DOSE: T+ 0:00	23 mg	oral	4-HO-MET	(powder / crystals)
T+ 10:00			Pharms - Diazepam

BODY WEIGHT:

80 kg

Background info:

This was my first time taking psychedelics of any description. My only past experience with drugs is MDMA which I had taken a few weeks ago (my first and only time taking any other drug, except nicotine from cigarettes). The reason I have just started experimenting with mind altering drugs is because I am very interested in neuroscience, ethics and their implications on modern law/society. I read into psychedelics and talked a lot with a friend who has experimented with them quite a bit and recommended 4-HO-MET as the first substance to try because it isn't quite as potent as LSD (which I was extremely interested in because of the, in my opinion, bizarre legal status of it) but still gives a strong psychedelic experience.

I had worked late the previous night so only got up at 4pm, hadn't eaten anything all day yet so stomach was completely empty. Smoked a couple of cigarettes a couple of hours before consumption.

Situation/Dosage:

I was in my flat at the PC. Large open room with my desk and chair and had pulled over the couch towards the PC for my friend to sit on while we put music on the computer. Both of us orally consumed about 22-25mg orally of the substance which was a white powder, at about 7.55pm.

Outcomes/Experiences:

The following is written a couple of days after the experience.
* indicates rough approximations of time

7.55pm: Consume 22-25mg of 4-HO-MET

8.05pm: Start feeling butterflies in the stomach and hands start shaking. Felt excited because it let me know the drug was starting to do something already.

8.25pm-*9pm: Started getting visuals, visual and sound enhancments. Music sounded a lot better and I'd turned up the volume to twice the normal level but it didn't sound like it was too loud, it just sounded amazing. Colours were a lot brighter and contrast between dark and light was a lot more defined. Behind the couch were my friend was sat started glowing green as though there were disco lights behind him on the floor. This was when I realised that the drug was working and I was getting visuals.

Shortly after I started to notice that my carpet, which is an ugly cheap plain brown carpet, had lots of patterns throughout it. As I noticed them they started to glow bright green and move and breathe. From noticing this I became euphoric and started laughing and looking around noticing patterns emerging in simple objects like the patterns on my curtains, suddenly becoming brightly coloured and alive. The most prominent colours in the visuals I had were green and pinky purple, both bright like neon lights.

I was in some disbelief about how these effects were happening to my friend and repeatedly asked him was he seeing strange things too (him being more experienced in psychedelics). I remember vividly at one point him telling me to move my hand and see if I see trails and as he said this, his eyes popped out of his head, kind of stretching a few centimetres in front of his head. I was not seeing trails at this point however. He told me to try closing my eyes.

Closing my eyes let me see more amazing visuals, lots of patterns that reminded me of tribal paintings I'd seen when researching psychedelics in the past. There were kaleidoscope style patterns emerging but no fractals. I could see random letters from a language I didn't understand, spinning in circles and changing colours. The visuals were mostly green and pinky purple but sometimes yellow and white 3D objects, like diamond shaped cards would fly about. As the closed eye visuals got more intense, I saw holographic girls dancing in between and through and on top of all the other patterns.

*9pm-*10pm: At this point I can assume this would be called the peak of the experience. The visuals were extremely vivid and fluid. Regular objects seemed to have patterns flowing out of them. In one corner of the room on my bookshelf, my books and videogames were dancing around on the shelves, swapping places and throwing out trails of the colours on them.

I kept thinking I could see my breath (my living room gets pretty cold at night) and trails of what I thought (and could possibly have been apart from when it came off other objects) was my breath changed into dots of light in different colours.

When looking at my friend, his eyebrows and moustache would move around erratically, becoming intense black (it's usually blonde) and just waving around on his face. The hair on his head remained normal for the most part as well as the rest of his features except for his eyes which swirled and got very large, taking up a bigger proportion of his face. The couch he was sat on also seemed to breathe. On the couch there was a bit of striped clothing and it just didn't look right so I wanted to move it, my friend knocked it off for me and then we were both very distracted and had to go get it and put it back on the couch and move it's position about for a few minutes. We considered the possibility of us feeling when the clothing looked correct in a certain way draped over the couch being art we don't understand but can appreciate.

Sometimes I would notice my hands moving and see very distinct trails, I could wave my hands and the trails would be over a foot long of the same hand overlapping and fading again. I didn't want to look at my hands on their own because I was scared that they would change. I was also afraid of going to the bathroom to look at the mirror because I didn't want to remember what I looked like while tripping in case it scared me. This fear wasn't constant and didn't effect the trip, I was just very aware of stopping myself looking at my hands and rather enjoying the rest of the show.

One other distinct memory I have of the trip was looking on my ceiling, it's a rectangular room with 2 similar light bulbs hanging from the ceiling a similar distance from each wall, both without lampshades. The one closest to us was on, the one towards the other end was off so the shadow of the furthest one was against the far wall. I remember distinctly that the lightbulb on was normal but sometimes I could see the rays of light hitting things and changing colours, the far bulb that was off, was perfectly normal, but the shadow of it was vibrating and moving around as though the light bulb was melting and vibrating and dancing around, but the actual bulb creating that shadow was still and normal.

