I noticed NBOMes and Amphetamines listed together as a potentially dangerous combo and decided to share my personal experience.
This was about 10 years ago, right around the time SR was taken down.
TLDR: I had a bad(?) trip on 25I-NBOMe and proceeded to smoke meth on the comedown. What proceeded was psychosis and HPPD in the form of "evil/demonic" pareidolia which lasted for years.
A little backstory:
It all started when I got back in touch with an old friend who later informed me he had ordered multiple sheets of a new type of psychedelics - 25C and 25I-NBOMes. He explained to me that 25C is more of a body high while 25I is more of a mind high with more intense visuals. With his recommendation, I started off with 25C and introduced it to my group of friends.
From my memory, 25C on it's own felt like candy-flipping in a way - a euphoric body high, with some cool visuals. I oddly remember a weird feeling in my stomach every time I took 25C, and the coolest visuals I can remember was staring at the cracked cement in my friend's backyard and being able to see complete suburban neighborhoods; some houses lit up, others not. We fell in love with the drug and proceeded to take it once or twice a week.
One of the friends and I were highly interested in trying 25I, so we hit up the dealer who agreed to let us try it at his house overnight under his supervision.
25I-NBOMe - The bad(?) trip (Day 1: Night):
I don't remember the dosage, my friend had multiple sheets of 25C and 25I but they were the same dosage for each type of NBOMe. Anyways, my friend and I took 2 tabs of 25I-NBOMe. (Can't remember if we took 2 directly, or 1 and redosed at peak)
It had the same disgusting metallic taste as 25C but I specifically remember it felt like the blotter burnt a hole through the gum under my tongue.
During the comeup, the dealer asked what we wanted to do and I suggested watching American Horror Story. (I'm a dumbass)
I'm fucking terrible with horror stuff in general so I have no idea why I suggested that.
What came next were the most intense visuals I've ever experienced in my life. I've done LSD and shrooms here and there and for me personally, they couldn't compare. The visuals I've had on those drugs were akin to morphing walls on LSD, and watching the ground slide beneath me like a conveyer belt on shrooms.
On 25I, I vividly saw warring nations on the dealer's bed blanket I was sitting on, tidal waves crashing into eachother on the ceiling, amongst other things. As I tried focusing on the show we put on, I proceeded to see hundreds of evil faces on the wall with sinister grins staring back at me; fading in and out from some areas, popping up again elsewhere. These are the most memorable things from the trip, everything else is a blur now.
The reason I'm unsure if it was a bad trip is because I was apparently smiling the whole fucking time. Looking back on it is terrifying, but I guess I was enjoying it in the moment?
Adding meth to the mix (Day 2: Morning):
The sun started coming up as our we were coming down. The dealer drove me to my house where my friend also parked his car.
The visuals weren't completely gone and my friend was uncomfortable driving home yet, so we smoked a bowl of meth. I still vividly remember getting out of his car to smoke a cigarette and staring at the bushes in the cul-de-sac because each green leaf looked like a western mythological dragon.
My friend eventually went home and I forced myself to eat some food. I also remember every grain of rice from the bowl I was eating looked like a naked lady (from a popular ecstasy pill press at the time).
I then played league of legends until it got dark out and I tried going to bed.
Paranoid delusions, Start of psychosis (Day 2: Night - next morning):
While lying on my bed, I started seeing floating black wisps of smoke/cloud darting around in my room. I was convinced that they were demons/souls and I would be either possessed or dead if I fell asleep.
I turn the lights on after trying to get this thought out of my head for 20 minutes, and failing. The wisps are still there.
I then notice the shadow of my chair looked like the silhouette of a girl, shoulder's up, who was facing to the right. Whenever I looked away, it felt like the shadow moved its head to face towards me. When I look back at it, it's facing to the right.
I stay up all night fucking horrified just staring at this shadow. Every shadow in the room, including the one I was staring at, kept swaying left to right (as if drunk), and growing and shrinking in size. This is a quite common trick the mind/eyes play on you after days without sleep, but this was the first time I ever gave it so much attention. And this was the most severe I've ever noticed this phenomena. Previously, I would hardly notice it even after being up for 4 days (the longest I've ever been up without sleep).
