1-13-2019 - 12mg trial (+phenibut)
12:30pm (T+0:00) - Ingest 12mg orally in 1.2mL of alcohol (10mg/mL). Very bitter taste which made my face scrunch up involuntarily It has only been 3 days since my last trial but I have a free day and I want to see whether tolerance plays a factor as much as other psychedelics, since this feels only quasi-psychedelic so far, or if it's more like non-psychedelic amphetamines where you can use them with less time between without building much tolerance. I am either going to go hang out with my friend for a few hours, or stay home and finish chainsawing up a fallen tree and splitting wood/carrying chopped rounds up a hill. Depends on if he gets back to me.
I am mildly physically dependent on phenibut currently, working on tapering down. I take it every other day at lower and lower dosages. Today is the first DOF trial where I am taking phenibut. Total dose is 3 grams spread into 4 doses with an hour apart between dosages (first dosage at 11am, last at 3pm). I expect they will mix quite nicely as phenibut mixes nicely with almost everything. I mention it since it is relevant, but this is a maintenance dose for me and will only really take away the withdrawal that was starting to creep in.
Just took my baseline BP/HR readings and it's 130/66, 61bpm.
12:50pm (T+0:20) - Possible first alert. Something just changed and my body and mind have attained a slight glow.
1:05pm (T+0:35) - I'm definitely starting to come up now. BP/HR is 136/78, 60bpm. Slightly higher, or maybe just normal variation.
1:30pm (T+1:00) - This feels stronger than last time. I have a bit of a psychedelic come-up feeling, in that aside from a rising motivation and light euphoria, I am yawning occasionally and wanting to stretch my muscles. I also have the feeling of needing to empty my bowels that I associate with stimulants. Although I do usually get that with DOC as well. This actually reminds me of DOiP and DOET a lot right now. I am certainly willing to call this a psychedelic state... it goes well beyond "simple stimulation". It seems like I am almost getting visuals. At the moment this reminds me of nothing so much as my 12mg DOiP trial except it feels less distracting. I feel more motivated to do things and more energetic. And with that, I'm going to go outside and split some firewood. BP/HR reads 124/73 at 60bpm. Basically the same.
3:00pm (T+2:30) - I just got back inside from chainsawing/carrying big tree trunk rounds/splitting. I think DOF is a good drug for this sort of work. I got myself very into a meditative zone and just pushed through it. My body felt very healthy, I just felt like I could make it work for me how I needed it to. I didn't feel in any sense of danger at all using a chainsaw or axe. Very in control and pretty sober-minded. I feel peaceful, content. I only came in because my elbow started to hurt from repeated axe impacts and strain from hundred pound or more tree trunk pieces. This is my second day in a row of doing this, a sizable red oak tree fell about a month ago, it had rotted at the stump and blew over in heavy wind, and I've been cutting it up since then. While out there just now I counted its rings and it has about 60 so it was older than I expected. Yesterday some of the rounds I had previous cut were dry enough to split. I really, really enjoy splitting wood, it's great exercise and there's a great tangible reward (firewood) and it's really satisfying to swing a wood-splitting axe over your head and slam it down onto some wood and have it explode into pieces. That felt like therapy!
3:20pm (T+2:50) - Playing music for the past 20 minutes was even better therapy. I really found it easy to play what I'm thinking. I was falling into no-thought zones easily where I was just playing and observing what was coming out and realizing I was no longer in control of it. I really love being able to get to those places and I was finding it effortless to do so just now. So this is now two trials in a row where the music enhancement has been very real.
Still no visuals, but my visual static is cranked way up. I think some amount of my extremely peaceful and centered emotional state right now is from the phenibut, but it's certainly not just that. I've just taken my BP/HR and it reads 116/64 at 80bpm. My heart rate is up because I just basically worked out and then played music but strange that my BP would be down below normal. But could be the monitor because the next 2 times it gave an error, it gets weird sometimes. I always measure 3 or 4 times in a row and take the average.
4:30pm (T+4:00) - I would say this is definitely a psychedelic. But a psychedelic with virtually no side effects or any bells and whistles. None of the spiritual either, but just a wonderful serene state with crystal clear thoughts and gentle introspection. Like a stimulant, except there is a warmth and character to it that elevates it above a simple stimulant.
