DALT

(This one has been published by Erowid!!!!)

I obtained n,n DALT mostly because it was very cheap and I wanted to expand my collection. I tacked it onto an order of some more desired substances from an online vendor. I was not able to find much about it on the internet save for a few scattered reports. I opted for smoking it, as insufflation was reported as painful and I’m not keen on plugging.

In these experiments I smoked the HCl salt. I’m unaware of the heat of vaporization or the heat of pyrolysis for this salt or for the freebase chemical. However, the salt is certainly active to some degree when smoked. I am not sure how this might affect dosage either. The powder was smoked from a conventional glass pipe, sandwiched between layers of either Cannabis or Mugwort. Combustion was achieved with gentle controlled heating, ‘teasing’ with the flame similar to how DMT is smoked.

These were several trials performed across a period of 8 months. I am not including them in chronological order, but rather in the order of which reports I think are the most relevant or useful.

This first post is just DALT alone. A followup post will detail all of my combinations.

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Dose: 100 mg

ROA: Smoked

Setting: My bedroom

T0:00-Sandwiched the DALT between 2 layers of mugwort, its consistency is very granular, like salt. I light it, teasing it gently with the flame. The smoke is bitter and acrid, although a bit sweet too, better tasting than DMT. It goes down smoother too, although it is a bit harsh.

T0:07-By now the substance has sort of melted and consolidated and mixed with the burnt bits of plant material, forming a solid black mass that smells of the chemical. I can still get sizable hits by combusting this mass however.
The effects are anxiolytic and dissociating. It’s not the classical dissociative feeling of numbness and lack of coordination, rather a feeling of my body sinking into a warm bath and dissolving. There is also this sinking feeling focused on my head, a familiar dissociating sensation. A feeling like I can feel the weight of my brain inside my skull, that my meninges are the fabric of reality and my mind is sinking like a gravity well into its depths, and the rest of my being, my sense of body, my sense of self, is slowly sinking down into it, flashing, pulsing, rippling.

It has a flatness to it that reminds me of its cousin 5-MeO-DALT… For reference, that’s a feeling of my entire field of vision becoming a single flat image with no spatial distinction between objects or anything really, I am gazing upon one singular image. The taste in my mouth is now reminiscent of the way a clothing store smells.

T0:15-I feel like I am just fading, but it is so deeply comfortable and relaxing. It’s like a blanket has been thrown over my mind, smothering me in its reassuring warmth. I’m getting quite a head rush, it’s not a quick rush like water being sprayed from a firehose, but a great languid rush like watching a swollen river flow with debris. Everything feels like it’s going to be ok, it feels like the drug is gently holding my hand and coaxing me into the experience, it is humble and kind and knows that I am not going to experience too much intensity, but it wants to guide me there anyway like any good host would.

My vision is blurring and twitching and falling out of focus, but really just because I am not paying as much attention to visual input. OEV’s are there, but evade description. Like they are entirely noticeable, but don’t manifest in any familiar way. It’s not patterns, or warping, or breathing, or swirling, or shifts in color, no pulsing or bulging or rippling, things just look different. Maybe it’s a slight shift in perspective, or maybe it’s my mind being shifted off kilter in such a way that normal visual input is interpreted as being altered.

T0:25-It’s a gently warm overcast day with a nervous sun occasionally peeking through the clouds. The sense of calm and bliss is sublime, my bed feels more comfortable than ever and it feels like I am covered in great downy blankets. All I want to do is smile and feel gratitude that the current passage of time has left me unscathed with worries or troubles, that the world is flowing by and I am safe from all of it. The grey air feels like great warm waves washing over me, tossing me about in the tranquility of a balmy moonlit night at a secluded beach. Yet there is a physical restlessness I cannot shake, it twitches deep in my bones and in my veins, indeed my heart rate has felt artificially quickened during this experience despite my otherwise calm. It’s pulsing weight, pulsing flatness, gentle waves rocking me on a glassy lake.

T0:45-I am out of the peak now, there is just a stoned sedated feeling left, and I’m unfortunately not even left with the pleasant psychedelic afterglow that I enjoy from most other substances. It’s just a calm dazed feeling, and a sort of anxiolytic relaxation almost reminiscent of benzodiazepines. Sometimes there are flashes of jitteriness.

T1:30-Back to baseline.

Conclusion: DALT is a recipe for quick, acute, short lasting psychedelic bliss and relaxation. It’s like throwing a great warm psychedelic blanket over your mind, and having it dissolve over the course of an hour. It’s quite pleasant with a bit of restlessness deep in the body. If only it lasted longer, if only it was easier to consume. It’s both intense and lacking any sort of intensity, it’s a very unique and novel substance and experience, although many probably wouldn’t consider the effects ‘worthwhile’ in comparison to other psychedelics. DALT by itself is honestly not too interesting, it’s when combined with other drugs that it really shines.

Hallucinogenic toolkit

In another post, I outline the potential for hallucinogens to be used to augment the mind in all variety of ways- recreational, therapeutic, utilitarian, etc etc. Because of the subjectivity of drug experiences and not much study towards codifying some universal objective idea of the experience, refining the unique properties of each drug to achieve desired effects can be challenging. One has to understand themselves and understand the properties of these drugs to properly assess them and assess the unique ways they could benefit oneself. Unfortunately, this requires testing a lot of psychedelics, not something I would recommend to anyone. Perhaps one day, studies will be done to figure out the exact neurological activity that creates a psychedelic experience and people will be able to quantify and objectively describe whatever aspects of the experience they can. From there the experiences can be defined and refined to serve specific purposes. On the other hand, perhaps there is no mathematical objectivity to these experiences, (in which case trying to establish some framework of functional hallucinogenic use can be very problematic), and we are doomed to guesswork. For now I guess this is an activity only for the dedicated and functioning psychonauts.
Pretty much, this is my psychedelic toolkit. If I could have a lifetime supply of all of these, my augmented future would be set. (Unless I go overboard with that much access to drugs, perhaps I need to develop more self discipline). These are the ones that I think serve essential beneficial functions without too many negative effects. If you're a psychonaut with the goal of augmenting reality, I think it would be useful to put a version of this list together for yourself. Think of it as your own version of Shulgin's "Magical Half Dozen" (2 of the 3 I've tried have made me irredeemably sick lol).

