DOSE:

19 mg

oral

2C-E

(capsule)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

About a week and a half ago (mid-November), I had the opportunity to try 2C-E. Since I was aware of its reputation as one of Shulgin's 'magical half-dozen,' and since anecdotally I had seen it compared favorably to such compounds as 2C-T-7 and LSD, I decided to go ahead and experience it for myself.

I have very few classes this term, so I decided to use this fact to my advantage and take the 2C-E early in the day, starting around noon. I also recruited a friend to act as sitter; we both took notes. I include only my notes in this report, because his notes were sparse and unenlightening.

Before I conclude with the full text of my 5 pages of handwritten notes, allow me to encapsulate what I felt to be the most notable 'take-home lessons' of the experience.

(1) I have previously found that, for me, phenethylamines perceptually tend to be distinguishable from tryptamines because their visual effects are primarily distortions of curvature or of perceived depth. For example, flat surfaces 'breathe.' Tryptamines, on the other hand, generally cause hallucinations of transverse waves moving through surfaces - there is a notable vibration. So I often notice the breathing vs. buzzing of a compound, especially because the buzzing quality of a tryptamine also seems to characterize its body load. 2C-E, for a large part of the experience, behaved like a tryptamine rather than a phenethylamine; I have a friend who said his prior 2C-E experience felt tryptamine-like for him, as well. If you are not fond of the particular tryptamine character I have outlined above, you might want to avoid 2C-E.

(2) I found that this substance - like several others, including my favorite, DPT - had an intense body load, characterized by tightness and pain in the chest. I suspect, from pulse measurements taken during the experience, that my heart rate was around 100-110 beats per minute at times, nearly twice as fast as my usual 60 bpm pulse. This is almost certainly dosage-dependent, but something to keep in mind. And it affected the entire experience, as I spent a portion of it convinced that I overdose constantly. I don't actually believe this, but it was totally convincing to me in my somewhat addled state.

(3) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I found that this substance brought out a coldly analytical, almost ruthless, aspect of my character, far removed from any state of mind I have been in on other psychedelics. A characteristic of this analytical ego was to drop many articles and other grammatical decoration - a kind of impatient curtness. The experience was extremely dark in many ways, but because of the analytical stress, there was very little frightening or discomfiting visual component - this may have been caused by my fastidiousness in note-taking. And this darkness does not seem to have had anything to do with my set or setting. Oddly enough, there was a very periodic characteristic to the insight - it came and went, so that some parts of the notes are silly and uninsightful and others are more focused.

In any case, I think I would take 2C-E again, but most likely it would be with a group of people or with my girlfriend. It was a lonely space to be in, and I think the presence of other (tripping) people might moderate some of the more darkness I felt.

My notes follow. They have been touched up a little for readability in places.

Set: Somewhat sleep-deprived, but good spirits. A bit hungry from extended fast (from previous evening ~midnight). Up for a fun, intense experience. Just finished attending graduate quantum mechanics, where we discussed spherical tensor operators.

Setting: My old dormitory & floor with my former roommate as sitter. Don't live here any more but am comfortable with both old & new folks. Plan to watch a movie or two in the lounge while coming up. Brought mood-relaxing CD's. [Although I didn't listen to any of the CD's, the first 75 minutes or so of the trip were spent watching Koyaanisqatsi.]

1130 (T-): Start meditating to clear mind & relax before ingesting.

1145 (T-): Switch focus to [my friend's] fish - sleep dep. & meditation making me feel slightly unreal as is. Found it very calming: a slow paced, monotonous life being played out before me. I noticed my heart rate slow a bit. Was amused by index of refraction making pebble layer in tank look 2D.

1218 (T0): I take the pill with water. Gelcap, mmm... And start to watch Koyaanisqatsi.

1243 (T+:25): First alert - slight internal warmth. Heart-rate the same. Some tremulousness.

1300 (T+:42): Slight seasick feeling from panning cameras. Stomach flutters.

1317 (T+:59): Some time dilation. Somewhat tingly in the extremities. Same heart rate. Stomach flutters.

1326 (T+1:08): Getting 'motion' sick from time lapses. Slight undulation in visual field. Jaw clenching.

