Love and Looping in the Mazes of Mind
4-AcO-DMT, Ketamine, Nitrous Oxide, Alprazolam (Xanax) & Cannabis
Citation:   Ikkyu. "Love and Looping in the Mazes of Mind: An Experience with 4-AcO-DMT, Ketamine, Nitrous Oxide, Alprazolam (Xanax) & Cannabis (exp75100)". Erowid.org. Sep 5, 2009. erowid.org/exp/75100

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
800 mg oral Piracetam
  T+ 0:00 600 mg oral Lecithin
  T+ 0:00 32 oz oral Coffee
  T+ 0:00 2 carts. inhaled Nitrous Oxide
  T+ 0:00 3 hits smoked Cannabis
  T+ 0:00 0.25 mg oral Pharms - Alprazolam
  T+ 0:00 16 mg oral 4-AcO-DMT
  T+ 4:00   repeated inhaled Nitrous Oxide
  T+ 5:00 2 bumps insufflated Ketamine
  T+ 5:30   repeated inhaled Nitrous Oxide
  T+ 6:00 1 bowl smoked Cannabis
  T+ 8:30 2 mg oral Pharms - Alprazolam
BODY WEIGHT: 130 lb
T-10:00 - 800mg - oral - piracetam
T-10:00 - 600mg - oral - lecithin
T-3:30 - 32oz - oral - coffee
T-1:00 - 2 cartridges - inhaled - Nitrous oxide
T-0:15 - 3 hits - smoked - Cannabis
T-0:05 - 0.25mg - oral - alprazolam
T+0:00 - 16mg - oral - 4-AcO-DMT
T+4:00 - repeated - inhaled - Nitrous oxide
T+5:00 - 2 bumps - insufflated - Ketamine
T+5:30 - repeated - inhaled - Nitrous oxide
T+6:00 - 1 bowl - smoked - Cannabis
T+8:30 - 2mg - oral - alprazolam

I'd been planning on attending this concert by a popular Dead tribute band for a few months, especially since my good friend J who lives nearby was intent on going too. I knew I wanted to trip for the show since it had been about seven months since my last one (save for a few light DMT and K experiences in the recent past) and I was starting to get that itch again. Of late I had been feeling as though there were a lot of loose ends in my mind that needed tying up as I've been undergoing various transitions and changes in my life.

I'm fairly experienced with psychedelics and had eaten 4-AcO-DMT (psilacetin) twice prior to this time, including once combined with LSD. I hadn't used nitrous in years up until this night. I smoke the reefer most days and had just started experimenting with small amounts of K in the past couple of months.

In my limited experience with it, 4-AcO-DMT had struck me as a unique and beautiful material, very gentle on the body and mind. Like DMT and mushrooms, the two other psychedelics that this one most closely resembles to me, I have felt healed after my experiences with psilacetin. Like most other psychedelics I've tried, this material still brings up a lot of psychological and spiritual problems that lurk in the darker corners of my mind, but it allows me to address them without violently shoving them in my face while shredding my ego to bits; the life review, as it were, feels more relaxed with the aid of this material. I knew that for my next trip on a serotonergic hallucinogen I wanted to experience this substance at a higher level but at one still manageable in a public setting. Given that this setting would be a concert at a familiar venue with plenty of other people tripping, I figured 15-18mg would be a good dosage range.

I spent the day of the show exercising and relaxing with some books as I had no work to do that day or the next. My brother who lives with me was home all afternoon too so we interacted off and on over coffee which leaves me in a positive state of mind. I should note that I ate some piracetam and lecithin with breakfast but since it was another ten hours before I ended up dosing there was no discernable interaction. When J called to let me know he was home and that I should come over and do some whippits with him, I gathered up my last sealed vial of liquid ketamine as well as some headies and some generic/weak alprazolam bars. I walked over feeling very ecstatic already as I was super-excited about the whole experience that lay ahead.

When I walked into J's living room he was just coming out of wa-wa land and so was a little disoriented at first. We shot the shit for a minute and I got some water boiling so we could cook the ketamine into powder. While we waited for it to boil, J fixed us both up with some double balloons and we got very silly for a few minutes, looping around and around in bliss while listening to some heavy jamming from the Dead's 'Without A Net' compilation.

