DOSE:

18 mg

oral

2C-B

(liquid)

I submit this report mostly in the interest of having a longitudinal log, rather than as a particularly novel or noteworthy event in itself. This is perhaps somewhere around the 40th or 50th time I've ingested 2C-B over the course of 6.5 years.

We attended a wedding party after the main ceremony. During and after the ceremony, I'd had several glasses of wine and was feeling mentally softened. The ceremony had been fun and emotional and I was in a giggly, open mood.

I had suspected something other than alcohol might be available and a couple hours after the ceremony ended, someone was appointed as the inviter, who went around the room and told people where they could go to get 2C-B if they wanted and consult briefly if the person wasn't exactly sure about it.

The 2C-B was being dispensed from a large bottle, having been dissolved at around 1ml per milligram or so. They asked how much I wanted, I told them 18mg, and they used a graduated cylinder to measure the volume and poured it into my glass.

The taste was typical 2C-B flavor, bitter chemical with that tinge of something else. It would be impossible for me to reliably tell the difference between different phenethylamines, despite having tasted a variety of them over a number of years.

I chose 18mg because thats my favorite social level. Not usually too strong, but with enough impact that I am shifted off my normally curmudgeonly, impatient self.

The wine was still in my head as I felt the 2C-B begin to permeate my CNS. Where I had been slowly losing cognitive steam over the last hour, now I felt a tingling surge of increased sociability. It was between 30 and 60 minutes when the effects began to be unmistakeable. I hadn't eaten a dinner and so my stomach wasn't full. I'd had some snacks here and there all day and a largish breakfast.

The physical stimulation was about the same as a strong dose of caffeine for me, which can be quite stimulating. With my 25-75mg per day caffeine habit, this would probably have been like a good 100-150mg dose of caffeine.. in the area of a strong coffee or a double cappucino for me.

A smile got planted on my face as I talked to friends from around the country whom I hadn't seen in some time. With one friend, I talked about my interest in the question of how people decide what they think is true, what constitutes knowledge and self-identification of 'truth', to which he replied that he is interested in how people make decisions, how to talk about decision making which is non-rational.. like why people take non-physically addicting recreational psychoactives in ways which are counter to their own logical decision making. It was an interesting conversation which was interrupted by the natural chaotic flow of a building full of friends.

I realized that my partner had disappeared and I hadn't seen her since she came up, so I decided to try to find her. In my somewhat non-linear mental state, I walked the entirety of the building twice and failed to find her. I began what I call my 'exhaustive search' protocol which I use when I can't find what I'm looking for. This is simply to go to the place where I expect something to be, then exhaustively search every possible location, even ones which are unlikely. I become very methodical as the only way to be sure that I'm actually looking at the things in front of my eyes. Soon after I started this, I found my love tucked behind the large foliage in the entry hall, entwined with a friend who had taken some MDMA and was looking for some comfort as she came up in a group of people she didn't know very well.

Often at parties where we are taking 2C-B and others are taking MDMA, it is an interaction that we have that the MDMA-people are far more touchy and needy than we get on the 2C-B. It is an interesting vantage point to experience the MDMA-mindspace from, with a sense of amusement and empathy, but with a substantial sense of distance from the smooshiness of that very boundary-softening chemical.

I was invited into and climbed into the pile in the corner. After a few minutes of this, it was clear the mood had dissipated and we all went back to the main fray. Some people were dancing, some frenetically, to the music. Per usual, I felt more like socializing than dancing and ended up seeking someone else to talk to.

Another friend and I spent some time talking about the complexities of human relationships, about how difficult it is to communicate. It strikes me, over and over, how humans are a species which is genetically predisposed to communication. We are, among the fauna of this planet, perhaps one of the most communication-oriented creatures. Wired to speak, wired to think abstractly, forepaws free to manipulate tools and keyboards to concretize language...

Yet, despite our predisposition for it, it is surprisingly hard, imprecise, prone to dramatic miscommunication. With those we love and have the best intentions for, we can still spend so much time in utter confusion. We often choose to communicate in ways which are obscure or oblique, often against our own best interests or wishes. Its a very confusing species to be.

Her relationship was at one of those points where she was questioning whether she and her boyfriend were just coming from contexts where they were just too different, their understandings of the world incompatible, so that their communications never really sorted themselves out.

It was a good conversation that we were struggling with trying to work out some insight and shared understanding... but again, as is the norm in these environments, the conversation collided with the chaos of phenethylamined social groupings. As we sat talking, a group of people sat down in front of us and began engaging us in banter.

The evening continued in the mode of having brief but fairly clear conversations with friends for several hours. People started to trickle out of the party-space, saying their goodbyes, while the folks who had chosen to take a stim stayed later.

Around T+5 or so, my partner said she was feeling jittery and a little physically uncomfortable. In retrospect, she should have taken a benzo (alprazolam) earlier on and didn't end up taking one until just before sleep. The phenethylamine-jitters, which I get fairly routinely on many of these shulginalikes, often consist of a feeling of buzzing or energy or tension in muscles. One of the things that is somewhat disconcerting about it is that it can often manifest in the largest muscles in the body, like the gluteus, thighs, calves, shoulders, etc, as a twitching or shaking. It is not so bothersome in short spurts, but my partner was experiencing it for a couple hours. Again, in retrospect, some type of calmer would have gone a long way to improve her enjoyment of the evening.

Overall, the experience was very enjoyable for me and helped create a sense of connection to the other wedding participants. I've been to dozens of weddings and often alcohol alone can be OK to help create a sense of shared experience, but having mild mind-stimulators and empathogens around can certainly give some more space to interact. So many people come from around the country to spend time together, its nice to have 6-8 hours of time together where there is no external obligation and people are in a good mood.

18mg was once again the right dose for me. Very light visuals, noticeable stimulation, mood lift, mild empathogenesis, social, fairly clear headed, not too gushy.

Needed to take .5mg alprazolam to get to sleep, which carried a bit of a hangover into the next day.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 19322
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 1, 2002	Views: 13,490
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
2C-B (52) : Large Group (10+) (19), General (1)