepam to start, administered sublingually from dissolvable tablets.

 

4:56- The magic of Diazepam is that it kicks in very quickly. Things feel like they're slowing down a bit already, breathing less shallow, heart rate still fast but not as much as before, fidgeting a little less, sill grinding my teeth, feel a bit better overall though. I’m still very talkative. I definitely don’t feel calm or fully under the influence of a depressant- in fact I still feel quite stimulated just less so, as though I had taken a mid-range dose of a stimulant.

 

T5:50- The stimulation is still too much, I am yet again too impatient, I take .5 mg Flualprazolam to try and snuff out these residual effects- my choice of benzodiazepine in this instance owing to Flualprazolam being particularly sedating. To my great relief, my heart rate is becoming noticeably slower.

I don't even feel the benzos at all, they're clearly being overwhelmed. Definitely more manageable than before, but also not a state I could possibly sleep or relax in. I do feel exhausted and strung out, but it is a sense of being burned out, of having expended too much energy in aimless stimulation than any of this being true fatigue or sedation. I could not imagine the exhaustion that would be imparted running the entire gauntlet of 3,4-DCMP’s duration, much less compounded with the inevitable sleep deprivation.

 

T6:23- Heart rate is slowing down more, returning to a semblance of normalcy, the stimulation has left the core of my nervous system and migrated more into my limbs and muscles. I am just sitting alone in a room listening to music, it is difficult to settle on anything I like though.

 

T8:46- I still feel exhausted but also tense and uncomfortable. My legs feel an anxious restlessness coursing through them. I consider adding yet another benzo to the mix, one with more muscle-relaxing properties, in order to stifle some of this discomfort. I don’t want to fully sedate myself though. I am so restless and irritable with my inhibitions lowered by the benzos already in my system- I am a bit concerned I will continue to act even more impulsively or snap at someone out of sheer annoyance at my condition.

I just want this to be over, most of the symptoms have worn off but I just feel so mentally worn out and strung out and irritable that I can't really focus on anything or get anything done. My brain just feels foggy right now, more so than it would from benzos alone.

 

T8:50- I buckle and add 10 mg of Norflurazepam to the mix. This should be my hard stopping point, no more for tonight. If I still feel shitty after this, I will just have to put up with it. I think I may try to just take a stim nap and lie down and breathe slowly. I'm developing a headache from the muscle tension.

 

T9:10- I try to lie down a bit, get my thoughts to stop racing and to deal with this deep restlessness in my bones. It feels like a textbook case of restless leg syndrome. My judgment is severely compromised at this point and I opt to just throw the fucking kitchen sink at this experience.

I go for 300 mg pregabalin (taken from opened capsule for a faster onset) on top of three separate benzodiazepines- something I would never ever in good conscious recommend to anyone else. Combining depressants like this is extremely dangerous, combining stimulants and depressants is extremely dangerous (as is illustrated here, often dangerous doses of one drug can be taken to offset the effect of the other- the bad decisions just kept piling up today!), but it is a risk I accepted due to an existing tolerance to GABAergic depressants. I was a bit anxious about lapsing into unconsciousness as in past experience combining pregabalin and benzodiazepines tends to be extremely hypnotic.

A decision I could not comprehend or justify when I was sober again was to also at this point add an oral dose of 50 mg 2F-DCK, consumed as uncontained crystals also for a faster onset. Perhaps I figured that an NMDA antagonist could snuff out excess communication between my neurons? Though I’m not sure its inhibitory properties work in a way that suppresses dopaminergic stimulants. I am throwing everything I can to tame this beast, against all sense and judgment.

 

T9:55- Despite doing everything I would advise against, I am certainly beginning to feel more at peace, something I attribute to my booster dose of Norflurazepam. I begin to wonder if I was too hasty to stack on the Pregabalin and 2F-DCK- did I make the same mistake twice? Have I destined myself to a blackout or to passing out when I was already on a path to recovery? I don’t want to just fall asleep tonight I intended to work on some things around the house.