1336 (T+1:18): Some tracers. Clamminess. Drank some water. Clenching in waves with flutters.

1345 (T+1:27): Definitely coming up. Almost tryptamine-like vibration vs. usual phenethylamine breathing. Pupils are gigantically dilated - narrow rims of color around pupil.

1355 (T+1:37): I hate that feeling of having to pee and not being able to. Also the massive drug-induced shrinkage. It feels a bit cold in here. Heat rate is maybe a bit elevated. Slight intensification of color perception. Still feels very tryptamine.

1402 (T+1:44): Sudden feeling of deep sympathy for people and interest in them. Enjoying odd sounds. Green haloes or tinges on many things. Feeling cold & somewhat nauseous.

1411 (T+1:53): Many tracers. Undulation. Everything looks greener (like 'tint' on an old monitor set too high). Hard to concentrate. Articulation is leaving me. Everything is shimmering. Feeling a bit overheated - cold hand from holding water feels good on neck. This really does have a strongly tryptamine-like body load. Walking feels strange - rubbery.

1418 (T+2:00): Notice closed-eye visuals. Definite 'tint' continues. Closed window, put on fleece. Music has helped calm nausea. Can't spell anymore. Feel tightness in chest and as though top of head were slowly boiling off like dry ice. Extreme time dilation. Strong sensuality and vibrant color to CEV's but no discernable shape or form.

1420 (T+2:02): My brother looks different & older every (few) times I see him. Can he say the same? I feel like day to day I degenerate without keeping track and then surface like now. Life doesn't have any steady rhythm or routine. I don't like routine, but I really don't like no rhythm at *all*. Feel neither too hot nor too cold nor feverish nor... But something feels wrong. Little stain on my paper moves in my peripheral vision deliberately like a fly. Paranoid feeling, but maybe I'm always this way a bit (definitely).

1430 (T+2:12): Hard to follow what I wrote 10 minutes ago. Wow! I need to do laundry. Severe time dilation. Basic 'long' unit of time [i.e. length of time that, after it has passed, would make me want to look at a clock] seems to be about 5 minutes.

1432 (T+2:14): Noticed an M.C. Escher tesseract in the texture of the paper. *Wow*! Open eye visuals are happening and I think the level of detail on the paper is not something my eyes can usually perceive. So total hallucination - or rather I'm highly sensitive to the luminance and the green tint [of the paper combined with the green tint from the 2C-E] probably adds some depth.

1435 (T+2:17): Don't feel sick. But tight in chest. CEV's: Exhaling bleaches the color. Maybe smears the vision as well. Breathing in contracts and brightens it. Still feeling tight in the chest and short of breath. Do I just give myself heart attacks every time I do drugs? I might definitely surmise so. At least I feel this way on most really strong drugs. Is it just that I OD all the time? Too much sensory echo to feel own heartbeat - ask G [the sitter].

1442 (T+2:24): Decided to belay that - feels more tryptamine than phenethylamine. Feeling of pain in the heart is very familiar. Heart rate is definitely increased.

1447 (T+2:29): Heart beat seems to have just gone away. Maybe it is beating much too quickly for my damp sense to keep up. Hear the fans and filters [of the computers and aquarium] and - yeah the *fans* like crazy. Whisperingness of being in a shared acoustic (i.e. fluid and constantly communicating) environment. Feel connected to distant things through simple vibrational principles. Definite sense of reductionist triumph. Loss of ego resolves only troublesome part.

1453 (T+2:35): I feel like an old Mexican peasant waiting to be buried. Dessicated and laboring.

1455 (T+2:37): Two faces in G's wall - sense of depth - lower and left is 'in front of' higher and right. Lower is a woman, slightly tired but pious with folded hands like the Black Madonna. Stooped. Upper figure is bestial - canine like a mastiff puppy - or death. Gentle but firm looking and also somewhat oblivious/uncaring. 'Come play with me?'

1500 (T+2:42): I ache. I feel like dead ground meat. But is *not* unenjoyable. It's just like how I've felt on a lot of tryptamines but maybe a bit more controlled-feeling? Definitely not in this state but reminds me of DPT - being so tripped out that vision washed out in achy redness - everything hurt or just made itself known intensely - I didn't know if I was talking or thinking or vomiting or bleeding or what.

