It's halfway through the year, looks like I procrastinated.
I am doing better than this post in the current moment actually. But I will talk about that later. That is things in motion that I will not post about until they are settled. I'm ok, I have stability and routine in my life again.
[tw: self harm, suicide, addiction]
I am still going to write this from the perspective that the year has just ended. I am going to pretend to be ignorant to the lessons and experiences I have had so far in 2025. I will discuss those in 6-12 months from now.
There really isn't too much to say this time. I am doing bad. I am doing well sometimes, but not as often. I ended 2024 on an extremely dark note, in a well of unemployment, uncertainty about my future, aimless time, listlessness, bouts of insane mania buttressed by deep cavities of depression. I drove out at sunrise one morning and sat beneath a bridge without my phone with a vial of cyanide in my pocket. I have branded and cut myself all over my body. I am at the mercy of violent mood swings, accelerated by rampant drug use. I have consciously stated many intentions to quit, and have kept to it for periods of time, but ultimately I have always failed and crumbled at that. I have lied and schemed to continue my addiction, I have betrayed and concerned the ones I love, I have made feeble attempts at seeking treatment that have all hit dead ends. I am untreated and without direction.
If I can review the year, it was beautiful and glorious in ways that are so far apart from drugs that have pulled me into the depth of our grand beautiful world. I embarked on a belated honeymoon with the love of my life- a month and a half in my motherland, Malaysia, among the jungle, among my relatives, among Islam, colorful and diverse, so many creatures living and fighting. My spouse learned to scuba dive and climbed a mountain in Borneo with me, it felt like pushing myself to my physical limits but I accomplished it. I celebrated a unique bicycle day, through pure happenstance and with great difficulty I obtained a single tab of LSD in Malaysia- The trip was fantastic and unreal, experienced in the Jungles of the motherland, the sound of insects and Azans and thunderstorms washing over me, on the other side of the world. It was the first time I truly felt the mass and depth and volume of this great sphere of iron and silicon and magnesium. I felt the glory of Islam and the glory of dedicated and disciplined prostration before a greater power. We next went to Vietnam and traveled the length of it, exploring the caves of Phong Nha – Kẻ Bàng National Park, I bought gabapentin at a pharmacy in Da Nang and got loaded for a 20 hour bus ride to Ho Chi Minh City. I did nitrous in a gay bar and saw the tunnels the Viet Cong used to fight America. I fired an AK-47 and stood on the remains of a destroyed tank. I went to Australia, met lovely people in Melbourne and Sydney, people fighting hard for indigenous liberation and a free Palestine, there were too many beautiful experiences in Australia to count- I did LSD again, this time in the Sydney botanical gardens, it is incredible that this humble little molecule, in its microgram doses, has crept across the entire world, eager prophets and acolytes ready to spread its secrets to the willing in every place! Everyone trips, everywhere. The capstone to this was accomplishing a lifelong achievement- scuba diving in the great barrier reef. When I was a child we rented a National Geographic Documentary VHS tape on the Great Barrier Reef and I watched it on repeat. I swore to visit this glorious place, and it was everything I expected and more. Beautiful adventure, vibrant life, so much living on so much.
It felt like a capstone to life. I never expected to make it this far. I checked something off of the list of things I wanted to do. Should I be content with the chapters I have written? Should I be content with the contributions I have made to the world? Should I strive to do more? Will I feel content if I were to die right now? The trip ended, as all trips inevitably do.
The beginning of the year I spent still working in a chemistry lab, synthesizing new drugs. In the home stretch, I had finished the projects I was contracted for so I was mostly just grinding out new compounds as fast as I could. I busted my ass for a few months in contrast to my usual laziness and indolence in the lab and made some beautiful things. I left for a trip. I came back to nothing. No job, no prospects. I attempted to apply to graduate school (ok, anachronistic spoiler alert I failed), I applied to many jobs. My life was adrift, all of the seeming accomplishments I had built- the glory of bringing my spouse to the motherland, hiking my favorite mountain together, seeing the great barrier reef, writing more trip reports than almost anyone other than Shulgin, trying so many drugs, inventing new drugs- all meaningless in the tides of capitalism but ultimately all meaningless in the tides of my own impulse towards hedonism and self destruction. I never expected to make it this far- every year feels like a victory lap. I assumed I would've killed myself or overdosed or been killed doing something stupid and reckless. I didn't plan for any of this. I don't have the funds or means to maintain this dissociative addiction long term. Substituting for other compounds like pregabalin or carisoprodol is its own host of problems. I am trapped and shooting off into an empty darkness I never thought I would encounter, one I never prepared to encounter, a whole damn adulthood.
