Saturday night I went to the emergency room as I was feeling tingling in all my nerve endings and twitching in all the muscles in my body. I had ingested around 16mg 4-AcO-DMT 4 hours earlier and didn't feel anything wrong with me, and I barely tripped as I had tripped the night before.
To make a long story short, I came close to dying and had a NDE in the hospital. It is not my intention to get any research chemicals scheduled or get anyone in trouble. I haven't given up any names of indivuals or suppliers nor do I intend to.
There are many possible reasons why this could have happened, and it may have nothing to do with this drug. It may be due to mental/physical overexertion from having tripped three nights in a row. It may be due to a vitamin deficiency, an underlying medical condition, an interaction with Zoloft, possible withdrawls from Ativan (which I take 0.5mg of on a daily basis though I have never had withdrawls before). I may have also accidently got trace amounts of 2c-e in my system as I didn't clean off my scale very well.
I just want to caution people that there could be something wrong with this substance/a possible tainted batch going around. It's still too early to determine the cause of this and I'm doing everything I can to narrow the possibilites down. I will keep people updated as I find out more and if there's anything people need to know. I just want to make sure after this that people take some caution.
I also want to note that I had taken this substance the day before and had not had any of these effects at all. A friend of mine had also taken some that same night and reported no ill effects so it is quite possible that it had nothing to do with it. Better safe than sorry though.
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I would also like to write up what I experienced that night/what my friend experienced too. I'm hoping by writing everything up maybe someone sees something that I overlooked as a possibility. I also feel it's important to write things up and get it out of my system to avoid ending up with PTSD. Since I wrote this up I felt I might as well share it with everyone. I ended up having to stop writing this every now and then as recalling the experience is a little upsetting and I broke down and cried several times while writing this.
On with the exprience:
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After my experience the previous night with this drug I really wanted my best friend (who we'll call Z) to try it too and see what he thought of it. He's a fan of shrooms, though it's the only psychedelic he's tried. I figured the dose I took the night before was only equivalent to maybe an eigth of shrooms, and he tends to react the same way I do to them.
I wasn't that interested in taking it a second night in a row; especially since it was my third trip in three days. I took some anyway though to make Z a little more comfortable with taking it. We took our capsules (filled with 15mg each) at about 9pm.
T+30 minutes: I wasn't feeling anything yet, though I wasn't too concerned since last time it took around 45 minutes before the first effects were felt. I also assumed my tolerance was probably high so if I didn't trip I wasn't too worried about it. At this point Z was saying that he was tripping quite heavily. He said it was similar to his first and most profound experience on shrooms. He looked pretty spaced out and was having fun watching the ceiling breathe. He also mentioned that he was seeing 3-d patterns coming out of everything he was looking at. I was very surprised he was tripping so heavily at this dose, as well as so quickly.
T+1 hour: Z is tripping VERY heavily. He is having trouble communicating at this point and mentions that he keeps forgetting what room he is in. He also mentions "teleportation"; he looks at another room and then all of a sudden he's in there. I've heard of similar experiences on mushrooms so I assume that he's blacking out as he goes into different rooms. He seems to be handling it like a champ though. I'm not really feeling anything other than a slight body high and very mild color enhancement. I'm amazed at Z's trip and kind of jealous. I weigh out 2mg on the scale and snort it.
T+2 hours: Still not really anything. I feel close to sober and have some mildly trippy thoughts. I'm quite confident at this point that I'm not going to end up tripping. Z is still tripping balls and looks like he's having a blast. I tell him I'm feeling pretty sober and offer to give him a drive around some back roads so that he can enjoy the rapid changing in scenery. He eagerly accepts after I convince him that I'm pretty much sober.
Z has a blast as I'm driving him around. We travel up-hill the whole time but Z believes we're going on a flat road. He's not sure where we are even though he lives on that street. At this point he stops communicating. I'm a little concerned since he's never tripped this hard before and take his lack of communication as a bad sign. I tell him I'm going to turn around and take him back home.
On the way back he has a very worried look on his face and tells me that he has a very bad feeling. I reassure him that everything's just fine, that he just took a drug and he'll be fine soon. Once we return home he seems to be in a much better headspace and calms down as I put a movie on.