1505 (T+2:47): Definitely understand feeling of loving so deeply and selfishly that love == breaking (i.e. pain so strong I would feel it physically and be unable to speak). I love her like crazy. I don't know if it's healthy.

1510 (T+2:52): Feeling of vulnerability. Baby kitten (redundant). Love is entirely irrational. It bodes poorly in billions of 'if-then' scenarios. But so what?

1512 (T+2:54): Strong feeling of identification. I don't understand anyone else but really wish I did. I can't even comprehend someone's experience of a song. THAT ISN'T MY EXPERIENCE. Or at least I can't comprehend it emotionally as opposed to intellectually.

1516 (T+2:58): Feel strongly that science != truth in any sense. Scientific terminology doesn't encode spirit. Yet I feel that one must lead into the other. Cognitive dissonance & heartsickness. Lots of grinding teeth. Painfully tight jaw. Just feel tight *wound*. Basically like DPT. Maybe I *do* just OD every time? That would explain HEART PAIN. Oh yeah, otherwise similarity (essentially lots). [This is actually not really true, except in the physical sense.]

1522 (T+3:04): It strikes me as strange that there should be handwriting experts. They know what it means when I omit the dots on most of my 'i''s, etc. But why can't I write cursive any more (practice)? [I proceed to write a collection of cursive letters, commenting 'like my brother's!' to a capital R, 'childish' to a capital A, and then I write the word 'cataplexy' about 15 times. It seemed like a random word at the time, but it seems somehow significant, in that it denotes 'a morbid condition caused by an
overwhelming shock or extreme fear and marked by rigidity of the
muscles.' Hm.]

1530 (T+3:12): Just spent last 10 minutes writing cataplexy in script. It felt totally alien. Sometimes nice. Curved down and around the paper and back up, like a drugged spider's web. Still feel like I have a dead scar where a heart should be. Can take off this fleece now. Some of the script cataplexy is really sexy writing. The X is very sexy because the shape it makes (the slash) is a nice contrast to the upward 'integral'-like part of the cursive x. Will *now* take off fleece after I have once more written [There follows about 15 aborted attempts to write 'cataplexy' again. None of them met my approval.]

1538 (T+3:20): This is amusing me now. H [a friend] came in. Still somewhat convinced I OD/have heart attack every time I do drugs. I feel kinda bruised and goofy. They're talking about fluid flow and temperature gradient. Nothing worthwhile for other people [I obviously disagree with this now]. But a lot of fun. Could be fun with someone.

1545 (T+3:27): Definitely enjoying biting own lips rather hard. Feeling somewhat erotic. But know I probably couldn't be potent - **too high**. The pain is nice, though (but this isn't unusual - often bite lower lip just shy of cut).

1546 (T+3:28): Ironic feeling of 'soldiering on despite' pain I've all too recently and voluntarily caused myself. Hypocrisy. I feel shallow. I criticize myself either too weakly or too much in a blanket. Either NO GOOD or really pretty okay if not awesome. Lazy and unsubtle I am.

1550 (T+3:32): Makes me think of R [my brother, who is clerking with a state supreme court justice] & death penalty cases. They seem clear cut punishment-wise, but it is definitely an adversarial system such that contrition is ignored because it's a zero-sum game. Trust. But there are always so many shadings. How can one tell what remorse is? Or is it just conditioned behavior? Are the remorseless simply more honest (or alternatively: less craven or sophisticated)? What the fuck.

1552 (T+3:34): Strong feeling of worthlessness. Lots of speculative power and shallow analytical power but not much penetration. Attempting to gain understanding and insight of physics. Like nosebleed blood slowly coruscating through layer of fishtank pebbles. Like pachinko machine. Sick and biological - slowtime - assumption of awareness. Could be dead before it is natural to me. Lazy. Lazy. Unsubtle because I don't teach myself
subtlety. Don't know where to look. Don't care to ask.

1555 (T+3:37): Angry. I don't know why. Aimless. Don't know if I am being unfair to myself or more honest than usual. Either way it is the reality of the moment.

