3,4-MD-PCPr

Age: 29

Weight: 140 lbs

Dosage: 80 mg intransal

Setting: At home

 

[Note: Because I have built up a tolerance to dissociatives, for one without tolerance, such an experience may be found in the range of 60-70 mg. A more manageable experience probably sits in the range of 30-50 mg.]

 

Preface: Another 3,4-MD substituted arylcyclohexylamine-care must be taken to distinguish from 3,4-MD-PCiPr- think MXPr vs. MXiPr. This compound is very interesting in the literature: out of a suite of similar compounds tested for broad-spectrum affinities it stood out as having one of the highest affinities for the NMDA receptor, along with being one of the most selective. What does selectivity mean here? Psychoactive drugs are defined by their primary mechanism of action, NMDA antagonism for dissociatives, 5-HT2A agonism for psychedelics, MOR agonism for opioids etc; because that is the action that drives the desired and noticeable effects. Most drugs hit a variety of other receptors too however- these are peripheral effects. Notably, many NMDA antagonists have peripheral activity on the monoamine transporters, giving them stimulant activity. A selective compound is one that hits the receptor of interest to a much higher degree than it hits any other receptors.

All of this is to say that 3,4-MD-PCPr is in that sense, a very “pure” dissociative- it drives the primary mechanism of drug induced dissociation without doing much else. The only other compound that was comparable in this regard was 2,5-DiMeO-PCP, interestingly enough. Perhaps selectivity is driven by having two aromatic substitutions. Per the dissertation, 3,4-MD-PCPr also had an exceptionally high affinity for the NMDA receptor, which would suggest that it was extremely potent- this oddly enough did not turn out to be the case. I am not sure what the explanation for this would be.

This is an odyssey of a compound, the experience is intense, all consuming, and lasts for a very very long time, with a duration of almost 30 hours. This is one of the longest lasting dissociatives I have ever consumed in fact. Perhaps that is a function of the exceptionally high affinity. While this is a higher dose, it was not overwhelming to the point of being incomprehensible- there was a sense that I could’ve gone even deeper, there was more to be found, but this much dazing intensity for so long made me reluctant to explore further, it was simply exhausting and I do not have the time for that. It is a numbing journey, vibrant and diverse, and can be manifested and adapted in various ways to the circumstances. It is quite anesthetic- perhaps it may have some use there. It is another one like 3,4-MD-PCP that is hard to really describe. It is a fascinating example of how those pharmacological properties can manifest in person.

 

T0:00- Dose taken intranasally. The powder is light and fluffy. It has an unpleasant flavor but there is no pain or sting.

 

T0:12- I go out to the outdoor market to get produce. It is a bright hot day in the late summer. I feel the onset- feeling a bit lightheaded and dizzy. There is no interference with interacting with the shopkeepers.

 

T0:30- I get home. I feel the drug more and more, but it is still very slow and gradual. There is a little bit of an extra push and extra momentum in every step.

 

T0:40- I feel pressure in the front of my head, like I am wearing a tight headband.

 

T0:50- It comes on more and more. It feels like a great wave is washing over me and tossing me about. Still gentle and manageable, but impossible to ignore at this point. I am quite dizzy.

 

T1:00- It grows heavier and heavier. I aimlessly scroll social media and read Wikipedia pages. I am having a hard time maintaining a stream of attention, I am distractable, but nothing seems particularly interesting. It feels so gradual and smooth. I see visual effects start to wobble in the ceiling. Concentric corrugated patterns in navy blue ripple and wiggle.

 

T1:20- How it comes now, a great storm washing waves over my deck. Lamps are tossed about and set the whole ship alight. It feels like that; I am suddenly burning with energy while great forces overtake me from places unknown. It’s a heavy dissociation. It progressed slowly and smoothly, but at once, the floodwaters are taken with heavy chunks of earth and debris; the gentle flow hits a surge; I can almost feel the impact of the sudden drop in intensity. It feels like heavy static has been poured over my existence like viscous syrup. Everything feels heavy, everything is beholden to gravity, it feels like the air is pulling me down into my chair. I let out a deep sigh.

But still- it is smooth, it is polite, it is gentle and intentional. It aims to make such jarring shifts in contrast as comfortable as possible. My fingers are heavy.

