• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ

The "true nature" of the 2C's.

My problems don't really come from tolerance, I don't use it enough that I have issues with tolerance. But the more I 'get' the drug the more I dislike it. I am thinking that its just not the right one for me. But I take drugs to get high more so then any sort of 'legitimate' reasons.

To clarify, I do enjoy gaining insights from psychedelics, but the main reason I am taking them is to get high, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
 
What I'm getting at is, you could be getting more "high" with less of the negatives if you reduced the frequency of your use - and if it's not for you, don't use it in the first place. If you're spacing your trips a month+ apart then obviously frequency of use is unlikely to be a factor, but maybe 2C-E just isn't for you? Or maybe you'd enjoy it more at a different dosage/ROA? I noticed you mentioning snorting 2C-E previously, I used to go down that route, but I now take it orally and find it a much more fulfilling, euphoric, and pleasurable experience. YMMV of course :)
 
It just seems that even when I don't overuse it, It tends to leave me depressed and drained. It makes small issues seem like a huge deal and leaves me regretting taking the drug in the first place. Most of the 'insight' that it gives me is nothing I couldn't have figured out on my own anyway. I think that as a tool for insight it kind of doesn't pan out and as a drug just to get high on it isn't very nice. I guess I just don't think its a good drug. But I guess different people react differently.

Maybe next I will try a tryptamine psychedelic, mushrooms or AMT.
 
2c-c sounds nice, but I would be very, very tempted to snort that drug, and my nose would be screaming for mercy, Lol.

One more thing I'd like to add, although I find myself disliking 2c-e, I think the combination of 2c-e and dxm is a very worthwhile trip. It didn't feel like a mix of 2c-e and dxm, but a completely new drug. It was the kind of trip that is worth doing once, but not exactly something I'd like to repeat. It actually left me satisfied, something that no other high or trip has ever accomplished so far...
 
Last edited:
May I suggest spacing out your trips a bit more as JG has already mentioned. Its a tough road to go down when your outlet for fun is drugs, no matter what they be. Now that's not to say tripping isn't fun, it's an amazingly 'fun' experience in my book, but I don't jive with the "I've got nothing much to do today/this week.... I'll eat some of this" perspective, if only because its gotten me into bad places in the past. Got an event coming up? A friend you haven't seen in a while who will soon be around? Going for a hiking/camping/climbing expedition? Have some questions about a behavior or relationship? Inspired by a physics problem? Amazed to find a certain flower blooming by your door? Those things and many more I think are all appropriate stims for a trip. But I don't think boredom is. Surely you work, or are chasing knowledge of something in some way -- dedicate yourself to that, and to your family and friends, day in and day out. That is your weekly fun. Go for a run. Climb a rock. Hold someone close who needs it. And then when a little prompt occurs -- add a psychedelic to the mix.

Not trying to tell you what to do or how to enjoy your experiences. This is just my advice. Be careful brother, take the road for the road, and remember, something brighter and better is just around every corner, and under every stone. Be you sober, or in hypserspace.

<3 Love and Light <3


I have to say, I've read the first 6 pages of this thread, and haven't felt compelled to write a response until now. Despite being completely off topic, that was amazingly well put, and I couldn't agree more with any of what you said. Your post has embodied my every belief about drug (psychedelic) use.



Slightly more on topic: As has been said multiple times, it's all down to personality. I find that my brain already thinks in ways that don't really make sense. My brain often converts simple sensations into full-fledged thoughts out of nowhere... these thought patterns often make very little sense as it is. For me, DXM is my equivalent of 2C's, though the "damage" hasn't been permanent. But I can see that my thought patterns altered by DXM is just pure insanity.

I'm sure everybody on this earth has drugs to avoid, and you've found yours.
 