(see also my summarizing of the substances more... 'poetically'??)

LSD- In my life, LSD represents the sort of default psychedelic. It is the basis and progenitor of all my psychedelic experiences, and in my mind almost all of them end up being compared to the standard of LSD in some form or another. This works particularly well because LSD can induce an absurd variety of experiences, lending it the ability to be compared with pretty much every other psychedelic.
In mixers: Could become literally anything, depends on what else is mixed in. Adds raw psychedelic power, forms a pure psychedelic foundation for any trip.

4-AcO-DMT- For if I want a deeper, more profound, more intuitive, more meditative, and somewhat less functional experience (and don't want to deal with the length or cosmic chaos of a hefty acid trip). Also for a more 'organic' experience that grounds me with the earth.
In mixers: Adding an organic and profound aspect to the experience with substantial intensity.

4-HO-MET- For if I want a deeper and more introspective experience with an analytical and objective connection to my emotions. Another one for meditating at home, not as functional.
In mixers: Adding a distinctly powerful introspective component.

4-HO-MiPT- For if I want the organic and introspective tryptamine experience without too much intensity. For if I want to enhance certain activities with the tryptamine glitter while still being entirely functional.
In mixers: Adding a neutral baseline tryptamine edge that isn't too intense, adding flowery visuals and giggliness

5-APDB- For if I want intense empathogenic effects and an intimate connection with those around me. I prefer this to MDMA as it is substantially less stimulating and fiend-y, longer lasting, and has a more of a psychedelic and visual component to it.
In mixers: Adding a mood boost, empathogenic and social aspect, or to stormproof a mix from turning sour.

2C-B- For if I want to enhance an experience with prominent visuals and cool psychedelic warmth but remain relatively lucid or functional.
In mixers: Adds visuals and the most manageable psychedelic headspace with stimulation.

2C-C- For if I want to enhance an experience with visuals and a body buzz without any stimulation. Also leaves me relatively lucid and functional.
In mixers: Same as above but minus the stimulating aspect, with a slightly more intense headspace.

2C-I- For if I want to enhance the functionality of my body and force myself to complete certain tasks. To just become more functional overall.
In mixers: Puts me in tune with my body and leaves me more coordinated and better in control of it.

DXM- For if I want to make a trip deeply disturbing and unnerving, to add a dissociative edge with some creepiness. This always melds with psychedelics in the most uncomfortable ways and is valuable for imparting knowledge of the less savory functions of the mind.
In mixers: Makes things creepy and unnerving. Only for situations where I want to explore darker parts of the consciousness.

Ketamine- Pretty much the default dissociative, gives me short acting dissociation that can be a boost to any trip.
In mixers: Adding an element of pure dissociation that won't tarnish the trip with a personality of its own. Useful for its short duration too.

MXE- If I want to add a dissociative with a bit more personality that will not only add to a trip, but grab its reins and transport it to another world. Seems to have infinite depths to explore. (RIP)
In mixers: Adding a colorful unique brand of dissociation that will meld its own world with any trip currently being experienced.

3-MeO-PCP- A manic and functional dissociative that can be useful for dragging myself out of inactivity. Enhances any experience and also allows for really neat dream exploration and meditation.
In mixers: Adding an energetic manic edge that is mentally dissociating, can distract from certain brands of unsavory introspection or overanalysis.

3-MeO-PCE- One of the most meditative and insightful dissociatives I have taken. Incredibly useful for sinking into a deep sensory deprived meditative space.
In mixers: Allows for deep meditation on any subject, in a mixer it would likely sink the trip into that infinite beautiful space.

2C-D

(This one has been published by Erowid!!!!)

[CW: Very graphic descriptions of violence, blood and gore]

Age: 21

Weight: 120 lbs

Dosage: 50 mg oral in gel cap

Setting: My apartment

T0:00-Dose administered.

T0:20-Onset, but only really noticeable as a sort of nervous agitation in my limbs, in my mind, in my gut, pulsing throughout my being.

T0:50-The comeup insofar is mostly just uncomfortable. It’s very stimulating, and features the usual psychedelic comeup symptoms, those being nausea and abdominal cramps. In addition to that, it carries the classic phenethylamine symptom of urinary retention. In combination with the nausea, it feels like there is a weight in my abdomen that has anchored there like a burr. I am shivering and shaking a good bit too. So far no other effects have manifest.

T1:00-The visuals begin to appear, it’s pretty standard as far as psychedelic visuals and pretty light. There is warping and distortion at the edges of my vision. Flowing angular chevron patterns are forming at the corners of my walls and flowing along them like conveyor belts. The patterns appear to be diamonds with all sorts of angular stepped zigzag patterns distributed amongst them. I am shaking and fidgeting, and my mind feels faint and light, yet simultaneously heavy and sunken.

T1:15- Still feeling agitated and physically uncomfortable. This headspace is very lucid, I am definitely able to think clearly and interact with my environment. I am getting the typical phenethylamine high frequency twanging effect, to reiterate, imagine having a taut wire and then plucking it. Instead of slowing down as it vibrates it reverberates faster and faster, increasing in pitch and frequency. This is what was happening with my existence, little pockets of the fiber of reality twanging off at the corners of my being, visuals that feel like the room is closing in on me while simultaneously expanding and vibrating into a rippling infinity. The patterns are all definitely very warm colored.