Heart rate is normal now though it feels sore and overworked for a bit, breathing normal now, feeling mostly drowsy probably because of all of the depressants, but distinctly stimmed up in my brain, with muscles still tense. I am alert and I definitely could not sleep. Still generally feeling uncomfortable, though less irritable with less brain fog or freezing up. Still hard to focus with no music or any activity really holding much appeal. It just feels like the pieces of my brain are all disjoint and not interacting with one another properly. I can't wait to get a good night sleep and have it wear off, though it is still too early for that. Not eating anything all day is probably compounding all the discomfort.

 

T10:05- For whatever reason I have added another oral dose of 2F-DCK, at 30 mg, bringing the consumed total to 80 mg. No idea what was on my mind at this point.

 

T11:00- I wake up my partner from a nap, they prepare dinner while I do housework. I am still functional but my motor skills are out the window, I'm stumbling and falling a lot. I have not had an appetite all day and I still do not. I am coherent and semi-articulate though my partner says I'm slurring some of my words. I am still high-energy and overly chatty, to their annoyance as they have just woken up. I feel lucid and exhausted, that sense of clarity that comes after a long day of physical labor even though I just stood still most of the day. I'm really in a mood to just get stuff done, despite my issues with balance. While I am clearheaded and can speak clearly, my words seem off, poorly chosen and poorly informed. I feel like I have ultimately settled into a nice sweet spot.

 

T12:00- Ah the dissociative that I inexplicably ingested has begun to kick in. I start to feel nauseous and every step feels like I’m on a boat. I am stumbling around, the nausea carries a sense of motion sickness rather than the poisoned sickness that can often accompany drugs. I eat 2 Datura stramonium seeds in hopes of alleviating this a bit. I still manage to get some work done with cleaning the basement, something I had intended to do all day. I am stuffing rubble and trash into contractor bags and moving a lot of boxes around, it mostly just feels like I am doing this task on hard more. My partner says I seem hazy, though I still feel like I can function as I need to. I am still talking way too much and slurring words together. I eventually haul all of the heavy bags upstairs and outside, I have no idea how I did not fall down the stairs at some point.

When I look at the walls I get light flowing visuals, gentle drifting textures like a thin film of water is running down them, or perhaps like cascades of dust slowly creeping down. The motion sickness subsides a little. Closing my eyes yields fields of abstract shapes. It looks like every blank surface is melting and flowing downward, an interesting effect.

Despite my best efforts, the stimulant is definitely still there, it's my bones, when I stop moving and sit down can feel the pent up energy demanding release, though it is heavily subdued now.

My mind is a bit less foggy, though I am mostly taken in by the novelty of how I feel. The worst has passed.

 

T12:49- My head is spinning, symptoms arise in flareups- shortness of breath, sudden heart pounding- like the 3,4-DCMP is fighting to punch through everything I have taken to contain it. What a vicious beast!

My memory is foggy and I doubt I'll remember this night clearly. I am on edge because the stimulation flares up, comes and goes, and then the depressants take over, smother me, lull me to a near sleep, the stimulant claws its way back into the picture, ad infinitum. It is not fun to have drugs battling inside of my body. Visuals still as downward drifting patterns on surfaces. With my eyes closed I see a tangle of worms or rusty nails tucked into some dark corner.

I roll a joint, I hope it will take the edge off and make me feel better, as far as nausea and such is concerned. My heart randomly pounding again. I feel tired but wired at the same time and my fingertips feel numb.

 

T13:45- I smoke in the backyard, still cycling through phases of sedation paired with bursts of energy. This drug is a fighter! I hope smoking a joint will settle my frazzled mind a bit.

