Isopropylphenidine (NPDPA, Isophenidine)

 Age: 27

Weight: 130 lbs

Dosage: 200 mg oral in gel cap

Setting: The house where I grew up

Preface: Isopropylphenidine (aka NPDPA, Isophenidine) (different from isopropylpheniDATE/IPPH, the stimulant methylphenidate analogue) is a dissociative in the Diarylethylamine class, similar to Diphenidine and Ephenidine. Its structure is exactly like that of Ephenidine, but with an N-isopropyl group instead of an N-ethyl group. The structure can be seen here. It was reported to be sold online in the early 2010s, though there exist almost no records of the effects, duration, and potency of this compound. 

I was fortunate enough to obtain a sample of this drug through a custom synthesis. I analyzed it via GC/MS just to confirm its identity and prove I’m not just making stuff up, which can be seen here. I titrated my dose upwards until I found a substantial dose at 200 mg orally. I shared some of the sample with others, who also found an effective dose in this range (save for one person who oddly enough, felt no effects at all- perhaps some as of yet undocumented interaction between his medications and Diarylethylamines, as he is able to feel other dissociatives perfectly fine). Like the other Diarylethylamines, Isopropylphenidine induces a strong week-long cross tolerance with other dissociatives (which made the titration process quite slow and tedious!). Threshold effects were felt at about 75 mg. I found 150 mg to quite active but not interesting enough to warrant a report. I would consider 200 mg to be an upper-mid level dose.

It is a euphoric, functional experience that allows me to effortless draw myself in and out of its depths. I found it also quite visual and cognitively stimulating. The dissociation is soft, a sense of sinking and slow and gentle flux.

I am not sure if effects would be different with other routes of administration- Diphenidine is enjoyed by many as a vaporized compound and perhaps this too would be interesting. I did not even bother with intranasal dosing as Diarylethylamines hurt a great deal when snorted and don’t seem particularly active.

 

T0:00- Dose taken.

 

T0:40- Maybe feeling the onset.

 

T0:50- Feeling a bit numb and dizzy.

 

T1:00- I am definitely starting to feel it more, a warm heaviness seeping down from my head, I vape a tiny bit of cannabis. There is a black light set up in the back yard in front of a white sheet to attract insects. I am hanging around seeing what comes in.

 

T1:05- Rapid progression of effects. A warm euphoria descends on me like a blanket, enveloping me, squeezing a tight numbness out of my extremities. I feel ductile and fluid and distractible, like my brain has become less solid and I am adrift in its eddies and whirls. Cognitively, talking to people feels nice, it feels fulfilling, like a proper dedication of my mental energy.

I close my eyes and sigh deeply. There is a sense of cool freshness, like this great aqueous consciousness is in motion, bubbling past my form and running over my bones like vitreous silk; a babbling brook in still moonlight. The water retains the residual warmth of a glistening summer sun.

 

T1:15- The dissociation makes its way down my limbs like slow rolling waves. This is pleasant, it is entirely within my grasp and my control, it is entirely internal. Visual effects present as stripes, pulses, visual snow and concentric circles, bouncing up and down as ripples, slowly. Ghostly textures and grand forms morph out of the void, defining themselves in the traceries and contours of the particles they collide with. I look at my ceiling and it looks like a topographic relief, bouncing up and down and flowing with the currents of my heavy sensation. There is a rapid sensation of rushing through my limbs, like sand is forcing its way through my capillaries. There is a weight at the back of my skull, smooth and flowing and conforming to gravity like a spill of mercury.

 

T1:40- I have to speak on the phone with family briefly over a issue with pests I observed in the house (Bostrichid beetles- grain borers; I am the family’s resident entomologist). I am perfectly able to hold conversation without suspicion. It is interesting- I can pull myself into lucidity when I need to, I can move about the house, talk coherently, research and relay information, and appear perfectly competent. Then I can sink back down into the experience, submerge myself in the pool, be withered by its deep welling currents.

I go outside and check my bug light.

