Battling the Burn Blahs
2C-B, MDMA
Citation:   The Avatar. "Battling the Burn Blahs: An Experience with 2C-B, MDMA (exp26694)". Erowid.org. Sep 9, 2003. erowid.org/exp/26694

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
50 mg oral MDMA (pill / tablet)
  T+ 1:30 20 mg oral 2C-B (powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT: 160 lb
Saturday night at [a certain summer festival in the desert], the night of the Burn. It was my third year at this incredible, primal gathering, and I decided to try the 2C-B that was floating around our camp. Five of us had split 40mg 2C-B the night before, with little or no noticeable effects. (For me, colors were enhanced and sparkly, everything a little bit magical -- not much more.) That's the thing with 2C-B, though: between threshold and full-blown trip there's about 5-10mg difference.

Those who have attended will understand this more fully, but after six days on the playa, I was pretty wiped out when we started getting ready to head out for the Burn that night. I had one pill of MDMA left, and was planning on splitting it with a friend once we got out there. We had problems with the electrical system of our art car, and after about half an hour of tinkering, we decided with great disappointment to just head out sans lighting and sound (this kind of put a sour tinge on my mood). I had planned on 'skiing' behind the vehicle with our off-road roller blades, but was unable due to said electrical problems. So I just skated out manually beside the vehicle. When we got to the crowd (maybe a quarter of the whole 30,000 had assembled already), I was feeling pretty fatigued and not really feeling up to the partying I knew we would do.

Besides forgetting my bike this year (and thus thoroughly tiring myself out walking everywhere), the other mistake I made was to roll on ecstasy on Wednesday night, in the middle of the festival. This not only made me an emotional void for the remainder, but tired me out even more, so that by Saturday I was kind of a wreck (averaging 3 hrs sleep/night didn't help either). Despite my lethargic, unemotional state, I decided to go ahead and drop my half of the E, hoping it would give me the rush of energy I would need for the festivities. I dissolved the 100mg pill in a water bottle and took turns pulling off of it with my friend, finishing just as the fire dancers came out.

For background, I'm fairly experienced with an assortment of chemicals, including about six times on MDMA (I try to space them as far apart as possible). I have never tried 2C-B, but have a lot of experience with halucinogens like psilocybin, for example.

I was hoping for a sudden rush, the 'Zzzzang!' of ecstasy that would propel me into that wonderful moment, but my fatigue (and MDMA use three days prior) worked against this. Instead the E hit me gradually, and I felt a wavy climb upward toward a relatively mild euphoria. For some reason I was apprehensive, and this feeling abated only slightly, while my energy increased by the same small amount. Overall I felt pretty good through the Burn, but not nearly as good as I should have felt.

By the time the structure collapsed in flames and the crowd began dispersing to various parties, I had finally reached a truly enjoyable state. However, the aforementioned fatigue would not go away, and this was to plague my experience for the remainder of the night. A friend who was on a full dose of 100mg of MDMA (and really loving it, judging by his pupils) and I wandered off to find somewhere to dance. We walked to a meeting point and waited for about fifteen minutes, but never found our group, so we wandered toward some trance and lasers in the distance. About halfway there (T+1:30 for the MDMA) I felt that I was not going to get any higher, and decided it would be a good time to take the 2C-B. I contemplated dosing gradually with water, but then said 'fuck it', and swallowed the 20mg pill. I was only mildly apprehensive, and looked forward to halucinating a bit.

We basically spent the next hour wandering around looking for the right 'vibe', and somehow coming up empty-handed. I think this mostly had to do with my state of mind and lethargy. The 2C-B kicked in just as the MDMA was beginning to wane, about 1 hour after I swallowed the pill. I started to notice that everything (especially the colored lights and lasers) had begun to sparkle and shimmer, and I also had a strange tracer effect. It wasn't like the tracers of mushrooms, where you almost see moving objects in multiple form, but it was as if any bright thing would leave an impression on my retina, which would remain as I shifted my gaze elsewhere. This created the illusion of many scenes (or various angles of the same scene) overlapping at once. It was quite beautiful. The most interesting visual hallucinations included a diffraction effect, where I could see white light spread out into a spectrum or rainbow whenever I shifted my gaze past it. Visually this is a very exciting substance.

My experience with 2C-B was that it was very wavy, in that I was up and down like a mild rollercoaster. One minute I would be feeling kind of despondent or unemotional, and then when I realized this, I would look around at all the pretty lights and instantly I would be back up. My fatigue played a heavy hand in this. Whenever we would walk somewhere, I would want to sit down and enjoy my surroundings after about five minutes. This was much more natural and comfortable to me than dancing. Crowds were overwhelming and I didn't feel any need to move or gyrate my body. Sitting and contemplating the wonderful, sparkling beauty of my surroundings was the most natural and enjoyable thing to do.

Like I said, my trip was different. Wanting to sit and stare probably had more to do with my being tired than any aspect of the substance itself. I could see dancing being the 'thing to do' under different circumstances.

The whole experience lasted about six hours total, and by dawn I was almost all the way down. But the strangest thing was waking up the next morning (after about three hours sleep) and still having open-eye visuals. I remember being confused about the sunlight streaming into the truck I was sleeping in, because it took on a bizarre green glow. The tracer effects were still there until the following night. Mentally I was fairly straight after being awake for about an hour or so. One pleasant surprise was that the 2C-B let me down much gentler than the MDMA would have by itself. My recommendation is to combine these two in the order I did (MDMA, then 2C-B). There was also a nice afterglow for about three days after the experience. I didn't experience auditory hallucinations during or after the experience.

Overall, a very nice experience that I look forward to repeating with a higher initial baseline.

- The Avatar

Exp Year: 2003ExpID: 26694
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 9, 2003Views: 16,105
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MDMA (3), 2C-B (52) : Glowing Experiences (4), Personal Preparation (45), Combinations (3), Festival / Lg. Crowd (24)

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