Hello friends! This is my first post here since ... over 12 years ago. I'm actually a senior member here, having joined way back in 2004! Also until very recently, my last trip was over 11 years ago. I'll save all the discussion about this for another post in another thread.
In brief, I returned to psychedelics by doing a titration of 2C-D up to 10.5 mg, which gave me a weak (++) for an hour or so. That experience was very positive, but I'm not much a fan of 2C-D's effects in me. It always seems like a lot of work coming up for a peak that is over as it begins. (I feel like that with 2C-B too, but I haven't used it as much). I, on the other hand, enjoyed 2C-E very much and did it more often than any other psychedelic. Except maybe for mescaline, no other compound has so profoundly affected the direction of my life.
My first 2C-E trip inspired me to study engineering. Later trips inspired me to study engineering with devotion, as though it were a spiritual path rather than merely a career or discipline. Another 2C-E trip gave me important lessons about my use of power, which made a lifelong impression on me. Of course not all my trips were so heavy duty, and in fact, most of the more serious ones were felt to be fun and recreational. I never experienced more than mild and/or very transient nausea with no vomiting. The body energy was incredible, almost always pleasurable, albeit sometimes overwhelmingly so. I experienced much of the enpathogenesis of MDMA except amplified many times and without most of the MDMA side-effects. The only prominent negative effect was muscle tension and a headache that set in about every other time I did it. Usually the headache wasn't so bad as to disturb the positive mood and overall euphoric feeling though.
I experimented with it in doses up to 20 mg. The first such trip, I was all alone in my new apartment in the dark at night, wearing wireless headphones with streaming psytrance music. The music was directing my trip and feeding into the visuals to a substantial extent. At one point, I was sitting in my computer chair looking forward, and I saw these crazy 3D animating faces to my sides. When I turned my ahead around, they came into full view, like they were in the room with me. This kind of thing was happening all over the place during the peak effects. At another point while lying in bed staring at the ceiling fan which was going absolutely bonkers, my train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a powerful voice, like my superego or something. It gave me a stern warning about power. It told me that I must wield the power I possess with careful, highly focused deliberate intent, for if I failed to do so, that power would be abused by other whose intentions did not align with my own. Before this trip, I had been studying some Aleister Crowley and Western magick/occultism. I was actively and purposefully cultivating power, but this voice warned me that to do so is extremely dangerous great care. This revelation was crystal clear and indelibly implanted. It's like the rest of the trip just stopped for a moment. I think it was shortly after that that the effects dropped off substantially.
My other 20 mg trip was on Christmas Eve during the afternoon and early evening with my wife (girlfriend at the time), who I'd done the original 15 mg with. She'd bought us a sheep skin rug, and as the trip set in, we found we couldn't pull ourselves away from it until the peak had lifted. The diffraction of light as it transmitted around the wool fibers was enormously exaggerated, creating rich flowing rainbows upon what appeared to be a vast woolen landscape. These visual impressions and the luscious sensation of wool against our skin fused into one delicious sensation. We melted into the wool. Despite the high dose, this only thing profound about this trip was the degree of indulgence.
In later trips, I tended to opt for 18 mg when I wanted something heavy or 12.5 mg when I wanted something more social and fun. Another trip of indulgence was spent on a beach in northern California. I grew up partly in the south east, where entering the ocean doesn't cause cold-induced shock (lol), and I'd never spent more than a short while on any pacific coast beach. A friend reserved us a camp site. He had some non-trippy friends there too, but they were easy to avoid during the peak effects. One and-a-half nights before, I'd gone to a psychedelic party in the woods and tripped on some mild acid. Any tolerance was felt to be minimal. Dose was 18 mg, taken in the mid morning hours. I spent most of this just crawling and rolling around in the sun-baked sand. The rich pastels of the sand dunes and scrub brush, the jasper blue ocean, the gentle crashing roar of the ocean---these sensations enveloped me and fused with the sensations of the sand. I melted into the beach.
