DOSE: T+ 0:00	48 mg	oral	MEM	(powder / crystals)
T+ 5:30	27 mg	oral	4-HO-MiPT	(powder / crystals)
T+ 0:00	repeated		Alcohol - Beer/Wine

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

Recently I was blessed to receive a sample of the benchmark psychedelic amphetamine MEM (2,5-dimethoxy-4-ethoxyamphetamine), which is #122 in PIHKAL. It appears as a white/off-white/almost a bit pinkish, fine powder that clumps together very easily. I received 50mg, and upon looking it up, I realized that I was only going to get one shot at this. So although I would have liked to take it at varying dosages starting low, I made the decision to take it all at once so I could be sure to feel the full effects on my likely one single chance to try this compound. I was sure of its identity and PIHKAL lists the upper dosage level right at 50mg, so I felt good about doing it all at once.

My mental set is fantastic. I had an intense work week where I had 3 vacation days scheduled but due to workload I had to work 2 of those days. It's finally all behind me and I have gotten off a bit early, on Thursday, and I have 4 day weekend beckoning. Things in my life are going great, I'm very fulfilled mentally and emotionally and I spend almost 100% of my free time pursuing music with my best friends in town, and nothing could make me feel better and more fulfilled. The setting is at my house, but I am about to head to my friends' house shortly. I decided to take the MEM just before getting done with my final work task, and once done I will head over.

3:34pm on 9/11/15 - Ingested 48mg of MEM orally (I was unable to recover 2mg from the medium it was wrapped in). My plan is to head to my friends' house soon and hang out, do music stuff (playing and recording), and probably take 4-HO-MiPT quite a bit later. My reason for the addition is because in PIHKAL, Shulgin repeatedly comments that he recommends taking MDMA with MEM in order to make the best use of its effects. I took this to mean that by itself it may be a bit lacking. Having no MDMA on hand, I thought about what I do have and I realized that 4-HO-MiPT is quite euphoric as well. Plus I am more interested in a psychedelic experience than an empathogenic one. But we'll see how it's going, if I don't feel like adding anything, I won't.

3:50pm - Maybe faint alerts? I feel a faint, smooth energy in my body. I feel good without a doubt. I'm getting a little movement in my bowels that I associate with stimulant come-ups.

3:55pm - Alerts for sure. This is probably going to be a ride, I get that sense. It's a very nice feeling though, entirely pleasant. Small euphoric rushes and a definite stimulant energy. About to depart.

4:14pm - Arrived at my planned location for the night. I'm coming up pretty strong now. Hints of visual activity at the corners of my vision, nicely enhanced colors. The feeling is good, but intense, so I feel slightly edgy. Easily manageable however. Like other psychedelic amphetamines I have tried, I feel extremely capable, coordinated and 'with it'. So far the come-up feels a lot like DOC. I'm going to stop taking notes now as it's time to hang out with my friend, the rest will be retrospective.

When I first saw my friend, who I had told I was going to be performing an 'experiment', he was curious about what I had done. So I told him (he already knew I was going to be getting a sample of MEM) and described what was happening. This is my friend who I trip with more than anyone else. I found I had a bit of that psychedelic self-consciousness. For the first 10 minutes I felt a little awkward and was having trouble determining what to say. I couldn't quite figure out why though, because it didn't feel precisely psychedelic. I was reminded strongly of the DOC come-up, where things feel intense and I feel a bit off-balance, but with DOC this is accompanied by psychedelia and it's logical that I would feel this way. With MEM, I felt good, and there were hints of movement around the edges, but the state of mind was closer to a stimulant or empathogen than to a psychedelic. Yet the come-up felt distinctly psychedelic in some way that is hard to put my finger on.

As time went on, I became more comfortable in this state, until about an hour and a half after arriving, I took stock of myself and found that I felt, well, pretty great. Another friend joined us, and we proceeded to do what we do, which is to laugh a lot and have hilarious, insightful, thought-provoking conversation and wordplay. The awkwardness faded and I was left with a stable state that I found to be a bit perplexing to try to describe. Colors were enhanced, but there was no other visual activity (the movement around the edges faded entirely after the come-up). I found that my thought process was flowing freely and I was making some additional connections conceptually between things, which is a psychedelic quality, yet there was nothing very deep about it. It didn't touch the spiritual level at all, it was more observational in nature. I felt hints of empathogenesis, but really I was just in a very good mood. Certainly my mood was affected positively by the MEM, but I would have been in a great mood anyway.

