DOSE: T+ 0:00	60 mg	oral	2C-I	(powder / crystals)
T+ 0:00	repeated	smoked	Cannabis
T+ 0:00	repeated	inhaled	Nitrous Oxide
T+ 168:00	60 mg	oral	2C-I

BODY WEIGHT:

75 kg

I had tried MDMA 2011-2012 but only properly experienced it in April, and since then have had it many times and Mkat/similar. With that, I’ve started using nitrous oxide and weed occasionally too, but really am interested in exploring what drugs have to offer, especially with altered states of consciousness. I tried half a tab of LSD acquired online at 4am after a night out having dropped MDMA 5 hours early and drank a little, so did not get a “representative” experience of this, just had minor wall-breathing visuals, nothing intense as a pure hit of LSD must be like. Since then I’ve tried diphenhydramine and 2C-I twice and enjoyed the wall-breathing effect experienced before, plus fits of laughter, and even some closed eye visuals after a nitrous oxide canister listening to some Justice first time around. This led me to designating a time in my head during the early stages of a house party to be alone lying on my bed in darkness to explore this further, resulting in an experience which felt like it was literally mind blowing, causing me to shout out loud “OH MY FUCKING GOD!” during the vocal build-up in Knights Of Cydonia by my favourite band, Muse (which has since become my favourite song by them).

It’s safe to say I’m a budding psychonaut eager to try all kinds of methods to reach altered states of consciousness and have kept a dream diary to help attempt lucid dreaming before even considering taking drugs for any purpose. I’m well aware of the importance of set and setting but with experience have found myself to be fully at peace with myself and in control of my brain enough to be able to prevent myself from having unpleasant thoughts pervade into my trip (i.e. when hearing other people wretch during the trip, it can sometimes instigate feelings of nausea in me also, but I’m quick to shrug them off).

I decided I would take 2 doses when I got home. I recall reading somewhere that people have had no health issues exceeding the “strong” dose of 25mg by quite a lot (about 100mg) and during a gig with friends on MDMA. When I purchased the 2C-I from my friend, after making many in the past with scales, he always made bombs up in front of me by eye, which he estimates to be 25-35mg. My first experience taking a double drop was with a friend with no prior experience with psychedelics but a strong desire to do so. I figured a single dose of 2C-I would not be too hard on him for his first time, however he seemed to feel as intense as I did on my double dose and could see dead body parts. I’ve never heard of anyone seeing any kind of human-like hallucinations at all on a regular dose of 2C-I, but it is worth noting that this friend was in quite a bad place at the time mentally. While he was uncomfortable for most of the time and occasionally put imagery of dead body parts into my head, I ended up guiding him towards seeing positive imagery like smiley faces which I could somewhat see/was making myself see, notably during The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song by The Flaming Lips, which was glorious. After the trip, my friend said he didn’t really enjoy it, but was glad he did it and liked the experience and would like to repeat it when he’s sorted himself out. Being a fan of all drug experiences even when virtually guaranteed to be unpleasant as in the case of diphenhydramine, I found it interesting and enjoyable.

Having double dropped, I found the come up time significantly reduced from the typical 1 hour of dormancy followed by another hour where senses heighten and visual distortion starts to occur. After approximately 30-45 minutes after taking the 2C-I around 00:20, I noticed my wallpaper and ceiling patterns start distorting quite suddenly. I was also surprised to see people and parts of people out of the corner of my eyes before my friend had come up and seen similar things, albeit dead versions. None of the people I could see appeared dead, they were either neutral or at times felt like there were people around me in a comforting way. I also don’t think I told my friend about the people and therefore implanted the idea of seeing dead bodies when he came up, although it is possible I am mistaken.

For the rest of that night, up until about 7 or 8am, all senses were distorted in the “usual” way, but cranked up. This is as extreme as I’ve ever felt anything like it, although I imagine it was amplified by the fact that all senses affected each other. Patterns in wood and wallpaper would breathe and oscillate, the sizes of objects shrink and expand and specs of dirt or crumbs flicker all over the place. At times audio would seem regular, at times it would feel like it was coming from random directions, at times feel like it was orbiting in an eclipse around my head like stars above a cartoon’s head. I had had a minor nose bleed at the gig earlier in the night which I believe helped the smell of weed get stuck up my nose which was quite unpleasant towards the end of the trip, as although smell was heightened, the audio, visual and sensual amplifications over-powered the sense of smell. At one point I took a bite of an apple which I was ecstatic about – it was the best an apple has ever tasted in my life. This was happiness was cut short however, when the bulk of the flesh had gone and all I had was bits of skin in my mouth which felt horrific and I coughed/gagged on slightly. The physical sensation over my body was incredibly intense. At times it would feel like waves of energy shaking and pulsating through my body – from top to bottom to top; top to bottom, then starting at the top to go to the bottom again, the reverse of that, left to right (and vice versa) and at times, any combination of any of those bombarded from all angles. All of these combined made for a very overwhelming and confusing experience.