I feel it's a bit irreverent to call this my favorite psychedelic. After all, I haven't tried all of them, and I probably haven't explored those I have tried enough to really know. I also must give due credit to my mescaline cactus ally. My first mescaline trips were a breakthrough for me. The first true psychedelic experience I had was with ayahuasca which I prepared and consumed all by myself. It was and almost certainly will remain the strongest trip of my life. It was terrifying and actually gave me a flashback. Later I too many mushrooms (despite fewer than advised) as I hadn't realized I'm quite a psilosofty, and here some of that anxiety returned. That fear of having a bad trip was always lurking, until I found mescaline. Mescaline was always so gentle and helped me integrate those early experiences so that they didn't impinge on my future trips. Later in that year of discovery, on midsummer's eve, I met my future wife at a very chill mountain/camping festival. The next morning, we took heroic doses of mescaline cactus (long story), and we were bound to each other in that experience. This year we acknowledged our 20th anniversary of that meeting. That kind of thing is kind of hard for a medicine like 2C-E to compete with, but it comes pretty damn close.
So I am very much hoping that my on-going reunion continues to be productive, but I admit I'm a little scared. My body is quite broken due to long/post-COVID/vax type damage (LC). I've recovered a lot but still have some significant issues. For this reason I'm proceeding with extreme caution and trying to moderate my expectations knowing that my health may not be compatible with stronger trips anymore. At least the 10.5 mg 2C-D was positive, both during (when I did experience some of my symptoms but they weren't alarming or bad), and especially in the days after when my symptoms were mostly gone and I had a lot of energy and upbeat mood.
As for my titration, I've done 0.5 and 1.5 mg of 2C-E. The 0.5 was surprisingly a weak but definite (+). The 1.5 mg elaborated quite a bit on the character, which is remarkably distinct from 2C-D even at this low level. I anticipate I'll get my first weak (++) with 5 mg. (Note, I'm using cannabis a fair amount with these lower doses to bring out more of the effects.) I do feel some apprehension going from 1.5 to 5 of 2C-E, given that I felt the 1.5 mg may have notably activated my immune system, not necessarily for the better. It's also possible I picked up one of the new variants from the weekend family gathering. They don't take any precautions as I must do to reduce my exposure. The first time I got COVID, I barely felt it. I just skipped straight to LC hell with the whole bag of shit including persistent malaise and dysphoria. It's not practical for me to constantly test myself, so I never know if I've gotten it and can only speculate that I did when my LC exacerbates. (The shots made my LC worse too, dammit, and almost killed me to boot.) On 1.5 mg 2C-E , I felt like some of my lymph glands were a bit swollen, and then I got some myalgia which has been recurring for a few days sense. Oddly, it's been particularly in the arm I got my shots. One theory of psychic healing is that for it to take place, the subject must briefly re-experience the pain or discomfort of the body's memory of the harm as part of the process of release. Maybe my immune system can go through an analogous process, which could be facilitated by as yet unknown effects of psychedelics. I recently learned that mescaline, at low doses at least, increases circulating leukocytes. This being the case suggests that many other psychedelics including 2C-E may have immune modulating effects which may deserve further study. Such effects may also explain why some people describe the "body load" as being like having the flu.
I will say that in all my experience tripping, I almost never got sick afterwards. In contrast, more than half the time I took MDMA, I got sick with virus symptoms within a week. With MDMA I also got all the nasty after effects later, like several days to a week after. The only exception is the first time I took LSD. I came down with a stomach virus as the acid wore off, but you know what? I'd had MDMA a few days before that.
I'll probably do my 5 mg trial tomorrow or Sunday. I expect it to be stronger than 10.5 mg 2C-D, which teased me with threshold visuals. I'll post if anything remarkable comes from it.
Oh, and I feel so sad for the significant population for whom this drug does not work well for. I had two room mates. One was a hard head to everything 2C she'd tried. The other was a lightweight to every 2C he tried, strangely including 2C-B but not 2C-I which he enjoyed at 25-30 mg. (Note, these doses are all oral and precisely liquid measured.) She once took 40 mg 2C-E and said she got nothing but body load. He took like 8-10 mg and said it was overwhelming and miserable. Another guy I met hadn't tried 2C-E before. He was very experienced and was adamant that he could handle himself in a heavy trip. I refused to give him more than 12.5 and said I'd only do that for him because of his experience. Anyone else I'd recommend 8-10. He got utterly blasted and spent the whole trip either pacing while making horrible faces or writhing around in his sleeping bag. He didn't interact with me until morning when I told him: "congratulations, you're a 2C-E lightweight". Some weeks later he emailed me all about it and decided he wanted to try again. He found that with 8-10 mg, he could have an extremely deep and powerful experience. Lucky guy.