 

T13:53- I do not know why I thought smoking an entire joint would help anything. In retrospect it was foolish to disturb the dust like this, and I yet again attribute this to my severely impaired judgment.  Predictably, the cannabis did the opposite. Everything was amplified, whatever illusion of functionality I could maintain before has collapsed entirely, I am extremely altered now. The joint really ramped up the effects of all of the different drugs coursing through my body, individually and in concert. My mind and body are in chaos now.

Each time I lean in to take a hit, the world closes in on me in interlocking prisms. Strange geometric figures lurk in the shadows. I feel like I am in a tightly enclosed space the entire time I am outside, like the entire world has turned to origami and folded and wrapped itself neatly around every inch of my form, crinkling and refolding to adjust every time I move.

When I get up to return inside, I am severely incapacitated. It is incredibly difficult to walk, every step lands somewhere I don’t intend, half of my steps inexplicably go backwards, it feels as though I am fighting an intense wind that is blowing me over. I don't really know how to hold my torso upright anymore so I'm bending backwards and into odd shapes at times. I manage to stumble inside, the 20 foot walk from my backyard to the couch inside being an immense challenge. I flop down and revel in being able to just sit still. I am able to talk to my partner normally enough apparently, though I am trying to hide just how altered I really am. I feel like I can keep mental lucidity even though it feels like a melting cascade of energy is falling upon my brain and melting it. Once I regain my bearings, we decide to go hang out upstairs. I recall crawling up the stairs on all fours, completely incapable of walking on them with my own two feet. I remember little else of the night from this point onwards.

 

T14:20- The nausea reaches a breaking point and I throw up. It sucks and feels terrible and doesn’t make me feel better. I ate almost nothing today so it was mostly dry heaving. The whole time, odd hallucinated papery membranes drape around the room, gently brushing against me while I struggle. I can barely stand up. I clean myself off and stumble out. I apologize profusely to my partner and change into pajamas, I feel as though I am on the brink of falling asleep.

 

T14:30- I am on the couch with my partner, just browsing the internet. There’s a big pile of blankets I keep leaning on and melting into. I have double vision and a hard time reading or making sense of anything, I don’t know why I’m even trying to be conscious at this point. Visuals flow down every surface lie a slow cascade of sand. The white background of my computer is a swirling abyss of gelatinous forms moving and pulsing like worms in a petri dish, cast against a backdrop of floral relief. My mouth is extremely dry, I decide to give up on using the computer and just snuggle up and close my eyes and sink into the hallucinatory effects. At some point I fall asleep and wake up on the couch very early the next morning.

 

Epilogue:

The next day I feel groggy, my head is foggy and I am still a bit off-balance and nauseous. I definitely took a bad situation and made it worse for myself. I am tense but chatty and in a decent mood. My heart rate is normal and my chest is no longer sore. I would like to try this drug again, but with significantly more caution. This was also an important lesson in losing all sound judgment when trying to mitigate one drug with other drugs.

 

 

LSZ

 Age: 25

Weight: 130 lbs

Dosage: 300 µg sublingual

Setting: Around the city

 

*You can skip the chem talk if you want. The paragraph after that outlines the setting and intentions for the day, and per usual, a tl;dr explanation at the end.*

Preface:

LSZ at first glance seems like a really arbitrary way to modify the LSD molecule- a structure completely out of left field, where in place of the diethyl “horns” of the LSD molecule, there is an azetidide group, a tense ring structure that is rarely seen in any bioactive molecules. Upon closer inspection however, it is clear that this azetidide is just formed by tying those diethyl horns into a square shape with a carbon bridge. The extra methyl groups that are left over help pull the ring apart a little to stabilize it. It’s a brilliant design! This makes a very LSD-like molecule suddenly have a constrained structure, susceptible to stereochemistry, whereas in LSD, the diethyl horns are free to rotate and move as they desire. Truly intuitive and brilliant design courtesy of the legendary David E Nichols. So this lends the obvious question- how does this compare to LSD?