I don’t know why this keeps happening but thoughts of violence and damage to my body begin to seep into the trip. I begin imagining what it must be like to receive a gunshot wound, whether it’s a bullet embedding in my flesh, or perhaps exiting out of the back of me with a spurt of dislodged flesh and blood, or perhaps it grazing me and picking off a chunk of flesh like a pickaxe chunking off a bit of rock. The thought of heavy metal shattering bone, or drilling its way through soft flesh looms over me. I think about all the flesh I am made of, how that flesh can come to pieces, how there is a solid skeleton and a weird membrane helping to hold all that flesh in place. The thoughts of this make me have an olfactory hallucination of the odor of blood hanging in the air. These thoughts are not particularly distressing or disturbing, they just enter my head matter of factly and demand my fixation. I am so grateful to have all my limbs and flesh and bones intact. I am so grateful I have never been grievously wounded.

The other violent fixation comes from a time when I was on 4-HO-MET and a friend sent me a video of someone stepping on a landmine. The thought of an explosion shredding my leg with shrapnel and spraying that shrapnel across my body haunts me, the thought of the flesh being torn to mangled ribbons, the bone being splintered and fractured and blasted across a distance, it sinks into my mind and I am perpetually remembering it, feeling a twang of pain in my legs, thinking about how lucky I am that I have legs that are intact and functional. This particular thought lingers well throughout the trip and into the next day. I cannot escape or ignore it.

T1:30-I have been reading a lot about crime, perhaps this is precipitated by my thoughts of injury or vice versa. I think about what it must be like to make the decision to try and murder someone, or what it must be like to be minding your business when you suddenly have pieces of metal flying at you at a very high speed. This drug seems to lend itself to existing vicariously.

T2:00-I go outside and smoke a joint. The sky is beautiful and I am no longer fixated on thoughts of blood and gore and injury. The visuals are still pretty strong, especially in the gloom of dusk. The sky is rippling and pulsing and breathing rainbows that sink down to me. Patterns and forms flash in the shadows in warm colors. I go back inside and hang out with my roommates and play videogames. Overall I am feeling light and jovial, my thought certainly feels sharper and more accelerated, I feel like I can process things and respond to them more effectively than normal.

T3:00-The visuals have mostly died down. I still definitely feel the mental effects as a sort of mental clarity and acuity.

T5:00-Pretty much back to baseline.

Epilogue: Despite the fact that the visuals and the psychedelic headspace fell away pretty quickly, I had this strange and unique feeling of mental acuity well into the next day. It was completely unique, it wasn’t like a high at all and it felt different from other psychedelic afterglows, cleaner, more refined, more streamlined, more efficient. I felt like I could develop thoughts and make connections and associations easier, but it didn’t have that glowing burnt out feeling that other psychedelics had me feeling afterwards. The next day I felt this way too, but like I didn’t feel high or even slightly impaired, I felt like a superior version of myself. Towards the end of the day it began to feel like hypomania, with me becoming extremely talkative and feeling very confident and optimistic. After a point, it almost felt like I was on MDMA, I wanted to talk to everyone and tell everyone nice things. This whole afterglow effect lasted about 36 hours.

Conclusion:

This is a short lasting and very standard psychedelic experience. It was certainly interesting enough but honestly I can’t really see any reason to pursue it with the intent of tripping except for those who just want to try everything. There are simply so many more interesting and exciting psychedelics out there, that have longer lasting and more punctuated effects. It seems to have value in the increased mental acuity however and the long hypomanic afterglow. I have heard about it being used as a nootropic in low doses and I can definitely see that. 

ETH-LAD

(This one has been published by Erowid!!!!)

Age: 21

Weight: 125 lbs

Dosage: 200 ug sublingual

Setting: My apartment, around campus

T0:00-Dose taken

T0:30-Feel the onset, manifests in some tooth grinding and a slight faint dissociated feeling.

T1:30-I’m hanging out with my roommate downstairs. I feel like constant contact with him keeps me from realizing how distant I am drifting off and how awkward my social skills are becoming (at least from my perspective). It is truly a feeling like drifting off, like floating on a ripply surface of a lake and having a warm wind slowly gently push me out into deeper waters. It feels like there’s numbness in my fingertips. This feels very similar to LSD in terms of the comeup and headspace, although it feels somewhat more dissociating, mentally and physically. There is also somewhat more bodyload, with a good bit of nausea setting in. Visuals are fairly abstract and lacking any sort of definitive form or pattern. Rather, they are concentric and ripply.

T2:00-This trips feels very ‘standard’ for a psychedelic experience. Thought is deeper, as in every bit of stimulus my mind encounters gets carefully handled and picked apart, dissected to have its internal depths plumbed and dredged and tinkered with. It’s like my mind is going the extra mile with regards to analyzing each designated “object”, and whatever associations that object generates. While this could certainly be considered a sort of mental enhancement, I realize that my mind’s ability to limit itself in this regard is functional and useful to keep me from constantly being awash in a daze of thought. This constant preoccupation with my own mind makes me feel awkward and stumbly in terms of my ability to outwardly interact with others and the world. Imagine a horse trying to run while staring intently at its feet. Eventually my dear friend/old roommate comes over. I am now with two of my closest friends, we are hanging out and playing videogames. I watch my roommate play Kirby 64, It’s entertaining as hell and it’s pretty cool to see the visuals manifest on the screen. I feel like I am making a lot of really awkward and stupid comments that are attempting to come off as funny. I feel like I am just awkwardly and automatically saying and interjecting things to fill the silence, all of which go without response, the silence following each statement is deafening as my own voice echoes in my head. My friend talks about music he’s writing and recording and it’s so cool to hear how he engages with his passion and how this engagement interacts with his struggles with mental illness. He plays us a song and it’s so cool to listen to and this provides a substrate for me to talk about everything in substantially more fluid and less awkward manner. I still have some trouble articulating my thoughts, and it feels like I am treading carefully the line between profound statements and psychedelic burnout incoherency.

