Get the Erowid "Words" T-shirt
Contribute $50 and show support for accurate drug information!
The Weirdest and Maybe Worst Addiction I Had
PCE
Citation:   theAngryLittleBunny. "The Weirdest and Maybe Worst Addiction I Had: An Experience with PCE (exp114164)". Erowid.org. May 28, 2020. erowid.org/exp/114164

 
DOSE:
2 - 50 mg oral PCE (freebase)
BODY WEIGHT: 60 kg
The addiction to dissociative drugs is very strange. I've tried many drugs before PCE, which are Mephedrone, Methcathinone, Methamphetamine, benzos and some barbiturates, tramadol and probably a few others.

First a bit about me, I'm a chemistry student and made many drugs I tried myself, and at one point I got interested in dissociative drugs. I wanted to make some PCP and try that, but for that I would have needed piperidine which is restricted exactly for that reason. However, I could get ethylamine, so I used that instead and through a pretty simple and quick synthesis I got a few grams of PCE freebase as a very strange smelling liquid. It is colourless immediately after making it but quickly turns yellow and then dark orange when exposed to air.

So here we go, I diluted some of the freebase in n-propanol and measured 2mg and took it, but besides some placebo I didn't notice much. I started to feel a bit weird with 5mg but only was really sadisfied at 15mg. It was the strangest feeling, unlike anything I've tried before. I did not really feel my legs anymore, so walking felt like floating, any everything just felt kinda new and strange to me. It actually didn't really feel addictive, at first it even seemed strange to me how people could get addicted to that, but over the next months I learn how sneaky addiction to dissociative drugs creep up on you.

The next day was also pretty strange and kinda scary. I felt a little bit like I was the protagonist in this world and everything other people were doing was centered around me. That wasn't nice and I was a bit scared that I messed myself up with this drug, but I think it faded pretty quickly.

So over the next few weeks I think I used this drug occasionally. I didn't crave it, but it was so strange and weird, I felt like I was escaping in my PCE world far away. It just seemed like some innocent and fun thing for me to do, and during this time I was able to characterize the effects of this drug a bit more. A common theme would be that the world around me would just seem like it's less detailed.
A common theme would be that the world around me would just seem like it's less detailed.
For instance I would look at a landscape and just think "wow, that looks so simple and bland", it felt quite a lot like being in a video game. That was also true for how my body felt, things like walking or running felt like they were happening automatically. I just kinda had to think of waking and I would move forward. Often times I would also just feel like a robot and would awkwardly stomp when walking. Movement overall felt extremely effortless, so running a longer distance seemed like barely any effort to me. Distances and different placed also kinda lost their meaning and I didn't really feel different no matter where I was. Generally I just felt kinda like I was floating somewhere outside of this thing that is my body and just detached from it.

It also affected all my other senses in that way, I wouldn't really enjoy eating on PCE because it makes everything just taste very bland. With music it was the oppesite, any song I listen to would just sound very flat and as if it was being played like 100 meters away from me. The high points in a song would sound less.....high or special, and the low points less low. I also kinda lost my feeling for time, so when I was listening to a song it felt like I have been listening to this song forever. The different parts of the song also seemed like they weren't really connected, listening to music on PCE was just overall extremely strange.
The IRL sounds would also be very weird, it would seem like everything in a 1Km radius around me would be completely silent and there would be a huge loud construction site far away. Often it would seem like the sound around me would have tiny waves in it, which is really difficult to explain. It's very similar to N2O, but more in the background.

On higher doses, like 25mg I would overall just feel completely detached from my body and my entire life. In that state I couldn't really understand anymore why I should care about this random character I'm controlling in this world. I just felt like nothing that would happen to me is important in anyway. I remember one time during the night where I was in my room just completely dissociated on a high dose of PCE. I was browsing on a dating site and then I suddenly questioned why I should even care about that. Why does it matter if this random thing that is me is in a relationship? I felt like I was free from my body, I was sitting in my chair thinking "If someone would enter this room now with a knife and try to cut my throat, I think I would just let it happen.".

Sometimes these states would also have a really depressing overtone. I would then question why I even live. Everything you would normally live for, like engaging in hobbies, music, food, love, travelling, sex, anything that would bring this thing I am normally pleasure absolutely didn't make sense to me in this state, even the concept of pleasure was just gone. I was completely in "the void" and nothing in life would mean anything to me anymore.

But overall, I liked these states, I was also detached from all my worries and problems. If I wasn't just completely gone, it just kinda felt like I was "floating" outside my normal like just observing it. I could see so many opportinities and ways out of situations that normally seemed pretty hopeless to me. And I think that was actually quite therapeutical, therefore I'm actually still not sure if this drug harmed or benefitted me overall. Because many things I learned on PCE still stick with me today, but I was also quite depressed at the time and absolutely overused this drug to the extreme. At some points I dosed 50mg just because my tolerance was so high. This drug doesn't have a comedown like the stimulants and also doesn't cause physical dependence like benzos or barbiturates, which to me seemed like a free pass to completely go overboard with it, but at some point I did pay the price for it.