The LSZ tabs were professionally made, one side of the paper bearing the molecular structure, the other with the substance name clearly labeled, dosed at 150 µg apiece. I opted to take two. It was the first warm day of the year, a 70-degree March day, so of course I had to be outside. I set out in the late afternoon, intending to spend most of the trip just walking around the city, watching the throngs of people enjoy this first respite from a bitter winter. I would weather the potential bodyload of the come up at home before setting out. I had no other plans or obligations for the day.

One last thing to note is that I received my first shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine 2 days before this experience. This first shot did give me some side effects, primarily fatigue. I found it extremely difficult to arouse and get out of bed, and at times felt exceptionally exhausted. Once I was fully awake and in motion though, I felt okay.

 

T0:00- Dose taken sublingually, as 2 tabs.

 

T0:20- First notes- feeling a bit stimulated and nauseous, something is making itself apparent. A restlessness in my bones. I am still just lying in my bed at this point.

 

T0:35- I decide it’s time to disembark, I chew down and swallow the rest of the tabs and prepare my bag for a long walk. I put on a bit of makeup, save for sweeping bold winged eyeliner, put on clothes that make me feel comfortable that may still keep me warm after sunset, and then set out. By the time I’m ready to leave, familiar feelings begin to creep in, pulses of energy down my limbs, a sense of heat rising from me, a fuzzy numbness in my extremities, a queasy uneasiness, still subtle but it’s clear that all will grow in time.

 

T0:45- Stepping outside is a shock, the sun seems brighter than it should and it feels like my stride is off kilter. A soft warmth proliferates across my skin like an encroaching mold. When I stop to wait for traffic, there is a definite queasy lysergamide come up, a distinct mental and physical rush shooting down my bones, a welling unease, a stimulation deeper than my bones, and a sense of being fully luminous in golden prismatic light. A level of stimulation somewhere between a tryptamine and a phenethylamine. All still subtle, but all still diagnostic for this class of drug.

 

T0:50- Stop by the market nearby to buy a bit of ginger root. The interaction is a bit disorienting but I am still lucid enough to appear normal. This can help settle my stomach. Waves of pulsing sensations of various temperature and texture tickle up my body and wash through me. I am still fully lucid, just adorned with flares of effects. The intensity is definitely accelerating as I walk to my destination- a park by the river. I am hot and sweaty and the entire sky seems like it is flickering with gently shifting hues. At this point the stimulation of the trip has completely overrode the lingering fatigue from my vaccine.

 

T1:00- Open eyed visuals begin to present, muted but clear and apparent before me. They are not laden with prismatic radiant color, but seem to immerse into the surrounding environment. It is like everything has added depth and texture, increased contrast manifesting into swirling pulsing interlocking forms, always shifting into new intricate and perfectly placed forms, but all of this in subtle bas-relief, against the sky, against the mottled sidewalk. It is a slight alteration, one that quickly fades when my attention turns elsewhere.

 

T1:20- I stop for a breather in a small park. I overdressed today and am hot and sweaty and need water. I am definitely tripping significantly now, to where the world around me no longer feels fully accessible. I am a creature simply out here to sense and navigate. Plenty of other people linger around, I pray they pay me no heed.  Sounds are reverberating around me, random snippets of passing conversation amplified and echoing in my head. My whole body feels a bit numb, I’m so sweaty and woozy, but it is overall a pleasant sensation. A certain nausea is also building however, which threatens to only grow in caliber. I can’t help but smile at the glory of the sun’s fire, all these people enjoying its warmth, I am content, if a bit uncomfortable. All I can think about is how weird everything around me seems, as if my sense of what’s normal has been hard-reset. It’s all strange, but I grow used to that, and in that, it all soon becomes normal. I can live with that. I get up and press onwards. Visuals increase in depth, in swirling interlocking motion, in fractally bordered intensity, though still colorless, still a shallow relief hewn into the surface of the sky.

