antlion

Monday, April 13, 2026

2025 In Review

 I am quitting dissociatives and self experimentation. This is detailed in a final article.

Happy 10th year in review to this blog.

This will be shorter than my usual year in reviews, most of what I want to say is in the final post. 2025 was of course dominated by dissociatives. It was a year of attempted mitigation after the unemployed listless misery of most of 2-2024. I locked my stash of dissociatives away from time to time with only my spouse having access. This was admittedly not to restrict myself, but to conserve what I had because I knew if I had had unfettered access I would just binge everything into nonexistence. Which I did end up doing eventually.

My workaround came from obtaining things from different sources while my main stash was locked away- buying things online from vendors, receiving test samples of novel compounds. And honestly, 2025 was a banner year for novel compounds. New on the market were O-PCPr, 3,4-MD-PCP, O-PCP, MXPCP, and FXiPr. All of these are worthy and interesting compounds in my opinion. I sustained by addiction on the backs of these novel compounds throughout much of this year, though I also found ways to burn into my stash and fall into the familiar patterns of use.

I spent an entire summer being extremely manic and promiscuous in ways that feel embarrassing in retrospect. I was overconfident and arrogant and my libido was controlling me. A major component of this was pregabalin, which I used heavily at this point solely as an aphrodisiac. I became a bit of a gym rat for a few months before burning out but gained several pounds of just muscle in a very short amount of time. That felt good, and was mostly separate from my drug use, but I fell off and couldn’t get back up.

I found employment finally. I love the job a lot, it aligns with my interests and I work with some of the kindest most compassionate people I’ve ever met. It just becomes unliveably slow in its off season with barely any hours. It warranted me plenty of free time to abuse drugs.

Pregabalin is worked into my regular schedule. I use it 3-4 times a week, which is admittedly way too frequent, but I usually don’t notice withdrawal symptoms unless I’ve used more than 2 days in a row, and its usually just a little extra anxiety and insomnia, stuff I’m plenty used to unfortunately. The social and confident hypomanic afterglow it gives me the next day has been instrumental to my now very public facing life, my political organizing, and my social and sexual life. Sometimes I would take it the night before something, not to get high on it entirely but mostly for that aftereffect.

The highlight of my year was being invited to celebrate Alexander Shulgin’s 100th birthday on his farm. So many of the most pioneering minds in the world of drugs and self-experimentation were in attendance- people I had idolized, whose work I had read and engaged with for years, at the same party as me! People I looked up to so much treating me as a colleague and an equal. So many incredible fascinating lovely people with outsize effects on the world of drug self-experimentation. Mentors and friends and internet friends I got to meet in person for the first time! I could go on and on with stories from that party and the people I met but I don’t want to get too tedious. I am just honored that I got to be a part of it.

Standing in Shulgin’s lab with my mentor in the world of drug science felt like a religious experience. I love how we both zeroed in on a spider that was crawling on a condenser. Wiling away the night in there talking shop with chemists from around the world, from so many background and walks of life and in so many “contexts”, it felt like Shulgin’s spirit was in all of us, and I’m sure he would’ve been tickled to know his lab was still a space of collaboration for the people who have taken upon the mission of continuing his legacy.

Anyways.

Per my usual year in review format, here is my ranking of every new thing I tried this year. This year was mostly entirely winners, I don’t think I tried anything that I truly didn’t like.

 

1. FXiPr

This compound is so magical to me. Others weren’t a huge fan of it, owing to its impotency and the unpleasant flavor/odor of the one batch that was available. I learned to associate that smell with joy and comfort. This is one of my favorite dissociatives of all time. Few are more therapeutic, calming, grounding, and insightful. It truly helped me through one of the most challenging times of my life, and I have made peace with likely never encountering it again. It was the ultimate drug for helping me make peace with anything and helped me to fully understand the dialectical method which has helped my mental health and political life so much.

 

2. O-PCPr

A very nice short acting relatively potent heavy holey compound with a nice degree of color, mania, and insight. Not nearly as much as FXiPr, it is more neutral and not quite as heavy. It often just felt more purely hedonistic than introspective. But it was still quite fun when I had it.

 

3. O-PCP

Another one that a lot of people didn’t like. First of all it smelled like garlic powder, straight up. We analyzed it in my old lab and still couldn’t find a good answer for what compound was causing that. Second of all, it is really boring on its own! And seems to fluctuate wildly in potency between people. The magic of this one though is combining it. It is a completely different experience when combined with other drugs, particularly things like Pregabalin or other dissociatives. It’s magical and deep and manic and fun. This can also be found with very high doses of it, but I don’t recommend doing that. I wish I had written a report just combining it with 3-MeO-PCP or something.

 

4. 7-OH-Mitragynine + Mitragynine Pseudoindoxyl

Lumping these together because I’ve never had Pseudo on its own. It’s cool that it feels like an oxy, too much makes me feel really awful and sick. It’s cool that you can’t really get a respiratory depression overdose from it alone. It also usually makes me feel like shit the next day, fatigued with low appetite. The hangover often makes it not really worth it.

 

5. MXPCP

This is a decent enough dissociative I guess, it’s fun and manic. It’s good for mindless activities like dancing. I don’t think it’s too social expect at low doses because it has a sort of inhibiting stupefying effect where I become inarticulate and can’t really focus or think coherently about things. But it has a wonderful warm and fun bodily rush and is great for moving around.

6. Loprazolam

Very standard heavy medium duration benzo. Not a ton to say about it.

 

7. Cathinone (Catha edulis)

I was talking to Andrew Gallimore at Shulgin’s birthday party when we both suddenly noticed we were standing next to a Khat plant in his garden. So naturally we plucked a few leaves and chowed down. Not a whole cheekful. And damn does it work. I felt the standard cathinone effects like heart flutter and excess finger fidgeting. I don’t really like cathinones. But it was a cool experience in context.

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