DOSE:	20 mg	oral	4-HO-MET	(capsule)
		smoked	Cannabis
	0.25 mg	oral	Pharms - Alprazolam
	0.5 mg	oral	Pharms - Lorazepam

BODY WEIGHT:

115 lb

Ego Death - My Experience

Let me start by saying it has taken me a few days to process what I have experienced.

I have been a regular marijuana smoker for about 3 years. Having only recently delved into psychedelics, I had never even heard of ego death or any such phenomena until after I went through this. I originally wanted to use psychedelics mainly for visual pleasure. This experience was very, very intense for me, and I wanted to write this report so that people are aware that this can occur on 4-HO-MET.

During the past few months before my experience, I had tried 4-HO-MET approximately five times, at 20mg and 40mg doses. The first few experiences were fairly pleasant and similar to one another. I saw spinning, shifting patterns in the surfaces around me, experienced music more intensely, and saw different colors and lights on surfaces. It lasted around 4-6 hours, and was mild enough that I could still make conversation and walk around. I enjoyed it, as I am a very visual, artistic person. If it hadn't been for the trip I'm about to describe, I probably would have continued using 4-HO-MET. I am a fairly regular marijuana smoker (about 2-3 bowls per day). I smoked a few joints each time during these first few times, with no issues. I also have a prescription for Xanax and Ativan as-needed from my doctor that I keep nearby while tripping just in case.

This particular time, I took 4-HO-MET on a beautiful Friday evening. My partner and I had planned to trip that night. I had abstained from eating for about the past 6 hours before. I was in a happy, excited mood. It had been over a month since I last tripped, so I decided to take a small dose just to be cautious. I took a 20mg capsule of 4-HO-MET with a glass of water at about 7:30pm.

About ten minutes after ingesting, I was already seeing swirly patterns in our kitchen floor and I felt a little light-headed. I realized that it was coming on very quickly compared to my previous experiences. However, I wasn’t alarmed. It was still pleasant and I was excited to see more patterns. I went outside with my partner, who is much more experienced with psychedelics, and we sat in our backyard and smoked a joint. While sitting there, I started seeing geometric, twisting, dancing patterns in the grass and trees around us. I remarked that it looked so pretty outside that it almost looked fake. I felt very nauseous and my stomach was in pain. When I stood up, I felt as if I could barely walk. I had vertigo pretty badly.

The effects of the 4-HO-MET took hold very quickly and powerfully. As I stood in our backyard, I started walking around slowly, to try to calm myself and get my bearings. Patterns were swirling and changing in all of the surfaces around me, and the swirls were going very fast. I remember looking at our yard and seeing a robin hopping around, but I couldn’t remember what the creature was called. It was then that I realized I no longer remembered certain words. I was a bit alarmed at this, but I tried to keep it to myself and wrote it off as part of the trippiness. I was still feeling very light-headed and faint.

As I stood outside I realized that the world looked different. It was no longer simply the swirls and patterns that I had come to expect with 4-ho-met. It had suddenly shifted to something entirely different. The only way I can think to explain it is that the world looked as if it had “doubled over” with a clear, glass copy of itself. Everything looked very shiny, mirror-like, glistening, glossy, and huge. There was a “dome-like” sensation I had when looking around, as if there was a huge, clear/mirror/windowed globe somehow covering the earth, very close to earth's surface. This looked very, very real to me, and was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