Last edited:
I've been meaning to chime in here for a while. OP is my best friend and I was with him through a majority of his 2c-e trips. He has shown unusual reactions to 2c-e, his first trip with it he didn't feel anything at all for about 4 hours until he reached well over the 20 mg mark. From then on he was unusally reactive to even small doses of 2c-e. I believe he also wrote this post shortly after an AMT trip, so don't judge him too harshly for not watching his every word. That said, 2c-e has been unusually unkind to both of us. Perhaps we weren't using this substance in a responsible manner (I'm sure there was at least a week between nearly every of our trips together), but few psychedelics have these kinds of effects on people when abused. We've noticed that 2c-e has a unique ability to screw with the brain's pattern identifying. Once you see a pattern on 2c-e it may never fade, there are carpets that to this day will not lose their patterning even under extreme scrutiny. 2c-e also seems to have a unique ability to loop senses through eachother. Sounds become touch and subtly alter vision, touch turns to taste and any number of other things. It makes for extremely unique experiences--and I'm not saying it affects all people this way, perhaps it's a shared and reinforced mental hallucination--but the 2 effects can combine and permanently change how senses are dealt with.

I haven't felt nearly the effects that my friend has and am not as sensitive to the 2c-e as he seems to be but I've had my own issues with it. An odd memory sits in my skull, something that I can not understand. The best way I can address it is as a construct. It presents itself as a purely impossible shape but when I try to access it I feel all sorts of emotions and sensations, like an entire trips worth of shit all hitting me at once. It's like a fragmented memory, and my mind recoils in horror when I consider it. I can't assign it to any particular moment, day or trip. I haven't even had a particularly bad 2c-e trip. And the more I try to figure it out the more anxious and frankly, crazy, I get. It's like digging a hole, and at the bottom lies my sanity desperately trying to crawl out. Other psychedelics have taught me that trying to figure out what bothers you is the only way to get rid of a problem, but this simply gets worse the more time and energy I put in it. It takes weeks to get over the anxiety that a few hours of trying to figure it out can cause. And the only thing I can say about it is that it's uniquely 2c-e-esque. This kind of mental construct is completely alien to me, and it seems like nothing but a waste of time and energy. No drug has done anything like this to me, scarred me so permanently in such an unidentifiable way. Take what I say with a grain of salt--maybe I'm crazy or something--but 2c-e seems downright toxic to me. It drains my spirit. Tryptamines, on the other hand restore what 2c-e seems to drain. 2c-e is a psychedelic by classification and structure but in practice it feels like the antithesis to one, and perhaps treating it like a psychedelic is where we went wrong because everything I've heard about how to treat psychedelics only made 2c-e's negative hit me harder during and after trip. Again, purely anecdotal. Neither dissociatives (heavy dxm abuse, mxe abuse, nitrous, salvia) or psychedelics (4-aco-dmt, AMT, LSD, mushrooms, DMT) have caused the profound harm to me that 2c-e has.
 
Scunch, I had all of these things for a few weeks after 2C-E (seemingly permanent when I was doing it often) - but upon a break they all vanished. So if he's tripped recently that's likely to be why. I'd recommend giving all psychedelics (and ideally dissociatives and cannabis, maybe even all drugs) a break for a month or two and seeing what happens. I'm willing to bet the effects would vanish - 2C-E seems to have long lingering after-effects like this for me, but they've always faded after 3-4 weeks of no tripping.
 
I'll try to explain this in a way that makes sense when stoned, which strangely sometimes causes things to make more sense..

Do the same sounds always cause the same touch/vision sensation? Meaning hearing sound A always makes you see taste A and hearing sound B makes you makes you taste B? I think this happens with other psychedelics as well. This is what happens: When on the drug, your brain understands or makes connections between things (sights, smells, even abstract concepts) that normally shouldn't have anything in common or be connected in any way. While sober, your brain understands that these two occurences (or thoughts) just, by chance, happened to occur in close proximity. While on these drugs, your brain basically "learns" things that don't make any logical sense. To make things worse, while tripping, the mind often jumps around (or at least mine does, but then again I have ADD) between thoughts rather quickly (ie thought spirals). It shortens our attention span to basically nothing. Unlearning these false/faulty memories and connections usually takes sobriety and time.

