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The First Time is Always the Most Memorable
2C-I
Citation:   The Free Thinker. "The First Time is Always the Most Memorable: An Experience with 2C-I (exp70533)". Erowid.org. Jul 25, 2008. erowid.org/exp/70533

 
DOSE:
40 mg oral 2C-I (powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT: 300 lb
In the past I have had experiences with Marijuana (several hundred times), Psilocybe Mushrooms (no more than 4 times), Dextroamphetamine (~100 times), Methamphetamine (3 times), MDMA (~7 times), Alcohol (several hundred times), Hydrocodone (~5 times in doses higher than 20mg) and Salvia Divinorum (3 times).

Prior to this experience I had only limited experiences with hallucinogenic substances, namely psilocybe mushrooms which grow wildly in this area following a good rain. Those two or three experiences were not long after puberty, never in measured doses, and with all the reckless curiosity inherent to a teenage mind. I felt as though I was never given a real chance to analyze the psychedelic experiences I'd had during those times. Unknown quantities were always taken, and it was always up in the air whether or not myself or anyone with me would actually trip, let alone how hard or for how long. Thusly, upon discovery of the world of research chemicals and guinea pigs I decided to order 500mg of 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-iodophenethylamine in order to experiment and analyze the hallucination phenomenon properly.

Package arrives one fine afternoon where I had only moments prior made arrangements to have a friend pick me up and take me to another friends computer repair shop where the three of us would hang out temporarily and figure out what to do with the rest of the night.

That day I learned two things the hard way.

1) Dosing accuracy with any potentially harmful/fatal and more importantly scarcely researched substance is of the utmost importance.

2) Measuring doses without a scale is not something to be done in a careless manner.

Friend arrives at my house. After a brief explanation I say it's time for me to take a trip. I break out a mirror and empty the 500mg of 2c-i onto it. Prior googlings placed my idea of a healthy first dose at somewhere right around the 20-25mg mark. I'm a (very) big guy and I thought I'd compensate for my weight by taking a dose that was on the upper side of recreational. I hastily split the 500mg into 5 almost-equal piles (it was a small mirror). I then take the smallest of the 5 piles and split it in half, then take that half and divide it again in half, putting the smaller of the two halves into a glass of orange juice and swallowing it. I then place the remaining powder into an empty pill container as best I can and we leave the house.

T0:20- feeling slightly stimulated, nothing to write home about, trying to subdue my own anxiety about what was to come.

T0:40- I definitely feel different physically, things seem slightly brighter but otherwise no visual distortion. Some stomach discomfort. Lots of yawning. Feels great to walk around, sort of like the (very) beginning of an MDMA trip.

T1:00- I notice the desks and shelves in the office in my peripheral vision are sliding around slowly.

T1:15- Staring at a writing pad with a blank piece of white paper on it. There are ripples and ridges in the pad due to age, these dance and shift before me in an enthralling Beziers-like (like the Windows™ screensaver) display. I continue watching this for the next 20 minutes or so.

T1:30- The visuals have increased slowly and steadily in both intensity and complexity. The more I stare at something the more it begins to shift and warp. A friends girlfriend calls and invites us all out for sushi, I mention that I would rather not be in a public and crowded place at the moment, and asked to be dropped off at home on the way. This later turned out to be a very wise decision on my part.

T1:45- The visuals have ramped up significantly by now, what I later found out to be a painting of some fishes appeared instead to be an overlay of swirling and shifting shapes, like grease in a pan, never staying in one place for long and behind it all regarding me with an unblinking amused stare is the visage of a queen as she would appear on a playing card. We exit the shop, it is dark out by now and windy. I start to shake uncontrollably a little bit due to the sudden change of temperature but this doesn't upset me much, I am too enthralled by a very large tree outside whose wild and rampant shifting was only made worse by the wind. Within the sea of green shifting forms was a face not unlike Treebeard from the Lord Of The Rings movies. The next 20 minutes or so are a blur. The ride home is a swirl of bright colors, cars appear only as arrays of floating red and white lights that pass by at varying speeds leaving long trails behind.

