Sickening Yet Quite Pleasant
2C-B, MDMA (Ecstasy) & Alcohol
Citation:   RaverPup. "Sickening Yet Quite Pleasant: An Experience with 2C-B, MDMA (Ecstasy) & Alcohol (exp66709)". Erowid.org. Nov 27, 2007. erowid.org/exp/66709

 
DOSE:
  repeated oral Alcohol (liquid)
  10 mg oral 2C-B (pill / tablet)
  120 mg oral MDMA (capsule)
BODY WEIGHT: 157 lb
This past weekend I tried 2C-B for the first time and had what seems to have been a classic adverse physical reaction, though it was certainly complicated by the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, an anxiety-inducing experience with public transportation, and the consumption of about 120mg of MDMA at the peak. This reaction was marked by coughing, the feeling of mucous blocking my sinuses, and, eventually, throwing up in a garden.

However, after the requisite post-puke napkin, chewing gum, and can of beer, I felt great – full of energy, happy to be dancing, enjoying the arabesque patterns behind my eyes, and quite enthusiastic about everything. Some visual images were intense, not so much of the way they moved or writhed, but simply because of what they were. In all, I would try it again in a more controlled, prepared situation where I could more easily deal with any adverse effects, but I think it would otherwise be quite manageable and enjoyable in public under the right circumstances.

The situation that led to my taking the 2C-B was a friend’s wedding, where an old mate showed up an offered some tablets to myself, my boyfriend, and our friend Kitty. I’m quite sure that they were real 2C-B, small light blue pills that I would estimate at about 10mg. His recommended dose for an evening was two pills, at which point he said “you can start to see the colors in people’s faces”, but as we wound up with only four pills, my boyfriend and I each took one and gave the other two to Kitty. Prior to all this I had had several swigs of whiskey and one of vodka from flasks, several tokes of pot with the groom and groomsmen, and then two extremely strong Jack Daniels and cokes along with sips of champagne and red wine for the toasts. Food consisted of cous-cous, two beef kabobs, and caeser salad, along with a little wedding cake. As soon as I found out about the 2C-B, and that my boyfriend and Kitty wanted to do it for the Halloween party we were attending after the wedding, I stopped drinking, but I had already done a very good job of sensitizing my rather sensitive stomach.

We left the wedding reception at 9.30 and had the anxiety-inducing experience of trying to get a cab in San Francisco on the Saturday of a big party weekend, the one before Halloween. The reception was in the Presidio, on the Western-most side of the city, and we had to get across town to the Castro, where my boyfriend and I have our apartment, to get ready for the next party. We tried calling two companies, both said they would “try” to get a car out to us, but given the rarity of cabs on a Saturday night in San Francisco generally, and being in the Marina specifically, we figured out we would need to go walking and just hope we found one.

The streets were packed with drunken frat boy types and girls in sexy (fill in the blank) costumes, and all of them were looking for cabs too. After walking a good half mile we caught a bus up Fillmore Street, one of the slowest East-West buses, and it too eventually filled up with an interesting cast of characters. We got off close to the Castro and finally caught a cab back to our place. Total trip time for about five miles: an hour and a half. I was not only tired, but in a foul mood since I had wanted to leave the reception earlier precisely because I thought getting a cab would be difficult, and I resented having had to use a good portion of my Saturday night dealing with transportation issues and yabbos. We changed quickly, had a bong hit and did our pills, this was around 11.15, and we set out walking to the next party

I alerted slightly about twenty minutes into our walk, when we went into a corner shop to buy some beer. The lights inside seemed very saturated to me, and I was a little confused by all the shop’s activity, but this could have been the bong hit as much as anything else. It was also during the walk that I began to notice the cough, at first it felt like my sinuses were congested and that this was triggering my gag reflexes. This is a familiar sensation to me, and I’m not sure how much of it is an anxiety reaction and how much of it is an allergic one, the previous week I had had the same reaction after eating some Indian take-out and being nervous about going out to a club, and in that case, and in a few other previous ones, this led to my throwing up. I also have a sensitive stomach, and have thrown up on mushrooms so many times that I can’t do them, while acid will also induce an anxious, semi-nauseated state in me.

When we arrived at the party I felt that I had this slightly anxious, sick feeling under control, but I was also very conscious of the need to significantly shift my mood and thought patterns from the state in which they were stewing. I went into the bathroom and noticed that the swirling wallpaper had a faint vibration to it, and if I stared long enough I thought I could see the movement of the swirl. I went back and sat on a couch in a quieter room and tried to collect myself. It had been about forty minutes since we had taken the pills, with some good walking in between, and I was definitely feeling them come on. I later learned that 2C-B is called “bees,” and now I understand why, I could feel them buzzing through my body, and my teeth seemed to be humming against each other.

The visual effects were subtle, but definitely there in the form of a very faint vibration. I wasn’t wearing my glasses during this time, so some objects were naturally blurry, but I could still tell that they were vibrating due to some other visual perceptual shift. I wasn’t experiencing any flight of thought or definite mental effects, though I did feel slightly detached from the party. I was tired, and mostly what I wanted to do was sit, I watched people come and go, but wasn’t feeling very interactive. I joined the boyfriend and Kitty at the buffet table, but everything there was too gross for me, a bowl of “hot zombie balls,” aka teriyaki meatballs, was brought out, and everything about them sickened me, the way they looked, the way they smelled, the way the little bit of sauce the boyfriend accidentally dripped on my hand tasted, and especially the name. Because of the hot zombie balls I had to go back into the other room and sit on the couch.

