DOSE:		oral	2C-E	(powder / crystals)
		insufflated	2C-E	(powder / crystals)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

I have been using entheogens, with varying degrees of responsibility, for almost four years now. Only once, so far, have I fucked up royally.

My fellow psychonauts A and E had come across a few doses of 2C-I. They'd never tried it before, and were excited to have a new experience. Unfortunately, they did not have enough for me to join them. However, A had a quantity of 2C-E that he was willing to share with me. Up until that point, my psychedelic experience was limited to one mushroom trip, two HBWR trips, and a number of LSD adventures. I had not done any research on 2C-E. I did not know what to expect. All I was told was that it was very powerful. A eyeballed a dose and gave it to me. Mistake number one. He said it could've been anywhere between 10 and 20 mg but he felt it was somewhere on the lower side. Our friend C is also present, downing two tabs of potent LSD blotter and embarking on his first psychedelic experience. A prepares a similarly estimated dose of 2C-E for our friend M (who had taken it once before), and we set out to find him. After roaming our campus for about half an hour we find him and our group is complete.

Wandering back in the vicinity of our dorms, A's politically active girlfriend spots him and drags him to a lecture given by some activists rounding up people to help with the aftermath of the Katrina disaster. The rest of us follow him (oh, the group mindset) and take our seats. The lecture is ludicrous. I donated a significant portion of my meager savings account to a Katrina relief fund already, and I don't need to be reminded of the layer of ooze that seeps from every man in a suit in Washington. After a few minutes, I nudge C and recommend we “get the fuck out of here”.

Our campus is located in the midst of rolling farmland; there are lots of gorgeous forests and fields to amble through. C and I are doing exactly that. By this time, at least an hour and a half has passed since we dosed and C is struck with the staggering depth of meaning and metaphor inherent in every blade of grass. I'm feeling what might be an alert and what might be nothing at all. Still, I'm glad I got him out of that lecture before he really started tripping and I'm glad that he's enjoying himself, even if I am pretty jealous. Before long, A and E catch up with us (M had some things to attend to) enjoying the effects of their 2C-I. They remark on the incredible tracers everywhere, and are laughing uproariously at anything and everything. They're telling dark jokes that don't strike me as funny at all, but seem gut bustingly hilarious to them. I begin to wonder if I'm going to feel anything at all.

Heading back to A's dorm, we encounter M and bring him back with us. I'm complaining about the almost total lack of any effect, as it's been almost two hours. M agrees, and A wonders if the dose he eyeballed was too low. So, he takes the powder, pours some out on his desk, and says, “Alright, if you want more bump it.” They tell me it's painful, but I ignore them and go first, bumping a small amount, about the size of my undilated pupil (if I had to guess, somewhere between 2 and 5 mg). The sensation is unpleasant, but not crippling. M follows suit, and reacts with visible torment. (After later experience, I've found that railing most chemicals doesn't bother me that much. The worst for me is 2c-b, and even that's perfectly managable for me.) We wait around for about 5 minutes, and A asks us how we're doing. M is content with his experience. I am not.

Another little pile of 2C-E goes up my nose. We wait around some more, and I'm still not feeling any different. Another little pile of 2C-E goes up my nose. I look at the wall immediately after railing it and a wave of plant-like tendrils courses through the wall paper. Yeah, this is probably enough. The group consensus is to go hiking on a trail that I have never been to before. Unfamiliar drug, unfamiliar environment. This is mistake number two.

We get in A's car, and he drives us to the trail. [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!] This is probably mistake number three, as A was tripping much harder than I was. The trail is only a mile away and we get there in a few minutes. By this point, I have ceased to feel any effects. God dammit. A decides that instead of taking the trail up the hill, we should just climb the steep face of it. Sounds good to me. I fly up that sucker, while my inebriated friends stumble and laugh their way slowly behind me. I get to the top and feel cheated. Everyone is tripping but me! This is stupid! What the hell went wrong?

The sun is beginning to set as my friends finally join me at the summit, looking out over the countryside. E pulls out the massive joint he prepared for the occasion. We pass it around, and I take a hit, and everything turns reddish. Is it the sunset? No... I look out at the sky and I see a paisley cloud. Yes, a cloud becomes one huge floating unit of paisley amoeba. I see a blatantly unnatural diamond shape rippling through the trees, not at all like the (comparatively) more organic LSD distortions I was already familiar with, and I think to myself “now, that's just not possible.” M is sitting on a rock, with a particularly stoned look on his face. He looks like a perfectly contented little kid.

