I snorted a big pile of chalky powder. As expected, it was instantly extremely unpleasant. Searing pain fired its way up my nose like a blowtorch, blistering everything it touched and crackling into my nerves. I coughed and sputtered as it stung my sinuses like being whipped with nettles, the jolts of pain fearsome and uncompromising. My eyes winced shut and tears ran uncontrollably from them. I couldn’t talk, all I could do was cringe and shudder. The sheer volume of powder made this substantially more unpleasant than my experience with snorting other 2C-x compounds.

The drip begins to run down my throat, burning the whole way down. I shudder as it runs its course, horrid bitter chills that rattle my spine. I am shaking as the experience begins to take grip with its wrenching polychrome fingers. They tear into me, eviscerate my mind and body, a swift and messy medieval surgery to insert a sizzling psychedelic experience into my nervous system as quickly as possible. Nervous energy shoots into my extremities a bit too quickly for comfort- definitely none of the gentle gradual immersion of dosing orally.

The nausea overwhelms me as the bitter chemical seeps deeper into my body. My body hotly rejects this poison, and I have to quickly run upstairs to throw up in the bathroom. I instantly feel better, a rare occurrence for me as typically the sickness from psychedelics sticks around for the duration of my experiences. I start to pick up on visuals as I purge my sickness, lights and flashes of color at the edges of my vision, pulsing and creeping inwards with each nervous throb of my heart. I return downstairs, feeling invigorated and replenished, though there is still a measure of physical pain and discomfort in my nose, my abdomen, and my muscles. This seems to be a bit of concern for my company but I reassure them that I’m feeling much better now and that I know what I’m doing probably.

The more positive aspects of the experience begin to pick up now. Tossed into the pool with the swirling discomfort is a rushing euphoria as the world begins to seethe with light and saturation around me. Concentric patterns, radiating patterns, floral patterns, all interlocking and traced around each other begin to manifest on every surface, waves of green and deep ruddy purple pulsing through them. These visuals feature no pareidolia or figures or forms- they are purely geoemtric and abstract, divorced from any organic form or behavior.

The euphoria washes over into hypomania. I am talking a lot, I feel hotly stimulated and my body and mind are rushing through the aether like a meteorite in the atmosphere, blistering with friction. I am infodumping about drugs to people I pray are interested and aren’t just humoring me. I am shaking a lot and can’t really sit still or find a comfortable position. I am extremely restless, and the experience so far shows no sign of leveling off. I chew some gum to mitigate the clenching in my jaw. There is still substantial lingering pain in my nose and throat. The visuals begin to conform to straight lines, and intersections in my vision pulsing and propagating from those points like an antenna emitting waves of electromagnetic radiation. They adhere to the corners of my field of view, sending out ripples across the center, and propagate from the junctions of hallucinated lines and structures like some great subconscious architecture mechanically and mathematically generating itself on every blank surface.

The patterns are blooming and blossoming on everything in a more freeform manner now, reminiscent of life-forms like scallop shells and palmetto fronds alongside great concentric diamonds, striped with rainbows and dark bands pulsing with prismatic auras. Though they resemble the organic, they are entirely artificial in their feeling, mechanical, impersonal, dead and unreal. They are still entirely strikingly beautiful and rippling with an entirely different kind of energy than that contained by the living. It is a primal, universal, esoteric and cosmic energy, one that exists and propagates on the virtue of its own mathematical physical properties. The overall energy in the room takes on a varegiated landscape as everyone’s individual experiences manifest deeper, ranging from the whimsy of exploration and novelty, to returning to a jovial and familiar comfort, to anxious detachment and incoherency and the panic of thought loops. My personal experience is rushing, fiery, electric, I try to take notes but end up feeling no desire but to scribble incoherently in my notebook, to at least vent some of this pent up energy. I smoke a bit of weed to alleviate some of the physical effects and round the experience off a bit.