 

T1:40- I’ve made it to my destination, a park/walking trail that snakes along the bank of one of the rivers that flows through the city I live in. As it is the first warm day of the year, people are out in droves, pandemic be damned. Many people are jogging or biking, while others are having picnics in the grass. It is hard to find a place to sit down and gather my thoughts before proceeding onwards. I am nauseous, it has been building and washing over me, bound to a rising turbulent warmth in my extremities. I need to sit down and I need a bit of weed to take the edge off.

I find an unoccupied bench and sink into it. I close my eyes for a second and I am flashed with a pensive phantasm of color. With my eyes open, the visuals are subtle and slight, not too colorful but with lots of morphing depth. But there are people all around me, it’s hard for me to stare at things and really absorb myself into what I am experiencing. I sneak a quick hit of cannabis from my one hitter; a passerby remarks on the cloud of cannabis smoke and feeling self-conscious, I get up and leave.

 

T2:00- I find another place to stop walking, this time a bit off the trail and a bit more secluded. I feel like I can actually take a deep breath and close my eyes and unwind in peace here. A wave of psychedelic heat crashes down on me as I stop moving, a great twisting and writhing weight from sinews of energy, immense in its stature yet at the same time ethereal and ephemeral.

I smoke a bit more cannabis and eat a chunk of raw ginger to assuage the nausea, and it definitely helps. The visuals at this point are subtle, but all-consuming, no matter where I look or how I look at it I can just barely sense their presence, even if it isn’t kaleidoscopic explosions of colors and fractals, or clearly defined self-transforming patterns. There is defined relief pressed into every surface, deepened textures and slight chroma-shifts, but they only appear if I seek them out, content to mind their own business in my garden of senses otherwise. In the blue sky and the clouds and the sun-dappled surface of the river some of the contrasted textures begin to interweave and form patterns, but they are fleeting and near-indistinct, perhaps reminiscent of meso-American art if the artisan had not really set out with a particular plan and gave up halfway through.

When I close my eyes I am greeted by a spinning symmetrical kaleidoscopic landscape of pulsing radiating forms and colors, like an inkblot driven by furious golden light. The fringes of these patterns give way to a wildfire of radiant fractals, their fringes crackling with electricity. It’s exciting, interesting, but merely a visual display that doesn’t invite me in to a deeper altered consciousness. Perhaps a part of me is still on guard as I am still in public and don’t want to fully surrender myself to that world, no matter how enticing.

Everything still has a sense of rising, building, growing in intensity. Things may just be beginning to level off but it still feels like there’s more fuel for this fire to consume.

 

T2:15- I get up and continue walking. Having tried to immerse myself in the experience before this, I decide now to immerse myself more in my surroundings. There are so many people everywhere, like the towering buildings around me are pulsing and beating out their life force to take in their essential doses of fresh air and sunlight in little joyous swarms. People sit in circles and socialize, people of all varieties, all sizes and shapes and ages and colors and styles, some blend in, others stand out with outlandish fashion and mannerisms. I am just another odd looking person in this mass, adorned with makeup, perhaps wearing too much dark clothing for such a sunny day, skulking alone through a river of people in their brightly colored fitness wear. I come to an obstruction, where construction is being done on a bridge above the trail. With no detour provided, the innovative river of people has simply torn down the fences and blazed through own trail through what was an active construction site. Unstoppable spirit.

So many people seemed like odd characters, intentionally placed in my solipsistic path for my consideration and confusion- an old lady costumed in stark pink Sunday wear, clad in more makeup than even me, prominently reading a book alone on a bench titled “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone”. Various gaggles of androgynous people similar to me with dyed hair and tattoos all of whom seemed vaguely familiar. A little man with wild dreads and a toothy smile soaring by on a bike, both arms occupied with holding aloft an enormous amplifier like Atlas, blasting music at a high velocity, another shirtless man on a bike who seemed to pass by several different times on this short walk, dancing hands free to the top indie-pop radio hits of the early 2010s. A colorful day with colorful people that made me glad to be where I was, a sense of satisfaction in the strangeness of my surroundings, in how as they coalesced it all became quite normal, a new world for a new day.

