Yeah DOC is really strong stuff. Some trips are stronger than others too (like with any psychedelic). Once I took 2mg, when I was taking it 2-3 times a month last summer, and it was just really strong, stronger than my 3mg trips (which has been my usual dose). DOC, as Shulgin says in PIHKAL, is a "dyed in the wool psychedelic". It just really gets in there and suffuses things, and it goes on and on. I love it, I haven't taken it since before winter, I've gotta do that again. I don't like it so much being inside, I vastly prefer to be outside and exploring nature, during the first stage anyway, during the second stage is when I like to party and anything is great then.
My bass player friend and I had another tripping jam session this weekend... I think I posted about the other one. The idea is to combine dissociatives with tryptamines and play freeform music together. Last time it was the most incredible experience, we seemed to conjure up a living, breathing entity that was telling a complex and epic story through the music. It seemed to be guiding us in this process, my friend even spontaneously developed a jump in technique that he still has. Last time we were tripping so hard that I wasn't sure if the music was actually amazing, or if we were just tripping, but it felt like the best stuff we had ever played. Unfortunately some weird shit happened with the computer and it didn't record so we couldn't know.
Well, this time the trip was extremely lucid for both of us, and indeed, the music was phenomenal, it was not our imaginations. This time I have a Nord keyboard too instead of a cheap Yamaha so my sound was so much better and more expressive. The process happened just the same, we started playing, it began a little choppy and unsure but moment by moment we were swept up in the presence of something profound and beautiful that was guiding the music. I mean it wasn't like I had no input, in fact I had a lot of input, it was me doing it, but guided by something beyond my fully conscious mind. We were telling a story with music, through our musical conversation, a story we both just knew. The choice of what to do in the next moment for both of us was something entirely self-evident. Once again, the music was evoking scenes and places and people and interactions. I remember one part that was describing the desolation and pain of the starving people of the world, for example, at first by showcasing a particular woman and her children (we both described it the same during a break). I'm getting chills just remembering it. The music was constantly evolving, never remaining in any set progression of key or rhythm or tempo, yet we were always together. We played for 6 hours almost constantly, even after the trip was basically over. I believe that this is something the two of us will be able to do without the drugs, but the drugs certainly help to facilitate an extremely open and emotionally sensitive state. And my playing... easily the best I've ever done, better than last time or any other time I've played music in my whole life. I could not believe the complexity and beauty of what was happening, with virtually no flubs. Unfortunately, the computer got weird again, inexplicably, and we were again unable to record anything, which really bothers me now because the music is in my dreams, it was the best thing I think I've ever heard and we could have had it permanently recorded for ourselves and others to hear. At the time we laughed about it heartily because it seemed like some sort of cosmic joke that it happened both times.
But, this weekend I am going as a VIP with this friend and his band, to a festival they're playing 2 nights at. I'll be staying in the band's camp area and my friend and I are going to set up late-night at the camp when we and everyone else will be maximally psychedelicized, and play our music for hours, and tell beautiful stories with music for everyone who wants to listen. We decided that if anyone asks, our 2-person psychedelic music session band will be called Unicorn Horn Porn. And I hope someone asks.
I'm intensely excited about it, of course about going to the festival at all (especially for free as a VIP), but mostly about playing there.
anyways, I'm in the camp that disbelieved in any higher power prior to my introduction to psychedelics, and "kept on keeping on" with that skepticism after that introduction. I wouldn't say that psychedelics have necessarily "reaffirmed" my skepticism, but they show me visually/emotionally what I already understood cognitively: that I can only interact with the universe through the gateway of my own subjective perception, and that perceived "acts of God"/miracles/serendipities/spiritual moments/"felt" presences are just that--perceived. Being able to "manufacture" the presence of a perceived entity or entities, just by taking a drug that affects my perceptions, really drove that point home for me. 