I blink three times, squinch my eyes, exhale sharply, and look up. Peculiar. I stand up and move around; despite the wave of sinking dissociative heaviness, I can quickly switch to being functional; albeit in a dazed, numb, shellshocked and clumsy state. I am dizzy and spacey and vibrating, my extremities feel heavy, my eyes feel like they are on the back of my skull and my skin feels like it is made of rigid plastic. I manage to roll a passable joint and go out into the backyard to smoke. The sky is a ceiling above me and the leaves rustle and set in flat planes exactly parallel to my body. I finish and go back inside. I am comfortable and content.

 

T1:35- I am back inside now. Cannabis certainly potentiated the experience. As it will always do. Everything feels heavy. The walls seem like they are angrily pressing down into a resistant floor. My footsteps feel like drumbeats. It feels like sand is falling over me, burying me. It feels okay to stand up, I can function with it, but there is a persistent compulsion to be still. The room perceived as tangled and bent moves around me and adjusts itself to form a path for me. I flop down in my study and put on Khoomei music (Tuvan throat singing of the steppe peoples; I’ve been taken with a fascination of reading about the Mongol Empire recently). The tempo and dynamics imitate the rhythm of the galloping horse, and as such, the sound tramples circles around the ceiling of my room.

I am just lying flat on the couch now, the ultimate heaven. I recognize that I can get up and engage with things and explore how this compound interacts with my various enrichment items scattered around the room. But all I want to do is sit still. I feel like I am being buried in vibrating sand that looks like TV static. So much of a total sense of buzzing, rumbling, vibrating throughout my entire body in pleasant ways. I stare up at the ceiling- Visuals present in pulsing grids, various shades of neon and pastel yellows and oranges. They shift and arrange in patterns of scales and ripples. They traverse naturally as a river would. Non-intrusive, merely there. Similar scenes played out on other blank surfaces. My head is heavy and I am very distractible, pacing like a zoo animal, not sure what I want to do- Do I want to move, do I want to play a video game, do I want to draw, do I want to just lie down and sink into the experience. The headspace is lucid and rational, which is curious.

I opt to just lie still and close my eyes and listen to music. There is an energy of blurred heat waves pulsing off any sharp corners in my vision. A Saint Elmo’s Fire of dissociation. It feels like huge icebergs are bouncing and pushing the loose phantom of what I consider my physical form. It all feels so big! Everything feels bigger and grander. It is monolithic. Everything is huge and heavy. Everything is towering. This is a drug that is epic in its scope.

 

T1:50- I put on music- Boards of Canada’s “Geogaddi”- luscious, eerie, intentional, each track feels like a living being. I shun the curtains and turn off the lights. I tie a bandana around my eyes. Immediately my body is subsumed by the earth and taken into its bosom. My consciousness is packed into a new avatar, limbless, roughly human shaped, a pale golem with few polygons. Carpets of grid patterns wrap tightly around it and I am transported about like a rollercoaster. There is a sense of motion; turning, twisting, rotating, at times being folded and rearranged, all of it soft and pleasant. Skies of patterned pastel colors, distant lands in crystal grids. There is so much sense of weight, this new conscious avatar feels bounded by heavy chains. There is often a sense of my form inflating, growing larger, twisting and bending. The annals of this experience were largely incomprehensible, just a pleasant sensory experience. I feel lucid, all I can do is really think and appreciate this experience, its soft vanilla edges, its clever designs and pleasant tactile surfaces.

 

T2:10- As the music plays I drift in and out of this space. I open my eyes sometimes and stare at the ceiling as purple and orange patterns pulse across the space in mathematical regularity. I drift now. All I can do is drift. I am full of waves. I am full of thoughts that I can’t quite piece together, but there is an underlying sense of tranquility, so this doesn’t bother me much. The couchlock is hyperbolic. I feel like a statue. I feel so content to be completely still. This is what I was meant to do, to be stoic, to be empty and tired as the clouds pass around me, sand pouring in over my head, pressing down on me more the deeper it gets. There is still a sense of motion, of hovering, of my shape expanding. I can try to do other things but this state is simply pleasant, the path of least resistance.

 

T2:15- There is a soothing tranquil euphoria that wells through me. This is a journey with fair winds. I need to go the bathroom. I force myself up and find that I can stand and walk perfectly normally. My hands feel like wooden blocks and I feel like my head is floating separately from my body but I can still operate. I come back to my room and sit down and sink in again. This can really be whatever I want it to.

 

T2:20- My spouse comes home from running separate errands throughout the day. I make small talk with them and while it is obvious that I am on a dissociative, I am still able to converse coherently. It just feels like I need to quickly visualize each word before I place it. I go up the stairs and follow them around the house, both of us just chatting about our days. There is no real boost to sociality, rather a mild difficulty quickly stringing thoughts together.