I was extremely nauseous and faint at this point. I don’t know what time it was, but I believe less than 1 hour had passed. Words were no longer coming to me easily and I couldn't really describe what I was seeing or feeling to my partner. I stumbled into the bathroom, where I noticed the floor swirling, which usually happens when I trip, but it was going extremely fast. Then I saw a beam of rainbow light across my arm, like some sort of laser bracelet. Nothing like that had ever happened before, so I had a feeling something weird was definitely happening at this point. As I was washing my hands, I sniffed the soap I was using (I'm fond of nice scented soaps), and realized I truly could not remember if I thought the smell of soap was pleasant or unpleasant. I suddenly felt like a newborn baby who doesn't know the basics of the world. Is soap a 'good' smell?--It seems like a basic question, but somehow I didn't know.;
When I came out of the bathroom, the world was still all glowy/mirrory/huge looking. I was not seeing patterns at all at this point, but rather just seeing this golden-clear-shimmery light all around and feeling this sensation that everything was this huge dome around me. I kept glancing around the room, hoping to make the dome feeling go away, but it didn’t. I closed my eyes, hoping for some closed eye visuals to relieve me, but I still saw everything that I saw with my eyes open. Now I was very frightened. I couldn’t escape this weird glowy shiny dome world. This was nothing like the 4-HO-MET I had tried before. I tried remembering facts about myself, like the name of the street I grew up on, but nothing was coming to my mind. It was like I had lost all of my memories, like all of my personality and memory was just blank. I sat on the floor our living room while my partner laid on the couch watching the clouds through the window. I was feeling very uncomfortable and uneasy. I kept glancing around waiting for the feeling and weird visuals to pass. My mind felt troubled and blank and scared.

We had music playing and a song came on that I knew was “sad” and significant to me in some way, but I couldn’t remember *why* I thought it was sad. I no longer had any connotations with the song. I knew this song had once been meaningful to me, and it freaked me out that I couldn’t remember why. I started feeling extremely upset.

I finally was so scared and freaked out that I asked my partner if he thought this batch was okay because it felt like a totally different drug to me. At this point I was nearing panic. He assured me it was the same and that he had taken from the same batch. I started crying uncontrollably. I tried to explain to him how everything felt weird and scary, but since I didn’t have my memory working properly, I couldn’t really explain it. I couldn't remember words. I felt that I was losing my mind. I started thinking what if was stuck in this state forever, if my memories were gone forever, if I could no longer communicate, and I started hyperventilating and panicking. It turned into a full-blown panic attack. I was barely able to breathe. My heart was racing so fast it physically hurt my chest. My partner asked me if I wanted it to stop, and brought me one of my 0.25 mg Xanax. Immediately after that I also took 0.5mg of Ativan as well because the panic was so strong. I thought I was experiencing psychosis or a seizure or something. I thought I was going to need to go to the emergency room.

As the Xanax started to take effect I was able to breathe again. I took many deep, slow breaths. I somehow remembered enough words to ask my partner if this feeling would go away, and he reassured me that the trip would only last a few more hours. I kept asking him questions to try to understand the situation I was in, and then not being able to remember what I had asked mere seconds later. I felt disconnected from the world around me, like an entity locked in another dimension. I felt the absence of my self, like my soul was gone, or had ceased being, and like some universal, blank soul was now inside of me. I didn’t know who I was. I felt like I had lived other lives in the past, like my soul was traveling, or like my soul didn’t belong solely to me. It was an extremely disorienting, strange, indescribable feeling.

My partner helped me into the bedroom and we laid down together. Tears were streaming down my face. The anxiety medications had calmed me physically, but my brain was still in this strange, no memory, no personality state. It felt like I was in a coma looking out at the world. I could perceive everything around me but it had no connotation, no back story or memory or emotion. Everything was still all golden and shiny and huge looking. I kept sitting up and looking around the room because it felt like the walls were closing in on me, like the room/“dome” thing was getting closer, which made me feel panicked again.

As we laid there with the sunlight of the early evening streaming into the room, I felt very clearly that I was dying; that this was my death bed. The last conscious moment of my life. I had no memories, no past. ; I looked over at my partner, but I no longer knew his face. I knew, though, that I was safe. I started feeling overwhelming gratitude and love for him. At this point I had no memories of my life or self. It felt truly like this would be the last moment of my life, and that I would die in this blank, shimmery, shiny world around me.

I don't remember coming out of that state. I know that I did come out of it and that my partner and I sat on the couch, watched a little TV together, and fell asleep normally. I remember being exhausted. The next day I was tired, weak, and my mind felt foggy, but I felt extremely grateful to have my brain and memories functioning again. It felt like I had come back from near-death. My partner explained that it sounded like I experienced 'ego death,' and I started reading up on what I had experienced.

This trip was unexpected, overwhelming, completely foreign to my other experiences with it. But it was very, very real and very intense. I personally would never seek out this experience again.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112035
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Jun 20, 2018	Views: 4,397
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