DOSE:

27 drops

oral

2C-I

(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

64 kg

I learned a lot about myself this night. I took between 10 and 15 mg not so carefully measured of 2C-I, (it was 27 drops) a hallucinagenic drug and went to a Tool concert. I went with two friends, one a guy named D. who had 37 drops in his water because he's done 2C-I several times before, and one friend named N. who didn't take anything and we didn't tell her that we had either.

We drank our 2C-I desolved in bottles of water. We were in the first section at the concert, front and center within the first 5 rows I'd say. The stage was about 5 or 10 feet away. It took a while for the show to start, and I didn't really feel too many effects yet. The woman next to us had red eyes. I don't know if that was real or not. I think she was just weird and wears red contacts though honestly. It wasn't a big deal, but I thought it might have been my first effect. When the show started the lights went black, and I saw the rack of lights above the stage coming down, like the whole rack moving down toward us, and after a few minutes I realized I was probably just imagining that.

We were standing right in front of the drumset, and I had a railing right next to me. It looked like metal which had been bolted into the ground but when I touched it or put weight on it I thought it moved. I couldn't tell though because by now my hands were somewhat numb. For the rest of the night my lower back, knees and my jaw especially felt like they were made of clay. Often times I would force myself to unclinch my jaw because I was biting down so hard enjoying the euphoric warm clay feeling.

When the show actually started the singer came out with a Mohawk, in a bright orange flurecent sweatshirt, state trooper glasses, and a breathing mask like a surgeon, or someone afraid of SARS but with an angry monkey's mouth on it. It really freaked me out but I think it was really there and would have freaked me out no matter what.

My entire body felt like it was made of warm clay. It was great but I couldn't feel myself breathe or swallow. When a song came on that I knew and I'd sing it, I wouldn't run out of breathe. I knew something must be wrong, that it must just have been an illusion and that I'd better control my breathing before I passed out. But I indulged a little a few times in shouting with no restrictions, as loud and long as was my will.

Throughout the concert, I first of all was blown away by how awesome the songs were. On a sober level even, but especially when just letting go, I was amazed by how good those songs were. Anyway though most of my trip was inside my head. My body felt weird yes, and I did see some things strange too. There was a huge backdrop of the 10,000 days album cover, it's such a weird picture anyway, and it was covered with all different colored lights, but I could swear it was getting bigger or coming closer.

I turned my body slightly to the left to face the guitarist and singer and it was throwing off my depth perception a lot because my point of referance had changed without me realizing it. The bar I used to literally keep a grip on reality disappeared. How had I drifted so far away, why did the stage look so different? But I realized eventually that I just needed to face the other direction to be ok. I, unlike D., didn't have many visual hallucinations. He asked me several times if static objects were moving, if the walls were breathing, and he also seemed to be confused and unaware what was going on at times.

I freaked out a little when the singer's arm band began to look like a giant bug but it lasted maybe half a second. The show was so sensory over stimulating. The huge monitors behind the band constantly had vivid strange images on it but Tool videos are crazy even if you're not on drugs. They feature aliens, or just ugly, freakish people doing weird things, like levitating, or performing autopsies, or acting like animals. Mostly though they just had a lot of pictures with eyes, or veins and weird geometric shapes.

I was thinking that most people contrive significant meanings for these things, but I understood them to mean that they were totally arbitrary. Like 'this shape means nothing, these creatures mean nothing and we could have put something else in this video that was a different color or shape and it'd have the same effect.' So step one there was realizing that it all meant nothing at all. This thinking led to an inner quantum mechanics discussion about how matter itself fades out of existance constantly. The only tangable reality is what's made of thoughts when it's observed consciously.

So I kind of decided what I was seeing was nothing, and I thought that about the notes in the songs too. I am always trying to figure out crazy patterns to write 'the perfect song.' And I guess you could put any notes after eachother and make it work and it doesn't matter because there's no perfect song. They're all kind of meaningless, and I just have to do what I like instead of relying on mathematics or something. Life shouldn't be a science.

On the otherhand I got so into the songs, that I felt each one was a new dimension to which the band had opened up a gateway. Because the song was so weird and different from conventional music it was on a linear path no one had ever taken before and we couldn't appreciate the new dimension because it was just too different. This made me think that people are afriad to be different, and that we repeat the same thing everyday over and over for years and generations even though we have infinite possibilites. I think I may have connected too much with the songs. Even days later I still feel that they were so powerful. They made me feel something incredible.