Also the thought you say your mind recoils from is probably various abstract thoughts or idea, in no way related, that your brain pieced together in non-logic while tripping. You can't comprehend it while sober, and trying to would probably make you crazy (as you say it has). But unused logical connections in your brain fade if not used. So as long as you tell your brain that these forks don't actually feel too spicy, the sensation will eventually go away. This is also the reason that forgetting to review between lectures or practice piano between lessons will result in you not remembering it as well. The connections in your brain won't have been reenforced and will have faded with time. Everything can be unlearned eventually, so you'll be fine if you wait it out.

Insanity is the point of no return, where you lose the ability to recognize your thoughts as irrational, and thus lose the ability to reverse them by yourself. You're obviously not there yet, so you'll be fine.
 
It's currently 'dormant'. I can still feel it there, but I've learned to ignore it and for the most part it doesn't bother me. I did have a particularly hard mxe trip where I kind of fell into that memory if that makes sense, but if anything the dissociation of MXE stuck to it, making it seem more distant and less volatile. It's funny, I've had countless dysphoric and downright nightmarish dissociative trips and I have nothing but love for them, the bad memories are so removed that the idea that they even happened is nearly absurd. Anyways, sobriety or the lack of it doesn't affect it much. I've had one 2c-e trip since I've noticed it's presence and it made the memory very obtrusive for nearly a week afterwards. It's been 4 or 5 months since that trip I think and it still sticks around, I just tip toe around it. It's been nearly a year since it first revealed itself. Biovail--I haven't gotten HPPD to the degree styrofoam has, it's mostly stuck to the visual field on specific surfaces, but the memory fragment is like emotional, sensational and CEV memories all welded into one memory. I've seen this potential in most psychedelics and had flashbacks to trips triggered by music, smells and sensations and all have been purely euphoric. 2c-e is the only one where something stuck in the long term, and it's also the only one that's had negative aftereffects. It's so odd because I never had a particularly unpleasant or dysphoric 2c-e trip. Altered states (besides that one mxe trip) make the memory nearly inaccessible and distant. I'm closer to it while sober but have learned to ignore it. That I can talk about it in this detail without bothering myself actually feels like progress. Time heals all wounds, and I can feel it healing this one too, but that it's taken this long just feels ridiculous.

Right now I don't think I'd touch any phenylethylamine again besides 2c-c and Mescaline and that's because they sound like they have very little in common with 2c-e and 2c-i.
 
You guys may have brought out some HPPD, 2c's known to bring it out or make it noticeable. It doesn't even take that many doses, good thing iv only tripped once off 2ce. Anyways i don't bother with psyches much, something about that seems counter productive sometimes. You always dose than think to your self, aww fuck why did i get my self into this again. That's what i always think on shrooms at least, the only positive i like from psyches is the after affects. Once your mind has been played around with , and in some cases raped it feels good to come back to reality and see things for their true nature. I don't really like the actual trip much but i can see how the after glow / come down can leave someone with some nice insight.
 
I have to chime in here to agree that I have found the same with 2C-B (I can't speak for all the 2C series but I have a suspicion I would feel the same about them). At first they seemed inviting, softer and more playful than LSD or Psilocybin. After my first experiment with 2C-B (tested), about a month later I invested in my own stash (tested) and in total had maybe 5 experiences with it over 2 months. Never more than once weekly and at doses from 14-24mg, and I was using no other drugs except weed at this time. On the last experiment I experienced extreme anxiety (this had been increasing every time I used it) and have not been the same since.