All of this confusion made me feel quite mad. Approximately every minute, 20-30% of that time I could have a coherent train of thought talking to myself in my head, thinking about what is going on or what I may want to do. This often gave me the illusion that maybe I was coming down as I had a brief conversation with my friend about how we were feeling and could explain it quite well, only for the same kind of conversation to crop up again 30 or so minutes later. These experiences and confusion led to a lot of insane short bursts of laughter at my own “insanity”.

These thoughts would then lead on to the most important part of the whole trip for me which I repeatedly referred to as “the loops”. At its core was the loop of whether or not I was insane. When able to think straight, I felt sane and being able to think as such seemed to confirm I was. However I knew that shortly I would be too overwhelmed to be able to think straight again, and so would become insane again. I’d think it was OK as it was only the drug causing this, but this would contrast with the fact that I took the drug knowing full well what would/could happen, and I made this decision when completely sober and sane. Yet it seemed that only someone who was insane would put themselves through the experience I was going through. Despite this confusion, I also found it very riveting and intriguing to be having such paradoxical/philosophical qualms and this was something I would feel I championed on my second double dose of 2C-I.

As well as thoughts looping in my head, physical imagery would also loop. This was amplified enormously by nitrous oxide. At one point after a hit, closed eye visual distortions of my room began to swirl around, with no apparent beginning or end. Eventually this would make my head feel like it hurt, and I could picture myself with my hands pressing down on my head, which again would shrink and trail with echoes of it continuing to loop. As I became aware of this, it just made it harder to think about and started the process again.

Early on in the night whilst lying down eyes closed with my friend sat at the end of my bed, another friend who had previously been in the room with his girlfriend would appear to be next to me smiling and chatting with me. This was somewhat easier to imagine when my eyes were partially open so some light could come in and I could visualise my bed a bit better, but fully opening my eyes would allow me to see that friend was absent, and only my other sat on the bed was there with me and the glimpse of people I could see out of the corner of my eyes created by objects such as my electric drum kit.

I went upstairs to use the toilet with significant events happening 3 times. Each time I urinated, it initially felt painful, then would change to feel extremely powerful, with these feelings looping until I finished. Although it could have been the drug, I’m pretty sure the second or third time passing urine was extremely long. Stains and specks on the toilet bowl and seat would appear to be moving and occasionally look like it was splashing as if it had come out of me, which was a bit off-putting at times where the dark specs looked like blood. It also looked like my urine was echoing/trailing/had split into three streams and I initially feared I was pissing all over my bathroom. I became fairly confident I wasn’t, but despite this still felt like I was pissing down myself at times, but as if the urine/a liquid were coming from my pockets above my penis. This was not a negative experience however; it’s an experience which could not be felt otherwise and the whole reason why I experiment with drugs. I did however often feel like people were around me waiting to go in the bathroom, watching over me, or standing right behind me. If I saw anyone, it was a small glimpse as before and not too bad. I felt more uncomfortable about thinking my housemates were out on the landing or stairs and I could hear them talking though they weren’t actually there, they were downstairs. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t them talking from downstairs I could hear as one of them was sleeping at the time.

The first time leaving the toilet I had a heart to heart with my wall next to my stairs, exclaiming to the wall and my friend how he was always there for me to put my hands against to help support me walking down the stairs whenever I got into drug-induced states of poor balance. Whilst other warm feelings such as these at silly things often would have me be aware of what I was doing being silly and maybe cliché of being on a drug and make me laugh at my own actions, at this point it felt very sincere and I really like and appreciate (almost love) the wall even more than I did before. The second time I was pleasantly surprised to be able to walk down the stairs without the wall’s assistance and was again fooled into thinking that maybe I was coming down a little bit. The third time I had friends at the bottom of the stairs and decided it would be easier and more fun to sit on the steps and slide my bum down each one. This was pure euphoria and I closed my eyes as I went down each one, feeling like I was going up and over down the same hill in a sunny field visually similar to the scenery in the teletubbies without the teletubbies being present, Teletubbies being a UK kids TV show in the 90s. I was very sad when I reached the bottom of the stairs!

