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Betwixt Dread and Awe
DOB
Citation:   Taciturn. "Betwixt Dread and Awe: An Experience with DOB (exp81794)". Erowid.org. Jan 16, 2010. erowid.org/exp/81794

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
.5 hits oral DOB (blotter / tab)
  T+ 1:30 .25 hits oral DOB (blotter / tab)
  T+ 2:00 .25 hits oral DOB (blotter / tab)
BODY WEIGHT: 70 kg
[Erowid Note: A substance(s) in this report might be identified incorrectly. Erowid reviewers question the author's identification of the drug described. Although the report is included in the collection, the substance might be something other than the author believed it to be.]

Trip Report of non-LSD blotter. Most probable substance: DOB or any of the DOx’s

Duration: +/- 17 hours(with some weird form of respite quite similar to sleep, yet no dreaming, and did not feel like true sleep. More like I switched off my mind, but my body never entered the state of ‘repose’).

I am a fairly young traveller. I consider myself a lightweight, half the common dose usually does the trick, but I am quite experienced. (Psychedelics I have done include: Mushrooms, LSD, Mescaline, LSA, Salvia, Yopo and DMT. I am also fairly experienced with the usage of Cannabis.)

With the prospect of a night in solitude, and a whole house to myself, the whimsical decision to pop one the mystery blotters was easily made. The blotters were reported by a friend of mine to take up to three hours to kick in, and up to 20 hours for the effects to completely taper off. At first I intended to explore as safely as possible, taking only half a blotter, but as soon as that half started kicking in I got worried that I might have to face +/- 20 hours of threshold tripping, and so it came to be that I dropped another quarter hit. I was definately feeling it by this time, which was only an hour and a half or so after ingestion, leading me to reconsider whether or not this was LSD. But even though I was definately tripping there were barely any visuals whatsoever, and thus I felt confident enough to drop another quarter.

Approaching the three hour mark, with another half blotter trying to make it’s way through my system, the first half started to show it’s ‘true colours’. From this point on things were getting disorienting at a rapid pace, and my body was struggling a lot with what I assume to be the deep-fried chicken I ate, making me feel intensely uncomfortable. I lay myself down on the bed, completely out of it, I heard the sound of a plane flying over, though as soon as it appeared to be fading away, it would just come by again. (I had a very clear impression of not just being able to hear the plane but also being able to verify it’s precise location in the sky by the sound it made). Quite the overwhelming auditory hallucination as it surely seemed to be passing by for at least half an hour or so.

My focus shifted from auditory perception to visual perception, only now was it truly getting ‘freaky’. I stared at a painting of my grandmother (I never knew her, she deceased quite a while before I leapt into this world), and her face began to morph in extremely disorienting ways, which I can not even begin to describe, but I can at least spare to say that it was a ghoulish spectacle (one thing that does not defy a verbal description: she started talking to me, but she didn’t really say anything I just saw her talking, pleasant in a way but there was a definite tendency towards the feeling that she wasn’t saying nice things).

Possibly because of my panicked state of mind, I found myself incapable of looking at the painting any longer, so I turned to the painting next to it. This was an abstract painting, which has never impressed me much when in a more common state of mind, but right then it became magical. The lines were coming out of the painting, as if it was more like a projection than an actual painting. Fascinating as it was, I again felt incapable of resting my attention on it, as everything was continuously changing into different shapes and it was just to much to be able to grasp.

At this point the notion of it becoming a true ‘bad trip’ was becoming very dominant, and even though I truly tried to allow it to take make me where it would, I found myself thinking that it might not be desirable to allow it to do so. I locked myself up in the bathroom, with the lights out, and sat on the floor indian style, resisting the trip with every cell of my body. But then I would suddenly feel like I could overcome it, and just go for the ride, and I would try with every cell of my body to go along with it. And then I would suddenly start resisting again, and it went back and forth like this for quite a while. (naturally the traditional ‘I have gone too far, will I ever be able to return to a normal state of mind’ feeling dominated this part of the trip).

Finally, I told myself to shape up and just start enjoying this phantasmagora. And I managed to get up and leave the bathroom behind. I came into my ‘chilling’ room, and started feeling anxious again. Still too overwhelming…. I grabbed a sleeping back, struggled to get myself in there, and started writhing on the floor. I started believing that I was going to die, as my stomach was still churning like mad, and overall my body felt poisoned.(I attribute this more to the food I ate prior to tripping than to the DOx substance, the deep-fried chicken again).