T2:30-My roommate brings out his pet blue tongued skink. I love reptiles and it’s so cool to be tripping balls and holding this creature. It’s scales seem to be rippling and breathing, and it’s so absurd that I’m holding an animal native to Australia in my North Philadelphia apartment. It runs around on the ground and I try to imagine what this creature must be thinking right now, in this strange world that defies all of its adaptations and instincts. We take it outside to the backyard to have it experience the world. I would say this was definitely my peak, at least in terms of sensory effects. Auditorily, things seem unaffected, people’s voices sound normal, albeit sort of isolated in a strange way, as if their voices are punctuated events in a grand void. Visually however, this was mindblowing. In the darkness, my entire field of vision is consumed by visuals. Whatever light there back here appears as shifting red, blue, green, magenta, and neon orange. Everything, literally everything is covered in swirling, pulsing, twisting and rippling concentric patterns, they are so prominent and clear that they begin to consume and obscure my vision. It should be noted that I am still fairly mentally lucid, I do not feel like my perception of such visual distortion represents a perception of a heavy disturbance in the fabric of reality. I am thinking clearly and rationally, it’s just that the world is becoming visually unrecognizable. After letting the lizard run about, we go back inside.

T3:20-My two friends partake in some 3-MeO-PCP. As I don’t want to add anything to this experience, I refrain. We go back downstairs and resume playing videogames. The sounds of people’s voices sounds so strange and surreal. It’s the sort of thing where I start to notice the properties of something while I’m tripping and it makes me wonder how I could ever take that thing for granted in a sober state. Of course this feeling never sticks or follows me into sobriety. My field of vision is still pulsing and flashing and the same sort of concentric patterns are still dancing on the walls, albeit somewhat fainter and weaker. I’m having fun though, I feel jovial and somewhat “burnt”, but I feel a lighthearted demeanor towards everything that makes it not bother me too much. I smoke some more weed. I have noticed that I do not really feel the “enhanced mind” effect that psychedelics give me on the comedown, where I feel more articulate and feel my thoughts flow faster. At this point, I still feel meek, dazed, and awkward. This is the sort of trip where it doesn’t bubble up in me and manifest in my mind, rather it’s the sort of trip that glistens and hover above my head, shining its glowering and glistening light down upon me.

T4:30-I have noticed that the visuals are mostly passed now, save for some faint color shifting on every surface. I still mentally feel very strongly as if I am tripping. I am certainly on the comedown now. We smoke some more and decide to go for a walk outside. It’s the first weekend of the school year and throngs of people are around town partying. My one friend is feeling very manic from the 3-MeO-PCP and wants to interact with everyone we walk by and run and play. I am extremely intimidated by everyone and want to keep to myself. Sometimes when coming down from psychedelics I am definitely in a sort of hypomanic state where I want to talk to everyone and I feel like I have something to say to everyone. However now, I feel like I cannot generate the appropriate words in any situation. I feel like I cannot even generate the appropriate thoughts. I feel meek and silenced and muzzled, I am awkward and afraid. I beseech him to stop trying to invite interaction from strangers. I am so very inhibited. We reach a grassy area between two dorm buildings and he does cartwheels on the lawn. I hide in a chair and try to artificially boost my confidence to stave off these effects. He eventually invites comments from people in the windows high above us, and honestly it’s a pretty silly and ridiculous situation. Eventually some of them come down and interact with us. Ideally I would have been able to converse smoothly and provide some sort of input, but I am in a sort of stunned silence, only able to utter awkward phrases. We eventually go to a grocery store and head home. I reflect on my lack of confidence. Part of it was the drug and its effects, however I feel like a strong part of all of this was also the fact that I was not presenting as I usually do, which can be intimidating or idiosyncratic to a certain degree. Appearing as my “normal” self made me feel weak and neutered. On the way home we meet up with some old friends in a restaurant and hang out there for a bit. In this setting I feel slightly more confident, like this muzzle is wearing off.

T6:00-We return home. The rest of the night we just hang out and smoke a lot of weed and play videogames. The cannabis entirely overtakes the psychedelic by this point and from here on I mostly just feel entirely stoned. I am able to cook a full meal for myself which is nice.

T11:00-I tried to go to sleep earlier than this, but noticed I was still a bit wired in that way that psychedelics keep you awake-you cannot feel the effects but you just don’t feel capable of sleeping at all. At this point though, I am finally able to sleep.

Conclusion: This feels like LSD’s ripply awkward cousin. I’m not sure if it was the set or setting responsible for this, though honestly it was the sort of environment to usually foster articulate thoughts and comfort. I feel as though this drug instilled a sort of anxiety in me during the trip that certainly wasn’t present in my mindset going in. It was certainly interesting, and pretty similar to LSD. The visuals were very abstract and I would describe them as rippled and concentric. I’m not sure how I could utilize it effectively in the future.

ALD-52

(This one has been published by Erowid!!!!)

(CW: Violence)

Age: 21

Weight: 125 lbs

Dosage: 200 ug sublingual

Setting: Around the city, at a party

T0:00-I went out to my favorite park for tripping. This time I brought an insect net and my collecting supplies. I reach my destination and go into the woods, at which point I settle down and pop the tabs into my mouth. I then romp around in the woods looking for insects. I run into a bunch of strangers smoking weed, though they seem to be down with psychedelics. We have awkward conversation and I smoke a few hits from their blunt.

T0:20-I begin to feel it. It manifests as a feeling of being unsettled, a sort of queasiness and uneasiness deep inside my gut. My limbs begin to feel numb and light and I start feeling sweaty. Mosquitos have been swarming me this entire time, so I am very uncomfortable inside and out. I start getting lightheaded, but in a sense that the entire word has become light and is rising around me, with my head as the focal point.