Some points in the show I couldn't stop giggling even when the band was trying to be serious and I really wanted to. D. couldn't help it either, nothing was funny, but I just couldn't take the smile off my face, and occasional giggle or chuckle. Other times though I'd look back to my right and there was a wild mosh pit going on. It was like a tornado, or like the standpede from the lion kind that killed mufasa. I wanted no part of that.

My most troubling thoughts came when I got too deep into my own mind. I was thinking that there are some things in my life which I was convinced I could beat on my own. I thought of a girl that I was friends with in high school, then I was in love with, and dated only for a few weeks before she broke up with me. I told people I got over her but I didn't because I never faced it. I was just pushing her to the back of my mind, replacing with with other girls. Since I wasn't actually depressed and I had excepted that she wasn't a part of my life anymore I took that as being over her. But I was wrong.

While I was dating my last girlfriend all I could think usually was that I didn't like her anywhere close to how much I liked the other girl, and that it was just a crappy relationship and it wasn't what I wanted. I didn't confront the problem for the last few years because my friends got tired of me whining about her and I thought it was the responsible thing to do, to just force myself let go.

It showed me just how complex my brain truely was. Or rather, simple in fact. I can push her to the back all I want. I don't have to be depressed about her, but she's still in there. My brain was saying 'You can't beat me.' 'You truely can't solve all your problems by yourself, can you?' It's not that my mind is so complex, it's that its so simple and everything is right there. It's like I was trapped in a room (my mind) with my problems and now I'd have to face them. One example was this girl, but she wasn't the only thing, it means all problems that people cover up and lie about.

There were, and possibly are, two me's. Often in life I narrate things to myself. Either before I say them out loud to someone else, or even when I'm by myself, to get my thoughts straight I will say the actual words silently in my head in correct english grammar. While tripping though I couldn't do that. My words were getting slurred and I couldn't even interpret them. It was really scary, because I knew what I wanted to be thinking but I couldn't say it to myself, and I have a hard time knowing what I'm thinking unless I repeat it to myself.

So I'd want to say something like 'Ok this is too intense, it's time to slip back into reality. I need to hold onto that raliling. These people on stage are just men playing guitars and drums. Those are just lights and pictures.' In the beginning of the trip if I did that it would bring me back to soberness, but now it wasn't really working that well because I couldn't think of those full sentences, maybe 2 or three words at a time, and then I'd just stop. Then I'd get angry with myself, and be like 'come on finish the sentence!' Then I'd think something like 'Man I can't wait to try to explain this tomorrow.' Then something like 'Wow I'm tripping balls, I keep thikning that I wasn't tripping but now I'm sure that I am.' Then I'd realize again that I wasn't focussed on saying the words and I needed to snap out of it.

Then I would see the security guard 2 feet from my face staring at me. I'd get paranoid. I thought he could tell I was acting strange because I wasn't singing or dancing and because I was looking at him instead of the band. So then I'd try forcing a dance and singing and bobbing my head. Then I thought that looked too forced so I just threw one of my hands up in the air and kept watching them, but I didn't scream or anything, my face was probably pretty emotionless.

The feeling of having a duel personality, and of the other one being someone so dark and who knew all, my mind was truely shocking and indescribable. It knew everything, and showed me everything. Truths and epiphanies right there, in front of my nose.

Everything in the universe has explanations that contradict each other, but according to my other self that's only because we are looking at them from the wrong viewpoint. The view point is what is contradictory because it's not the correct referance point from which to judge, and that's why we get rediculous answers that don't make sense.

Another point was that there are things that I don't know the answers to and can't objectively find out. Like for example whether we landed on the moon or not, or who really shot JFK, or 9/11. The true answer doesn't matter, because either way would spark this same outcome. The future (present) would be the same way. People still wouldn't know whether it actually did happen or whether it didn't, and they'd still claim the same conspiracies. Both possibilities exist with each other simultaniously in superposition, just like matter in quantum theory and that's it. The point is I shouldn't waste my time thinking about it because it doesn't matter.

Another thing that disturbed me was the video they played for the song Aenema where the alien ripped out his intestines, because it reminds me of a story called 'GUTS' that I read a few years ago. It was the first thing I ever read or saw that made me feel physically ill and since then I think I tapped into some part of my brain that connects thoughts to reality. When I saw the intestines I started feeling sick and really really forced myself into a normal state of mind, away from the trip, away from Tool even, just trying to not be sick. When I read GUTS I broke into a cold sweat and blacked out on my bathroom floor while waiting to vomit, so I didn't want that to happen again. eventually I overcame it.

