Unity with a friend

4-HO-MET
Unity
josie

Context

Name:
Josie
Trip Date:
09/04/2018
Age:
25
Setting:
An apartment in Seattle with a close internet friend who I'd just met for the first time.
Gender:
Female
Height:
5ft9
Weight:
150 lb
Medications:
300 mg spironolactone / 8mg estrodiol daily

Substances

Name Dosage Route of Administration
4-HO-MET 60mg Oral

Onset

Onset
12:30 pm:

I consumed 60mg 4-ho-met in a gelcap. This was the first time that I have ever tried this compound.

12:38 pm:

I’m experiencing a very mild body high.

12:48 pm:

At this point, the body high has gone from mild to distinct. I also see subtle colour patches over my environment and when I close my eyes.

1:00 pm:

I feel kinda sedated.

1:03 pm:

I’m experiencing mild colour enhancement and starting to feel nauseous.

1:07 pm:

I’m getting fairly distinct geometry, but it isn’t quite strong enough to identify its style variations yet.

1:15 pm :

I’m getting heavy drifting, geometry, and distinct thought suppressions.

1:18 pm:

I’m getting a tonne of colour enhancement, and I’m feeling very intoxicated. I’m also in a great mood and feel as if my mood has been elevated.

1:20 pm:

My hands are sweaty, and I feel very cold. They are also very shaky and unstable when I hold them out in front of me.

1:24 pm:

I’m drifting off into super intense geometry and daydreams. The visual effects of this trip are powerful and colourful.

Peak

Peak
3:00 pm:

At this point, I seem to be peaking. The effects of the drug are unique in comparison to any other tryptamine I have tried. The visual effects are disproportionately powerful in relation to the accompanying physical and cognitive effects. I am experiencing no nausea, anxiety, disorientation, delusions, etc, and yet I am breaking through into level 7 geometry. However, it’s worth noting that despite the intensity of this geometry, upon closer analysis the patterns are very simplistic, repetitive and shallow in their detail. They contain no hallucinatory imagery whatsoever.

Although I am not disorientated, I am experiencing many cognitive suppressions such as analysis suppression, short-term memory loss, language suppression, etc. I am also uncontrollably laughing at minor things, sweating profusely from my hands, streaming from my eyes, salivating from my mouth, and phelgming from my throat at a level of intensity which I have not experienced on any other psychedelic.

Throughout this, I am experiencing cognitive enhancement and suppression cycles which continued for the rest of the day. During this state, I spend an approximately 10-20 minute period feeling incredibly stimulated and inspired, followed by another 10-20 minute cycle of feeling sedated and brain dead. It feels as if my brain is putting all of its energy into running at maximum efficiency, only to run out of steam after a short period and need to recuperate until it regains the strength to repeat this process.

I am experiencing therapeutic introspection regarding taking better care of my health, improving the passability of my voice, and being a kinder, more honest, and less selfish person. I thought about my girlfriends and understood how lucky I am to be in long-term relationships with two people I love dearly and who love me back.

4:00 pm :

I lay on the sofa in this state, shifting between staring out the window at the trees and talking to my friend about some of his personal issues. At some point during this conversation, I spontaneously get the feeling that something has “clicked”, that I am no longer looking at my life through the perspective of “Josie” but am now instead looking at my life through the perspective of all of existence. I suddenly feel that I am literally the universe experiencing itself and engaging with itself through organisms within it that are evolved enough to be capable of observing and interacting with their surroundings. I notice how it feels like this state of being is a distinct node or point in spacetime that is somehow directly connected back through a “window in time” to the last trip I experienced this state of mind during, which was over four years ago.

At first, I feel an overwhelming sense of peace and stillness, but after what felt like several minutes I begin to feel nervous. I felt as if this sensation was something that countless people have spent their entire lives meditating over for the chance of merely catching a glimpse of it. I felt that this state of mind had extreme historical and philosophical significance and that people throughout history had likely formed entire religions around this experience. I knew that I was incredibly fortunate to experience it, so much so that this was one of the most significant events that had ever occurred to me.

During this state, I got the sensation that the universe is not a collection of disjointed concepts and labels, but a truly unified system of behaviour, each part of which was interconnected with and interdependent upon the greater whole. This meant that human beings do not see things as they are, but instead separate their environment into symbolic subconcepts and labels to such an extent that they “forget” the actual state of affairs and come to the illusion that they are a separate agent approaching an “external” environment.

Accompanying all of this, I also had the sensation that the separateness of time was yet another illusion. I felt that the history of existence wasn’t a present moment with a past that was no longer occurring and a future which has yet to have happened, but instead was a collection of simultaneously occurring events which were merely points along a “map” in a physical direction. This feeling led me to the conclusion that although a person does not live a life which is a long as the history of existence as a whole, their finite lifespan continues to occur infinitely within their own time frame.

As I laid on the sofa with all these thoughts flowing through me, I realised that I needed to pee. However, I did not want to change my environment and instead wanted to lay there and continue to experience this state of high-level unity. I genuinely considered pissing my pants before stating aloud that as a physical point of existence, I should not give into decay as to do so was to was to accept dissolution and to surrender to entropy. I felt that for better or worse, I must therefore always choose to engage with my environment instead of just ignoring it.

When I started engaging with the environment, I could feel the effects of unity fade, and I started looking at the world from the perspective of Josie instead of existence as a whole. However, I laid back down after peeing, and the feeling quickly returned in full force. I requested that our Amazon Alexa play ripple by the Grateful Dead and quietly wept tears of joy to the lyrics. After this, I looked outside at the trees and felt incredibly grateful to be alive.

My friend started randomly talking to me about some work stuff involving the taxi system that Lyft is competing within Seattle; I couldn’t comprehend a word that he said due to my loss of short-term memory. However, I listened closely as I felt that I was hearing the sounds of society and that although it would usually be considered trivial during my egotistical states of normality, In my current state, I felt that it was beautiful.

I felt that consciousness was a universal aspect of existence that was present within all systems to varying degrees no matter how simplistic. The function of the universe was therfore a perfect conscious process which through its own imagination, had somehow designed itself as a system of exponentially increasing self-complexification. I felt that within the known universe at least, human civilisation was the most significant point of complexity that it had so far reached. I, therefore, concluded that we should be striving not to destroy ourselves and to continue the momentum of this process ever onward into wherever it may lead us. This should be done not just for ourselves but for the universe as a whole.

After this, I sat there for what felt like an hour or so simply looking out the window and feeling blown away by what I had just experienced.

Offset

Offset
6:00 pm:

At this point, I had lost the feeling and returned to my default state of constant depersonalization. I spent the rest of the evening talking to my friend, trying to piece together what the fuck had just happened while undergoing 20-minute long enhancement/suppression cycles.

Conclusion / Aftermath

I am incredibly lucky to have experienced this state, especially from the vantage point of a human being which is less indoctrinated into mystical and religious thinking than the average person. I will spend the next few days, weeks and months analysing this state of mind to try and draw what conclusions from it that I can.

I am not sure that taking any other psychedelic today would have made a difference in regards to experiencing unity. 4-HO-MET does not seem like the type of substance that is more likely to induce this state over any others; it seemed that instead, the occurrence of this state was far more dependent on circumstance and setting in a complex and subtle way that I am not sure if I will ever fully understand.

Thanks for reading.