T0:30-The discomfort sets in so deeply. I am no longer seeking insects but pacing frantically in the woods, as if to run away from this feeling. I settle down on a rock and smoke a joint. I feel so faint and dizzy, but not in any threatening way. The visuals are beginning to set in, although they are pretty light and do not overwhelm me at all. They are simply decoration on this gruesome cake that is forming from my body. After I finish the joint it feels like my mind has been subject to a rush of warm wind that sends shudders through me. I resume my hunt for insects. I find myself running through the woods, it is getting dimmer as the sun begins to set and I find that I am not really headed in any particular direction, but rather running around aimlessly to stave off this discomfort. My navigational skills thankfully are not compromised and I am easily able to find my way around the forest.

T1:00-I am tripping pretty hard now. The visuals are not imposing or impeding me in any way, but they have 

certainly made themselves known. There are rainbow auras around things and my entire field of vision seems to be pulsing and flowing around the edges. I sit on a rock to watch the sunset, but the bodyload is immense. I am very nauseous and I feel like I am about to throw up. The sunlight is all powerful and cascades around me, I truly feel like I am bathing in its heat and life. I try to catch insects here, but find them to be sparser than I thought they would be. This is slightly frustrating. I am manically pacing the area, the restlessness I feel is incredible and overpowering. I wish the nausea would go away. Other people come to hang out on the rock and smoke and I suddenly find myself extremely anxious. I feel as though the deep discomfort of this trip would very adversely affect my ability to interact with others and I am deeply afraid they might try to interact with me. I feel as though I would only be able to stammer out incoherencies. Sounds in the distance and reverberating and trailing off, and the clouds begin to morph into meso-american looking patterns. My thoughts begin to travel to darker places, I begin thinking of the incredible amount of violence that has existed in the world, of what it must be like to sustain incredibly traumatic injuries, like being slashed with a sword, run through with a spear, shot with an arrow, shot with a gun, hit by shrapnel, stepping on landmines, stabbed with a knife, having limbs be dismembered or crushed or mangled. It pains me to know that so many people in the history of earth have felt these incredible and mind boggling pains, and I realize how fortunate I am that I do not live surrounded by war and violence. I imagine the horrors that battlefields of old must have been, with so many people having their entire lives snuffed out in a frenzy of incredible pain and physical trauma. I wonder how it must feel to bleed out on a battlefield after having a limb cut off with a blade, or blasted to shreds from a musket shot or gun shot. And then there’s the fact that some people dedicate themselves to a cause by means of violence, that someone has read up on the theory of a cause, that they have dreams of elevating that cause and bringing it to fruition, they have taken up arms and yet before they can make meaningful change they are blown to pieces by mortar fire or something. And even without violence one can be traumatically injured, it could happen to me today. I could get hit by a car, or fall off a cliff. I realize how precious and fragile my body is and vow to protect it as best I can.

T1:15-I decide to pace around the forest more. It’s getting darker and I soon find navigating the forest is 

becoming more difficult. The visuals begin to deceive me, making it appear like there is a trail where there is not one. I still manage to navigate successfully. At this point I am mostly just looking for a place to lie down where I can settle all of this discomfort. I find a nice hill of dirt and flop down on it. Lying down feels a little better, and I calmly gaze at the sky and the trees battered with the golden orange light of the setting sun, the twisting and spiraling mess of branches soaking in the dimness beneath them. I breathe in and out, and for a second it feels like this incredible discomfort is letting up.

T1:30-I return to my rock and sit down, but feel awkward and return to pacing around the forest. I am tripping very very hard. It’s not too visual, but is heavy mentally. I am dissociating from the entire world, and my mind feels as though its jumping around to different times and locations. Sometimes I feel like I fall into holes of thought that consume me for hours when in reality it has just been a few minutes. I was invited to a party across the city that I feel like going to, but I do not feel as though I am in any condition to be in public. Nevertheless, the forest is getting very dark now and the only way out is to climb down a big rock face. I pace around some more in the dim forest before returning to the rock. There are plenty of people there, but I just ignore them and climb down. The rock looks incredibly beautiful, it glistens and sparkles as though it is encrusted with a druze of little crystals. Its forms are flowing as if it’s a speleothem in a grand crystal cave. I am absolutely transfixed by its glistening mystical beauty. I navigate my way down to the trail below.

T1:50-I am definitely still peaking. I walk along the trail where people are jogging and biking. I try to ignore all of them and hope they ignore me. Thankfully there is a path I can walk along the riverfront that’s separated from the main bike/jogging path. There I can take solace in being alone, I can sit down and take a break and stare at the sky. The water is rippling into beautiful fractal patterns and the sky is decorated with blocky images of dragons and faces. Everything is parading in the resplendent pink and salmon glow of the setting sun. I keep walking.

T2:15-I reach a more populated area and walking around people is very freaky. I try to avoid them. At a restaurant on the riverfront there are people preparing for a wedding. It’s surreal to walk by that while I’m covered in dirt wearing torn up clothes. I reach a point where there is a lot of plant growth around the river and the sound of insects becomes deafening. I lie down and take it in. It amazes me that almost all insects are silent and rely on chemical signals and odors, but there are a few who have adapted to use sound to communicate. It amazes me how almost all sound generating insects belong to a specific order (Orthoptera), yet there are a few prominent examples in other orders (like cicadas), meaning that the ability to generate sound was a result convergent evolution. The buzzing vibrates and reverberates around my skull, it’s like listening to really buzzy noise music. It feels like it’s making my brain vibrate, and it’s really neat to pick out the sound of each individual species. I am getting devoured by mosquitos. I begin to think of all the insects flying around filled with my blood, It’s surreal to imagine little parcels of my blood flitting through the air. I see a bat above snatching up insects and my thoughts turn to violence again, the violence of nature. How an insect going about its business is suddenly accosted from the gloom by this horrific hairy creature with massive fangs. The pain an insect must feel when it gets crunched between those sharp teeth, the pain insects must feel from all of the unimaginably horrific ways they can die. And it’s weird to consider that a bat is eating little bits of my blood.