During the night I occasionally took another hit of meth to stay up since, at the time to me, sleep equaled death.
The sun eventually comes up and my family members go to work/school. I'm home alone. Once again, I try to get some sleep with the newly provided comfort from the sun.
I'm still paranoid out of my mind and unable to sleep; this continues until around noon, when the sun is completely up over my head.
The sky is clear, yet somewhat cloudy, typical Southern California weather... but it just looks and feels so dark everywhere as if light itself was directly leaving from my eyes.
As someone who highly prefers dark environments, I completely raise/open all of my room's blinds for the first time in my life.
At this point, the only thing stopping my neighbors from spying on me is the clear glass of my windows.
It doesn't help.
Full-blown psychosis, heart-attack(?) (Day 3: Afternoon - Night)
In an attempt to get these paranoid thoughts out of my mind, I load up more league of legends.
As I'm playing, I notice something in the reflection of the black reflective framing of my monitor screen. (The reflection on my monitor frame is almost as clear as a mirror)
I vividly see a person sitting on my bed behind me. I look back, it's my crumpled up blanket. I look at the monitor frame, it's a person. I look back and forth around 10 times before getting up and changing the shape/positioning of the blanket and sitting back down. I still see a person in the reflection. I start using the reflection on the monitor frame to scan my whole room and notice a woman standing by one my windows. For whatever reason I deluded that it was an angel for a bit, but it's not important. While this is all happening, I feel something in my throat and I'm having trouble breathing. Whenever I try to drink water, it feels like it's going down the wrong hole, forcing me to clear my throat or cough. For any meth users that read this, I know what you're thinking, but it's not the usual junk that gets caught in your throat during dehydration. It felt like a part of my throat, actual tissue.
I go to my backyard to smoke a cigarette, hoping that changing the environment would help. The shadow of a patio umbrella cover resembled a person that kept pointing at me and then at itself, while making other gestures (probably the wind). I remember a story from the friend I was just with of how he befriended a demon on shrooms (he had his own issues), and I try conversing with the shadow. In my mind, whenever I said something, the shadow would make a different gesture (convenient timing from the wind). This goes on for a while before deciding to head back inside. Then, I freaked the fuck out.
On the reflection of the clear glass sliding door of my backyard, I see a younger teenage boy standing next to me. I take my eyes off of the door and look beside me, there's nothing there. I stare at the reflection while asking who he is, what he wants, etc. Nothing happens. I look beside me again and look back at the reflection. The person in the reflection changed from a boy into a girl. I try talking to it more until I hear the loud sound of dishes breaking in my kitchen (which is directly next to the backyard door). I go inside to check the broken dishes but nothing broke. I go back outside to check the reflection but I couldn't see the person anymore.
At this point, whatevers in my throat was getting bigger, and breathing was getting harder. Trying to clear my throat didn't help at all, and if anything, it made the situation worse. My heart rate has been high and irregular this whole experience, but I start feeling as if my heart stops for a split second every now and then. I lay down on my living room couch feeling the impending death, and the shadows in my living room start blatantly moving around and dancing around me. The only ones that I can remember to this day was the shadow of a person standing next to my window curtain drapes constantly looking outside the window, back towards me, then back outside again as if to monitor the situation. I also remember seeing a small shadow figure sitting atop an aluminum cookie box on a distant shelf (think tinkerbell from peter pan) swinging her legs back and forth. I stared at it for a few minutes until it seemed to notice me and tilted her head to look at me. It stopped swinging her legs, but never took its eyes off of me again. Eventually I call my aunt, who is a nurse, and told her I feel like I'm dying. She comes home to check on me and freaks out while checking out my heart rate. I tell her I told adderall to study and she gets mad. For whatever reason, from the moment I could hear the garage door opening as she got home, my situation slowly got better and her presence alone helped a lot. This is what leads me to think it was a panic attack and not an impending heart attack but I have no idea, as I'm not an expert. I'm positive there was no hyperventilation though, it was more so the opposite.