About a half hour into the party I was wondering exactly where I was going to go on this trip, and if I was now fully up. I wasn’t really enjoying the experience, I felt anxious, as if I had done a dose of something that was just strong enough to make me feel speedy without also lifting my mood. My stomach was also feeling distressed, and we had arrived at the party just as it was thinning out, so I thought I had dosed myself and now was going to have to find other circumstances in which to deal with it.
About this time another group of friends arrived and convinced us to join them at a private “dance party” in an apartment building about six blocks away.

On the walk there I tried having a conversation with one of our friends and realized that I was really high, I wanted to talk about an editorial piece I had seen in the paper that day, and while the concepts were all fully in my head, I was having difficulty connecting them with words. It was as If I was really excited about what I wanted to talk about, and my mind kept running ahead of the words. I also noticed that the sidewalk seemed to curve out at the edges, as if I was looking at them through a fish-eye lens. When I moved I felt rolley, and told one of our friends that I was now getting my sea legs.

Though I was feeling sicker, and having more incidences of coughing that caught the attention of my travelling companions, I did not feel out of control of the experience as I do when I’m about to throw up on mushrooms. I thought that I might throw up, but it was not because of some mad rush of whirling chaos around me, rather, I was quite clear headed, though a bit giddy, and was able to separate my sick feeling from any kind of mental effects the drug was having. It had just upset my stomach and provoked some kind of anxiety reaction based off my earlier mood, this was quite clear to me, and at no point did I feel overwhelmed by any kind of mental anxiety. I just wanted to be sure I knew where the bathroom was.

The party was completely packed when we arrived, a very rockin’ electro/breaks/hip hop dance party with DJs, wall projections, a fairie light garden, the works. I was really thrilled to be there, but found the packed dance room a little overwhelming, mainly because of the heat and very loud sound. I tried to find a comfortable place to sit, chatted a little with Kitty and the boyfriend, and even danced a little bit, but I couldn’t shake the sick feeling. At one point I coughed and something came up in my mouth, I went outside and spit it out.

Though I was having subtle visuals and could feel that I was high, I thought that maybe I had taken too small a dose to “break through,” so I decided to push it with a capsule of about 120mg of powdered MDMA. There was a little bit of MDMA dust on the capsule, and the taste of it gagged me. Within about five minutes I felt a rush, and my visual field was broken down into jump cuts from one object to the other. I had a vision of myself out in the garden, throwing up, and the next thing I knew that’s what I was doing. I was inches above the seething leaves, and I had my first moment of panic, what if I had just really overdosed myself. I puked hard, bringing up food and a lot of bile and liquid. My boyfriend came over to check on me, and after I was able to blow the vomit chunks out of my sinuses, chew some gum to get rid of the taste, and wash all the rest back down with a beer, I felt absolutely great.

We danced for about another two hours, and though I could tell that I had completely wasted the E, I otherwise was quite happy. When I closed my eyes I could see pulsating purple and gold arabesque patterns, and some visuals, like those of the horror movie being projected on the wall, and Kitty’s rather demonic paper mask, were too intense for me to look at. They were not disturbing in the way of hallucinations, but the intensity of what they were representing was too much for me. I also found it difficult to look people in the face during this period, as though looking at them was too much for me to focus on.

When we left the party and were back onto the street I could tell I was high simply from the feeling of very clean enthusiasm I had for everything, my boyfriend complimented me on being such a party trooper for being able to throw up and still carry on, and I was quite proud of this myself. The jitters and body buzz were all gone, and I thought I was coming down. When we went back to my apartment we all did some MDMA and, though I felt a weaker onset than I usually have with it, I did get into a very pleasant, contented state. Because I was so tired, and also a little played out from the puking and dancing, I mostly laid on the couch for the rest of the night. The feeling of social detachment continued, but I was okay with it, I could lay on the couch and chill in my own headspace and come into the world when I wanted to, but I was also okay with just letting the boyfriend and Kitty hang out. I was much more about enjoying the feeling of comfort than anything else.

Given all that preceded the experience, as well as the additional chemicals that were brought to bear on it, I’m not completely sure what I can attribute directly to the 2CB. I did seem to have the classic unpleasant body experience, but after the sick part was done, I felt very good, much as I do after puking on mushrooms. Since I threw up the MDMA before it had a chance to really get into my system I think most of what I felt afterwards must have been from the 2C-B, and I think it must have been a full dose in my system by that time. There was an ecstasy-like quality to it, in that I felt very happy, excited, and really connected with everybody at the party. There were acid-like qualities to the visuals, but I did not feel any real overwhelming mental trip aside from my anxiety about doing this new drug and also feeling nauseated by it. Mostly I wondered when I would really start to trip, not realizing that I was already out past the moon.

I would definitely try 2C-B again, but would wait an hour or so before venturing out after dosing to see how it’s going to make me feel. I suspect that, having thrown up on it once, I’ll probably throw up on it again, though now that I know what to expect that might be easier to deal with. I would very much like to find something that can provide the ebullience of E without being so much of a sledgehammer, and something that can provide the delightful aspects of acid visuals without the risk of the entire world melting away and not solidifying in quite the right way again. 2C-B seems like it might have these qualities, and it’s certainly worth it to me to throw up again in the name of scientific research.

Exp Year: 2007ExpID: 66709
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 27, 2007Views: 12,004
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2C-B (52) : General (1), First Times (2), Large Group (10+) (19)

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