Soon J had to step out and walk to the venue to buy his ticket so I stayed back and kept an eye on the ketamine I'd dumped on top of the plate sat on the pot of boiling water. During this time I smoked a couple of hits of Jack Herer and listened to the Dead tear it up on an incredible version of 'Let It Grow' from 1990. By the time J got back the ketamine had completely crystallized (coming out to ~520mg) and he scraped it off the plate with ease using a credit card. We did a few more whippits and J did a bump of the ketamine while we smoked more weed. By this time the band was due to go on fairly soon so we decided to quickly eat up our hallucinogens and be on our way. J preloaded with a small amount of clonazepam and then took 16mg of 4-AcO-DMT orally in powder form, just knocking it back with some water. Wishing for a more gradual come-up and not wanting to taste the bitter alkaloid, I carefully dropped my 16mg of the fluffy tan powder in a gel-cap and swallowed it after preloading with ~0.25mg of alprazolam. With that we got our shit together and left for the show.

The band played two sets and I felt myself gradually rise to a peak about most of the way through the first. I think J began feeling it before I did since he took his dose in powder form, but he also mentioned that the 'maybe feeling something already' sensation might have been due to the benzodiazepines. Regardless, the come-up on 4-AcO-DMT has always been gentle to me, not too fast like LSD and not too slow like 2C-E. This time was no exception. 16mg (a dose that turned out to be just right for this setting) left me with few tracers that I noticed but I did have the unique visual field typical of tryptamines. The architecture of the theater we were in looked plastic and kind of rubbery to me, a visual alteration more comparable to that I get from low doses of smoked DMT. I transitioned gradually into a headspace relaxed and expansive all at once. I felt much connection to the musicians onstage and the emotional release from just swaying to their beautiful sounds helped immensely in guiding my trip into a positive direction.

Throughout the time spent in the concert hall I observed the character of the experience become more introspective with each passing moment. I attribute this partially to the alprazolam probably wearing off by this time, allowing for my emotions to flow more freely, the music acting as a friend leading me by the hand deeper and deeper within. Many different predicaments within my own life bubbled up from the recesses of my mind. Rather than reacting to this by being overwhelmed by the dangling question marks I perceived all around me, I chose to examine each one from various possible perspectives and learn to trust myself more in being able to make the appropriate decisions when the time would come. Though I still perceived myself at a crossroads in my life, I felt more liberated than ever by delighting in the seemingly endless possibilities presented to me by this expansion of the senses. During the set break I noticed that the effects became far more pronounced without the music to guide them: colors appeared significantly brighter and my head felt clear as ever, each thought possessing a Zen-like such-ness incommunicable in words.

By the time the band was wrapping up their double encore after a smoking hot show, the energy of the venue was very high and I felt the air around us crackle with electricity. That night I saw so many people completely let go and allow the music to move them, inspiring me to let go inwardly and give myself up to the experience still unfolding inside. By now I felt cleansed and healed, breathing slowly and evenly, my eyes wide open, my posture much straighter and a huge grin plastered across my face. I thought much about my various relationships to all the people in my life, feeling so much love and gratitude for them being there, for being able to share so many different aspects of ourselves with each other. I'm nearly at a loss for being able to further describe how thankful I felt then for being allowed to participate in the vast spectrum of experience with people who care for me so much. I was and still am deeply moved by this encounter with some of the more intimate aspects of myself.

As we were exiting the venue, thankfully among the first ones out, J and I passed a guy outside with a nitrous tank situated conspicuously in a gym bag, filling a balloon for someone while we joked with each other about how we already had our own. In fact we were both looking forward to indulging in more whippits as well as the freshly cooked up ketamine powder. We walked very quickly back to J's apartment as it had become considerably colder outside.

Back in his living room, J queued up an incredible Phish show from '94 and cut the pile of ketamine into halves, one for each of us. We inhaled more nitrous with a lightning-fast version of 'Maze' playing in the background, giggling at each other like madmen with the realization that the psilacetin was still going strong--these weren't just any run-of-the-mill nitrous hits! I heard the music loop and fragment into miniscule bits moving in and out of phase with each other while my connection with reality itself was momentarily obliterated from my consciousness, slowly returning bit by flanging bit as I dissolved into a fit of insane laughter. Time skipped like a scratched-up CD. This was my first time using nitrous while tripping and I found the combination utterly incredible, great for laughs as well as insight (no matter how fleeting they may be). The body high was also markedly different, this time much more pleasurable than nitrous used alone or while stoned.