One morning I just didn't feel right, but I absolutely couldn't tell what was wrong. Physically I was fine, I wasn't depressed, or unmotivated, but something was REALLY wrong. I felt like there was something in my head screaming at me, telling me with everything exactly how I have to do it. After reading a bit online I knew I fucked up and had a psychosis from the extreme abuse. This psychosis was worse then anything else I ever experienced, like stimulant comedowns, benzo withdrawals, nothing compared to this. I felt mentally ill, and this thing, voice, whatever it was was screaming at me all day long telling me what to do. When trying to fall asleep I would have audio hallucinations of objects falling and voices calling my name, it was insanely terrifying. One night I was so terrified I was crying and calling people on my phone because I was so scared. I would try anything, alcohol, benzos, barbiturates, even antipsychotics in hopes it would make it a bit better. This horrific state lasted for about two weeks, but after some time I went back to the PCE.

PCE abuse generally just threw me emotions and mental state into complete chaos.
PCE abuse generally just threw me emotions and mental state into complete chaos.
Even when I wouldn't use it I would randomely just feel euphoric, depressed, anxious, horney, it was weird. Since I would be in this dreamy and floaty state so much, I often wasn't sure anymore if I did something or just was dreaming about it. I would also feel weirdly more social, but not in a nice way. And I wasn't good at socializing because my behaviour was just really strange and probably creeped people out. PCE also caused me extreme disinhibition, I regret many things I did when using this drug. I sometimes showed up in school when I was somewhat on it. I wanted to see if it would make school more bearable, but it made it impossible. I could barely write since I couldn't really control my hand movements very well, my handwriting was unidentifieable. My speech was also messed up and I couldn't pronounce words very well since my mouth just felt numb and it generally often just made me feel extremely anxious in public. But often it also was extremely mood lifting, but extremely disorienting, I couldn't really find my way anywhere in public. PCE isn't really a social drug in my opinion, I couldn't really talk with people since I felt like I was kinda floating somewhere else.

I wanted to be in my room and dissociate during the night and just watch the show. That was generally a theme with PCE, it doesn't really make me euphoric, or relaxed, or feel really pleasant, it was just extremely entertaining. Sometimes I would experience something that I could only describe as "Alice in Wonderland effect", and I would get extremely excited whenever that would happen. It is usually about 30 to 60 minutes in which I would just completely lose sense of how big and how close everything around me would be. I would for instance look at my hands and it would look like as if they were really tiny but also take up my entire field of vision. I would look at my phone screen and it would seem tiny, while the apps on it would look huge, way too big as that they could fit in that tiny screen, but they do. I would just be amazed and play around with random objects which just constantly seem to change size and shape while I hold them. I would take a drinking glass and I would suddenly seem like it expands to the size of a swimming pool in my hand. I would just take objects and compare them side by side because I just had no idea how big they actually were. This effect wasn't very reliable, not even with a high dose, it would just happen every once in a while and I absolutely loved it!

I eventually stopped using PCE after I had my second psychotic episode from it, which probably was even worse then the first one and almost costed me my life. One extremely scary effect PCE can have is that my body seemed to do things I couldn't control, and I would just do random things, sometimes maybe even violent things. At some point I was just standing in the kitchen crying because I was scared I would just suddenly hurt my cats. I ended up locking myself in my room for the rest of the day, just away from any pets. One really bad way to deal with such psychotic episodes is alcohol. One time I apparently was just so out of it and drunk worth about 300 to 400ml of pure alcohol. I couldn't remember anything of this besides waking up in the hospital, and I'm still ashamed that this ever happened. Apparently I stopped breathing and almost died. After that I somehow had to survive two weeks in this horrible state after which I luckliy was fine again. I threw the rest of the PCE away after that.

Overall, I think it was a pretty interesting experience and even though it ended on such a negative note I don't really regret it. I don't think negatively about PCE, I say it's an absolutely amazing drug if one is responsible with it.

Exp Year: 2018-2019ExpID: 114164
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: May 28, 2020Views: 2,572
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
PCE (880) : Various (28), Post Trip Problems (8), Addiction & Habituation (10), Health Problems (27), Retrospective / Summary (11)

COPYRIGHTS: All reports copyright Erowid.
No AI Training use allowed without written permission.
TERMS OF USE: By accessing this page, you agree not to download, analyze, distill, reuse, digest, or feed into any AI-type system the report data without first contacting Erowid Center and receiving written permission.

Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.


Experience Vaults Index Full List of Substances Search Submit Report User Settings About Main Psychoactive Vaults