Anyways, I go back to my room. It's getting dark outside again so I call my friend to explain my situation and ask for help. He comes over to provide some rationality as I describe what I experienced. As I mention the female shadow figure during the previous night he says, "Okay... but have you considered that it's just the shadow of the chair?" Although I earlier mentioned that it was indeed the shadow of a chair, during my paranoid night up I completely overlooked this fact. Not that it helped at all anyway.
I feel like this is getting pretty long so I'll try to keep it short from here on. My friend was a stoner so he suggested we smoke some weed and I stay the night at his place. I still saw weird shit in his room but eventually went to sleep. A lot of events after this one are hazy in my memory, but I definitely went crazy for a few months. During this time I convinced myself the bad trip was not from the 25I, but from the meth, so I tried taking it again with my friends and had a severe bad trip.
HPPD & Conclusion
Ever since these events I found a new sense of "evil/demonic" pareidolia, where I could see sinister faces in the patterns of literally anything. Walls, floor, shadows, patterns on blankets, towels, anything you could think of. Of course, only if the source material slightly suggested the form of an evil face. I also saw a vivid face of Jesus on my pillow and was convinced that it was my salvation. The sensation pursued for years, though the intensity slowly decreased over time. It stopped freaking me out about 3-6 into it. I gradually accepted that it's my mind playing tricks on me and accepted it as a part of my life. I'd estimate that the pareidolia mostly went away after 3-5 years. It's been 10 years since this all happened and i'm not sure on the frequency of the pareidolia, but I do know that I woke up extremely hungover a few weeks ago and noticed a face on a plastic bag across the room. Didn't bother me at all, which is why I don't recall the frequency of the events the past few years but I'm fairly certain that was the first "face" I've seen in 1-2 years.
I apologize if this was too long and winded, it's my first time telling the story other than when I told my aunt when she came to check on me, and my friend that helped me out. Any feedback or opinions are welcome, positive or negative.
I'm actually curious how others would perceive/rate my situation. I've always believed that people go through worse and just get over it without freaking out like I did.
This was about 10 years ago, right around the time SR was taken down.
TLDR: I had a bad(?) trip on 25I-NBOMe and proceeded to smoke meth on the comedown. What proceeded was psychosis and HPPD in the form of "evil/demonic" pareidolia which lasted for years.
A little backstory:
It all started when I got back in touch with an old friend who later informed me he had ordered multiple sheets of a new type of psychedelics - 25C and 25I-NBOMes. He explained to me that 25C is more of a body high while 25I is more of a mind high with more intense visuals. With his recommendation, I started off with 25C and introduced it to my group of friends.
From my memory, 25C on it's own felt like candy-flipping in a way - a euphoric body high, with some cool visuals. I oddly remember a weird feeling in my stomach every time I took 25C, and the coolest visuals I can remember was staring at the cracked cement in my friend's backyard and being able to see complete suburban neighborhoods; some houses lit up, others not. We fell in love with the drug and proceeded to take it once or twice a week.
One of the friends and I were highly interested in trying 25I, so we hit up the dealer who agreed to let us try it at his house overnight under his supervision.
25I-NBOMe - The bad(?) trip (Day 1: Night):
I don't remember the dosage, my friend had multiple sheets of 25C and 25I but they were the same dosage for each type of NBOMe. Anyways, my friend and I took 2 tabs of 25I-NBOMe. (Can't remember if we took 2 directly, or 1 and redosed at peak)
It had the same disgusting metallic taste as 25C but I specifically remember it felt like the blotter burnt a hole through the gum under my tongue.
During the comeup, the dealer asked what we wanted to do and I suggested watching American Horror Story. (I'm a dumbass)
I'm fucking terrible with horror stuff in general so I have no idea why I suggested that.
What came next were the most intense visuals I've ever experienced in my life. I've done LSD and shrooms here and there and for me personally, they couldn't compare. The visuals I've had on those drugs were akin to morphing walls on LSD, and watching the ground slide beneath me like a conveyer belt on shrooms.