It was definitely some kind of stimulant as well... I had a lot of physical energy and I found myself bouncing around a lot, but I also do that naturally; when I get excited or positively socially stimulated, it gives me energy and euphoria. But I was also perfectly comfortable just sitting there unmoving. It was relaxing at the same time as stimulating... I felt no amount of overstimulation, no sweaty palms or feet, no anxiety. I didn't bring my heart monitor but I suspect my heart rate/blood pressure were increased mildly. Because of this range of effects and pseudo-effects, I'm not even 100% sure how to classify this as a drug. Is it psychedelic? A little. Is it empathogenic? A little. Is it a stimulant? Yes, but not like amphetamine or anything. For comparison, AMT is a much stronger empathogen and psychedelic for me. DOC, which the feeling of MEM reminds me of in some significant ways, is fully psychedelic and more stimulating, and even more empathogenic oftentimes. MEM struck me as a rather generic but fully enjoyable drug. The come-up felt intense and even had some rushes to it, but once it finished coming up, the stable state it resulted in remained unchanging for hours. It didn't seem to ever reach a peak, it came up and then stayed right there for quite some time. Over the course of the night it slowly and comfortably faded in intensity until it was gone (shortly before I went to bed).

I spent the next few hours enjoying the companionship of my friends and laughing a lot. At some point, my friend and I went inside to jam together (me on keys and him on bass). As soon as we started, I knew it was going to be a highly creative and satisfying jam, and indeed it was. We played in F# minor primarily, with some modulations we seemed to just both know to do. I felt intensely expressive and my fingers were easily able to do what I wanted them to do. I had some strong moments of just flowing and being surprised by what came out. Afterwards my friend complimented me on the jam. We didn't record it but we wished we had, which is the mark of a good jam in my experience. I would say that the music enhancement was the most noticeable difference in myself over baseline that I found with MEM on its own.

Also, throughout the trip, I was slowly drinking beer, and I found that, like with DOC, alcohol mixes exceedingly well with MEM, except that with DOC I like to wait til the peak is over and the plateau stage hits, whereas with MEM, it was like the plateau stage hit right after the come-up. The alcohol added to the euphoria and joviality I felt substantially without seeming to detract anything. I didn't get drunk, I had about 2.5 beers over the course of 5 hours. I also smoked weed twice, and, like with the DOC plateau, I got high but it didn't seem to synergize at all. This departs from the way DOC works because during the first stages of DOC, if I smoke, it kicks the trip in much stronger, but with MEM this did not happen.

Time passed like this, with me having a really great time, enjoying the company of friends and socializing and doing the things I like to do, and then at around 9pm (~T+5:30) I decided I wanted to add that 4-HO-MiPT. My friend decided he wanted to do it with me, so I weighed him out 25mg and myself 27mg, and we took it orally with some water to wash it down. I still felt the MEM the same as I had since the come-up completed, but really it was quite mild the whole time, so I felt no fear at adding what is for me a solid, but not high, dose of 4-HO-MiPT to the mix.

Within 20 minutes we both started to come up. Our whole timeline and style of our trips was basically the same. In truth, it didn't feel a lot different than 4-HO-MiPT by itself, but it was as if the MEM allowed the positive aspects of it to come through in a much more focused way. From the very beginning of the tryptamine's effects on me, I felt a rising, bubbling euphoria, adding to the mild euphoria already produced by the MEM. Usually with most any 4-substituted tryptamine, I feel a bit out of sorts during the come-up, not in a negative way but just like, I don't know what to make of anything, or what to say, or what to do. This time, there was none of that, I felt focused and articulate even during the come-up. Visuals began to appear, nothing really any different from 4-HO-MiPT by itself though. I'm never focused on visuals with this tryptamine anyway.