 

T2:40- It is so smooth and pleasant and gentle, It is so nice to just lay here and let it take me over. At once though, it is intimidatingly intense still, almost 3 hours in, with no sign of relenting.

 

T3:00- It comes and goes in waves of intensity with little rhyme or reason. I am in a daze, unable to focus on deciding a task. The air feels dense with times and memories. The room is stuffy and stifling. It feels like ambient energy around the room is sticking to me and building up and I do not know what to do with it. I have a bit of a headache. It is heavy and distant, a great beast whose scale is shown in diffused dust and mist. There is a sense of unreality, that a new world will spawn behind my door when I close it. There is a sense that everything in my room is preprogrammed as are my interactions with those objects. But these were just fun frolicking thoughts, nothing to seriously consider. Orange and green grid patterns now cast over everything.

 

T4:00- I feel heavy but there has not been an imposing sense of a rush throughout this experience. The drug has operated in the background, with great weight and vigor. There is little mania, but there is a subtle sort of self-serving self-congratulating bent to thought processes about the self. I sit down and play Ocarina of time- I am trying to attain the lens of truth. The dissociation is heavy and hard to ignore. I feel like I have to keep fighting it off when I sit still and focus on a task.

 

T5:00- Still quite intense. I can still achieve some state of loss of body and full closed eyed visual spaces if I lie down. The peak has been waves of intensity for the last 4 hours. It feels cavernous and colossal. It feels like a long journey. I can still talk and function. I don’t have much appetite. I am kind of tired of the lingering intensity at this point.

 

T7:00- A friend who happened to have officiated our wedding has come over for dinner. I can socialize normally but it is still affected by a sense of consciously choosing every word. I still stutter and trip on words as I do with dissociatives. The intensity does seem like it has begun a very long gradual descent.

 

T8:00- Normally I do all the kitchen functions because I am a control freak. I usually like to cook for guests, but this time around my spouse has offered to do it with my friend so I get to just sit back in a daze. I am lounging in an easy chair, there is no longer a sense that I can sink fully into the experience anymore. That was starting to get frustratingly disorienting, but I do find the general sense of cognitive slowness, dizziness and odd senses of proprioception and weight to be annoying at this point.

 

T10:00- I eat dinner. I don’t have much appetite at all but I manage to finish it. I am still pretty dazed, but I am certainly less incapacitated than I was 2 hours ago. I can converse more normally now which is a blessing. But I am still dizzy, stunted, slow.

 

T14:00- Have just been hanging out and playing videogames. It’s really still there. Wow. I mostly just feel it in my body now, along with a sort of dazed flatness in my head. My limbs feel gangly with excess momentum and more weight in the hands. There is still an odd spring in my gait. It is now 4 A.M. I don’t feel particularly stimulated though I still sense it would be annoying trying to sleep on this drug without any assistance. I take my prescribed 50 mg of Trazodone, 25 mg of Doxylamine, and fall asleep.

 

-The next day-

 

T22:00- I wake up at noon. I definitely still feel dissed. There is tightness around my head. I feel dizzy and detached from things. My equilibrium does not feel fully restored. I am still in my head, taking in the world around me with a degree of separation. My limbs still feel oddly weighted. Whuff.

 

T26:00- It has gradually settled away throughout the day. I have to drive up and meet a friend. I get in the car, pull out of the space, drive down the road a little, and immediately settle into the first parking space I see. I can’t do this. I have lost my sense of the space the car takes up, my reaction times are poor, and I feel oddly distractible. None of that. I cancel those plans.

 

T28:00- Less and less but It is still present. I mostly just feel it as a physical sensation in my head, and still an odd spacy dissociation from objects I interact with immediately.

 

T30:00- There is perhaps a still lingering afterglow but the effects seem to have mostly subsided by this point.

 

Conclusion: What a saga. This is not something to be taken lightly or casually. I suppose this is what pure ultra-high affinity ultra-selective NMDAr antagonism feels like. Long and difficult to parse or describe. A heavy and all-consuming type of experience that really just drags on forever. It is perhaps meditative and insightful, but any lessons are eventually lost in the throes of travailing its waves for more than a day. It is blissful, smooth, confident without the mania, anesthetizing and couch-locking. But I can easily wrangle myself out of it to walk and talk and function, albeit a bit handicapped. There are so many layers and levels to this compound, which is natural for something with a duration of 30 hours.