5:30pm (T+5:00) - I really like this stuff. My girlfriend got home a while ago and there is a faint bit of not feeling total ease in socializing but nothing major. It's more like whenever it's my turn to talk, it feels like I have no time to decide what to say so it's slightly flustering. This got better as we talked for a few minutes. I went outside and carried 8 more tree trunk rounds up the hill, and split one of them. I didn't feel any of my previous 2 days of work while I was doing it, I wasn't even getting too out of breath until the end. I only stopped because my elbow started hurting again. Now we're going to eat a little dinner and try to go see the new "Bohemian Rhapsody" movie at the "brew and view" which is a local pizza and brewery place that has a small movie theater. I'm quite hungry, there really isn't any appetite suppression at all.
7:00pm (T+6:30) - Definitely on the way down, but I feel the same, just a little bit less intense (not that it was ever
intense). We decided we're going to see a 10pm showing of "Princess Mononoke" instead. It's really striking how peaceful I feel. Everything is in its right place. Not in some sort of synchronicity type of sense, but much more simply. It is good, I am good. I have what I need. I have someone to love, food, shelter, friends... this is good. It's good to remember that.
8:45pm (T+8:15) - Music remains so very wonderful to play, the flow state very accessible. I still feel the DOF but not very strongly. It has left me with a residual, comfortable glow. I started reading a new book by an author I love whose series I just finished and have been getting very absorbed in it. In about a half hour my girl and I are going to go see Princess Mononoke in a movie theater. Pretty excited about that!
12:30am (T+12:00) - Got home, going to try to go to bed. Still feel a faint glow of DOF... longer duration this time.
Thoughts the next day: What a fun night! I smoked a few hits of weed before we left, in preparation for the movie, and first we went out to the grocery store. I was having a great time making witty quips and interacting with the cashiers. Then at the movie, there were a lot of people, and this guy sat down next to us that me and my girl both later agreed looked really familiar, like we'd met him before. He introduced himself and we got to talking, basically the whole time until the movie started, pretty fun and easy conversation. He was a nice guy, and it was fun to meet someone new and converse. We ended up talking about all sorts of stuff, all the way up to the nature of the universe (due of the one of the movie previews).
Then Princess Mononoke came on and it was glorious. I remembered when it started that I saw it a couple of years ago with my girlfriend, but that was at home, and anyway I remembered only about half of it. I enjoyed the movie very much. After the movie, we went home. I still felt the remnants of the drug, just a comfortable body and mind glow. I felt relaxed, but my mind was too active to sleep, even after reading for an hour. Eventually, at 2am (T+13:30), I took 0.5mg of etizolam, and faded into sleep pretty quickly after that.
Well, raising the dose to 12mg made some differences. First of all, the duration was longer. It seemed that the plateau just stretched out compared to my 8mg trial. Also, it pushed it into more fully psychedelic territory, although it was psychedelic only in the mind and body. There were no perceptual differences at all, no sense of being able to go deep, just a very beautifully peaceful, content and thoughtful state. The mental state I found myself in at 8mg was very pleasant but this 12mg trial was more fully developed. I honestly completely loved the way I felt. And I have a great afterglow today, too. The whole thing was subtle and graceful and very useful. The phenibut, again, likely increased this aspect so I will have to try another similar dose next on a non-phenibut day, but I know my body and mind and phenibut only has a subtle effect on me these days due to dependence. There was a lot more at play than phenibut, for sure.
Another thing I noticed is that I felt so content with my state that, at the brew and view, where everyone was drinking beer, I did order some pizza, but I had absolutely no desire whatsoever for beer. I was feeling like alcohol would just muddy up the subtle but beautiful state of grace I had found myself in. That is significant for me because I have a hard time resisting alcohol in general. I am hopeful that I can at times take this for band practice. Not only is the music enhancement wonderful with it, but if it suppresses my desire for alcohol, it may be able to help me break that pattern. My bandmates all drink and it is band practice that really ultimately led me back into liking to drink years ago, after many years of barely ever doing it or feeling attracted to it. More recently I basically only ever drink at band practice or if I go out to a show. I'd like to cut the band practice drinking out. I may have found an ally for that, we'll see. Phenibut alone makes me really enjoy alcohol and more likely to choose to drink it due to greater impulsiveness. The utter lack of draw to alcohol was very noteworthy and distinct.