I put off the 3 mg trial until today so I could observe my body and give my mind more time to process the last experience. Here is my mini report:
I sipped the dose over a 5 minute period. This time the onset was very smooth with just some tummy/gut awareness. No rushes. At T+1:15 I was confident I didn't need to be near the toilet and went outside to rake leaves with my wife. The chore felt pleasant, easy, and satisfying. I did not feel stimulated, but I didn't feel any fatigue either. I did seem to sweat about 3 times as much as might be normal, or maybe I was working harder than it felt like. In about half-an-hour, we filled up all of our lawn bags and decided to walk to the hardware store to buy more. They were sold out, so we finished the area with a plastic bag and then set out for a pleasant walk. Wife (who only had cannabis) seemed to have a bit of a contact high and remarked about the considerable time dilation. Visually, I noticed the perspective effect of pupil dilation and a slight enhancement of details but nothing dramatic. The sunlight also seemed a bit cooler in color temperature than normal, but I noticed that yesterday (without psychedelic) as well.
When we got home, it was still only T+3.5, and I put on some Infected Mushroom / Classical Mushroom, which I followed with some other random psytrance. The music euphoria was excellent, and I got a couple hours of good dancing in. Around T+4.5 I prepared and ate my dinner while actively dancing. I only ate half the portion though and saved the other half for after my shower, which was at T+5. When I got out of the shower, I was feeling incredibly blissful, and after I finished dinner, we watched a couple episodes of "Babylon 5"---a series I'm viewing for the first time. (IMO, this show is really excellent and seems very timely relative to current events in the real world.)
Overall I had a wonderful time today and experienced bliss on a level that I don't think I've felt since my early trips > 11 years ago. I had stimulation no different from other psychedelics. The urge to move to the music was there as was the energy when I did so, but I did not feel pushed or overdriven at all. Granted, the effects weren't nearly as strong as my recent 8 mg 2C-E experience in which I d felt rather over-stimulated in the late plateau. This is a big reason for me choosing to explore 2C-I again. I wanted to feel the "2C-stimulation" with minimal mind-fuck, so that I could better understand what I felt on the 2C-E. My reasoning is that if the stimulation from 2C-I bothers me, then the 2C-E "over-stimulation" was probably a drug effect that I'm more sensitive to. OTOH, if I don't have this problem with 2C-I, then the "over-stimulation" of the 2C-E may have been more of a psychological effect---a bodily manifestation of some kind of thought-form that needed processing. Of course, this thought-form could also re-emerge on 2C-I as well, but I assume I'm less likely to encounter it on the I than the E.
Perhaps it's too soon to judge, given that I only had 3 mg of 2C-I, and I got a surprising amount of sparkle out of that 3 mg! I do recall when I was young, after my first (mild) trip with 2C-I (10 mg? don't recall), I tried taking 3 mg before work as a stimulant. I was waiting tables, and when it hit me, I felt really uncomfortable and then I felt like I was doing everything twice as fast---way too fast for a "normal stimulated day". Also as the effects hit, I developed an ocular migraine, which was very disturbing. Many migraine sufferers experience an *aura*, a kind of altered state before the headache sets in characterized by among other things visual distortions. These visual distortions aren't trippy though. They are more like playing a dirty Nintendo (NES) cartridge (sorry kids). It's like having areas of stuck pixels (which can be static or moire-like patterns) that completely obscure the vision of parts of the eyes. They also pulse with the heart beat, which is extra creepy. Thankfully the aura only lasted an hour or so, and when I got home, I felt fine. An Internet search helped me understand what I'd experienced. I've had a couple other ocular migraines since without taking anything, so I have no idea if the 2C-I triggered it or if it was just an obnoxious coincidence. The experience did leave me with the impression that 2C-I was hyper-stimulatiing in a way that might actually be worse in lower doses, and given my difficult 1.5 mg experience earlier this week, I was quite nervous for today. Thankfully, today was not a repeat of either of those unpleasant experiences. I now feel reasonably comfortable moving to 6 mg some days from now!
One thing that is becoming absolutely clear to me from these low dose expeditions is that even a (+) experience is still psychedelic, and as Sasha said, there are no casual experiments. If I take 3 or even 1.5 mg 2C-I and my set or setting are bad, then my experience will likely be negative too. It's unlikely to be a train wreck, like too high a dose in a bad setting could be, but it still matters a lot to how the trip goes. Hence, it's best to prepare for these low dose experiences almost as much as I would for high dose experiences. Furthermore, even 2-3 days between these kinds of low doses is fine for tolerance, my mind might still need longer for post-processing.