I was a mess for at least 3 months, feeling weird, dissociated, depressed, anxious, feeling like I was going to go psychotic and worrying that my thoughts hinted towards a developing psychotic state. After this 3 month period with nothing other than weed and a further 2 month break from weed too, I managed to get my head above water with the whole deal. Although I didn't realise at the time I was using the 2C-B, reflection during this sober period showed me just how nasty and twisted the 2C-B had been with my head. The experiences offered mind boggling beautiful colourful visuals, and sometimes giggly, confusing thought patterns, but while I was being distracted by these effects, I realised that the experience had just been surging me with anxiety and twisting my head round in a really confusing and contorted way. It felt very un-natural and inhuman on reflection. Looking back I noticed that my head had gone off kilter after my very first experience with it. It's not like my usage of it was "abuse", for me anyway, as I had been on much worse binges (2 times a week for a month) with mushrooms and LSD without any hitches. I noticed that I couldn't integrate my 2C-B experiences because they offered nothing to integrate, the effects just lingered and lingered and lingered and I would feel a bit off for a few days after and each trip just never reached any kind of 'closure'. I know this may just be limited to a few people and I'm not saying that people can't have no issues with these drugs, but I did and ALL the friends who took it with me have noticed similar problems to varying extents.

Still to this day 1 year later I do not feel back to the person I used to be, I feel the experiences robbed me of a bit of my personality and have made my psyche a bit cold/broken feeling. It has dramatically impacted my ability to enjoy other drugs also as it kind of scared me away from drugs for fear that it was all drugs causing these problems. However, infrequent use of the classic psychs and MDMA over the past half a year have helped me a little with getting both my life back on track and reducing my fear of drugs also which is getting on its way back now too.

I had quite bad HPPD (afterimages) for at least 6 months, and I still have them now and they've only in the last month or so reached a point where I believe they actually will go away for good. The anxiety and fear of psychosis stayed with me strongly for some time also. As I said I'm not trying to bad-mouth this whole series and I really respect the work Shulgin has done and I'm a huge fan of his, I just find something about 2C-B very disturbing, and my decent education with chemistry and psychology makes me feel like the other 2C-X drugs would have a similar effect on me, and for that reason I doubt I will ever try them. If I do, it'll be infrequently (once or twice spread out by at least half a year) and I won't venture further than the magical half-dozen. I can say however, after some experiences with Mescaline (synthetic, tested), that it is a truly incredible psychedelic, and to me seems like everything 2C-B was trying to be but failed so terribly at. Warm, gentle, emotional, colourful and visually beautiful, with a body high probably better than MDMA and a euphoria probably better too. I would highly recommend it to anyone who feels let down by the 2C-X series or related phenethylamines.
 
anyone suffering from psychedelic aftereffects, hydergine really helped me get rid of them.

the 2c-x have all been great to me, besides the body load of 2c-e. I've snorted probably over 35mg of 2c-b at a concert and even though it did make me a bit anxious I had the time of my goddamn life and saw a vision of a neon blue lion with a mane of fire. However since that trip I feel as though I've pretty much gotten all that I can get from 2c-b, I've taken it around 15 times now. 2c-c is gentle and beautiful, while 2c-e seems more rough and analytical. I haven't had a proper dose of 2c-i yet so I can't really comment on that one.

DOC is what seemed to push my serotonin system over the edge but I really think that hydergine helped it a lot, and I've had good experiences with DOC since my period of abusing it.

2c-c > 2c-b IMO
 
I've taken 2Cs including 2C-B, 2C-C, 2C-D, 2C-E, 2C-I, 2C-T-2, 2C-T-7, 2C-T-21, and 2C-P hundreds of times over the years and they still feel like some of the least damaging substances out there. They can be really intense, and I've had some bad experiences on some of them, but I consider them some of the best and most trustworthy psychedelics (maybe a few of them are a little sketchier). 2C-E is in my top 3 psychedelics of all time. Then again despite all of these trips and many, many others on other things, including periods of significant abuse, I have never developed even a touch of HPPD, so maybe it's down to individual body chemistry. Still, to call a whole class of drugs bad or evil is pretty silly. They're tools, like any other drug, and they might be good for some and not so good for others.

The only 2C-X I feel might not be such a good thing to consume (out of what I've tried) is 2C-I... that one feels a bit schizophrenic and strange in my brain. I still enjoy it but I use it very rarely (I did it this past weekend actually, but the last time before that was years ago).

