DOSE: T+ 0:00	200 ug	sublingual	ETH-LAD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 1:15	0.5 mg	oral	Pharms - Alprazolam	(pill / tablet)
T+ 6:40		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

Since I was a young child, I had always been friends with my next door neighbor Billy. But Billy was leaving to backpack around Europe for 5 months (freaking sweet), so we decided we would send him off with a psychedelic trip.

I had heard about ETH-LAD on various online forums and RC websites, and had just attained 25 tabs to try it out. Both Billy and I are fairly experienced with LSD and 1P-LSD, so we thought we could handle a higher dose of the ETH-LAD and decided to take 200ug.

I had read online that the effect profile of ETH-LAD is unpredictable and intense. The PsychonautWiki page also noted that 'ETH-LAD has also been reported to more readily produce adverse physical effects such as severe and persisting nausea, temperature dysregulation, and generalized bodily discomfort, particularly at higher doses.'

Nausea is not uncommon in the world of psychedelics, so we knew we just had to go into it with empty stomachs. I had done that numerous times before with mushrooms and never had any issues; we both expected to be fine.

We live near mountains, so one Saturday morning we set out at 7am and got an hour deep into wooded mountainous nowhere to set up a camp for ourselves. After setting up a tent and setting out all our stuff, we took the 200ug on tabs sublingually at 8:50am.

T+0:40 - At about 9:30, we were standing around waiting for the tabs to kick in. I went over to the tent to get my phone, and when I turned around I found Billy bent over, supporting himself by a boulder. 'The nausea is here!' he shouted.

T+0:55 - I still felt alright for a minute, but by 9:45 we were both bent over just trying not to puke. At this point the psychedelic effects began to set in, and boy were they intense. Colors ran aggressively together across our entire fields of vision. I felt remarkably dizzy and disoriented. It was like getting hit with a psychedelic stun grenade- most everything in my field of vision was blurry and worlds away, but when I would focus a perturbing sense of physical malady pervaded my entire body. Billy was the first one to puke around 9:50.

T+1:05 - By 10:00 I had joined Billy in violently and uncontrollably dry heaving on the ground. The mental effects had increased dramatically, I felt wildly disoriented and my vision was sickeningly unstable and wavering. In my bag there were two 0.5mg Xanax pills that were to be used as trip-killers in case of an emergency. Generally I believe that if something is difficult in a psychedelic trip you should try to work through it and trip-killers should be used only as a last resort before going to the hospital. However, given the violent physiological reaction we seemed to be undergoing, Billy suggested we take the Xanax and I didn't take much convincing. We each took 0.5mg at about 10:05.

T+1:20 - The effects were beginning to reach peak levels and both Billy and I were still badly nauseous. The nausea came in waves; a bout of heaving would usually leave me feeling just generally uncomfortable for 3-5 minutes. After shifting between many uncomfortable positions and trying not to be overwhelmed by hallucinations, Billy and I would take turns retching on the ground. The temperature dysregulation was becoming pronounced; when we would kneel in the sun we would begin to sweat and feel hot, but when we would move to the shade we would feel chilly and long for the sun. Moving was very sickening in itself and could only be done in short bursts. Auditory hallucinations became prevalent, creating a ringing, high-pitched hum that would be distorted by sounds in the environment. The breaking of a stick would be echoed in the hum repeatedly, sounding like soprano helicopter blades, reverberating like ripples in an audial pond.

T+2:00 - The Xanax had made the hallucinations better, technically. It had perhaps brought the intensity of the experience down from a 10 to an 8. Better, not great. Billy and I continued in agony as 30second bursts of dry-heaving punctuated stretches of disorientation, confusion, nausea, and an ineffable feeling of ill-being. For the next several hours these bursts of heaving came more intermittently, at perhaps intervals of 20minutes. It was wildly intense and unpleasant. There was no cell-reception since we were in the middle of nowhere, so there was nobody we could call. Driving would have been impossible, we were too deranged, plus the car was parked about half a mile from our camp and we couldn't walk that far for nausea. I was reasonably sure we couldn't die, and that we would just have to wait for the drug to work it's way out of our systems.

T+4:10 - Billy began feeling better around noon, I had my last torrent of choking, gut wrenching dry-heaving about 12:30pm, and by 1:00 we were beginning to feel downright decent. We still couldn't exert ourselves very much, but time and the Xanax had worked the intensity of the experience down further to the equivalent of perhaps 150ug of LSD. We were able to go on short walks, play cards, and set up hammocks in the trees.

T+6:40 - Both Billy and I are daily cannabis users, so after we had been feeling below average but above ghastly for a couple hours, we decided to fire up a bowl. The visuals of the ETH-LAD had further diminished in the past few hours, but after a few tokes of left-handed tobacco we discovered a pleasing increase in visuals without accompanying nausea. Neither of us felt well enough to eat yet, but the cannabis put us pretty much feeling middle-of-the-road. We laid in the tent and closed our eyes and found remarkably vivid and quick-paced closed eye visuals. It seemed to resemble the cannabis phantasmagoria of floating images and screwy patterns, but it proceeded with astonishing rapidity. Four or five distinct, vivid, and intricate hallucinations would flash before our eyes per second. They ranged from cartoons to geometric patters, to figures beheld in 3D space. Sense of sound was also highly elevated- the forest was imposingly loud and somewhat distorted. This hallucinatory state made for a pretty decent rest of the afternoon.

T+11:00 - By about 8pm we were both sober again and we packed up and left.

Seeing only the harm potential in the tabs, I burned the rest of them when we got home.

I now understand that it sounds like ETH-LAD can have pretty positive effects at lower doses, but holy cow, I cannot recommend high doses. If you want to do a high dose of something, do mushrooms, those are interesting. This was a harrowing puke-fest and the psychedelic effects were more confusing and disorienting than with other hallucinogens I've used.

Also an important lesson- follow harm reduction guidelines- namely, if you're trying a new substance, start with a low dose to see how it affects you and work your way up. Billy and I thought we were experienced enough with LSD to handle a high dose of ETH-LAD, but we didn't take into account just how grueling the nausea could be.

Also worth noting, my friend Billy had been having stomach problems for several weeks prior to this trip and had been experiencing occasional nausea anyways. I wouldn't be surprised if that exacerbated ETH-LAD's ability to produce nausea for him, and then I got nauseous sympathetically. Even so, to any readers, I advise extreme caution with high doses of this substance.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112431
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Oct 10, 2018	Views: 2,757
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