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Death and then Awareness
2C-I
by 52
Citation:   52. "Death and then Awareness: An Experience with 2C-I (exp39805)". Erowid.org. Jan 24, 2005. erowid.org/exp/39805

 
DOSE:
20 mg oral 2C-I (powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT: 110 lb
I took 20 mg with approximately 15 other individuals one night, but none of them seemed to share my experience with it. I'm surprised 'only' 20 mg seemed to take me to the fringe of death, non-existence. Anymore and it might have been unbearable.

40 mins. in:
At the beginning of the night I was sitting with T in my room admiring the patterns of dim, yet dazzling prisms on my ceiling. My head periodically felt unbearably dizzy as I tried to absorb myself in them, going beyond the visuals. I knew my walls were breathing or at least moving in waves, but not to my own breath. I found that the most difficult thing to do was to balance myself, center myself and still stay conscious.

1 hr:
I immediately began to realize that I was losing a sense of reality. Usually people, places, which seem apart from me can reassure me of my own seperate existence, but now I only felt me, and me was pervading all of space, and me was very comfortably switching realms into unfamilar places. I ran to H's room and comforted myself a while among other voices. Strange things began to happen. For instance, I began to feel unable to do anything but concentrate on remaining 'here'. I couldn't rely on other's assurances that I was alive, I had to continually remind myself, lest I fall into something deeper, perhaps darker.

I had a sensation that I was more able to 'exist' through the walls or even T's hand rather than through my own body. I had some control, over my level of panic, but not over what was happening to me. I said some pretty stupid things, like I remember asking everyone in the room to act normal, hoping their assurance that they knew reality would be enough. It worked for a bit, than I began to see the world in some sort of 2D, almost as a distorted screen and I finally told L, 'Ok this was fun and all, but when will it stop?' Finally I ran to G's room, thinking perhaps he had an antidote, maybe was playing a trick on me. The strange thing was, that I could run, or occasionally snap out of it, but I couldn't leave, it came on regardless. Sometime before that, a sensation began that I was dying. Obviously I never knew what it would feel like to die, but when I felt it, I knew.

Sensory input was available, but meaningless and just a distraction, from the incredible difficulty I had to just exist. I occasionally passed out, continually felt dizzy in the head, felt like I couldn't get to low enough ground to 'balance' or regain control of myself. There was nothing pleasant about this experience, not horrifying, but unexpected, and uncontrollable. I lost any memory of my body, how it felt to be in it, rather I was pared down to my upper spinal cord, perhaps the brainstem, and that was the only grasp I had on what I know as 'myself'. I was hungry and thirsty, but like you would not believe. The problem was that water did nearly nothing for me, and I couldn't feasibly stomach food. The air was nourishing enough for a while, but even that left me feeling incredibly weak, like I was ready to shrivel up and vanish.
That's the best way I could describe the experience, I feared vanishing, becoming nothing and being enveloped by non-existence, something we never consider.

2 hrs:
All of my energy was now dedicated to remaining in existence. I knew people were communicating with me, asking me questions, asking me to do things, get up, but at the same time I knew how hollow their requests were, and I only saw one thing that demanded all of my attention, that sucked up all of my awareness, and that was to exist. It was the only thing that wasn't transitory, that felt immediate, that never changed, I felt like I could exist like so forever; that is, forever contemplating my own existence, staring at myself(yet physically I was staring at a wall, but was observing not only at visuals, maybe something intangible).

I stopped resisting my decay into nothingness and began to go with the flow, catching on to the idea that to be, I had to be, and being was all that mattered, now, forever, either or both. I was weak, incredibly tired, I felt like a small child kicked in the corner, seeing what was immediate and urgent while others danced in the background, unaware of what I saw. But I could not even explain to them how essential it was to be here, to be right now, to look, look where I am looking, and be. I was observing myself. I felt like a mirror, looking at a mirror, reflecting itself a million times. There are really no words to describe it, there were no thoughts. I was one meager unfinished thought, I said, one unasked question, there was total silence, I knew that I had always been like this, forever, and as all things passed, I seemed to say - go on, do as you wish, but I will go on being it. By the way when I say 'I' it is so far removed from what 'I' am right now. 'I' am not the consciousness of this body, I could have been anyone, or the walls, they felt no different. I just let it be.

3 hours +:
I stopped fearing 'death'. I let it come, and became extremely aware. One of the nice things about 2C-I was that it did have a peak and things became much more bearable when I knew I would gradually return to non-awareness, hollowness. You see, awareness was extremely consuming, and so tiring, at least in my weak body. It was impossible to communicate, it had nothing to say. It was it, it didn't know what it was, it went on existing, in an extremely humble way. It was humble because it did not exist for itself, it was just resisting nothingness. Its story was the same story, time and time again. It was unbelievable to describe, I do not believe I even fully penetrated into it.

I found the power to move the street names and redesign the map on Z's wall, but I had no desire to do so. Then later I saw plants grow in front of my eyes. It just wanted to persist, existing. Though I realized I had known it forever, I knew I had forgotten it. I was living as far away from it as possible, on the fringes of nothingness. But I was almost happy to think that I may be relieved of being so aware of myself, my own existence, my own weakness. We would see it as grand, but it was weak, it felt death so near. People asked me if I was ok, and I nodded my head no, only because, as it was eternally suffering, in this transfixed concentration that was completely necessary if it was to continue to exist. 'I' as they knew me was always ok, but that did not matter. As for the existence of others, the state of our whole world, it almost did not seem to care, in the sense that it was doing the suffering for us, that's the only way I could describe it. I mean it was asking everyone to just stare, look where it was looking, be with it, but you could also not escape it, because even without full awareness, you could not stop being it, and it was only one thing, small or big, I could not tell, but all that was.

On the whole, I want to warn the unwary spiritual traveler. I was alone on this expedition. I am forever thankful for the wishes for my friends, but they could do nothing for it. This was an incredibly potent drug for me, there was no way to resist it. I could not have predicted its effects. It took me hours to regain control of my body, for I sat with a fixed stare for hours upon hours. My friends were loving to sit next to me as it all happened, but even their love was very hollow and transitory, I could see through it all, it was full of emptiness. The idea of being was the only full and complete feeling, and it the one I feel now and will always know, in an incredibly raw way.

I came out with no lasting spiritual assertion. I feel the same as I always have, and because non-being was so painful and the idea of being, so critical and absorbing, I feel relaxed. My life is empty and pointless, hollow, but something is doing the existing for me, it is in me, I cannot see it, it is laughing at me, with me, in the most loving, tearful way. Perhaps I will return to it again one day. I know that because it is now, I am just ignoring it, for better or for worse.

Good luck, be careful.

Exp Year: 2005ExpID: 39805
Gender: Female 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 24, 2005Views: 21,442
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2C-I (172) : Large Group (10+) (19), Difficult Experiences (5)

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