To the above poster, thanks for sharing your experience. I'm not trying to say you didn't experience what you did, or that 2Cs didn't react badly for you. It's just that for most people, they seem to be pretty safe drugs.

And yeah, mescaline is a beautiful, special substance. :)
 
I haven't anywhere near the breadth of experience with these substances that Xorkoth does, but from what I've seen, there's no reason to think there's something inherently wrong with the 2C's as a whole. Personally, I find 2C-B to be a bit empty and hollow, but I absolutely love 2C-E and 2C-D. Looking forward to trying 2C-P some day, and I'd like to try 2C-C and 2C-I if I get the chance. Probably won't ever come across any 2C-T-x.

Ditto on mescaline being beautiful, special. I like to think of 2C-E and 2C-D (probably all of the 2C's really) as variants on mescaline. They have a lot in common IMHO.
 
Yeah I think it must be body chemistry because like you all say most people have no issues with the 2Cs. I should add that although I tested my stuff, there's obviously no way to distinguish between 2C-B and 2C-I with a simple EZtest kit, and I've read the most similar reports to mine from people who were using 2C-I, so there's a chance that it could have been that I was using. Anyway, I just wanted to share my personal experience with whatever it was I took. I agree that all the 2Cs are variants on Mescaline and I definitely seem the similarities from what I took to it, but the 2C felt like a 'broken' version to me, although I see how from Shulgin's POV breaking the mescaline molecule apart, re-arranging and substituting and documenting all the differences must have been an incredible journey in documenting both the effects of the chemistry of psychedelic phenethylamines and the part of the psyche the poke at. It's truly awe inspiring and I'm glad he did it, even if I can't appreciate the products of his experiments very well myself.
 
The nature of the 2C's (2C-x series) are very analytical, robotic, intellectual, and cognitive boosting. They aren't there to completely kill the ego. We can't survive on zero ego (as people would take advantage of us and we would not feed ourselves and then die). Some ego is necessary. Too much ego is bad, but too little ego, and you'll never stand up for yourself. You'll get walked over and be a pushover. 2C-x at sub-psychedelic doses is an intellectual booster and teaches you to stand up for what's right at all costs. If you let the gangs and the gang glorifying media take over, and the military industrial complex and mega-corporations, it will be a sad world indeed. We're not living in the sixties. These are different times. We may need some sort of society or community, but we also need intellectualism. Without intellectualism, the idiots would take over and fuel mass ignorance. The key lesson is stand up for yourself and to deny ignorance. By the way, the black hole mostly means the zero ego and ignorance accepting mentality that ignorant dummies and gangs are somehow on the same level as you and that we should lower our standards to become these scum of society is flawed. 2C-x series are basically repulsed by the sheer ignorance of your subconsciousness(something that you were likely never aware of). They're telling you to "wake up and smell the reality we're really living in". Peace is being killed and no one is doing anything about it. 2C-x is the warrior drug. Protest or do something! :!
 
seriously, any psy, if taken more then once every 2 week, will cause serious psychological problem.
but if you trip once every month, its always very helpful.
but when I trip 2-3 times a week, I get tons of depression, anxiety and overall negative experience.

even with my favorite psychadelic (mescaline), if I trip once a week, forget about it, the experience will be not just joyful, but will come with negative aspect.
I normally do emscaline once every 2 month, and its very helpful
 
True nature of the 2Cs? One would probably have to try all of them first, and even then umbrella statements wouldn't suffice as they are all unique.
 
Only ever tried 2c-b but I gotta chime in for the positive faction here. Different psychs for different moods and this one has it's place. I love that I feel in control but can also relax my mind and body to let it work it's magic but pull back when I want. It's relatively short lasting so I can fit it into an evening and still get a good night's sleep. And oh, the tingles and subtle sexual energy this gives on the waves. Just try edging on this drug and you'll be converted. One word. Exquisite.
 
Top