Throughout the night a couple of joints were shared between me and my friend. At one point when one was not lit up at all, I felt like I had one in my hand and was smoking it, despite knowing my hand was empty. At one point when I was holding one it looked like it was skewing and going through my fingers, and I couldn’t feel it either. Me and my friend spent approximately 15 minutes smoking an unlit joint. We occasionally expressed doubt as to whether it was lit, but was fairly certain it felt warm at the end and that we were smoking it, only for our doubts to be proven right when another friend came in and laughed at us for what we’d done. We didn’t mind though, as it seemed like we were smoking it at the time, and that it just lasted really long!

By 5am-ish, the amount of coherent thoughts increased from about 30% to 60% and again I felt like I was coming down. Though the peak had probably gone, it had only subsided a little and I was definitely still tripping balls. On a single dose, I usually find on regular doses of 2C-I for there to be two distinct parts of the trip. Though people describe 2C-I as a mix between LSD and MDMA, I’ve never laughed as much as I do in the latter part of a 2C-I trip (once the visuals have subsided) on MDMA before.

For this “giggles” part (roughly half) of the trip, we decided to put Flight of the Conchords on. While I believe every line and delivery of the show to be acted brilliantly deadpan while sober, on a double dose of 2C-I, this translated into laughing at every single aspect of the show. It was brilliant! This eased my friend who had been tripping badly, although he did keep asking me what I was saying, as I often mumbled and laughed along to lines that the characters had either just said or were about to say. At one point, it seemed like the actors’ faces were moving like the effect in A Scanner Darkly. Another scene outside where the characters looked especially sad had us convinced that it was raining, but it turned out it was not! A lot of these episodes were watched, and some of them were slept through, drifting in and out of sleep. I’d say by midday I’d had about 2-3 hours of patches of sleep and felt a bit exhausted, but generally good. No sensory overload as before, but still could see minor parts of the ceiling moving.

That was on a Monday night/Tuesday morning. A few days later on a Friday night, me and my housemate, S, had been drinking (him more so than I) when we decided to both double-drop around 2am. Around 2.15 I said we should do some MDMA if don’t feel anything by 2.45 from the alcohol in our system slowing it down, but by 2.30 I was tripping hard with the ceiling patterns being more violently merged and bending than ever before. We started by watching the first episode of Flight of the Conchords but by the time it had finished could not concentrate on another episode. This first hour was much like the night before, however with less imagery of people in the corner of my eyes and more generally lunacy from us walking around the house laughing at how we were feeling and thinking and the state we’d got ourselves into. S had been texting his girlfriend who came around at about 3.30. I got the impression she was worried about him and started tidying up some junk mail that had ended up strewn across the hallway. From here on in, the confusion and inability to make my mind up was very apparent. I wished to spend more time with just me and S being the only people awake in the house both on the double dose feeding off of each other’s lunacy, yet I was also happy for him who I’m sure appreciated his girlfriend being there for him if he needed it. I appreciated her kindness in starting to tidy up, but saw it as both futile as it was likely more would be created before the night was through, and unfair on her to tidy up our mess.

I spent the most of my night from there on in by myself with a far more profound and introspective trip than before. This itself was very characteristic of the loops/paradoxes that confounded me before and all night. How could it be possible that I could have such a deep and meaningful trip when I spent 70% of the time confused and unable to come to a decision as to what to do? As this happened I felt the urge to write a lot down on paper, ripped up cardboard box that had had nitrous oxide in, the back of a boiler manual and kitchen roll as well as 5 notepad text documents. I’ll expand and describe on the thought process I tried to capture at the time and can still remember from the time as it is currently 24 hours after ingesting the 2C-I that I am writing this up.

Initial things I realised was how being alone made it much harder to have direction in the trip. With someone else around previously I was distracted from making decisions by trying to help my friend not bad trip and concentrated on picking songs to play (which was incredibly hard). Early on I felt like the character in Fresh Meat called Vod who is very fidgety and often nervously laughing as a result of her drug abuse. From here on in, my emotions were often like that of a yo-yo. Whilst typing up these feelings, I’d find it funny and then depressing, worrying about my own mental health. Despite the intoxication I could still type quite quickly and would flick between these states of genuine happiness, nervous laughter and depression every couple of seconds/words.