T+4 hours: Z's trip is pretty much over at this point and he begins describing everything that he was going through. It sounds like he had a very intense experience. He mentions that while looking at a light he was able to drift off into it and experience every atom within it. He also mentions that at one point during the car ride he felt as though he was on fire although he didn't see any flames. I still feel the same as I was before and realize I'm not going to feel anything else at this point. He's really excited and calls one of his other friend's up to describe his experience. I'm glad he had a good time and give him a little for the road.
He's about to head out as I begin to feel a tingling sensation in my nerve endings, as well as pressure behind my eyes and soreness in my neck. "I'm not so sure about this shit Zac, I'm starting to really feel like shit..." he kind of ignores me and tells me he doesn't feel anything abnormal. He asks if I'm alright and I tell him I'll probably be fine and I let him go home.
After he leaves I decide to get in the shower to see if that makes me feel any better. The tingling starts to get a lot worse while I'm in there and I'm starting to hallcuinate somewhat heavily. I'm a little worried since I shouldn't be tripping at such a long point after taking it. I try and ignore the way I'm feeling and tell myself that I'm probably just panicking and maybe I've been tripping the whole time and just didn't realize it. I begin practicing calming breathing and I feel much calmer; however, the tingling sensation is still getting much worse and I'm starting to feel as though I'm having a seizure.
It gets more and more intense and I decide I need to go to the hospital. My mindstate feels quite sober and I realize that I've never felt this awful after taking anything, even while on bad trips, so I rush into the car to get myself to the emergency room.
I arrive there and get to the receptions desk wildly hallcuinating. I'm losing control over my muscles as they begin twitching quite rapidly. My heart is beating very fast.
"Can I help you?" she asks.
I look up at her and she looks like a demon. Her eyes are grayish blue and her pupils are the size of pins. She's very deformed and missing an arm. Her skin is kind of transparent and I can almost see her brain through her thin skull. I keep calm despite how disturbing the hallcuination is and tell her what's wrong with me.
I'm admitted in and they lay me down on a table and begin taking my vitals and run an IV in my arm. The tingling and muscle twitching is constant at this point and I get very scared as I face the possiblity that something is wrong with me. It no longer seems possible that I just had a delayed trip and that I was just panicing. My mindstate was pretty sober. I attribute the intense hallcuinations due in part to the drug being in my system and the hallucinations hitting me harder to due increased heart rate and high blood pressure. At this point I was convined that there may have been a toxic impurity in the batch I took as I know that 4-AcO-DMT appears to be as safe as Psilocin.
As they lay me down on the bed I did my best to remain calm even though everyone looked very demonic. I told them what I took and explained to them that it's likely as harmless as Psilocin. I told them I was more concerned about an interaction between Zoloft or a possible toxic impurity. They assumed I was just having a bad trip for a while, but eventually realized I was too with-it to just be having a bad trip and started taking my concerns seriously. They took a urine sample from me and also took several EKG's (this the correct term for it?).
They told me that my vitals were stable but that I was running a fever, and my heart rate and blood pressure were way up. I told them that I was hallucinating a bit and that all the hallcuinations had a theme of death/dying to them but that it could have just been my mindstate. I also explained that I have taken a wide array of substances at different dosage levels and never had such a reaction before.
I asked if it seemed like I was just having a panic attack/bad trip and they said they were having a very difficult time determining that.
Suddenly I started feeling pain in my nerve endings and losing control over my body. I started crying as I knew that this was it; I was going to die.
I pleaded with them to call my friend as I feared that it was too late for him and he might already be dead in his sleep. They sent people over to his house and I had them call my mother and father to come in right away. I knew I was going to die and I was utterly terrified. I wanted to see my parents one last time and tell them how much I loved them. I felt like all my organs were beginning to fail and I had to struggle to stay with it. I kept asking if I was alright and the best they could tell me was that they were having a hard time telling if I was or not but that my heart was still functioning normally and I wasn't looking too pale. I cried out "Oh my God I'm dying!" and began to tremble and cry.