T2:10- I am home, in my room, alone. I briefly get on IRC and describe my rapidly intensifying experience and comment offhandedly that it is 'almost too much to handle'. Confusion sets in along with a nagging unsettling feeling that sensory and especially visual information is too much for my brain to make sense of. I am stimulated yet very tired mentally, as if my body, no, my brain is screaming at me to go to sleep right now. I decide to power up the ol' dreamcast and play some Rez hoping to both occupy myself and be distracted by the array of trippy colors, trails, and techno music the game throws at you.

T2:20- I am trying very hard to ignore a growing sense that something is wrong, it is getting harder and harder to concentrate on the game. I am wearing only boxers, my fan is on the highest setting pointing directly at me and not oscillating, I am sweating severely regardless and this is only adding to the sense of alarm. The desire for sleep (again, only mentally) is becoming overwhelming.

T2:25- I drop the controller and decide maybe I will feel better if I close my eyes for just a little bit, trying at first in five and then ten second spurts to make sure closed eye visuals are not too much. I give in and close my eyes, what follows are the most vivid and realistic hallucinations I've ever had. Moreso than my salvia experiences which were more dissociative than anything else. I am familiar with the way that things morph and move on many other psychedelics. An almost subtle shifting, things not necessarily moving spacially but almost within themselves, within the set amount of space that they occupy as objects. In much the same way that things morph with the eyes open, scene after ultra-realistic scene unfolded before my closed eyes. Morphing steadily from one scene to the next with precision and grace, it was as if my eyes were completely open, down to the finest detail I saw myself standing before buildings I'd seen only in dreams from years past, at a gas station holding the nozzle of a gas pump with no cars in sight, on top of a building at dusk in a city I'd never seen before. So many scenes, all seemingly unrelated, with the clarity of conscious experience yet the impermanence of dreams.

T3:00- Time measurement at this point is not exact, but I believe it to be right around the 3 hour mark. My eyes are still closed, and suddenly the intense visuals stop. Like a light switch, I went from seeing entire worlds unfold before me to that special shade of muted black that I'm so used to normally seeing when my eyes are closed. I open my eyes and close them again several times over the next 10 to 15 minutes, with eyes closed I am back to the Beziers screensaver only this time its behind my eyelids and its green. After the gravity of the situation sinks in I begin to feel relief that I will not be requiring hospitalization, and that my peak has apparently ended.

T3:15- I have to go to the bathroom. After urinating I pause to examine myself in the mirror, I marvel at my huge pupils and the way that my facial features almost slide into place as I change my expression. While making faces I absent mindedly notice my mom is watching some movie really loudly, and its in a foreign language. Slowly it dawns on me that the movie, while loud, is not in fact in a foreign language. It's in english, I'm aware it's in english, but I have to struggle, and concentrate VERY hard in order to make sense of the words. I wonder at the fact that unless I concentrate on specifically what they are saying, it all sounds like a gibberish of male pitched and female pitched growlings.

--It should be noted that this is the only time I would ever have any sort of severe audio distortion/hallucination on 2c-i.

I return to my room and notice that the open eye visuals have ramped up in intensity at this point. I would later find that this is almost always the case following my peak on 2c-i. What I mean by intensity is not that more things start to move, or more colors, but instead a marked increase in movement and morphing and more than that an increase in the speed with which things move and shift, especially in peripheral vision. It is at this point that relief really sets in, I'm still tired, so I get in bed and fall asleep without much trouble. Approximately 1 hour later I wake up wide awake and with most physical effects from the substance gone. I eat dinner and stay up for several more hours, the rest of the night goes fairly normally with minor visual distortions (especially when staring at something) continuing into the wee hours of the morning.

Since then I have taken 2c-i somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 times, in doses within the range of what I would estimate to be 10 to 25mg. If I had to guess, I would say I probably took 35-45mg that first time. Never again was I as careless or uninformed as I was then.

Exp Year: 2007ExpID: 70533
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 25, 2008Views: 23,786
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2C-I (172) : Difficult Experiences (5), Nature / Outdoors (23), Overdose (29), First Times (2), Various (28)

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