Thinking About Blood and Gore
Context
Substances
Name | Dosage | Route of Administration |
2C-D | 50 mg | Oral via gel cap |
Onset
Dose administered.
Onset, but only really noticeable as a sort of nervous agitation in my limbs, in my mind, in my gut, pulsing throughout my being.
The comeup insofar is mostly just uncomfortable. It’s very stimulating, and features the usual psychedelic comeup symptoms, those being nausea and abdominal cramps. In addition to that, it carries the classic phenethylamine symptom of urinary retention. In combination with the nausea, it feels like there is a weight in my abdomen that has anchored there like a burr. I am shivering and shaking a good bit too. So far no other effects have manifest.
The visuals begin to appear, it’s pretty standard as far as psychedelic visuals and pretty light. There is warping and distortion at the edges of my vision. Flowing angular chevron patterns are forming at the corners of my walls and flowing along them like conveyor belts. The patterns appear to be diamonds with all sorts of angular stepped zigzag patterns distributed amongst them. I am shaking and fidgeting, and my mind feels faint and light, yet simultaneously heavy and sunken.
Peak
Still feeling agitated and physically uncomfortable. This headspace is very lucid, I am definitely able to think clearly and interact with my environment. I am getting the typical phenethylamine high frequency twanging effect, to reiterate, imagine having a taut wire and then plucking it. Instead of slowing down as it vibrates it reverberates faster and faster, increasing in pitch and frequency. This is what was happening with my existence, little pockets of the fiber of reality twanging off at the corners of my being, visuals that feel like the room is closing in on me while simultaneously expanding and vibrating into a rippling infinity. The patterns are all definitely very warm colored.
I don’t know why this keeps happening but thoughts of violence and damage to my body begin to seep into the trip. I begin imagining what it must be like to receive a gunshot wound, whether it’s a bullet embedding in my flesh, or perhaps exiting out of the back of me with a spurt of dislodged flesh and blood, or perhaps it grazing me and picking off a chunk of flesh like a pickaxe chunking off a bit of rock. The thought of heavy metal shattering bone, or drilling its way through soft flesh looms over me. I think about all the flesh I am made of, how that flesh can come to pieces, how there is a solid skeleton and a weird membrane helping to hold all that flesh in place. The thoughts of this make me have an olfactory hallucination of the odor of blood hanging in the air. These thoughts are not particularly distressing or disturbing, they just enter my head matter of factly and demand my fixation. I am so grateful to have all my limbs and flesh and bones intact. I am so grateful I have never been grievously wounded.
The other violent fixation comes from a time when I was on 4-HO-MET and a friend sent me a video of someone stepping on a landmine. The thought of an explosion shredding my leg with shrapnel and spraying that shrapnel across my body haunts me, the thought of the flesh being torn to mangled ribbons, the bone being splintered and fractured and blasted across a distance, it sinks into my mind and I am perpetually remembering it, feeling a twang of pain in my legs, thinking about how lucky I am that I have legs that are intact and functional. This particular thought lingers well throughout the trip and into the next day. I cannot escape or ignore it.
I have been reading a lot about crime, perhaps this is precipitated by my thoughts of injury or vice versa. I think about what it must be like to make the decision to try and murder someone, or what it must be like to be minding your business when you suddenly have pieces of metal flying at you at a very high speed. This drug seems to lend itself to existing vicariously.
I go outside and smoke a joint. The sky is beautiful and I am no longer fixated on thoughts of blood and gore and injury. The visuals are still pretty strong, especially in the gloom of dusk. The sky is rippling and pulsing and breathing rainbows that sink down to me. Patterns and forms flash in the shadows in warm colors. I go back inside and hang out with my roommates and play videogames. Overall I am feeling light and jovial, my thought certainly feels sharper and more accelerated, I feel like I can process things and respond to them more effectively than normal.
Offset
The visuals have mostly died down. I still definitely feel the mental effects as a sort of mental clarity and acuity.
Pretty much back to baseline.
Despite the fact that the visuals and the psychedelic headspace fell away pretty quickly, I had this strange and unique feeling of mental acuity well into the next day. It was completely unique, it wasn’t like a high at all and it felt different from other psychedelic afterglows, cleaner, more refined, more streamlined, more efficient. I felt like I could develop thoughts and make connections and associations easier, but it didn’t have that glowing burnt out feeling that other psychedelics had me feeling afterwards. The next day I felt this way too, but like I didn’t feel high or even slightly impaired, I felt like a superior version of myself. Towards the end of the day it began to feel like hypomania, with me becoming extremely talkative and feeling very confident and optimistic. After a point, it almost felt like I was on MDMA, I wanted to talk to everyone and tell everyone nice things. This whole afterglow effect lasted about 36 hours.
Conclusion / Aftermath
This is a short lasting and very standard psychedelic experience. It was certainly interesting enough but honestly I can’t really see any reason to pursue it with the intent of tripping except for those who just want to try everything. There are simply so many more interesting and exciting psychedelics out there, that have longer lasting and more punctuated effects. It seems to have value in the increased mental acuity however and the long hypomanic afterglow. I have heard about it being used as a nootropic in low doses and I can definitely see that.