DOSE:

30 mg

oral

2C-I

BODY WEIGHT:

62 kg

Last Monday I took 30 milligrams of 2C-I after getting home from work, having no obligations the next day until 7pm. I had purchased 100 mgs with two friends of mine, the split being 40 to me and to one of them, and 20 to the other. My original purpose for acquiring it was to split 20-20 with a friend of mine who wanted her first experience with psychedelics. When the plan to do so over Thanksgiving break fell through I decided to use my share myself. My original plan was to take 20 mgs (the same dose that I had used when I tried 2C-E), but after one of the others who bought it with me reported less than exciting effects at that level, I decided that, since I had a sitter (My roommate, who I’ll call LTimmy) in case anything went terribly awry, and I could sleep for the entire next day, I’d take 30 mgs instead (I weigh about 62 kgs, so that comes out to just under half a milligram per kilogram). I squirreled away the remaining 10 mgs to combine with the next batch I purchase.

I ingested the dose at around ten o'clock and almost immediately found myself quite queasy. This wasn't entirely the drug, though, as I had already made my stomach uneasy by drinking too much sweet tea earlier that evening. I proceeded to lie down on my side and wait, listening to some soothing music that tends to help me when I get like that. After about 30 minutes I began to experience the beginnings of the body buzz. Within the next 15 minutes the diamond plated design of the refrigerator began to shift and change perceptibly.

For me, drug experiences, particularly with psychedelics are always better when accompanied music (I only rarely have specific effects derived from the music, but listening to it is often nothing short of exhilarating). I turned off the music I had been listening to and put on a record of more appropriate tunes (I've noticed that, while there is significant overlap, I prefer 'lighter' music on 2C-I and 2C-E, as opposed to the music I enjoy when on DXM, for instance, which, while I wouldn't call it 'dark' by any means, it certainly is more so than what I enjoy on true psychedelics). I sat in a chair and sang along as I watched the ceiling ripple and wave. I also spent this time trying to download an album that I had used on a previous trip - but had to return to its owner - and found very enjoyable, but my lack of success at downloading the album made me somewhat irritable (The “real world” never moves fast enough for me during most trips), causing me to snap at LTimmy when he returned from getting food. This was also aggravated by the fact that I was seeing tracers (A first for me!) and his entrance made the one I had been observing go away (The light from the hall was responsible, I suspect).

He left again soon and I proceeded to write him a note explaining what had happened and apologising. It felt very good to do this - to do my best to see that he wouldn't be upset with me (He wasn't exactly a willing sitter. We often trip together, and he was already frustrated that he had no psychedelics to take and had to see me enjoying this; I'd feel the same way. That said, he took good care of me, as always.)

On 2C-E, the body buzz had been incredibly enjoyable and one thing which I had wanted to do and hadn't was take a shower, so as to stimulate as many of those over-sensitive skin cells as possible. I decided not to make the same mistake this time. In the shower was when I first noticed that the body buzz was not as enjoyable as that of 2C-E (my speculation now is that the body buzz was too strong, given the high dose), consisting of the usual increased sensitivity of the senses (smell in particular was heightened, though tactile enhancement was noticeably less than with 2C-E), and an almost ever present tingling somewhere, usually either my hair or my legs, which is where I usually get it. Also in the shower was when I first noticed serious visual effects: the shower curtain was trying to reach out and grab me. I stress, though, that this was not frightening, but rather amusing. I spent a while growling and yelping at the curtain and kicking it before I decided that I was ready to move on.
As soon as I was dressed again I turned off most of the lights and noticed that everything had developed slight halos, mostly of red.

Also, I noticed that the rate at which my eyes registered frames (I hope that explanation makes sense outside of my head) had slowed down significantly. My hands appeared to race over the keys of my keyboard and LTimmy's movements seemed fast and jerky. Observing this effect, particularly his movements, was intensely fascinating. While watching him I noticed his face begin to distort and - unlike similar distortions of his face I saw while we were on 2C-E which were responsible for a period of significant fear on that trip - I didn't find them frightening at all. It is also at this point that I first started noticing patterns that would form, shift, fade, and form again on most surfaces I looked at. I had experienced this to a lesser degree on 2C-E, but nothing coming close to this. After a while of this I moved to the bathroom again, to play with the mirror. On 2C-E, I experienced the majority of my (rather minimal) OEVs while looking in the mirror (the frightening ones were exceptions).
Watching the patterning on my body was an enrapturing experience. It wasn't long before I had removed my shirt so as to observe them on my chest and stomach and arms, as well as my face.

I then moved on to study the way in which my face distorted. With 2C-E, I had seen my face become more androgynous and had also seen pieces of my Father's face in place of mine. I had no control over this, however. This time around, though, I was able to distort the reflection however I liked. I replaced my face in its entirety with my Father's (aside from being rather close, he and I already resemble each other a great deal, which is why this is a recurring theme), I made my image distort into all sorts of caricatures of myself, I even was able to change the complexion of all my visible skin. The latter struck me as a significant achievement, at the time.