T2:30-Walking along the trail I run into a friend. Conversation feels very awkward at first but I manage to speak coherently and cogently eventually. I feel like I am entirely out of touch with reading nonverbal or emotional cues however, and I feel like I keep saying inappropriate things. Whatever. One thing he tells me that really stuck was that he was out of school now, and he had to adapt to the lifestyle of eternal work, as opposed to the long breaks that come with doing school. It’s a frightening thing to consider, and I am easily able to visualize the blocks of time in my mind as large tangible portions. We eventually part ways and I walk 20 blocks to the party as fast as I can.

T3:35-I reach the party. I am overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people there, but I have come down a little. I am mostly tired. I only know like two people there, but one of them comes to great me. They lead me through the house introducing me to strangers. I am so flustered. Eventually I just flop down and sit on the ground and rest my tired limbs. I am so sweaty and dirty and I look very out of place. Some of the people there freak me out, and I view them with an incredibly cynical eye. Two people in particular seemed like cartoon characters, just stereotypical depictions of stoners. They seem like they are extremely performative with this image. They are very offputting to me. Interacting with all of these strangers is very awkward. I smoke a lot of weed, but it doesn’t seem to kick the trip back up.

T4:30-The party has been ok. I am not really talking to anyone just hiding in corners. I am very sweaty inside so I go outside to where there is a goddamn pool on the roof. This is decadent. I am too dirty to go into the pool however. Eventually another friend shows up and I try to hang around them, but I still feel awkward and it feels like my social skills are stunted. I can’t seem to form a meaningful connection with them in this moment and feel like a lost puppy following them around. I give up on that and resign myself to a corner inside. I am incredibly sweaty however, so I resign myself to a corner outside. I look for bugs because that’s my favorite party trick. Eventually I am able to strike up conversation with some people. At this point I am able to interact more confidently. My words flow out naturally, and I am struck with the calm and familiar feeling of enhanced mental acuity that manifests on the comedown of trips.

T8:00-I am mostly down now. The party was pretty cool a lot of people were offputting but maybe I am just being judgmental towards strangers. Every party I had been to recently was awash in close friends and they were comfortable environments. I am happy that I was able to go to a party full of strangers and have good interactions with them, and none of them would be able to find me and interact with me later as I use a different name online than in real life. I take the subway home. In the subway station a random guy chats me up and tells me that he had been going to the library recently and learning a lot. He tells me all the stuff about science that he has been learning and I teach him things I know about bugs and biology. It’s a pleasant and fulfilling interaction.

T8:40-I get home and smoke weed with my roommate. We play videogames for a bit. I just feel stoned now, the drug has mostly worn off, although a slight afterglow is present.

T11 :20-I go to bed. I am back to baseline.

Conclusion: As expected this is somewhat similar to LSD with respect to the headspace. It diverges in terms of having a heavier bodyload, less visuals, and a sort of darker more neutral headspace, lacking the giddiness that LSD can sometimes impart. This may be due to the discomfort I was feeling in my body the entire trip however.

2C-B (Oral)

(This one has been published by Erowid!!!!)

Age: 21

Weight: 125 lbs

Dosage: 30 mg oral

Setting: My friend’s pool

Preface: I could never have imagined a more perfect setting would present itself. My friend was back at his parent’s house in the suburbs, a place familiar to me since I was 6 years old, a place of comfort and pleasant memories. They had a large property with a beautiful pool and garden, and it was in a textbook idyllic suburb on an incredible sunny summer day. The sheer inherent contentment and pleasantry and nostalgia of the place was overwhelming even without the help of drugs. Not only would I be in this place of deep emotional resonance, but 4 of my closest and dearest friends would be there with me, all of us achieving alteration in various ways. Our host took LSD, one simply would be smoking a lot of weed, and the other two were taking 2C-B, one of them having this be their first ever psychedelic experience. I was very excited.

I was a bit stoned for the train ride/the walk there and was also on the afterglow of 3-MeO-PCP I had taken the previous night. The walk was filled with manicured trees and flowers and the idle sounds of distant lawnmowers and dogs barking and birdsongs, the soundtrack of the living breathing suburb. I’ve always been a fan of filth and chaos and laziness and mess, and at times the ostentatious cleanliness and order of suburbs has come off as insincere and unnatural to me. Just a pretentious way to feel superior to people who felt superior. Right now though it was pleasure and peace to bask in, just overwhelming surface beauty. Enough about how I feel about suburbs though, it's mostly besides the point and sounds pretentious. Bottom line is everything seems great and I’m hanging out with some of my best friends.

T0:00-I’m the first to arrive. I wait in the old familiar house with him and roll joints while I wait for people to show up. When 3 out of the 4 others are there, I pop my capsule. My friend does likewise, and the host takes his tab of acid.

T0:30-We’re playing in the pool. I begin to feel the onset of the drug, a lightness in my head and a slight nausea. Colors begin to look brighter. I am intermittently playing in the pool and going around the garden collecting insects for my collection. The sun is beating down and bathing everything in resplendent light. We light up some joints.

T0:40-The last person arrives. They biked all the way here quite a bit of a distance, and they are playing music through a portable speaker on their bike which carries a nice atmosphere with them. I give them their 2C-B and they join us in the pool.

T0:45-I begin to peak now. It is like a great gloved hand that was gently massaging me has now embraced me, swallowed me in its prismatic iridescent fingers. I feel like I have been hit with a great wave that carries me into a great vibrating sea. The pool is a spectacular place, with the ripples of the water dancing and swirling and twitching to colorful pieces like stained glass fern fronds. We smoke some more and put on some wonderful music. The feeling of water running over my body is spectacular. I am the first person to begin peaking, the others are still on their comeup, so we are not sharing the same level of wonderment yet. I am very lucid and can easily and clearly make conversation, but I am also awash in a powerful synthetic euphoria with visuals that ripple through the world around me.