People often tell me they are surprised at my age. I assume it is that I come off as immature, the spirit of a wild clout-chasing teenager. I don't know how to act my age because I never thought I would be this age. It's disorienting.
I abstained from dissociatives (other than nitrous) for 3 and a half months. I thought of them constantly, I had dreams about doing them. My experiences were wonderful. There were times when I thought "I wish I was dissed right know". There were frankly, times where I was very glad I was not dissed. It was near-psychoactive to see the sun peak over the island of Borneo, an amber sky chasing away the violet night as the first glorious rays of light hit the peaks of mount Kinabalu. The thin icy air, my body pushed to its physical limits aching, groaning, my heart raging to keep going on. These were not normal circumstances, my mind was not its normal self, you can find this in so many places. Looking out of the vine-laced mouth of a cave into the valleys of Tân Hoá with its forested limestone pinnacles, soaked in slick jungle cave water. Drifting between the towering coral bommies and peaking into the little crevasses for the millions of tiny fish and invertebrates buzzing and swimming in their perfect infinitely complex ecological harmony! But this isn't a travel blog- it goes to say I abstained for a long time. I guess I can manage it if I am not at home.
At home it is very different. I immediately sank back into old patterns. I abused drugs heavily. An ideal combo for me in this phase would be something like 3-MeO-PCE to start, maybe a bit of 3-MeO-PCP later, some little bumps of FXE at points, pregabalin in this system for some extra depth, then later a heavy hole, ketamine, DCK, 2F-DCK, FXE, DMXE, were the choices to add weight and sink into a hole and enter my lovely "sandbox" space where I am god, the creator, I can generate a body and imagery at will. It's sensational. This was habitual. Perhaps I would also take a benzo to sleep, usually temazepam or flunitrazepam or triazolam these days. Or I would stay up with it, hit cocaine or 3-Me-PCPy to keep rocking in a blackout. How deeply deeply fucked up.
After one too many incidents a breaking point was reached, I said I would quit, I got a safe, entrusted the keys to my spouse, and locked the collection in the vault. Of course I found loopholes. I was still dosing experimental compounds to write reports, for the good of knowledge I guess. This system sometimes kept me at bay- they are not all entirely pleasant. I would squirrel things for the times the vault was unlocked for special occasions or for scientific analysis. I could still order and receive things. I abused the remaining ones that were some degree of fun. I substituted for other drugs. I am not clean. I am failing this so badly.
I am sorry to whine, but that is the current state of things. To break time again, I am seeking treatment options. I do not want to commit to inpatient. I love drugs so much. I cannot imagine a life without them. But that is obviously maladaptive. I need a life without them, or with much much much less of them, like everyone else.
Where am I going.
I didn't really try much new this year. Just old habits.
Here are the new ones ranked:
1. 3-F-PCiPr - This is a truly miraculous compound, I love it so much, it goes so many directions, it is soft, it is intense, it can be confusing or disorienting, but it will always take care of me. The depth is immense, and low doses are a comforting delight. It felt like it had a nootropic afterglow, I think this one can be very useful.
2. PCiPr- The everything dissociative. It lasts a very long time. It is hard to describe, it goes so many directions. It is heavy, functional, focused, confusing, manic, stimulating, sedating, and damn intense the whole way. Low doses are nice and sociable.
3. 3-MeS-PCiPr- This is just a less potent 3-MeO-PCiPr, it has the same essence but is muted and muffled in every sense. Too subtle. About 5x less potent than the corresponding 3-Methoxy compound. Full report hopefully coming soon.
4. 3-MeS-PCP- Similar to above, this is just a less potent 3-MeO-PCP, more subtle and muffled. I don't know if sulfur is a direction worth exploring with arylcyclohexylamines.
5. Flunitrazepam- I roofied myself and it was a lot of fun. Nice floppy euphoric short acting heavy benzo. Its nice when you do it to yourself.
6. 3-EtO-PCiPr- This one is really smooth and light and confusing, I need to work up the dose, I feel like I don't really understand it yet.
7. 3-EtO-PCP- Another one that I have had a hard time finding a proper dose. Gets very intense very fast, very steep dose-response curve. But interesting. Not sure if I enjoy it.
8. 3-MeO-PCsBu- Okay I don't personally enjoy this one, but it is really really interesting- this drug is pure mania and stimulation, barely any dissociative effects, but apparently binds well to NMDA- It is so jittery and manic thoughts racing, it is a distinctively dissociative mania but there is no physical sensation. I wonder if there are biomarkers for mania in clinical trials, and if there are, I wonder if this drug could induce those biomarkers- may be of interest for research into treatment of bipolar disorder. Report someday.
9. 2-MeO-PCiPr- I haven't done enough of this to properly characterize it- a light subtle dissociation so far.