 

T1:50- The night is humid and warm and loud with insect sounds, the thick soupy air swirls around me. Being up and in motion feels natural, I feel momentum and assurance, I feel comfort and warmth. I collect some interesting longhorn beetles in alcohol. I see a vast variety of little flies and moths and caddisflies, so much more than I get in my heavily developed back yard back in the city. There is a cranky European hornet patrolling the sheet, just to add an element of danger. It feels like doing my business while dodging an enemy in a video game. I am sweaty and bathed in an eerie blue glow and flourishing in my element.

Sure enough, the hornet doggedly pursues me back into the house, I have to break into a run. There is a heavy, hollow dissociation in me, like I am filled with air. There is a great pressure about my head. I go back inside and flop on the couch and it is like floating in a pool on a starlit night.

 

T2:15- I lie down and close my eyes and turn on music. There is not much internal space to explore, not much in the way of vivid closed eyed visuals or intense sensations. I try to release my body and swirl away into the space of a hole but it doesn’t happen. I am fully conscious of myself, fully conscious of the world around me, and fully conscious of this great deep blue void within which I am now adrift, tossing me about like great crawling currents under the surface of the waves. The visuals are largely incoherent, indistinct, like trying to scry meaning from dust and debris on the surface of a lake. Regular pulsing patterns underly minute textures as before, in relief, in three dimensions, on all sides of me. I am bouncing and bounding between their resonant reverberating waves. Everything moves in radial forms, in indistinct steady motions.
All of my thought processes are fully intact as I drift about this space, there is no noticeable difference in how I receive or communicate information. I can will this experience to dissipate at will, leaving little more than a faint ghostly wisp, a shell reminiscent of the presence it once had. There isn’t anything particularly colorful or psychedelic about it, like some other dissociatives tend to have, where there is an articulate free flow of association and information; it is just my regular sobered thoughts in their regular sobered patterns. It is like I am wearing a dissociative coat, the drug has not embedded within me, I am embedded within in it. It buzzes nicely in my head like that vicious hornet I had encountered before, it takes a back seat if I want it to, I cannot imagine any possible way in which this drug could be overwhelming. Perhaps it would be a good starter dissociative for the initiate, or perhaps it would be too subtle and miss the point entirely. It is something gentle and benign, even if it could overwhelm me, it would nurture and cradle me and catch me as I fall. What a trustworthy friend.

 

T2:30- Still maintaining the same steady peak, still holding at the same intensity. The experience is dreamy in its lucidity. Closed eyed visuals are still pretty indistinct. Throughout this experience, it is honestly the open eyed visuals that have taken more prominence. They are not particularly vivid or colorful but they make themselves known, as static and waves and blobs in translucent reds and blues, morphing and bubbling. I go out and look at my bugs more, I revel in the lushness of a living summer night, I revel in the light and life that immerses me and furiously pulses into the world around me, green and in motion, always moving, always entwining.

 

T3:00- I eat some food. While most dissociatives suppress my appetite, I notice no such issue here. I am starting to fade out and turn down, the experience is definitely receding.

 

T3:40- I am still getting some stripey visuals but the experience is overall less discernible now.

 

T4:30- I play videogames for a bit while watching T.V. as I come down. Nothing profound or fulfilling, just entertaining myself now.

 

T5:30- Mostly back to baseline, only feeling residual effects. No particular stimulation or sedation.

 

T6:00- Back to baseline.

 

Conclusion: Isopropylphenidine is an interesting subtle little compound that allows for total control of the experience. It is not heavy or immersive, rather the subject becomes heavy and immersive. It’s a very external experience, in opposition to the internality that a lot of dissociatives have offered me. It is an experience I am free to steer as I see fit. It is quite visual for a dissociative, especially with eyes open. My thoughts are lucid, I am able to converse clearly. But I am also able to sink in and immerse myself if I so desire. There doesn’t seem much depth to it, but perhaps that would reveal itself at higher doses- though 200 mg is already a pretty substantial dose. This is not particularly potent material It seems. It also yielded the week long cross-tolerance that other diarylethylamines seem to yield. The nature of the dissociation is heavy and in motion, like a swelling river. The visuals were particulate, and formed from larger underlying forms defining themselves in that particulate matter. Overall I consider it a worthwhile curiosity and a cool little novelty. If I had to draw a comparison to a familiar substance I would say this is closest to Ephenidine, naturally.