After each song I really wanted the concert to end. I loved the feelings and thoughts I had, but I wanted it to be over so I could regain control. Every song I heard was the best song I'd heard up to that point in my life and I was glad they played it, then I'd really hope that it was over, then they'd play another and I'd be glad I got to hear that one too but then I'd hope it'd end after that. It ended at a good time though.

When the show was over there was no encore. They turned the lights on and I was still at the peek of my trip. I couldn't hear very well, and I was numb and my pupils were probably dialated. D. was totally out of it even more than I was. N. got one of Danny Carey's drumsticks and the setlist, and when she showed it to me, I was just saying 'I don't want it, it's just a stick it's not special.' Like, it wasn't the moment, the moment was over and done. Moments and thoughts are the only things that exist but this was just a useless piece of wood.

While the drug made me realize a lot, they also fucked up my thoughts, I couldn't even form sentences and I was afraid of my own brain and the sad truth that I was alone useless and not special in anyway. So I don't want to do them anymore I don't think.

On the way out I couldn't feel my feet so I was walking on auto pilot just hoping that I didn't fall, sishing I brought a notebook with me to write stuff so I didn't forget it. D. and I wished N. hadn't come with us, because we wanted to talk about our experiences, but she didn't know what we had done. It's ok though, she was nice and didn't bug me out, plus because of her we saw the setlist and the names of all the songs they played.

When I drank some water I hoped it went down because I couldn't feel myself swallow it, but I wasn't thirsty anyway. The lights and the scenery of the city was so cool. It was an epically spectacular view, but really that's just Tokyo. So many weird coincidences and things kept happenening after that concert. I've forgotten most all of them. Also I felt like my depth perception was off, and my hearing was as though I was underwater, but that's probably just from the amps. My effects wore off entirely about 7 hours after drinking the 2C-I, as we left on the monorail, but D. was going for another hour and a half or so saying he wished he only took as much as I had.

It was still early so we went out for dinner, I just asked N. to order whatever she wanted and we'd share. I ate it even though I couldn't feel myself swallowing, but that food was damn tasty. I still didn't want to drink anything.

On the train ride home, I was about to text a lot of people and say 'I'm tripping balls' or 'Tool was so good' but I decided that's a part of my personality I don't like, where I brag and try to be the people's hero, so I didn't say anything to anyone.

For the longest time I've thought Japanese people were stupid. I thought they were trapped in an illusion, that their society is based just on mimicing America, but that they did it wrong and it was meaningless. They have kids who dress like gangsters, but don't act tough, aren't in gangs, and don't do drugs or listen to rap. They idolize Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt because of cell phone commercials, but they don't even do anything in the commercial. I just hated how dumb and empty Japanese people seemed.

After realizing how meaningless everything is though, even matter. I decided that they are right, and America is the one with the illusions. It's all arbitrary, and Japanese people just dress how they want and don't judge. They bond together, it's real unity, it's not like America at all. They trust each other, they are considerate of each other. It's what America is missing, it's what I want, what people need. It was really especially comforting that even though I'm not Japanese. I am a person, and I am on earth, and I am matter in the universe and I felt that Japanese society excepted me. I felt pretty good.

I went home around midnight and got back to the dorm around 1, but before that I stopped at the convenience store and bought some really weird snacks that I would never have bought otherwise which seemed to stand out to me. Some green tea mint oreos and some weird anmochi. I was worried most of the night about how good I felt because when I've felt that good from drinking alcohol I usually got pretty sick soon afterward.

I fell asleep at around 2 and I had a really bad headache. I woke up with the same really bad headache, but I'm so glad I haven't been nauseus at all. I layed in my bed with that terrible headache feeling hot and cold, I put on 'Seinfeld' because I needed something happy and familiar in the background. Sadly, I could only think about how far away I am from home, and that I'm on the third floor of this building. I felt like useless floating particals out in space that didn't matter, and I just wanted to go home, and wished I could sleep and stop thinking.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 60682
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 19, 2007	Views: 28,575
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
2C-I (172) : Difficult Experiences (5), Mystical Experiences (9), Music Discussion (22), Hangover / Days After (46), Relationships (44), First Times (2), Festival / Lg. Crowd (24)