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Bicycle Ride Through a Hellish Carnival
2C-I
Citation:   Thorgeir. "Bicycle Ride Through a Hellish Carnival: An Experience with 2C-I (exp37590)". Erowid.org. Jan 12, 2009. erowid.org/exp/37590

 
DOSE:
15 mg oral 2C-I
    repeated smoked Cannabis
BODY WEIGHT: 180 lb
Prior to trying 2C-I, I had not taken any phenethylamines, although I'd had a fair bit of experience with LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, DXM, and amphetamines. My close friend, Nehemiah, was planning on moving back to San Francisco in a few weeks, and had ordered 2C-I from a 'research chemical' website some weeks previously, without knowing much about it other than 'it produced acid-like visuals.' He had been steadily propositioning me to take it with him, but I refused on the grounds of not knowing anything about it.

Eventually, I decided that I may as well give it a try, as a way of seeing my friend off. I did research online, but for some reason, I looked up information on 2C-B instead of 2C-I. I became excited when I read that 2C-B was similar to MDMA, which I had wanted to try. Of course, 2C-I is not the same as 2C-B, so I was in for a shock.

The night we decided to dose ourselves was not pre-planned. It was a humid mid-August evening; Nehemiah and I were sitting in my bedroom, listening to music, and smoking some grass. It was a usual evening for us. Nehemiah suggested that we should get higher by taking the 2C-I capsules he had at his apartment. I agreed, and we set off, cannibas and bowl in pocket. His apartment was only a few blocks from mine, and it was about 8 pm when we arrived. We each took one 15 mg capsule and smoked more grass. We then went over to another friend's house, where there was a small social gathering. We sat and chatted for about an hour, when we both started to feel lightheaded, flushed, and a little bit nervous. We retired back to Nehemiah's place for a few minutes, until we both began to feel over-stimulated and decided that a bicycle ride was in order, not knowing at all what was ahead of us.

We rode off, avoiding main streets as much as possible, and eventually ending up in a public park where I'd had a number of formative psychedelic experiences. My body buzz continued to rise the entire time, becoming increasingly uncomfortable. We tried to ride down a trail that lead into the woods, but there was a fence and locked gate a few feet down it that had never been there before, blocking our way. Thinking this very strange, we rode to a place where a staircase made its way down into the park, and carried our biycles down. I was experiencing visual distortion by that point, but nothing like I've had from other psychedelics. It felt as though my eyes were about a foot in front of my head, immense and all-seeing, and my visual field was bent and twisted in a manner that made me feel dizzy.

We rode through the park and out to an area of post-industrial wasteland near the river. Bile began to creep up, and after a few minutes, I could think of nothing else besides sitting down and trying to vomit. We stopped our bikes in a weedy, trash-strewn field and I pulled out the pot. My hands felt like they do sometimes while on LSD, immobile and distant. I put a small nugget in the bowl, being too uncoordinated to break it up. It was discovered that we only had a zippo lighter with us, which lead to much distress and foul-tasting smoke. After taking about two hits, my stomach calmed itself, but everything in my visual field began to bend and distort even more, and patterns emerged over everything. The entire world began to take on the character of a malevolent carnival. It was in the same league as a high-dose LSD trip, but with none of the mental effect. I had a horrible body high, vibrations with reverberations shaking my body like an earthquake. The whole thing had a very harsh, unpleasant, speedy chemical edge.

The next three hours were spent riding our bikes very quickly around the city, getting lost in familiar neighborhoods, straight streets seemingly twisted around on themselves. Everything was very bright and loud; it seemed as if there was a car shining its high-beams behind us the entire evening. At one point, we passed a pedestrian, and I desperately called out, 'I should not be bicycling now.' I had none of the profound-type thoughts that have come with other psychedelic compounds, and I longed for the speedy, overly visual trip to end. It felt like we would never come down.

We eventually made it back to our neighborhood, intensely exhausted. I decided to sleep at Nehemiah's place, as the few blocks back to my apartment seemed to be infinitely far. Neither of us had any idea how long the experience would last, as we both seemed to still be peaking. We showered, and I sat in the hall and listened to music coming from Nehemiah's roommate's bedroom, which the hallway seemed to be growing and shrinking in time to. During this period of time, a large lump of mucus appeared in the back of my throat.

Eventually we lay down in Nehemiah's bed and tried to sleep. It became increasingly apparent around 3 am that this wasn't going to happen anytime soon. When my eyes were closed, I saw shifting fractal patterns, with flowing rainbows in the background, not unlike the CEVs I've gotten from mescaline. We smoked more pot in attempts to mellow out, but it would only thrust us back into the heavy visual stew for a few minutes. My stomach got heavier and heavier, and began aching. I nodded off into a state that was certainly not really sleep, waking up at around noon, alone, with an all-over body ache, headache, and upset stomach. I had trouble sleeping the next night as well, but the day after that, felt relatively normal.

I would not take this chemical again as it seemed to have no beneficial mental effect, an unpleasant body load, and an overall toxic feeling.

Exp Year: 2003ExpID: 37590
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 12, 2009Views: 12,794
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2C-I (172) : First Times (2), Difficult Experiences (5), Various (28)

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