I didn’t stop walking or take any more breaks, I had a destination in mind at this point, a little stretch of the trail where it branches along closer to the river, where it is more wooded and secluded and crumbling piers and overhanging tree trunks allow one to relax and splay themselves out over the water and look out over the Western skyline and the setting sun with a bit of privacy. 

 

T2:30- I have reached my spot, a specific tree trunk that reaches out over the riverbank, its shape perfect for accepting a languid human body. I splay myself out on its branches and relax under the gaze of the setting sun, smoking a bit more cannabis. I have a beautiful view of the Western skyline standing over me, the buildings silhouetted in the sinking sun, their inner lights beginning to twinkle on. Various people occasionally pass by but don’t seem to notice me, leaving me comfortable in a sense of solitude. My thoughts now flow freely, a steady chain of association free to run its course like a river, unimpeded by my conscious meddling. They dance around thoughts of what I wish to follow in the scope of a career, in the scope of longer-term life goals, in the scope of building and progressing my various practices and areas of knowledge into some sort of professional reputation. Terribly mundane but pressing stuff. I fantasize about aspirations, about achieving fame, widespread well regard, a good reputation, pride and recognition, it’s a lovely self-supplied self-indulgent dopamine rush.

It's hard to type notes on my phone, it’s hard to precisely control my fingers. They feel warm and numb and aren’t fully responding to my commands. There are patterns gently forming on my hands, like embossments in my skin, shifting gently with color. There are swirling fractals forming pareidoilic shapes in the bark of the tree around me and in the sky, subtle but clearly discernible. There’s a lasting, molded, warmth to the visuals, as though they have been simmered and baked into my optic nerves, that they have arisen from a steady and gradual application of energy. When I close my eyes there are spinning zooming networks of fractals, crackling with energy like neurons. I get restless eventually so I get up and keep on walking, not sure where exactly I’m headed.

 

T2:50- As I’m walking along I decide to poke my head into another spot along the riverbank. I tap my pocket to make sure I have everything, when I notice- I have lost my treasured pocketknife, the same one that had always been clipped to my pocket every day of the last 3 years. It had been everywhere with me and had a nice bit of wear and patina rubbed into it from heavy use. Honestly it didn’t have the best steel and was quite blunt, but it was sentimental to me and if I was to replace it soon I would’ve liked it to have had a more graceful sendoff. My mind becomes obsessively and singularly consumed with the task of retracing my steps and relocating it. I am on a mission, I trudge forward (er…backwards rather) without pause or without stopping for a breath.

I first stop by the overhanging tree where I was lounging- it would follow that it would easily slide out of the pocket of my splayed out body. I mistake the tree for another one however, one occupied with a person sitting at its base minding their own business. I interrupt them to ask if they’ve seen a pocketknife- in retrospect an odd thing to hear from a masked lone stranger in a secluded place. The person seems nonplussed and nonthreatened and even lets me come down to take a quick look before I realize I’m looking in the wrong place entirely. This interaction is incredibly awkward and fills me with an upwelling of intense anxiety that soon chases me from the spot. I find the right tree and search the area thoroughly to no avail. Where else? Perhaps where I sat down earlier to peel and eat some ginger root?

I beeline for this spot, not stopping once. I pass by groups of people I recognize- perhaps they recognize me too and think it odd that I pass them again. Maybe I am overthinking this- I am consumed by an obsessive anxiety and a fearful sense of dread. I was once a being enjoying the sunny day, basking in the glory my surroundings, and now I am a storm of nerves bearing down on the path before me, quaking in its own precipitation of sweat. How much simply losing a sentimental little object can set me off-kilter! After about 15 minutes of walking I reach my destination and to my dismay see no sign of my treasured trinket. I dejectedly make one more fast, streamlined walk back to the tree to look one more time, though it is getting dark now and soon any further searching will be entirely hopeless. I pass by the same people yet again, assuming myself to appear stranger with each pass.