The joint comes back to me, and I take another hit. Mistake number four. Almost immediately after the second hit, my depth perception is annhilated. The sensation is like a stained glass window breaking in reverse: all the seperate three dimensional components of existence suddenly and violently un-shattered into a solid two dimensional landscape. And I'm on top of a hill I've never been to before. I am so disoriented that I lose balance and fall onto the ground. I can't stand up. I don't know where the inclines are, I don't know where the horizon is. It's beginning to get dark. And my friends decide they want to leave. They want to go back down the mountain. No. No I can't go down the mountain now. I'll fall. I'll die. I can't. But I can't tell them, the words are so far from my mouth.

They start walking, and I get up and follow them. We take the path this time, thank god, but even a reasonably normal hiking trail with my friends leading the way is too much for me to handle. Panic sets in, not like the ontological slip n slides or the ego assaults of my previous tryptamine experiences, but a beast far more confusing and sinister. I feel like my consciousness has been locked deep inside of my body with no possibility of release. The rocky path beneath my feet becomes a stony face, a series of stony faces, all identical, that I am destined to walk for the rest of time.

Ahead of me, my friends are completely unaware of my difficulties. They seem like they're getting farther and farther ahead of me, although they later told me that I was close behind them the entire time. E and M are communicating entirely in gibberish for the fun of it, making up a language as they go. It looks like fun. I remember when I had the capacity to use words....

The more I want them to slow down, the faster they seem to go. The forest is getting darker and darker. The trees are black gashes in reality, holes of darkness that stretch on for infinity. The rest of the world seems two dimensional and artificial. When a friend disappears behind a tree, it's like he's gone forever. When he reappears, it's a brief miracle.

We're finally within sight of the car, when A turns around and says “hey guys, I'm too fucked up to drive, do you think any of you can take the wheel?” Oh, god. “Haha, nah, I'm just kidding, let's go home.” Was he kidding? Oh, god. Is he going to kill us all? The five minute car ride back to campus is one of the longest experiences of my life. I am convinced I am going to die. Every oncoming headlight is my demise. My eyes are fixated on the road, my breathing is short and tense. I later found out that M was similarly disturbed by A's comment. Apparently, it was a joke that he and C had come up with, but boy was that the WRONG thing for him to say at the time.

We're back safe in A's room and I am in disbelief. I'm relieved, but rattled, and I feel myself shaking anxiously from tip to toe. Sitting on the floor of A's room, I marvel at his wall. It's a plain white wall, illuminated by red, green, and blue christmas lights. These shades fuse into a rich and hyper-real (as in more real than real) shade of purple, a solid body of perfect hue that stretches deep into the wall and into the infinite beyond. The view of the campus from A's window, on the other hand, seems two-dimensional, fake, and totally uninteresting. A turns on some cheesy techno, and the intense delay of the synthesizers assaults my ears like pelting hail.

At this point, I begin wondering if my friends are plotting against me. After all, they drugged me, they took me up to that damn hillside, and now they're talking shit about me while I sit right here as though I wouldn't notice. Or are they? I'm too disoriented to follow the conversation at all. They keep exchanging secret glances... or are they just looking at each other? I can't tell. Fuck it. I decide on the spot that if I'm going to consider these people my friends, I might as well trust them. Instantly, I feel better. The shaking stops. Cool. I'm gonna survive. I can follow the conversation again! In fact, I find myself keeping up with it better than E, who keeps forgetting what he's about to do next. I'm back! I survived!

The next day, I feel more or less fine. No lasting psychosis, no unpleasant physical reaction, just back to baseline, business as usual. However, I have some new policies in place. No new drugs in unfamiliar settings! No unknown dosages! And do as much research as possible before using new chemicals!

I had no idea that smoking pot potentiated psychedelics to such an intense degree. I mean, I had smoked to enhance my acid trips many times before, but I did not see it as a potentially disruptive force. I now have a whole new respect for the synergy between marijuana and other entheogens. Also, I am now well aware that 2C-E takes a long, long time to make itself known. And, from further experimentation with 2C-E, 2C-B, 2C-I, and MDMA, I've found that I seem to have a peculiar resistance to phenethylamines (or those ones, at least). They're not ineffective, not at all, but I do not get the same degree of effects that my associates seem to get. To give the reader an idea, I later took 20 mg of 2C-E and felt nothing more than a mild ++. Twenty fucking milligrams! The rest of my friends reported typical 2C-E effects from the same batch, so I don't think there was a fault with the chemical, and the dose was weighed with a reliable scale.

Anyway, this was the most terrifying experience of my life, more terrifying than a massive dose of LSD in the woods at night during a howling winter windstorm that my sober friends confirmed was actually ripping the limbs off the trees. I have never felt that cold and removed from reality in my life, and while I am curious to explore that place again, I do not plan on doing so until years from now.

Good luck and safe journeys!

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 79917
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 21
Published: Jul 19, 2009	Views: 17,542
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2C-E (137) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3)