T1:20-The others begin to join me on the peak. Everyone is so giggly and jovial, we are telling stories and joking under the brilliant glow of the sun and the sky. The clouds look like the surface off flowing water and the surface of the water is reflecting the resplendent light like the fire of a million glistening diamonds. I find my body under immaculate control that I could not have imagined before. In catching insects, I find my fine motor skills are very much superior, being able to easily pluck insects off of flowers with my forceps before they are able to fly away. This is despite my visual field being interrupted by the strong visuals that cause plants and variegated textures to mirror themselves and flash with green and magenta auras. In swimming, I feel graceful like a fish or dolphin. This one may have just been perception, I probably looked clumsy as hell but I sure felt graceful and elegant. I am so perfectly lucid too. This drug feels not like an experiment or alteration, but an enhancement, it’s travelling down a well-travelled path, it’s a well-practiced routine that I am bathing in the benefits of. It’s pure unbridled joy and revelry and beauty, all chemically enhanced to my very liking and specification. I flip around underwater and close my eyes, feeling weightless in suspended in a wonderful fractal bliss. There are very few closed eye visuals- they mostly present with my eyes open. Wearing goggles, or opening my eyes underwater, I am greeted with the familiar visual patterning of 2C-B, lines, striations, stripes, floral and foliate designs in calming pulsing colors.

T2:20- I was trying to catch a bumblebee with my bare hands and stung myself on its stinger. Bumblebees will rarely consciously sting, rather I mishandled it and pricked my finger on its stinger, probably against its intent. Normally this would be a cause for alarm, but in my state I don’t mind at all, even when my hand swells up substantially. I continue swimming like nothing happened, although there is some itchiness and achiness to it the rest of the night. We are all joking and laughing and giggling so much at this point that it hurts. Who knows if any of this was truly funny or if we simply found giggliness and humor in our altered states? But it was extremely fun regardless and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and having a great trip. The nice suburban neighbors periodically stop in and out of their house doing errands and yardwork etc. We make a concerted effort to assure the odor of burning kush doesn’t creep too close to them. It’s weird to think about them going about their daily lives while next door we’re plunging into the depths of our perception. I don’t mean that in some pretentious superiority complex “suburban sheeple not doing psychedelics” way, it was honestly truly strange to think about, an alien thought to mill about in my mind like a wad of clay.

T3:30-We get out of the pool and hang out on the patio, drying off. In a new dry environment I feel like the trip is sinking in even harder than before. I close my eyes and fall into a trance, there aren’t marked closed eye visuals but the headspace is like sinking into a deep well. I am entirely entranced and consumed by thought that splashes me like treading water at the surface of a choppy sea. The grass of the backyard spreads out before me like an undulating ocean. We turn our attention to the spectacular golden hour hearkened by the sun as it creeps down the sky. The trees are bathed in golden light like gilded snowcaps, a large cluster of spiderwebs in the treetops catching the light at just the right angle and glistening like a tangle of golden chains. The branches and leaves of the trees are mirroring and fractalizing themselves like snowflakes or blossoming fern fronds. I draw and find myself drawing the usual psychedelic fare, this time the theme is sea creatures. I don’t seem to have the sense of aesthetics and composition granted by LSD. The drawing ends up sloppy and ill composed and I never finish it.

T4:00-Our next object of attention is the clouds- they are truly strange looking today. Rows and rows of cirrostratus clouds like ocean waves crawl across the sky, they are beautifully structured in a seemingly very organized manner, resembling great spinal columns or herringbones. In the state that I’m in, they look extremely 3-dimensional, and not nearly as ethereal as a cloud should. It is like twisted ivory and driftwood sits looming above us, the deep blue dusk sky as a backdrop, its vastness and distance so impossible to comprehend that my mind simply perceives it as a near and flat screen. I play the album ‘Since I Left You’ by the Avalanches, which creates such a wonderful beautiful atmosphere (for me at least. Maybe it was selfish for me to put on an entire album that only I knew about…) The heavily layered songs get picked apart in my sinking and pulsing thoughts like a grand jovial jigsaw puzzle. We smoke some weed and order a pizza. The process of ordering it is an absurdly complex ordeal in our state but we manage eventually. I find my appetite is not as compromised as it usually is on psychedelics. After this we return to the water.

T4:40-We sit in silence and gaze at the color of the sky as the sun creeps below the horizon. Just silence was we gaze at the swirling and breathing and blossoming clouds. The sky is unfolding itself before us and its wispy edges slither off into the abyss of the night sky. After a while we get cold, it seems like we all want to get out but are all waiting for one person to suggest it. Eventually one of us does and we all get out and dry off and get changed.

T5:00-The next activity to occupy us is a game of exquisite corpse (party game where each person draws a section of a creature without looking at the others). I notice my drawing is much less psychedelic than it was before- fewer repeating patterns of fractal abstractions. When the game is over I have to catch a train home.

T5:30-Walking to the train station is a blast. Warm comfortable suburbia is a living breathing entity around me, exhaling streams of iridescent color that disperses through my field of vision. I am listening to music and grateful for the fact that no one is around me as I can sing to myself completely tone deaf and off-key with reckless abandon. I arrive at the train station and satisfy myself with staring intently at textured surfaces. The visuals are dying down but still remain enough for me to revel in their presence. Forms like eyes wreathed in feathers bubble up out of the concrete and on the stucco walls. The train ride home is pleasant and it is nice to return to another place of familiarity.

T6:10-Get home. Smoke weed. Play videogames for a while. All the usual comforts, what a pleasant way to come down!

T8:00-Back to baseline. Go to bed. 

2C-I (Intranasal)

Age: 21

Weight: 125 lbs

Dosage: 12 mg Intranasal

Setting: My apartment

T0:00-Dosed Intranasally on an overcast day. A new roommate has moved in and my house is not silent and lonely anymore. The pain isn’t the instant drilling burning of 2C-B. Rather, it’s a slow burn, it just sinks in and smolders inside of my face.