No sign of it here. I accept that it is lost, that someone else probably picked it up by now, and this acceptance brings me a measure of relief. I’m hungry at this point, and exhausted from the ceaseless pacing. I set out for home, defeated.

 

T3:18- Begin my walk down the large central avenue of the city to the central subway station, my thoughts have mostly moved on from my dear knife, a small tarnish in an otherwise wondrous and beautiful day. The sun is fully set now and the night grows noticeably colder. I stop for a breather in an open park in the heart of the city, once a vibrant urban space with privacy, shelter, and seating, but it was renovated into a bare empty panopticon to cut down on ‘nuisance’ elements. It’s depressing how what was once a gathering and socializing space is now just a flat concrete expanse with no interesting features save for some cheap furniture where I can stop to rest for a few minutes. It seems it can serve no function beyond this.

I descend into the tangle of tunnels in the center of the city that head to various public transportation hubs, my senses on guard as there has been a rash of violent incidents in these stations in recent times. It isn’t too late at night however and the station is well populated, so I let my guard down. The subway arrives just as I reach the platform, which always feels like a blessing. I feel like an odd broken being in the mess of other masked figures crowded onto this box, sweaty and flustered and exhausted, a fish out of its water. There are gentle patterns forming in the myriad mottled and patterned surfaces on the inside of the subway car. I check my emails to pass the time.

Today two pertinent employment opportunities have presented themselves, in both areas I am interested in pursuing as a career and academic. It is exciting, it is the first glimmer of light after months and months of useless stagnation, where I spent every day of my unemployed life getting high and reveling in my own indolence and sloth. I finally feel like I am doing something and going somewhere with my life. It feels undeserved, as, like I said, I have not actually worked towards this at all. Both opportunities happened to just seemingly fall on my lap, all I did to earn it was do a lot of drugs and keep myself alive. I don’t deserve to be rewarded for my behavior, what does this teach me? Oh well, I am glad the future is finally looking bright. This elation carries me home from the subway, a fun and delighted walk fantasizing about potential futures. The experience has melded into an emotional aspect primarily, the visual and other sensory effects have largely passed into a distinct psychedelic headspace.

 

T4:20- I’m home, tired and very hungry. I put some instant rice and beans on the stove, adorning it with strands of saffron and fresh-crushed annatto seeds in a tea infuser. I am sweaty and pop the windows open and drag a heavy chair into our empty kitchen to rest while I keep an eye on the stove. Most of the house has been emptied and packed up for renovations, everything is in disarray. I put on some music and the sounds reverberate and echo a lot, sounding tinny and constrained, yet voluminous and rich. It’s an odd effect that didn’t really present at any other point of the experience with any other sounds.

I open my laptop and respond to emails and messages I’ve been neglecting while I was out. I feel perfectly lucid in conversation and writing, there is none of the overthinking or overanalyzing that sometimes hinders effective communication when I’m tripping. Each word feels carefully chosen and fully effective, there is a distinct intentionality to all of my actions that lets them flow freely.

 

T5:30- My dinner is done now. I’m home alone, so I opt to just sit in my chair with a potholder on my lap and eat out of the pot with a spoon. I am hungry and don’t plan on leaving leftovers. I spit out my gum, and this brings to the forefront that there is a lasting stimulation still coursing through my nerves, manifesting as bruxism and muscle tension, still raging and burning, but I also feel tranquil and relaxed. I’m smoking a bowl of cannabis by an open window there’s a gentle breeze through the budding cherry blossom in the backyard, there’s ambient noise of my neighbors in their respective back yards enjoying the balmy night as it cools down, this is the sweet life, things are good and I feel an uplifted mood. The food is warm and delicious and filling my empty tummy with something dense and hearty is an excellent sensation.

