I Am a Mannequin

3-HO-PCE
Arylcyclohexylamine
Dissociative
nervewing

Context

Name:
nervewing
Trip Date:
05/2017
Age:
21
Setting:
My apartment
Gender:
not specified
Height:
6'0
Weight:
120 lbs

Substances

Name Dosage Route of Administration
3-HO-PCE 20 mg Intranasal

Onset

Onset
T0:00:

Dosed Intranasally, it has the same acrid petroleum flavor as 3-MeO-PCE, but does not sting at all.

T0:14:

Begin to feel the onset of the experience. This manifests as a sort of lightheadedness.

T0:30:

I am simultaneously feeling heavy and light, with a slight tingling numbness in my extremities. No other effects noted as of now, I definitely feel altered, but just barely.

T1:00:

I am still not feeling very much at all. There is a sense of mental dissociation there, but it’s faint and elusive. I decide to redose with another 10 mg. At this point I am noticing open eyed visuals in the form of faint dark and light horizontal bands flashing across my field of vision.

T1:30:

I decide to go outside and smoke a joint I had rolled beforehand. I lost the joint among my bedsheets but find myself perfectly capable of locating it again, indicating that I am not impaired to any meaningful degree. I go outside and relax in the bathtub we have stationed back there. I smoke the joint and sink into the ambient noises of the neighborhood.

Peak

Peak
T1:40:

The experience feels as though its picked up substantially. Interestingly enough, the physical dissociation does not extend beyond a numbness of my extremities. There is no wobbliness or hallucinatory sense of motion or loss of body, I am still quite corporeally grounded. I feel like I have been suddenly separated from the world, subtly and stealthily, as though a rug has been quickly and quietly pulled out from under me. I am now floating in my own bubble, separated by some indescribable barrier from a world I can still sense, a world I can still see and hear as it bustles around me. It is as if a cold and sterile scalpel has made a cut so thin and clean that it has rended reality apart and left me partitioned in my own private space.
The open eyed visuals now manifest as flashing faint diamond patterns, especially visible against lights, like that of my laptop. It looks like two bulges are pulsing on either side of my field of vision, the same sort of peripheral shadows one may see when they rub the corner of their eye. The close eyed visuals are almost like video clips, vivid and clear, built from my memories of the day- of the may day protests I witnessed in the city that morning, the masses of people and signs and banners and the faceless black bloc and the energy of people in resistance. I feel like my face is drooping and melting in a most surreal and ethereal manner, like tentacles are hanging down from it, this is not so much of a physical sensation as it is some odd discrepancy in my normal perception.

T2:00:

I begin feeling a sort of warm, sweaty, moist graininess that I feel from dissociatives, like all of my flesh has been replaced with wet sand and that the interstices between these grains and between them and my skin form numb voids from which a feeling of very shallow anesthesia is derived. Indeed, there is not much feeling in my fingertips. I still do not feel acutely physically dissociated, and with sufficient pressure, this anesthesia is overcome. I am very couchlocked, not in the incapacitating manner instilled by dissociatives like ketamine, but more in the sense that I just really really don’t want to move. Stillness feels like my body’s natural state. I am quite lucid and clearheaded despite the strong mental dissociation disconnecting me from my environment. I can think coherently and cogently, though the world is instilled with some indescribable “weirdness”. There is a buzzing in my head and everything feels grainy to the touch, like I am roughly vibrating.

T2:15:

The feeling of sandiness has become more marked and apparent. My head feels as though it is pulsing and sliding around, like it has broken free of its moorings in a windstorm. It physically feels as though my head is sinking inwards 3-dimensionally, like there is a black hole at the center of my brain. It feels as though a band has been tied tightly around my skull and is squeezing my thoughts closer together. My movement is light and liberated and my every action carries extra momentum, like my extremities are heavy and my limbs are light. The sense of separation has manifested as everything feeling ethereal and drifting around me, though despite all this, the experience is still quite mild and I do not feel acutely impaired or incapacitated in any way.

T3:00:

I smoke some more cannabis. I feel warm and weird, my body feels like it is made of fuzzy gelatin and my tongue feels numb.The “bubble” I have been contained in for the duration of the experience is reinforced. It feels like there are a series of concentric spheres around me, pulsing, vibrating, and most importantly, keeping me separate. This separation is now not only a separation from the world around me, but is now a separation from my normal self. I feel as if I have quietly changed into a different person, like this dissociative has spread through my mind like a plague and I didn’t notice until it had fully taken hold. It has stealthily and carefully assassinated me and replaced my former self with a new self, constructed from half formed memories and odd semblances of human thought. I feel emotionally flat and unempathetic to a disturbing degree. I feel as though I am missing some human essence, that I have been replaced with an artificial humanity that falls directly in the depths of the uncanny valley. I still cannot entirely articulate how I was different, I just was. I must be wary with who I interact with while on this substance, as I may behave in uncharacteristic ways. I notice this in conversation with some people, though they don’t call me out I find myself responding in ways that I would not normally. I feel uninhibited in what I say and what thoughts I form, an implication that my normal state is inhibited by some forms of empathy or humanity. I am an alien trapped inside a sphere, a body snatcher and a mannequin.

Offset

Offset
T3:30:

Looking back on the experience at this point, I feel as though I have had amnesia for the past few hours, or that the past few hours have been a distant memory. When sober I would later realize that I had a decent recollection of the experience, though taking notes certainly helped jog my memory for the sake of writing about it.

T4:00:

I feel like I am coming down now. I only really feel that same faintness and numbness in my extremities and that sensation of tightness wrapped around my head.

T4:30:

Mostly back to baseline, though my head still feels heavy. At this point I smoke more cannabis and find myself rocketed back into the thick of the cognitive aspect of the experience. I begin to ascribe deep importance to all sorts of minor stimuli I am being subjected to. I find myself constantly getting distracted and falling into super deep focus on each distraction, only to get distracted again. The headspace at this point is potently psychedelic and is reminiscent of other “psychedelic” dissociatives, though there are no accompanying visuals or sensory effects. I read through news stories and vividly imagine the events surrounding each one, creating detailed and emotionally compelling narratives in my head, empathizing with each character in each story. Perhaps this sudden hallucinated empathy is me coming back into myself, to compensate for the total flatness I was feeling before.

T7:00:

Back to baseline now. I go to sleep.

Conclusion / Aftermath

This dissociative holds value for its novelty, though I did not find it particularly useful. The near total lack of physical effects was interesting, as was the all consuming cognitive dissociation. It was not physically stimulating, but was quite mentally stimulating. The sense of disconnection from the world and from myself was stark and would have been startling had I not sunken into it so gradually. The sensory effects were mild and nondescript. Overall this is an odd drug, though I really do not see any way I could utilize it in the future, whether it be for introspection or for social settings. I would hardly call this a dissociative in fact, it is it’s own unique and totally novel sort of alteration, though not one that I am eager to revisit. I would most compare the headspace to O-PCE, dull, neutral, and emotionless, though as I mentioned, without physical effects.

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