T0:05-The pain has reached a peak now, still not comparable to how acute the pain of 2C-B is. It’s still a pulsing seething pain. It’s a white hot ember landing in my face and slowly burning out, as opposed to a blowtorch being shoved right up my nose. It stings my palate and the drip feels like a sore throat. It is entirely tolerable however (despite the severity of the earlier description…), especially compared to other things I have insufflated. I feel like I am getting lighter.

T0:15-The drip is nauseating, but still tolerable overall. I wash with saline and it relieves the lingering pain, the salty bitterness that drips down my throat is unpleasant but it hearkens the end of the discomfort from this ROA. Overall, snorting this was not nearly as bad as some other drugs, especially other 2Cs.

T0:20-I begin grinding my teeth, and light visual distortions begin to manifest. No part of this feels “intense” in any sense, rather it’s a smooth ride through the swirling world of 2C-I that came on a bit faster/ at a lower dose than if I had taken it orally. The visuals seem harmonious with what I am actually perceiving, and do not impede my vision in any way. I smoke a joint as a the peak crashes over, like I usually do.

T0:30-I am pacing and dancing around my room, this is fantastic. I suddenly notice how filthy it is. I notice how much my body wants to move, how I am a mind with this perfectly controllable and highly responsive body at my disposal, how I can be the puppeteer that leads this body to do my absolute bidding. I notice how filthy my living space is- not just the mess strewn about but the actual filth in the carpet, the fact that I haven’t vacuumed this room for a whole year. This bothers me for the first time ever. What proceeds is a manic cleaning fit, literally refusing to afford myself even a second of rest or immobility. I clean up all the mess and organize all of my things, working up a substantial sweat and winding my frail body in the process. I then get to vacuuming every inch of the room, frantically and frenetically dragging the vacuum around the room and cleaning the filth like my life depended on it. It felt so great to do this, simply the knowledge that I managed to finally motivate myself to make my living conditions acceptable. That I not only saw fit to do so, but actually accomplished the task too. My work done, I threw myself onto my bed and breathed myself a sigh of relief in my nice clean room. I imagine this is what Adderall is like for people, only I had wonderful rainbow visuals dancing in the corners of my vision and pulsing through the entire clean space. This is so simultaneously stimulating and relaxing.

T1:10-Woowee doing stuff felt good, especially in contrast to the mind numbing inactivity that occupies most of my time. I want to do stuff, I want to be productive and feel accomplished. I always make excuses to put off tasks but now feels like the time to disregard any excuse and just get stuff done. I decide to go down to my entomology collection in the making and heavily organize all of it. It’s in total disarray as I am not the most organized person and I also procrastinate with all the boring clerical work regarding its upkeep. I go through every bit of it and write up labels for everything I have left unlabeled. This is a huge step and something I had been putting off for many weeks. I get it done in 20 minutes and sit back, wholly satisfied with my work. Visual distortions are light, in no way impeding this work. Mentally I am focused almost to the point of being in a trance. I decide to go outside and collect more insects.

T1:30-I am in my backyard, trying to catch little bees from flowers with tweezers. While my previous experiences with 2C-I gave me increased coordination and control of my body, it seems to be lacking now. My attempts to capture them are largely fruitless (although I get it eventually!). I am getting swarmed by mosquitos, more than I have experienced even in the tropics. They are making a delicious meal of me. I don’t mind at all however. I rationalize that as an entomologist I should get used to incredibly uncomfortable field conditions, and that this is training for what will inevitably be a career of dealing with legions of mosquitos, sweltering heat, bludgeoning humidity and all sorts of other discomforts. It feels good to suffer like this, when I think it will contribute to some greater whole.

T2:00-I go back inside and take some Benadryl to counteract the fact that I am entirely covered in bites. I talk to my friends online. Conversation is excellent, my thoughts flow so smoothly and precisely, and they are guided by a distinct perceptive and empathogenic edge. I am substantially more eloquent and articulate. With previous experiences with 2C-I, it was like my mind was at last in perfect coordination with my body. And now my mind was in perfect coordination with my words. I could express my thoughts cleanly and without any discrepancy between mouth (er … fingers ….) and brain.

T2:45-I smoke a lot of weed from my gravity bong. This kicks things up super high, I lie on my bed and sink into the most intense visual-hallucinatory state I have ever experienced from 2C-I. Time becomes meaningless as I wander a vast library of absurdity in my mind at a leisurely pace. I lose track of everything becoming engrossed in strange chains of thoughts about strange things, and from there the strange associations that generate new strange thoughts about strange things in strange places. It’s so incredibly surreal but feels so natural. I become aware of how totally dissociated from reality me and these thought processes are, yet it still feels so natural, just a total paradigm shift. My mind has accepted these new conditions with open arms, and denies that any other mode of thought could exist. The CEV’s are incredibly mechanical, not even sharp and synthetic but very literally machine like, at times seeming like biomachines with insect legs and at other times being purely geometric pieces moving in unison with one another to make great intricate machines and fields of circuitry. It is like I am being sucked into my head.

T3:30-I’m mostly coming down now.

T4:30-Mostly only afterglow at this point.

T6:00-Entirely back to baseline.

Conclusion-The 2C family can feel like entirely different drugs depending on how you administer them. The oral ROA is an entirely different experience than insufflated. This is chiefly in the timing- you come up fast and hard, you get faceplanted into the experience from the top of a 12 story building, rather than the slow descent the oral ROA gives you. Not to mention the incredibly pain of snorting them. With 2C-I, the contrast seems to manifest at a deeper level. The intense focus I had felt was entirely unique among all the drugs I have tried. I imagine a good dose of regular stimulants would be like this for most people, but this had the added benefit of psychedelic visuals and the psychedelic headspace. 2C-I has been cemented as a powerful tool of self-augmentation to me, both physically and mentally. It improves all of my functions to various degrees in various ways and will certainly serve me well in the future.