When I came back out, tried to explore my thoughts and found, to my displeasure, that I wasn't experiencing much of a change in my headspace. It is for this effect that I predominantly employ psychedelics and its absence was disappointing. I decided to make the best of it, though. After all, I had either consumed or relegated to indefinitely useless over twenty dollars worth of this. I was damn well going to enjoy myself (the days when I could get drugs from LTimmy are long gone. He's really like a stereotypical dealer that way; the first trip was always free, but after that . . . ). I spent maybe an hour (Most of my estimates of time are pretty questionable roughly after the shower; I did my best to remain ignorant of elapsed time, feeling that it would only provide me with a strong-ish grounding in reality, something I had no desire for) looking at paintings on my computer, watching LTimmy, and doing more of the same in the mirror. It was also at this point that I noticed that a particular phosphene that I see whenever I look for them began to change (this phosphene serves as an element of comfort for me on trips, as I can remember having it as far back as Kindergarten). It's appearance became what I can only describe as a 'psychadelicised' version of itself, in the most archetypal sense of the word. During this time I also began to see the vague silhouettes of a friend of mine in my peripheral vision occasionally.

Next, I decided it was time that I go and explore the outdoors. It was late enough at night that I felt like I could avoid close inspection easily enough. This was only my second time outside while like this, and the only other time had been only a simple walk around the building on a relatively mild DXM dose, so I was treading into unknown territory! While outside, I felt like I was viewing everything around me in slow motion, particularly the other people walking about; it reminded me of the effect in movie where the frame rates are tampered with so that the camera appears to be moving faster than it actually is. The moonlight on the wet grass was strikingly beautiful. I found myself chasing after several red lights I saw in windows (They turned out to be 'Exit' signs; I was disappointed), and then I toyed with the idea of walking across campus to visit a friend of mine (It was his birthday) but I decided that the fact that I hadn't brought my phone and would've had to wait for someone to follow into the building was enough to keep me from going ahead with it.

It’s worth noting that I did not consider a fifteen to twenty minute walk across campus a problem; I had no doubts that I’d be able to reach my destination without any difficulties, which is precisely the thing that has kept me inside on almost all my previous trips. I started back for my room and, about halfway there, I felt somewhat fatigued so I found a bench that was nice and secluded and sat down to rest for a few minutes. Here I watched trees reach and grasp at the sky and all sorts of lichens crawl over a nearby brick wall. When I looked at the sky, the stars were unimportant–my attention was fixed solely on the movement of clouds. After my little break, I went back home.

Upon entering the building I was greeted by some rather inebriated girls who were sitting on the steps, drinking (the smell of the vodka, by the way, was strong enough to be painful to my nose, what with the enhanced sensory input). They started talking to me and I struggled to make nice until I could get away politely. Watching patterns crawl all over their faces while they talked wasn't exactly pleasant. Between that and the smell, I was anxious to disengage myself and slip back inside as quick as possible, which I managed to do. LTimmy asked how my walk had been, and I described it briefly to him.

At this point it felt as though I had passed my peak and I decided that I really needed to make the most of what time I had left. I decided to use the technique that has (almost always) proved to be the most rewarding element of any trip: shutting myself in the bathroom with the lights out (It's all but perfectly black in there without them) and letting things happen. Due to the noises from the floor above that had been a distraction throughout the night, I borrowed a pair of earplugs from my roommate and closed the door.

In the past, this technique has succeeded in recovering memories from my childhood that I had repressed, an effect which is one of the main motivations for my use of psychedelics. Aside from the memory fragments, doing this had usually only enhanced already existing background visual affects. And that was how this started. However, once I had the earplugs adjusted so as to block out almost all the noise from upstairs, I began hearing things in my head for the first time ever (that I can remember at least). These started as piping music, but soon developed into incoherent voices. The voices become coherent once the hallucinations started, though, and seemed almost to be mocking, but I did not find their presence bothersome. In fact, I relished in mental shouting matches where I silenced these detractors one by one.

All my previous hallucinations had been either CEVs in which I was able to see intricate images that I found profoundly connected with whatever I was talking/thinking about, dreams in which I merely watched myself in a variety of scenes, or the more mild effects like patterning, halos, facial distortions etc. (The one exception is an out of body experience I had during my first DXM trip, but I remember that trip so poorly that I have trouble using any experiences from it in any sort of analysis) That wasn't the case this time. I found myself in black landscapes where I sought to climb towers that were constructed from pipes of day-glo colors, but could never succeed. Upon realising that I was moving myself in these hallucinations and that I had some degree of control, I set about creating a companion for myself - a cat (This was another thing I had never attempted before). But the cat arrived very quickly, and I spent quite some time petting and scratching him before he lept from my lap and slunk off. I then decided to go back into my head. I was soon watching myself walk through a place of utter blackness (which I knew to be my brain).

