I definitely think it was a worthwhile experience, and I will certainly partake again in the future. Not sure if I'd do a higher or lower dose.
This is good to hear! It seems you had a fairly typical response and no side-effects worth complaining about. I don't know what dose will be best for you for therapeutic purposes, but from the standpoint of exploration, I definitely think it's worth trying a higher dose. I would suggest something in the range of 400-450 mg depending on how confident you are. At 450 mg, it will probably be quite a bit more intense but not especially heavy. I think 400 mg is a kind of "upper middle" sweet spot for a lot of people. Once you go above 500 mg, the trips start to last longer. I once took probably around 600 mg and it lasted for over 16 hours. The OEV experience was incredible, and the body energies were so powerful that it was difficult to stand up.
If you want to go lower, then below 200 mg or so the psychedelic aspect diminishes and it becomes of a kind of stimulant/entactogen. This can be very useful if one wants to enhance experiences that involve being around more non-tripping people as it's easier to interact with them. I think mescaline is very nice at these "underdoses"---magical even. My first two experience were sub-psychedelic, and I remember thinking about how I felt very grounded, confident, and at ease. I felt better than I ever had on MDMA, and it lasted much longer and lacked any of the negative effects.
Also, is there any period of time that one must wait before trying it a second time? With something like MDMA I know it's not recommended to do it too many times in close succession, for concern over depleting neurotransmitter reserves, unlike something like LSD or psilocybin that could be theoretically taken every day.
I'm not sure what you mean about theoretically being able to take LSD or psilocybin every day. Taking either of these or mescaline every day will lead to rapidly diminishing effects. To avoid diminished effects, I recommend waiting at least 3 days between two consecutive trips. If tripping three or more times, it's best to wait at least a week between each trip.
I personally prefer to wait at least a few weeks. Part of this is the psychological integration that is widely discussed, but I also feel like my body needs to "integrate" the experience in an analogous way to my psyche. I believe psychedelics initiate a cascade of changes and developments within the body which take more than a few days to manifest, and it's best to let the body finish its renovations before issuing new orders.
Since I'm now using psychedelics to treat chronic disease, I tend to pay close attention to what my body is doing. When symptoms start to return with greater frequency, it's usually a sign that it's time for another dose. As my overall health improves and I become more willing to take bigger doses, I'm noticing longer periods of remission after each dose. It's been 3 weeks since my 15 mg 2C-I dose, and I'm still in very good shape.
And is there typically a hangover the next day like MDMA, or not? Someone mentioned that to me but I wasn't sure if that was indeed the case, and I did feel a bit groggy for the first part of today but that seemed to dissipate in the afternoon; I wasn't sure if that was from the medicine or if it was unrelated.
All psychedelics have after-effects, but I would not use the word hangover to describe them at all. Indeed, I find post-trip effects to be complex and to last a lot longer than a day. I experience considerable mood elevation, feelings of increased flexibility and creativity, analgesia, stimulation, and some continued expansion of emotional range. For the most part, these "positive" after-effects counteract or mitigate the negatives I describe below.
The only real negatives I personally experience are fatigue and a headache. Many things contribute to the fatigue: activities undertaken during the trip; poor sleep quality/quantity on the night after; etc. I also think that in general, healing requires work, and work leads to fatigue. I also get post-trip headaches often but not always. With mescaline, these typically set in between the morning after and the second morning after. They are usually mild in nature and rarely persist beyond a full night of sleep.
So on the day after, I typically feel both negative and positive effects, but the positive effects are such that I can easily ignore the negative effects for the most part. That said, it's not unusual for the tiredness to catch up with me that evening or sometimes it takes another day to get there. Then I feel very tired and compelled to rest---not bad, just tired---and when I do rest it feels very restorative. After some good quality sleep, I find the negatives are all but gone but only positive effects that persist for days or even weeks.
The last thing I'll say is that I notice psychedelics, particularly the longer duration ones, seem to keep "doing work" on the body (if I may put it like that) for some days after the experience, and this can manifest as feelings that aren't entirely pleasant. I think of these as like growing pains or maybe
healing pains. I suspect that they coincide with biological processes of restoration and renovation. I also suspect that the psyche may go through analogous processes.