I’ve always loved music and I’m pretty sure I’d commit suicide if I were to fall deaf. Early on I was listening to an iTunes genius playlist of the song True by Spandau Ballet i.e. 25 songs of cheesy 80s pop many would be ashamed to admit they like. At one point when I was typing I found myself being a bit anal and trying to correct mistakes which seemed a bit pointless and worthless whilst under the influence, but then again I felt like I had to do that as it is part of my character to be anal with spelling and grammar (although this often meant a ridiculous overuse of punctuation). I repeatedly felt comfortable accepting this about myself though. This was characterized extremely during a saxophone solo in a song (I believe the title song True by Spandau Ballet) where I felt I was also soloing, except with my typing and punctuation. I wasn’t just copying the rhythm of the sax solo however; it was like it was my own unique solo played on the instrument of my typing keyboard. This also evoked with it imagery often associated with a sultry sax solo – to the right of my vision I felt like I could see a burlesque dancer like Dita Von Teese beside me, making the whole experience strangely erotic. Around this time I also found it funny that I kept thinking of great things to do i.e. finish reading Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, many songs I wanted to listen to or films to watch, but I felt like a dog excited by everything over and over, never being able to have a long enough attention span to end up actually deciding on what to do – another slightly frustrating and confusing loop. The songs Uptown Girl, Relax and You Sexy Thing made me chuckle and dance in a way which made me chuckle some more. Whilst I chuckled at the cheesiness, I also chuckled at the fact that I have them, but then realised it’s because I actually do love the music on its own merit as well.

My views on life and existence were challenged a lot by the loop/cyclic nature of my thoughts. Towards the end of the night (around 6.23am according to a note) I wondered whether one of my thoughts I had when I first double-dosed. I concluded there was no way of knowing for sure, but that I must have done, because the thought was mine and even if that was the first time I consciously thought of it, it came from my mind somehow. No-one told me to think it, so it must have been my idea, yet it can’t have just come from nowhere. This made me feel as though everything has already happened or is somehow inevitable and that choice is an illusion, as I will act however my personality dictates, rather than picking between options as my personality will pick whichever suits it. This lead to many discussions with myself about taking more drugs.

At one point I thought about taking some diphenhydramine I had in my room, or Salvia, or MDMA. Part of me couldn’t decide which drug to take (which would be the most interesting/enjoyable/not dangerous) and part of me felt that it was a bad idea to take a drug in case of an adverse mix causing me to die. As I had already taken a drug to be the way I was, I felt that it was inevitable that I would take another, as it’s my nature to be curious and experiment with things such as drugs. The longer I didn’t take any drugs, the more I felt like “if I was gonna do it, I’d’ve done it by now” but the more I felt that, the more it spurred me on to want to take more before I completely came down from the 2C-I.

This also lead to writing various notes about what I was contemplating taking as a safeguard in case someone found me unconscious so they would know what I’ve taken. This also led to comments about not caring if I died and that I still don’t think there is a meaning to life, yet also feel like music is life, and that music is me and I am music. I came to the conclusion that as there is music for all moods with all kinds of lyrics and imagery, it can represent anyone, and music will still be here when we die and will transcend life itself. Again, contrasting with this I felt like my thoughts were really pretentious, cliché of a drug experience and therefore not genuine and pompous.

One of the funniest loops I found myself in was in relation to myself using mouthwash. I was worried it would be intense on my mouth, and when it wasn’t, had more. Then I had the trouble of disposing it somewhere in my room, until I found a cup. I couldn’t be bothered to move it from my room, but thought it would be dirty to leave it in here, in contrast with how I clearly am not dirty as I wanted to use the mouthwash. I went to pour it away in the kitchen sink but thought it would be funny to leave it out to confuse someone as to why there is a cup of mouthwash on the windowsill. Again this seemed ironic from someone trying to be clean, so I wrote a note on kitchen roll saying “Too depraved to be clean” which was bit of mind fuck for me again thinking about my actions being a result of a drug which I chose to experience the effects of. I feel the best way to sum up the feeling of it all is with another loop/paradox – double dosing on 2C-I is akin to consensual rape. The feeling is so intense and overwhelming and mind-fucking I don’t think anyone in their right mind would want it, yet I chose to do it so I must want it (and in my case having already felt it once before).

I was surprised to find this much about myself, though also felt like I already knew it all anyway and it’s just reaffirmed me and made me happier as a person. I can see how if I was not happy with aspects of my life this could force you to come to terms with yourself or encourage you to make a change afterwards. Though I’d like to experience a more regular dose of 2C-I again and imagine I will double-dose if I don’t come across a similar better experience, I have no desire to do it in the near future as I’d imagine I’d have a very similar experience and feel very fulfilled from the trip.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 98368
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Feb 20, 2013	Views: 4,995
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2C-I (172) : Small Group (2-9) (17), General (1)