My parents got there surprisingly fast. They looked utterly devestated and weren't sure what to make of things. It's worth noting that I had a brother that they had lost to cancer a year before I was born. All my life they've done their best to try and hide how much his death utterly devestated them. My parents are getting kind of old and a year ago my mother almost died of a heart attack. The last thing I wanted to do was call them up and scare them if I was having a bad trip. But I was utterly convinced that I was going to die and desperately wanted to see them one last time.
They tried to reach my sister but being the middle of the night were not able to get a hold of her.
At this point I completely lost control over my muscles and I felt an intense fight to stay with it. To give you an idea of what it was like, imagine Michael J. Fox and how his disease makes it impossible to control his movements. I was experiencing something very similar to that. I took each of my parents hands and at that moment I had an experience that I can't even begin to explain. I've never been at all religious but after some of my trips have always suspected that there's some higher spiritual force at work in some form or another.
I felt as though I was granted power from a higher force to say what I needed to say before I died. I've suffered from depression for a long time and feel as though I have never for a moment in my life communicated with people beyond some artificial level. But through tears and confusion I was able to tell them clearly and with full emotion how much I love them and how much they've always meant to me. I told them how I feel they're some of the most courageous and wonderful people on the planet and how they deserved to be happy. I told them that after I die I don't want them to mourn and I want them to live every single day to the fullest. I told them the meaning of life was to live and to love. I told them how much I loved my sister and I told them to tell her all the things I wished I had told her. I told them that if anything happened to Z to let him know how truly sorry I was for doing that to him. I wanted to tell Z that he was really the only friend I've ever had, and he's always been there for me through thick-and-thin when no one else has. I told them to tell Maria (a girl I'd recently dated) to know although things didn't pan out that I think she's the sweetest girl I've ever met and she's been a friend to me even though she didn't have to be and how much I loved her for that. I told the nurses and doctors in the room that they're some of the most important and courageous people in the world and how much I deeply respected them.
I felt myself start to slip away and soon everyone changed from looking like demons to looking like angels. The colors of the room transformed into the most beautiful and vibrant colors I've ever seen. My fear completly vanished and I knew that if I was going to die that there was nothing to be afraid of. I would still carry on in existence in ways we cannot fully understand.
My last thoughts were that if I died how it would completly devestate my family and that it was not yet my time; I needed to be there for my family. Suddenly I felt myself get better and I returned to the moment. I regained some degree of control over my body and my heart rate and blood pressure started to return to a normal level.
Before long the nurses and doctors were satisfied with how I was doing and brought me over to ICU. They kept me there overnight to keep track of me. They told me before I left the hospital that they looked up the substance and believed it to be just as safe as I thoght it was. They told me they still needed to do some follow-up work and run some tests to determine what happened.
Now it's Monday and I'm still having some muscle twitches and pain in my nerve endings. I'm able to control my body just fine now though. I'm taking lots of vitamins, drinking lots of water, and getting lots of rest. I'm starting to feel a lot better.
I don't forsee myself needing to use any drugs again for a long time. I don't regret having done any of them and maintain that psychedelics are important compunds that can be very beneficial for conquering one's short-comings and fears. At some point in the future I may want to trip again but I doubt that will be for a very long time. I feel like I've been granted a wisdom beyond me and that I need to stop letting life pass me by and enjoy every moment I have. It looks like I'm going to be fine but I'm still not sure. I'm going to be seeking follow-up work and depending on how I'm doing a week from now I might ask to have an MNRI. I'm still feeling pain in some of my nerve endings as well as feeling a bit "off".
I'm keeping on top of things and will let you guys know if I find out there were any drug interactions that people need to be made aware of or if there is a tainted batch going around. I contacted the person that sold it to me and told him I almost died on an unrelated compound and then he told me that he sold me this stuff because he had a bit of a scare with it. I'm not sure what he meant by that but I contacted him and told him the truth that it was on the stuff he sold me that this happened and asked for clarification on what he meant. I'm not at all mad at him but if there's some bad stuff going around then we need to figure out when that particular batch was put out and warn people against taking it before I can figure out what caused this to happen. Use your good judgment and excercise caution.