On 25I, I vividly saw warring nations on the dealer's bed blanket I was sitting on, tidal waves crashing into eachother on the ceiling, amongst other things. As I tried focusing on the show we put on, I proceeded to see hundreds of evil faces on the wall with sinister grins staring back at me; fading in and out from some areas, popping up again elsewhere. These are the most memorable things from the trip, everything else is a blur now.
The reason I'm unsure if it was a bad trip is because I was apparently smiling the whole fucking time. Looking back on it is terrifying, but I guess I was enjoying it in the moment?
Adding meth to the mix (Day 2: Morning):
The sun started coming up as our we were coming down. The dealer drove me to my house where my friend also parked his car.
The visuals weren't completely gone and my friend was uncomfortable driving home yet, so we smoked a bowl of meth. I still vividly remember getting out of his car to smoke a cigarette and staring at the bushes in the cul-de-sac because each green leaf looked like a western mythological dragon.
My friend eventually went home and I forced myself to eat some food. I also remember every grain of rice from the bowl I was eating looked like a naked lady (from a popular ecstasy pill press at the time).
I then played league of legends until it got dark out and I tried going to bed.
Paranoid delusions, Start of psychosis (Day 2: Night - next morning):
While lying on my bed, I started seeing floating black wisps of smoke/cloud darting around in my room. I was convinced that they were demons/souls and I would be either possessed or dead if I fell asleep.
I turn the lights on after trying to get this thought out of my head for 20 minutes, and failing. The wisps are still there.
I then notice the shadow of my chair looked like the silhouette of a girl, shoulder's up, who was facing to the right. Whenever I looked away, it felt like the shadow moved its head to face towards me. When I look back at it, it's facing to the right.
I stay up all night fucking horrified just staring at this shadow. Every shadow in the room, including the one I was staring at, kept swaying left to right (as if drunk), and growing and shrinking in size. This is a quite common trick the mind/eyes play on you after days without sleep, but this was the first time I ever gave it so much attention. And this was the most severe I've ever noticed this phenomena. Previously, I would hardly notice it even after being up for 4 days (the longest I've ever been up without sleep).
During the night I occasionally took another hit of meth to stay up since, at the time to me, sleep equaled death.
The sun eventually comes up and my family members go to work/school. I'm home alone. Once again, I try to get some sleep with the newly provided comfort from the sun.
I'm still paranoid out of my mind and unable to sleep; this continues until around noon, when the sun is completely up over my head.
The sky is clear, yet somewhat cloudy, typical Southern California weather... but it just looks and feels so dark everywhere as if light itself was directly leaving from my eyes.
As someone who highly prefers dark environments, I completely raise/open all of my room's blinds for the first time in my life.
At this point, the only thing stopping my neighbors from spying on me is the clear glass of my windows.
It doesn't help.
Full-blown psychosis, heart-attack(?) (Day 3: Afternoon - Night)
In an attempt to get these paranoid thoughts out of my mind, I load up more league of legends.
As I'm playing, I notice something in the reflection of the black reflective framing of my monitor screen. (The reflection on my monitor frame is almost as clear as a mirror)
I vividly see a person sitting on my bed behind me. I look back, it's my crumpled up blanket. I look at the monitor frame, it's a person. I look back and forth around 10 times before getting up and changing the shape/positioning of the blanket and sitting back down. I still see a person in the reflection. I start using the reflection on the monitor frame to scan my whole room and notice a woman standing by one my windows. For whatever reason I deluded that it was an angel for a bit, but it's not important. While this is all happening, I feel something in my throat and I'm having trouble breathing. Whenever I try to drink water, it feels like it's going down the wrong hole, forcing me to clear my throat or cough. For any meth users that read this, I know what you're thinking, but it's not the usual junk that gets caught in your throat during dehydration. It felt like a part of my throat, actual tissue.