J wanted to get started on the K pretty soon since he still had to work the next day, but I was enjoying the synergy of the nitrous with the afterglow of my peak so much that I declined to k-hole with him. I didn't wish to disturb the headspace I found myself in as I was still feeling very introspective and took much delight in examining my life without any judgement or perceived bias for the first time in so long. I watched J insufflate his share of the ketamine while we indulged in more whippits, deeply immersed in the mindfuckery that was tickling our eardrums and flanging all over. I did a couple of tiny bumps of K, one up each nostril, in a careful effort to push myself further away from baseline for a while longer. J had warned me that he would probably become more sloppy and demented as the K took over more but he and I both mostly stayed in our seats as well as our own minds, quietly absorbing the music and enjoying our respective headspaces.

In retrospect I wish I had done the ketamine after all because I don't think it would have disrupted the flow of my trip as much as I was anticipating. To be honest I still felt apprehensive about doing that much at once since I hadn't ever k-holed by that time and didn't wish to go in too far over my head. Looking back on it now I think I would have been fine if I had indulged because I felt such a sense of mental agility that I could have dealt with anything that presented itself to me. I realize now that J was encouraging me to do a whole bunch because I was in possibly the best state of mind to approach the hole for the first time. At least now I know that when I next dig that stuff out again I'll make sure to do so after the peak of my next tryptamine expedition, whenever that may be. And having whippits around to enhance it where appropriate wouldn't be a bad idea either.

That said, I'm glad J has tried this brand of ketamine that I have (Ketamax) a couple of times now because it seems to have a different set of effects from those he experienced with the brand Ketaset and from those I would expect from my limited experience with K. His dose was around 260mg, which, had it been Ketaset, would have had him on the floor drooling. 260mg of the Ketamax powder, on the other hand, allowed for him to still walk around in robot fashion and be somewhat cognizant of his surroundings, all the while experiencing bizarre instances of time travel and dilation. Rather than diving straight into the hole, he said, it felt more like he skimmed over it for a more prolonged period. In fact he later told me that he felt the K still ebbing in and out as I was leaving his apartment.

After J emerged from his inner theater we chatted about his travels over a bowl of some dank, both of us agreeing to call it a night since it was getting late. I gathered up my things and walked back to my apartment where I stayed up for another few hours listening to the Orb's 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld,' unable to sleep in spite of the 2mg alprazolam I ate. The stimulation that was preventing me from passing out didn't feel chemical in nature; the 4-AcO-DMT seemed to have completely left my system some time ago. What remained was a mental excitation still left over from my glorious peak and the epiphanies had therein. Still geeking out over the beautiful insights I had during the trip, I eventually zoned out of consciousness to the sweet strains of 'Spanish Castles in Space' on loop. I came out of a very light, dreamless sleep an hour before noon feeling refreshed and unfazed by the lack of proper rest. I spent that day in good company, watching movies with my girlfriend and brother while revelling in the lingering afterglow.

This trip couldn't have been more ideally timed; it was exactly what I needed at that juncture in time and space. More, I realized again that a concert of free-wheeling psychedelic jamming is one of the best settings I can think of for tripping. I had spent my last few trips before this one alone or with another companion at home and things would sometimes get claustrophobic in such an environment. Being in such an open and accepting atmosphere with loud, uplifting music shaking the building helped me give the trip more focus, if only for part of it. This is the type of imprinting experience I would love to recreate again at the appropriate time given the opportunity, without a doubt using this chemical again but at a higher dose (20mg+). Walking away from this experience I'm left with so many ideas about how to use these powerful tools more appropriately, that is for re-imprinting myself to respond more creatively to context and novelty. I am humbled by these lessons that will figure greatly in my future explorations.

Exp Year: 2008ExpID: 75100
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 5, 2009Views: 13,934
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Ketamine (31), 4-AcO-DMT (387) : Various (28), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3)

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