A whole host of new people enters the room, drastically shifting the dynamic. Frankly I don’t know any of them too well and none of them are on psychedelics, so I retreat to a couch out of the way so I can just draw pictures and quietly observe. Everyone else in the house greets them warmly, and the space is soon whirring with the sharing of affections and pleasantries at one another’s company. What was a patchwork of introspective shared experience has now broadened into wider interactions, and though it is nice to witness, it is disorienting and I am content to exist in my niche hiding amongst the crevasses of all the activity. The arrival of some of these people seems to bring a measure of great relief to the person having a challenging and anxious experience, a relief for those who were concerned about them. I try to explore my own experience, noting that there aren’t too many closed eye visuals and that they seem to fueled by the fire of my sensory experience. I smoke some more weed and that certainly kicks up the open eyed visuals.

Still peaking the same, nothing new to note, the visuals predominantly take the form of palmettos conforming to a straight and exact framework of diamonds shapes and to the literal boundaries of my vision. The room is fairly dark as the sun begins sinking, allowing for a detailed interplay of these forms in the dimness, allowing them to take on swirling and vibrant colors. Almost no auditory effects to note except a slight flanging and reverberation of sound, making everything sound ever so slightly deeper- not deeper in pitch but more voluminous.

I note that there is still a residual burn in my face, but it is a mere annoyance and is entirely tolerable. Such is the price of being plunged into such an experience so quickly. Concentric auras adorn everything, everything is flashing and pulsing with light. I am content where this experience has leveled off. A lot of the initial stimulation and mania and rushing euphoria has softened and the trip has turned down to a pleasant smolder and sizzle.

Several people embark on a sort of psychedelic second wind, redosing themselves. Another person takes an initial dose at this time. The energy in the room has settled down to people interacting more intimately one on one, falling into their respective social niches and rapports. I smoke a great deal more cannabis to stir the dust on my experience and kick it back up, so I too can taste some psychedelic rejuvenation. Things already feel on the downturn for me. Smoking more definitely achieves the goal of kicking up the experience, breathing a new life and vividness into the experience, tangible fresh pulses through the visuals and headspace.

The physical stimulation has mostly given way to a burnt exhaustion now- not the sort of exhaustion from long tiring exertion and endurance, but a hotter and more acute exhaustion of nerves and muscles frazzled from so much energy firing through them. I spoke with the person who was having the difficult experience and they had mostly recovered. It was nice to help them navigate and articulate their experience in fresh retrospect, to feel competent and helpful in the development of someone else’s psychedelic repertoire. It was ultimately a valuable and useful experience despite the distinct terror and confusion, as it often is, and no lasting negative consequences were immediately observed as being incurred.

Things wind down more and I smoke more to try and wring more color and energy out of the experience. It seems as though it is receding as rapidly as it came on however, as I am left mostly with just feeling stoned, with a bit of extra energy and color.

I wind down the rest of the night with more weed and gentle intimate social interaction with many people. I honestly am very close with only one person here who I have known for a very long time, though everyone else is still extremely friendly and welcoming and receptive to close interaction. I grow closer to everyone it feels, while at the same time I can enjoy witnessing how several people who know each other intimately interact and express their friendship and affection and camaraderie with one another. I am in the gentle pleasant afterglow of the experience, where it feels like my mind is running faster than usual- it is an enhanced and warm and euphoric functionality, where I have passed any boundary of being impaired. Every aspect of myself feels enhanced, including the glowing vibrancy of colors around me, a pulsing seething heated saturation of my visual field.

People are at all sorts of different levels of experience and the energy in the room is diverse, swirling with activity and a patchwork of different perceptions from people in a variety of head spaces. I personally am mostly back to baseline, my trip replaced for the most part with simply being stoned.

I set out for home. The subway ride is faded and exhilarating, though the visuals have mostly passed by this point. Riding the subway late at night while visuals play off of every surface has always been a favorite experience of mine, though it seems things have subsided by now. I get home and fall asleep without issue after about 4 hours of goofing off