 

T6:00- Effects seem to be leveling off. Sensory effects have mostly fizzled out while cognitive and emotional effects come to the forefront, blossoming into a neat plateau.

I am thinking about how nice it would be to take a benzo when I’m fully down and bliss out into that, but the schedule I’m keeping doesn’t allow for it.

 

T6:20- I have fallen into a reading hole based around reading about Alzheimer’s disease and the project “Everywhere at the End of Time” by The Caretaker, a series of concept albums that sonically captures the progression of the disease, from the onset to death. This is driven in part by talking to my partner about their grandmother, who is in the later stages of the disease.

It is a terrifying and heart wrenching thing to consider. Memories are so important to me, and the thought of having them decay and degrade until they are nothing is demoralizing and crushing. The inevitability of the disease, how it is truly incurable and how its unstoppable progression can only be slowed, never ceased, the world of loneliness and isolation and confusion that the victim falls into, until the world around them grows unrecognizable and the person they once were grows unrecognizable to peers, the terror of entering a lonely realm, never to return, only getting lonelier as one progresses further and further, until one forgets what loneliness even is. The terror of being caught in a thick impenetrable fog, or an unilluminable darkness, of not being able to turn back or turn any way, of not being able to communicate with the outside world the depth of this darkness because it has all but disappeared, a living body slipping into the shadows. The horror and sadness of it brings me to tears. What does one do against such a powerful fate? All I can think about is the sense of dread that would consume me were I in that situation, a dread fading to nothing, not a quiet peace, but an incomprehensible, raging nothing.

 

T7:20- Transitioned onto a new hyperfocus, this time reading papers on the study of the psychedelic pharmacophore, on new research that has elucidated the exact configuration of the 5HT2A receptor as it receives a psychedelic compound that triggers it into activity. This is super exciting research that is wondrous to read about, the potential for delving into further fascinating compounds is endless. I begin dreaming of this renaissance in psychedelic science, how bounds have been made in the field that would unimaginable 20 or even 10 years ago. I begin to think that someday perhaps I may even be able to contribute to that field. It is self indulgent fantasy, but it feels good, all feels right. Aside from this distinctly psychedelic freeflow of thought and association and a stimulated focus on whatever I’m reading, and a distinct embedding in my memory of my experience, I am certainly in the midst of a steady downturn in all noticeable effects.

 

T8:40- Almost back to baseline it seems, the only effects that remain are stimulation, a buzzing in my limbs.

 

T10:00- Back to baseline entirely by this point.

 

Conclusion: LSZ ticks all the boxes for a lysergamide- a degree of stimulation, a long duration, cognitive and emotional enhancement, and standard fare sensory effects. Like any lysergamide, it too bears subtle differences from its compatriots. It should scratch the itch for anyone seeking such an experience. It is not quite as insightful, deep, introspective, or intense as LSD, its effects stack up similarly to the whole suite of LSD-like analogues and purported prodrugs. What sets it apart? The visual character is unique, a hewn relief that cooks in from my surroundings, forming organically with little pattern or reason, they are simply there and matter-of fact, never forceful, not particularly engrossing. Lucidity was a key feature of the experience, paired nicely with a certain sense of tranquility and calm, bolstered by a bubbly and optimistic euphoria. This is an enjoyable drug by any measure, it may not offer the depths of LSD but will offer a nice way to spend a nice day. Though I was alone for most of the experience it could absolutely be a sociable drug. I am not sure what a higher dose would present, but in how the different effects presented in proportion to one another I imagine it would get confusing and disorienting before it reached a place of deep introspection and engrossing detachment. It lacks push, or any sort of rush. Overall, something light, something delightful, an experience that cooks into the mind and keeps the user afloat on a raft of warm emotions.