DOSE:

0.5 joints/cigs

smoked

PCP

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

The truth is, it was just about the last thing I hadn't yet tried. I've run the gamut of research chemicals, natural hallucinogens, mescaline extracts, acid, narcotics, anti-cholinergics, stimulants from ritalin to dexedrine to adderall to desoxyn to cocaine, ecstasy, downers from zolpidem to xanax to GBL, and even a few of the commercially available piperazine blends. I've played around with Ketamine, probably on about fifteen occasions. I've combined it with pot, and, in one unfortunate evening, Ambien. I found it to be physically interesting, but mentally quite boring. This was intranasal, by the way. I've messed around with DXM a few times, at doses up to 500 mg. It makes me feel ill, but overall it's just not worth the ickiness.

PCP? Just the most interesting member on the list of the Big Bad Nasties to try. This list, in my mind, includes inhalants, heroin, meth, and crack. I take narcotics every day for back pain, so heroin really just doesn't sound like anything I need to fuck around with. Inhalants? Shit, dude. I'm a fourth year biochemistry major. I need all the brain cells I can get. So when my friend Liz called me up and told me she had a four-person dose of PCP in a joint, I jumped on the chance to smoke that shit like it's going out of style, because who are we kidding, it really *has* gone out of style.

Liz saved me half the joint. It was ugly and soiled with dark brown coloring. Lemme tell you, it didn't look like a joint anymore. It smelled somewhat musky, somewhat sour. She recommended I take a few puffs off of it and put it down. I never listen.

I took the joint and broke it up into a pipe. Lighter touches bowl. Boy inhales. Boy holds breath as long as possible. If there really was cannabis in that thing, I certainly didn't taste it or feel it. The smoke was smooth enough, but with a strange, unrecognizable flavor. It didn't taste awful, but it didn't taste like something nature intended, either. My Palo Alto Rich Kid sensibilities were excited by the horribly ugly joint, the rich, chemical smoke, and the insane reputation this stuff has for being the dirtiest crap you could ever ingest. Here was something my stuffy hippie friends would never try. Here was something never to mention casually to my yoga classmates, who all lean toward the tripper side.

I smoked about 90% of that two-person dose before leaving poor little liz with maybe a puff or two off the bowl. It wasn't until the thing was almost completely gone that I really felt something I knew to be more than just the resin buzz I'd catch off smoking an empty bowl. So what did it feel like? Well, I'll need to be a bit colorful in my language, because I can't really find the right words to describe it. The body high felt cold and metallic. It had the same *feeling* of a strong-but-sub-subspace Salvia dose, but with none of the irritating physical discomfort caused by Salvia. I normally perceive a kind of ripping sensation in my joints and spine from Salvia. I felt a similar kind of 'dislocation' on PCP, but I was in much less pain than I would have been even sober.

Cannabis also has this algesic effect on me, compounded by the back problems I currently treat with yoga (hardcore vinyasa style, 5x week) and Levorphanol, 1mg, 4x a day. The body high left me with a sensation of being one step behind myself at all times, or one step ahead. My mind and body felt like they were out of sync. It kinda reminded me of Robotech, where the pilot's neural connection could be more or less in step with the Gundam depending on who was piloting. The notion that I was, in fact, piloting a mech did cross my mind at several points in the evening. Walking became much more of a conscious exercise in moving each foot and assessing balance and weight distribution before continuing with the attempted gait. I felt pretty fucked up, and chose to sit in my car and listen to some music to avoid my parents and the danger of falling on my face and ruining thousands of dollars of orthodontia.

Man, no matter what we listened to, I just couldn't really get into the music. Everything sounded distant and hollow. The highs less high, the lows less low. The music seemed unable to penetrate my being, unable to provide me with any sort of aural joy. I honestly just didn't really care what we played, so I turned off the music for fear of insulting my favorite artists by listening to them in such a state. As an aside, other dissociatives (namely DXM and N2O) tend to provide quite enjoyable enhancement of music for me.

Mentally, I was incredibly far gone. I was having the same trouble grasping ego and sensibility that I get from Salvia. In fact, the only drug that's been able to alter my sense of self in such a manner was Salvia. Even with something like 5-MeO-DMT there's a sense of the observer. PCP gave me no such luxury. I was entirely thrashed. I don't drink and drive, and I never will. Same goes for GHB. PCP is definitely now on the Great Big List of Stuff To Never Drive On. Cannabis? Not so much of a problem. Even the standard hallucinogens generally *assist* my driving capabilities at normal doses (in the same manner that they improve my attentiveness, balance, and coordination in yoga), although I'll save the editors the time of putting a note on this report by saying that just because I choose to take the ridiculous and amoral risk of placing myself and others on the road in danger by occasionally operating a moving vehicle while on LSD it doesn't mean I endorse the same choice for anyone else. PCP, however, left me quite sure that I'd die within minutes if I'd attempted to drive.

By far the characteristic feeling during the trip was a sense of surreality. I felt like I was living in a dream. Time lost meaning. My whole life prior to the evening faded from my consciousness. I was completely unable to process any sort of narrative regarding who I am and what my life is. It was a kind of ego death, but there was no greater awareness to replace what I'd lost. The trip was in no way scary, though I would definitely say the experience was incredibly strong. There was a noted lack of emotional reaction to anything I was feeling. You'd figure that, as I was more fucked up than I'd ever really been before, I'd have some sort of strong feeling about my state of mind. Euphoria? Dysphoria? Neither. Overall, there was a sense of positive physical feeling. As the drug mellowed in intensity (the downhill journey began approximately 45 minutes after ingestion) I was left with the notion that I was somehow powerful, influential, able to solve problems and understand the needs of others in new and exiciting ways. I had a flash of ego-inflation in which I identified myself as being somewhat christlike for the final hour. There were very few residual effects after the drug wore off, and I woke up the next day feeling just fine.

Here's an overall synopsis:
Onset: 5-10 minutes
Peak: 25 minutes
Duration: 1.5-2 hours
Overall effects: Significant analgesia, dissociation, 'ego-negation', mild euphoria, stimulation. Trouble walking, judging depth, coordinating gross motor movement.

Conclusions? Well, it's definitely incredibly wierd stuff. It's really nothing like anything I'd ever tried before. There were no moments of agitation or rage, no cop-killer mentality. It wasn't particularly psychologically interesting, though. I certainly didn't plumb the depths of my psyche or reach any newfound understandings about my strengths and weaknesses. I was just massively fucked up for like an hour and then it went away. I liked it better than ketamine or DXM. If it were available, I'd try it again in a heartbeat. I seriously recommend a tripsitter as a precaution against stupid behavior, but I don't detect any inherent danger to the drug. It was definitely worth satisfying a morbid curiosity, and I recommend it to anyone putting so much other crap in their system that they really just might as well try this one, too.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 54176
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 4, 2007	Views: 89,399
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PCP (113) : Music Discussion (22), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)