I go to my backyard to smoke a cigarette, hoping that changing the environment would help. The shadow of a patio umbrella cover resembled a person that kept pointing at me and then at itself, while making other gestures (probably the wind). I remember a story from the friend I was just with of how he befriended a demon on shrooms (he had his own issues), and I try conversing with the shadow. In my mind, whenever I said something, the shadow would make a different gesture (convenient timing from the wind). This goes on for a while before deciding to head back inside. Then, I freaked the fuck out.
On the reflection of the clear glass sliding door of my backyard, I see a younger teenage boy standing next to me. I take my eyes off of the door and look beside me, there's nothing there. I stare at the reflection while asking who he is, what he wants, etc. Nothing happens. I look beside me again and look back at the reflection. The person in the reflection changed from a boy into a girl. I try talking to it more until I hear the loud sound of dishes breaking in my kitchen (which is directly next to the backyard door). I go inside to check the broken dishes but nothing broke. I go back outside to check the reflection but I couldn't see the person anymore.
At this point, whatevers in my throat was getting bigger, and breathing was getting harder. Trying to clear my throat didn't help at all, and if anything, it made the situation worse. My heart rate has been high and irregular this whole experience, but I start feeling as if my heart stops for a split second every now and then. I lay down on my living room couch feeling the impending death, and the shadows in my living room start blatantly moving around and dancing around me. The only ones that I can remember to this day was the shadow of a person standing next to my window curtain drapes constantly looking outside the window, back towards me, then back outside again as if to monitor the situation. I also remember seeing a small shadow figure sitting atop an aluminum cookie box on a distant shelf (think tinkerbell from peter pan) swinging her legs back and forth. I stared at it for a few minutes until it seemed to notice me and tilted her head to look at me. It stopped swinging her legs, but never took its eyes off of me again. Eventually I call my aunt, who is a nurse, and told her I feel like I'm dying. She comes home to check on me and freaks out while checking out my heart rate. I tell her I told adderall to study and she gets mad. For whatever reason, from the moment I could hear the garage door opening as she got home, my situation slowly got better and her presence alone helped a lot. This is what leads me to think it was a panic attack and not an impending heart attack but I have no idea, as I'm not an expert. I'm positive there was no hyperventilation though, it was more so the opposite.
Anyways, I go back to my room. It's getting dark outside again so I call my friend to explain my situation and ask for help. He comes over to provide some rationality as I describe what I experienced. As I mention the female shadow figure during the previous night he says, "Okay... but have you considered that it's just the shadow of the chair?" Although I earlier mentioned that it was indeed the shadow of a chair, during my paranoid night up I completely overlooked this fact. Not that it helped at all anyway.
I feel like this is getting pretty long so I'll try to keep it short from here on. My friend was a stoner so he suggested we smoke some weed and I stay the night at his place. I still saw weird shit in his room but eventually went to sleep. A lot of events after this one are hazy in my memory, but I definitely went crazy for a few months. During this time I convinced myself the bad trip was not from the 25I, but from the meth, so I tried taking it again with my friends and had a severe bad trip.
HPPD & Conclusion
Ever since these events I found a new sense of "evil/demonic" pareidolia, where I could see sinister faces in the patterns of literally anything. Walls, floor, shadows, patterns on blankets, towels, anything you could think of. Of course, only if the source material slightly suggested the form of an evil face. I also saw a vivid face of Jesus on my pillow and was convinced that it was my salvation. The sensation pursued for years, though the intensity slowly decreased over time. It stopped freaking me out about 3-6 into it. I gradually accepted that it's my mind playing tricks on me and accepted it as a part of my life. I'd estimate that the pareidolia mostly went away after 3-5 years. It's been 10 years since this all happened and i'm not sure on the frequency of the pareidolia, but I do know that I woke up extremely hungover a few weeks ago and noticed a face on a plastic bag across the room. Didn't bother me at all, which is why I don't recall the frequency of the events the past few years but I'm fairly certain that was the first "face" I've seen in 1-2 years.
I apologize if this was too long and winded, it's my first time telling the story other than when I told my aunt when she came to check on me, and my friend that helped me out. Any feedback or opinions are welcome, positive or negative.
I'm actually curious how others would perceive/rate my situation. I've always believed that people go through worse and just get over it without freaking out like I did.