1556 (T+3:38): Reading others' writing always distances one from the reality of a thing. And person at one point in time is fundamentally different at a later point in time. Fundamental alienation from self in time. Body/mind separation: space also. Sense of separation --> cognitive dissonance. Dying all the time. All the time. Now sensing the crisis more than other times (this is consistent). Feeling of slow drowning with occasional surfacing to scream unheard - last several years. Vulnerability. Desire for intimacy without risk.

1600 (T+3:42): HARDCORE TIME DILATION. Also can't add. Focused too much on reality of thought vs. irrelevancy of 1+1.

1602 (T+3:44): Conflict: Feeling of brokenness / worthlessness. Criticism of self for such condition. Sympathetic feeling -- criticism is too harsh (mom, me). Antagonistic feeling -- criticism is too weak (dad, R). Too busy with criticism to address issue (German [tendency] - Iranian is anti-intellectual - grandstanding taken over once-great culture). So ultimately: constant despair. No fix. But knowledge can fix, right? Wrong. Always more to learn. Never instinctual understanding because I have no instincts. Intimacy can fix? Sure. But so risky. God risky. But I love her... And [yet] codependence is bad. Maybe not fixable. Solution: just live. Death sucks a touch more.

1615 (T+3:57): Strong desire to discontinue this avenue of thought. Weakness on own part. Still physically feel like shit. Heart still going pretty damn quick & chest still tight.

1620 (T+4:02): Lips practically bitten through. Time suddenly contracted - time passing fucking *FAST*!

1623 (T+4:05): Just feel really kinda dead. Need not to think about physical pain (lack of sensation in chest & tightness & overall trembling).

1627 (T+4:09): Eyes: NO LESS FUCKING HUGE than at 1345! Nice.

1630 (T+4:12): Right that pulse thing. 84 BPM. Normally ~65-70. I'm sure was much faster earlier. So coronary struggle definitely. Not healthy. But oh well.

1638 (T+4:20): Lips bitten. Yow. Pleasurable. Sharp teeth I have. Phlegmy fatigued confusion. Want to taste blood? Yam yam yam. *Material* me. Distracted by Coupling show from BBC. Very insipid (lots of assumptions of accepting unthinking superficiality) yet really witty at the same time.

1645 (T+4:27): La la la. Bity. Bity. Nice. Focusing on achiness now.

1650 (T+4:32): I feel like dead flesh.

1652 (T+4:34): Don't bite off lips. Yes.

1655 (T+4:37): Need not to think. Hippo's making fun of [my notes'] voluminousnessness (one to many 'ness'-es). Dilating again - time - like underdamped brakes [i.e. the motion of a dash-pot in a shock absorber when the system is underdamped - slow oscillation]. Feel like I could suck my lips off.

1657 (T+4:39): Visually things are totally understated now. Now is phenethylamine-like. Maybe delta-function [the character of the experience as starting with a huge perturbation to the perception of self] is so intense as [for the chemical family] to be indistinguishable. And I've only found far-beyond-threshold experiences to be worthwhile at all. CATHARSIS --> crisis.

1700 (T+4:42): Want to go out. Venture a bite to eat.

1705 (T+4:47): Coupling is funny in a horribly shallow way. Must be omewhat (very) shallow to enjoy it myself. 'How low would you go?'

1710 (T+4:52): Feeling very achy everywhere. Hungry hungry. Enjoying feeling of tension. Same as lip-chewing.

1715 (T+4:57): Time to go get pizza (finally succeeded around 1720 (T+5:12)). Rare to have fun on drugs. Learn often many of the same things I think. Reconsider substances generally. [And reconsider I did, in the positive, nearly immediately - a friend came in and revealed that I might have the chance to try LSD for the first time the next day.] JAWS STILL CLENCHED> But hmm... Acid?

1725 (T+5:07): Acid. Hmm. Need to work. Self-destructive. But acid... God. NO TIME. But gotta make it. [It should be emblematic of how 'down' I was - and how taken up with the notes - that I was not even thinking of 2C-E at this point, yet still taking notes.]

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 28736
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 2, 2003	Views: 47,720
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
2C-E (137) : First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)