DOSE:

Etaqualone

BODY WEIGHT:

155 lb

Gender: Male
Age:27
[Set/Setting: see below]
Psychonautic Experience Level: Advanced

An experiential timeline-derived narrative follows, and illustrates what an average etaqualone experience felt like for me.

Set: Intent on relaxing after a day of work; excited about experiencing this new material, spattered with bouts of anxiety about dipping my psyche, once more, into the abysmal plane of the unknown.

Setting: Both time spent with a friend and time spent alone listening to music and exploiting aspects of general comfort available to me.

T+0:00 553mg etaqualone ingested orally. I am surfing the internet, listening to downtempo electronic music.

T+1:05 First truly palpable effects from the drug are felt; they resemble, both in feel and intensity, the onset and partial come-up of alprazolam (Xanax), though an undefinable quality made the etaqualone unique.

T+1:30 For me, oral ROA takes a good deal of patience and represents the true polar opposite of smoking it. By an hour and a half into the experience, I am most certainly feeling groovy. Some have described spatial orientation to resemble that of alcohol intoxication, but I did not find this. Perhaps it is because I was motivated to move so little.

T+2:00 I have concluded that I am really enjoying myself. I am partial to sedatives, hypnotics and opiates and so I had high expectations for etaqualone. The rolling feeling of calm and tranquility - though, with a timbre that differed significantly from other, similar, substances - kept my eyes glassy and produced only mild respiratory depression (Note: this will vary from source to source and person to person; be vigilant about protecting yourself).

T+2:30 The effects certainly haven’t gotten any *stronger*, but by the same token, neither have they decreased. Mundane activities, like watching Netflix on a laptop, become welcoming beacons of laziness which I, the etaqualoned, eagerly sought after.

T+3:00 The decrescendo is upon me. I feel the intensity of the rolling calm coming to a slow, but deliberate halt. Like an old train resisting inertia.

T+5:30 After a little past five hours, I feel back enough to normalcy that I would not call myself intoxicated. I write little to nothing about the experience between 3:00 and 5:30 because, truthfully, the recollection bores me. I favor the initial stages of the experience.

Overall, etaqualone was not unworthy. I did, I admit, succumb to the compulsive re-dosing seen with smoking the material. Initially, this feeling was unfamiliar and exciting, if not also unsettlingly powerful. After five to seven hits, my mind felt as though it has struck its cap. I could not re-achieve the rush without waiting to re-dose until I was at the point of fiending for the feeling. This was off-putting.

I found oral dosing to be enjoyable up until 800mg, after which it felt redundant and, again, I felt as though I had hit some kind of restrictive (and frustrating) cap.

Etaqualone is not nearly as prolific as its illicit analogue, but for the curious and well-informed/adequately prepared, the chemical represented a different and unique experiential perspective, and I am glad that I gave it a shot. I have decided to refrain from seeking it again, however.

I should also add that smoking etaqualone, with repetition, brings long-lasting irritation to the lungs. I have had coughing symptoms and mucous production - at varying degrees of intensity - for the two weeks it has now been since I last used etaqualone.

Etaqualone is an insidious creature. Rapid stimulation of the reward system, a unique pleasure that defies logic, re-dose-provokingly short duration of action and multi-variate drug interaction concerns, coupled with dosing that is wholly inconsistent from person to person (anecdotally) are some of the prevalent neurological traits that define etaqualone as a subjective and little-studied human experience.

Etaqualone appears to be disappointingly inefficient via oral administration; subjectively, enjoyable dosages range from just lower than 500mg to over a gram or more per person, per event. Compared with other routes of administration, oral represents the soundest way to avoid compulsive dosing but overall being the least enjoyable level of exposure to the drug’s CNS effects.

Intranasal dosing of etaqualone produced not so much irritation of the mucous membrane, but significant airway blockage that felt as though absorption of the material into the bloodstream was hindered by the powder’s immobility such that this route-of-administration’s (ROA) virtue was never realized.

Etaqualone is soluble in both isopropyl and ethyl rubbing alcohols, but re-precipitates abruptly on contact/in combination with an aqueous solution. Intravenous and intramuscular ROA would thus be highly inadvisable.

Rectal administration is possible, though as is the case regarding intranasal etaqualone, the properties of the chemical make achieving a worthwhile experience a frustrating and often fruitless effort.

Sublingual/buccal ROA are effective and are less prone to the problems seen with other ROA. Onset of sublingual etaqualone was approximately twenty minutes across every trial. The lowest effective dose was variable, and best described as 150mg +/- 35-50mg. Etaqualone is a relatively obscure quinazolinone derivative of methaqualone; the sanest advice in the world is to dose conservatively until a baseline can be established.

This is never more important than when applied to combustion of etaqualone (since it can not easily be prepared for injection). Smoking etaqualone is an extremely effective ROA with a fast onset (~10 seconds) an a short duration (15-25 minutes full effect; 40 minutes afterglow). This ROA is most likely to unlock the addictive danger of etaqualone as it promotes continuous, compulsive re-dosing despite the diminishing intensity and subjective pleasure of the experience. If one so chooses, my suggestion is to be very careful and wary of re-dosing past your body’s physiological limits.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 101867
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 27
Published: Nov 4, 2015	Views: 3,611
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Etaqualone (613) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Unknown Context (20)