As the trip settled into us and we settled into it, we began to just talk and talk. A lot of syntactical language humor was discussed, which is something me and my friend often get into because we both think it's great. Before long my face hurt from laughing so much. I have had this happen other times on just 4-HO-MiPT, but it's not always how the trip goes and it was very pronounced during this one. It seems likely that the MEM synergized in this way to make this aspect of 4-HO-MiPT stronger than usual. I find that its euphoric effects come from both an empathogenic enhancement and from a place of humor; everything just seems so funny on it, and that makes me feel great, as does laughter itself. I was getting some of this sort of thing on MEM as well, before adding anything else, but the 4-HO-MiPT made it tremendously stronger in this regard.

The night went on like this, with near-constant laughter, intelligent conversation, and camaraderie overflowing from our cups. At one point, our other friend who lives there came home from a date and started telling us about it, and it sounded so strange. My tripping friend and I were analyzing his behaviors and the stories about their interactions (which at the time sounded me to like maybe this girl wasn't so good to date, though since then I have met her a few times and she seems pretty cool), and replying to him in ways we thought would give hints about what we were realizing about the situation. Sometimes he was acting so much out of stereotypes and it was weird yet amusing to witness. It was really fun to meta-analyze what was happening while participating in it as well, and that's the kind of thing that happened throughout the night as we were hanging out. Personally I get a lot of satisfaction and pleasure from stuff like that, so for me, the whole night after adding the 4-HO-MiPT was amazing. It wasn't my favorite 4-HO-MiPT trip but it was probably my second favorite.

As the night started to wind to a close and the trip slowly died down, my face and head were hurting from laughter. I started to drink some beer to help me get tired and have a little more fun. Like before with just MEM, it mixed very well. I also find that alcohol mixes well with 4-HO-MiPT so this didn't surprise me. I drank maybe 4 or 5 more beers over probably 2 hours, longer than we had intended on staying up, but why interrupt something great? I got moderately drunk, and I noticed that I was getting a bit sloppy, not in a negative way but I was stumbling over words periodically and my thought process and speech patterns were getting a lot less clear. I didn't mind though as I was also starting to get tired and the trip had more or less worn off other than the post-glow. As the first blush of dawn colored the sky, we went to bed. I fell asleep quite quickly and slept for about 5 hours. Upon rising, I felt a little foggy-headed from the alcohol but otherwise good, and still in a great mood. I spent the rest of my Saturday doing a river hike with the same friend I tripped with, in a place where we basically balance, jump and climb up a mountain river across boulders and logs, including climbing up a large waterfall. It was amazing as usual, and my fog cleared as soon as we got there. My face and even my abs a little were sore from all the laughter, but I felt wonderful the whole day.

In summary, MEM is a difficult drug to classify for me. Honestly it was a bit generic, but quite nice still. There was nothing negative about it. If someone offered it to me, I'd take it again. I'd even try it at a higher dose. But I'd be fine with it if I never got the chance again (which I probably won't). It seemed to contain elements of a psychedelic, empathogen and stimulant, but it didn't do any of them as well as plenty of other things. Overall I found it to be a bit lacking, until I added the 4-HO-MiPT, at which point it really took off. However, I was having a 4-HO-MiPT trip primarily, the MEM didn't seem to color it a lot. I think what it did was it filled in some gaps and focused the trip even more profoundly in the positive/euphoric direction (though I already find it to be profoundly euphoric on its own). I didn't necessarily feel there was a specific synergy happening. But it seems like MEM might make a good 'launching pad' for other psychedelics, as a way to help focus something else more positively. If I were to get some again, I'd use it that way I think.

So that's my experience and subsequent reflections on something very rare. I'm glad I got to try it, especially given its significance as a landmark in Shulgin's research. For a number of hours I had a little piece of psychedelic history modulating my brain, and now I've been able to report on that to the world. I enjoyed it, but in terms of subjective effects, I didn't find it worth using over a variety of other substances that do it better.

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 107201
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 32
Published: Oct 28, 2015	Views: 4,495
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MEM (716), 4-HO-MiPT (342) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Combinations (3), First Times (2)