Another thing to note about this, being my first trip, was I never felt fear and because I'd read up on psychedelics, I simply reminded myself that none of this was real and it was just the drug, it was extremely calming when things got tense. Especially having my friend who was experienced, with me, to see that he was fine was very calming. Also, every now and again, I got the urge to just stand up off my chair. I sometimes felt like the room was shifting, almost like it was on a boat, but once I stood up, the room settled and I was perfectly balanced and I could (and did) walk around fine, as though nothing about my ability to balance or physically move had changed at all.

Towards the end of this more intense part of the trip, closed eye visuals were too intense for me and made me quite nauseous and, I don't know why, scared me, so I didn't close my eyes much at this point.

Throughout this whole period there was a lot of distortion with the sense of time, like feeling like an hour had passed in a single song. We'd laugh and say how a certain song had been on for hours and it had only been a couple of minutes. Also, the intensity came in waves, going from very intense to not quite so, however always a lot more intense than the first hour or so.

*10pm-*10.15pm: The visuals were starting to wear off but I was still euphoric and wanted to see how this changed the real world outside. I told my friend I wanted to go outside for a walk and we got up. In the mindset to go outside, the visuals calmed down a significant amount to the point that there were only patterns on carpets and walls, nothing actually breathing or producing it's own patterns into the world. The most noticeable thing was that I felt way taller, the room felt wider, my view felt wider. Like everything within my line of sight, even the corner of my eyes, was in full focus.

Before we left, we grabbed some cigarettes and I don't remember what we talked about, but at one point we started repeating the word “wet” because it sounded weird. Now and again, when I said it, time seemed to slow down or speed up, making the word sound even stranger. Then we caught ourselves and remembered we were meant to be going out for a walk.

It might be noteworthy to say my friend was distressed at first at the lack of music as we prepared to depart but once we were up and talking his nervousness about the trip being bad because it needed music subsided. I had also disliked the silence while the trip was very intense but it was fine from this point.

*10.15pm-*12midnight: It was very dark when we got out but because of the enhanced visual effects, enhanced colours and contrast, we seemed to be stepping out into a film noir world. We no longer had music and there were no people around but the sounds we did hear, like our footsteps and the sounds of distant cars were distinct, crisp and clear. We walked up to a park in the film noir world. I felt really tall and all the environments felt wider. My friend seemed to be a lot taller than me from a couple of feet away but when I walked up to him he was back to being the same height as me.

We smoked a couple of cigarettes in the park and the enhancement of sound was a lot more obvious. I could hear the gas coming out the lighter and the click and spark as the flame ignited. Looking down to light a cigarette was like zooming in so my vision encased just the lighter and cigarette and it was extremely clear. Time seemed to slow down when I lit the cigarette and I could hear the crackle of each bit of tobacco alighting.

We stood and talked and listened, looking over the town rooftops (the park is on top of a hill) and everything was in perfect focus and wide angle. I looked at a row of trees with the moonlight hitting one end and a lamp hitting the other and the contrast of each tree was amazingly distinct. As we stood there, the visuals came back and I started seeing the glowing patterns in the paths on the park, but not in the grass.

We talked and confused each other and my mind raced, jumping through millions of subjects in seconds. The whole time, walking around had felt like nothing (the hill is steep and I usually feel at least a little tired walking up, as fast as we did) and all my physical abilities seemed to be normal, better in fact. My logical capacities seemed to be the same except I confused myself at times as I would try to verbalise a thought but I would already be thinking of something else before I could finish speaking about one subject.

We went for a walk around and the only notable effects now were the euphoria, a kind of sense of awe that the world had somehow changed but was still the same, it was just my brain changing things, like a lucid dream of sorts. Also everything was still very wide. Roads seemed to be a lot wider. At one point I had to cross a road with a car coming and my friend just crossed immediately and I waited for nearly a minute because I thought the car was a lot closer or coming a lot faster and I apparently waited for a long time and had plenty of time to cross.

We eventually walked back and once inside, the visuals which had completely disappeared when we were walking, started coming back, although a lot calmer.

12midnight*-1am: The visuals were there but a lot calmer. I got on the computer and started reading other trip reports. Sometimes words would move around or become bold or italic on their own. Eventually I calmed down and my friend went home. The effect that lasted me with the most was the curiosity, the constant questioning of how or what had happened after simply eating a bit of powder. I couldn't sleep until 6am with the help of a valium. A few hours after I was calm, before I went to sleep, I had some paranoia because I could still hear far away sounds very clearly and was alone in the flat.

Conclusion: For me, this was a precursor experience. After all my research I had wanted to try LSD but this is a lot less potent. I will probably take this again, possibly alone next time. I would recommend this for anyone wanting an introduction into a psychedelic experience as there were no negative effects for me apart from feeling slightly nauseous just as the trip started to take effect, and the shakes (these effects are apparently common with most drugs though). I would definitely not recommend this drug for someone who is mentally unstable or depressed as, from what I've read, it can intensify feelings of depression. It's good to take in a good mood and if you are excited for the experience and know what to expect so there is no fear, which could turn the trip bad. As for the mental stability, I've researched psychedelics and their physiological and psychological effects a bit, not loads, but more than the average person, and these experiences do lead to you questioning your reality, even long after the effects have worn off. You question how everything changed just because your perception was different.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 98202
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Dec 16, 2012	Views: 13,840
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