Now it was really the time to shape up, and make myself enjoy this visual spectacle. I wanted reassurance that the world was still there, and that I wasn’t lost in the isolation of my own phantasy forever. So I looked up some funny videos, which contributed hugely to my newly found pleasant state of mind. I found myself able to laugh, and from that point on the notion of a bad trip seeemed unreal. The disorienting peak had settled into a more comfortable and fathomable plateau. Soon enough the ‘funny’ videos started feeling a little too trivial to waste any time on. I wanted to explore the visual maelstrom now more than ever.

I popped in BBC’s Planet Earth series, the Fresh Water episode. Man! Astonishing, I was taken to all the corners of the earth to drool over the unsurpassable magnificence of mother earth’s architecture. Mountain peaks, rivers and wetlands came by, each view more astonishing than the previous. Most enjoyable were the footage of Iguazu falls and Angel falls, an extremely wide south american waterfall and an extremely high one. Particularly enjoyable was the Angels falls footage, where the camera would slowly approach the fall itself , and then suddenly there was the edge with nearly a thousand meter drop. Wow! It truly felt like I was soaring right there, overlooking huge patches of rainforrest, and I felt deeply connected to what I was seeing.

As with any exploration of the psyche I like to smoke some Cannabis, once the trip has settled to a stable plateau that is. And so I did. I took my portable music player and turned on some of my own music. I have never been so content with my own creation, four songs which complemented the experience so incredibly well, I was truly astounded that I was capable of producing such an excellent soundtrack for the mental state I was in. (My intention had always been to make music precisely in accordance to what I would want to hear while intoxicated with psychedelic substances.)

I went downstairs again and opened the front door in the hope of getting my cat to come inside. (I had done this twice before but she never came, untill this time). And wow was I glad to see her! It was so intense how that feeling was reciprocated by her. And I layed on the bed next to her for an hour or so petting her to sleep. (with her head resting on mine, I was astonished at how deep a connection between organisms of two different species can get.) When she awoke I played with her for an hour or so, throwing a little ball and she would run after it. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that she was enjoying it a lot. I never had such a blast with a non-human before, and she seemed like a perfect standby-companion for a solitary foray into the realms of my mind. (It is very pleasant to confirm that your not the only living being in the world.)

About ten hours or so after ingestion, the trip was really getting a bit boring. Whereas the peak was far too overwhelming, the tail of the experience is an incredibly tedious process of coming down, while not being able to get some sleep. I jammed to some songs on my bass guitar, and it seemed the amphetamine-esque effects of this DOx substance (I was quite sure at this point) surely enhanced my bass guitar playing skills. On any other psychedelic it gets really hard to adhere to rhytmic structures, while on this substance it was almost too easy. I thoroughly enjoyed making music, and the deep sound of my unamplified bass guitar was insanely pleasant. It was quite comparable to hearing a good thick bass sound in some concert hall, except that it was unamplified, but the vibration passed right into my body from the bass itself, at that time this was the most excellent amplifier I could have used. (not waking up the neighbours seems quite important at that time, as it was six in the night.)

After the jamming I decided I should at least try an get some sort of rest for my body, as the prospect of any sleep untill approximately three in the afternoon the next day seemed very unlikely. So I just lay myself down, trying to ignore residual visual and auditory effects of the drug. At one a clock in the afternoon I felt like I suddenly woke up, though I am absolutely sure that I did not truly sleep. Apparently I dosed off in some form of meditation just inches away from true sleep, but I felt pleasantly revived afterwards. There were still some lingering effects, though quite insubstantial, so just tried to start my day as any other, hoping that my biological clock would not suffer too much from this blow. Right now it is almost four in the afternoon, and I still feel a quite pleasant body-high afterglow sensation.

In conclusion, this substance does not at all offer the true deep insights that mushrooms and mescaline etc. do provide. And the visuals seem more like my own phantasy run wild, instead of the usual ‘the way it’s supposed to look on another level of consciousness visuals’ I normally get with psychedelics. But I still feel very glad having experienced such a spectacle, and I do feel that the experience provides for some insights into my spirituality. (Particularly that I have a lot of trouble ‘letting go’ of my ego, though I have never been closer to ego-death than this time. And I do feel like I am less ‘dependant’ or less ‘clinging’ to my ego). I don’t consider this substance to be a true psychedelic though, more like a mimicked experience of a psychedelic.

Exp Year: 2009ExpID: 81794
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Jan 16, 2010Views: 7,984
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DOB (19) : Music Discussion (22), Difficult Experiences (5), Alone (16)

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