After some searching I suddenly found myself in a metallic room where, lying in a dentist's chair, was another me. Standing beside me was a creature which I can only call 'Braniac,' due to his resemblance to the comic book character of the same name. He offered me 'my mind' at which point the top of the head of the “me” in the chair opened up and a rush of images flooded out, within which I was quickly engulfed. Here I found myself with access to every memory I had ever had; I needed only to think of a person, a place, etc. and I would find myself experiencing every memory asociated with it. While exploring this I found myself concious of a deep voice speaking incoherently in the background, which I knew to be that of something else in my head. I immediately placed myself back in the empty black of my head and created a large, thick stick in my hands. I then proceeded to swing it about, smashing things I couldn't see, but could both feel as I hit, and hear shatter (I hope this wasn't my brain trying to tell me that these research chemicals are wiping out a lot of brain cells). I demanded that the deep voice reveal itself or I'd continue, but to no avail.

Eventually, I found myself rather abruptly shunted back into the real world. I decided that I had gone as far as I was meant to for the time being, and just sat there, thinking about possible explanations for what had just happened, during which I experienced vivid visualisations of my thoughts, but nothing that truly struck me as profound.

I emerged when LTimmy demanded to use the bathroom. I felt like I had been in there for twenty, maybe thirty minutes at the most, but his estimation put it at an hour or more. After this, I felt as though the effects of the drug had been drained from me. I suddenly decided to bury my clock so that I couldn't hear its ticking, my reasoning being that I wanted to enjoy the ride down without a reminder that my time was running out. For the rest of the trip I listened to music, admired what visual effects remained, and tried to assemble a cohesive assessment of what had gone on in the bathroom. Around the time that my companion phosphene returned to normal I crawled into bed.

I couldn't sleep for a while and continued listening to soothing music while watching the (normally) unremarkable view out of my window in a sort of drunken awe. Eventually I fell asleep, but I was soon (I think) jolted awake (I literally convulsed as I woke up) by a dream that I can only recall as being very vivid and having a sudden, discomforting ending. After this, I found even the minimal effects that I had experienced before dozing off drastically diminished, and was soon asleep again.

The next day I noticed no sort of hangover (except that I got up earlier than planned so as to have lunch with a friend, and was rather tired that day) or residual effects. This is in stark contrast to my smaller dose of 2C-E; the day after I took that I found myself feeling very detached, and it seemed as though I was watching what my eyes saw from a great distance. I also found music enhanced the day after that trip, to the point of still experiencing some indistinct CEVs at work that day (I was backstage at the rehearsal of an orchestra). It was both unexpected and very pleasant and, luckily, the guy who was working with me didn't seem to notice.

Looking back on it, this trip was probably the best I've had, even compared (in a rough sort of way) to more potent doses of DXM. Compared to 2C-E, I feel that the headspace of 2C-I wasn't as impressive, since on a smaller dose of the former I achieved mental affects that, while not as strong, were close and didn't require my working at them at all. With 2C-I the only profound headspace was achieved when I really tried to force it. The 2C-I trip also didn't include anything I would classify as frightening or upsetting, though this was due in part, no doubt, to my having more experience this time around, as opposed to when I took the 2C-E, which could be quite frightening at times. I feel that, in comparable doses, 2C-E would be a much more contemplative and rewarding (emotionally/mentally) trip. That said, having a companion to talk to on the 2C-E made my mind less prone to getting stuck in loops, so I don't know how the 2C-I trip would've been different if I hadn't been alone, especially since I had the recurring feeling during the trip that if someone were tripping with me, I would've been able to think aloud to them and we could have jointly reached meaningful conclusions. For pure visual effects, I think 2C-I is the better choice.

Also, even though my dose of 2C-I was half again as much as my dose of 2C-I, LTimmy commented afterwards that I was far more able to focus on and complete tasks than I had been with the 2C-E. Muscle tightening, in particular jaw clenching seemed to leave less soreness in the morning than with 2C-E, but that may have been because - knowing what to expect this time - I had gathered a supply of chewing gum to keep my jaw busy, which is where I usually feel it most the next day. I still intend to introduce my friend to psychedelics with 2C-I, both for its more mild mental change and for the social aspect. I hope to acquire another batch before Christmas, and I'd like to try 35 mgs next time (I was actually surprised when my heartrate didn't increase nearly as much as I had expected), preferably with LTimmy who has said that he'd trip with me, but he'd want a different substance for himself.

I hope that this can provide some sort of idea as to what to expect from the experience for anyone who hasn't tried this particular chemical before. Ta!

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 48607
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 13, 2006	Views: 34,727
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
2C-I (172) : Alone (16), Entities / Beings (37), General (1)