DOSE: T+ 0:00	500 ug	sublingual	25C-NBOMe	(blotter / tab)
T+ 5:25	3 g	oral	Kratom	(liquid)
T+ 6:45		oral	Alcohol - Hard	(liquid)
T+ 0:00		smoked	DMT	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

It’s evening at home during a quiet holiday break. I had been planning for a few days to have a trip, most likely with 4-HO-MET, which has been a great ally lately. Halfway through measuring a dose it occurs to me that it feels repetitive, and what other options do we have? Have I thought about sampling the 25C again? I had mixed feelings on that one from a light, fairly aimless 250ug experience a year ago, along with nervousness about unpredictable health risks from the NBOMes. Why bother when real LSD is plentiful? I spend a few minutes refreshing my memory regarding any dangers/casualties and eventually decide that the risk is low enough given the known dosage on this blotter, my low-dose intro experience, and enough reports that 25C seems most benign (compared to 25I or 25B). Also I’m not taking any medications, have a rhythm of moderate psychedelic use every few weeks, but nothing in the past 10 days.

7:45pm - I mentally set an intention for the evening and check in with the space of my apartment — it’s tidy, warm with pleasant lighting, smells of pleasant essential oils, just me at home. I welcome any friendly spirit guides who want to hang out, set up protective psychic boundaries, and slip half a tab (500ug) into my gums. Off we go!

8:10 (T+0:25) - I’ve been selecting a playlist and am noticing some nervous stimulation. Yes, definitely a bit of a physical push and some crackling visual noise. Butterflies in the tummy. At some point I spit out the paper when it’s clearly coming on.

8:30 (T+0:45) - It's been a process of getting comfortable inhabiting my body; the comeup on any psychedelic is a transition that takes a lot of mindfulness and feeling the sensations that arise, as they are. At first sort of a chemical feeling, as if I were on two levels - disconnected from myself as the observer, but an awareness of sharp currents coursing below through deep skeletal channels, but a strange emptiness in the space between. I might describe the comeup process to you, reader, like a flood of water rushing down over rocky hills: at first an uncontrollable burst of energy carving sharp channels in random directions. It can feel like a ton of things, depending on where the river is flowing within me and what solid objects it encounters: a woozy or burning stomach, twitching or tense muscles, visuals, a warping sense of space, I might hear the voices of people from earlier in the day; I almost always have to go to the bathroom. Whatever chaos arises in this flow, I observe it and allow it to release the gunk from my channels. I like to get up and dance a little, breathe, stretch, concentrate on an altar. Over time I’ve learned this is a key to a rewarding trip for me: unless I settle into my body the whole thing’s going to be imbalanced and uncomfortably funky and confusing. My neuro-spiritual-sensory apparatus (however the heck it works) works best when I’m present instead of carelessly drifting out-of-body. So after about 20 minutes the flooding river has, if you’ll further indulge the metaphor, washed away the sharp rocks and branches, and my inner psychic valley has filled up to become a peaceful lake. It feels like the onslaught of energy’s settled down and I’m occupying myself in a nice way.

9:10 (T+1:25) - I’ve been sitting on the bed, musing on my dating life. I’m shown portraits of two girls: one works at a local pub and was suddenly fascinating and attractive today; and another who I met online and hung out with recently. I’m guided through my deeper feelings on the two, and their subtle differences: the first one is attractive because of spontaneous chemistry and, honestly, my own fantasy and projections onto her, whereas the appeal of the latter is shown to me as a radiant light that I’m genuinely curious and excited about. The lesson is obvious: don’t waste your time getting entangled in junk food romance — or at least be well aware of what you’re doing. Pursue quality and resonance.

9:30 (T+1:45) - Really… really… nice… rainbows. Let me clarify: auras. I don’t get “visuals” the way many trippers describe them (eg. patterning, motion, breathing, neon geometry, loud overlays on the visual field). Rather, psychedelics help open my perceptual awareness to other layers of non-physical reality, in particular I’ve been working on seeing and understanding the energy fields that permeate the space around us (see also: the work of Alex Grey, Amanda Sage, Andrew Jones, Sam Farrand, or Barbara Brennan). Such an awareness is available while sober too if I pay attention, but I appreciate entheogens to push it further so that I can integrate those lessons and teach my brain to process the wild flood of spiritual information coming into those chakras.

OK, so: rainbows. I was over on the bed stretching my legs and looking at my feet against the white wall. It’s gorgeous and a lot of fun to observe: I’m radiating intensely in layers of yellow-white, orange, turquoise and purple, and I can watch currents of deep blue working their way through my legs as I stretch them open. Against the white wall it's plainly apparent, but also in space, wicking off my toes like a translucent, rainbow magnetic field and vibrating slightly. This material is really excellent for third eye work! I’ve actually noticed remarks about obvious auras in a number of NBOMe reports. I was skeptical at first because it seemed cold and empty compared to my tryptamine pals or acid, but really came through and filled out into a beautiful, warm inviting space. Not to say it's been an *easy* warmth, but well-earned by slogging through the psychic material that comes up so that I can release it. To get to know the luminous beauty, I have to stare down a LOT of ugliness, shadows and stored trauma. It’s scary, but I trust the process to move through it and come out the other side more open and radiant than before. Tonight a lot of letting the rainbow field do its work involves cracking open my heart, looking clearly at past relationships, and crying it out. You know, really getting in there and *feeling* it. The spirit knows where to go if you listen.

9:42 (T+1:57) - Changing the music to something deeper. I’m starting this new album and it's telling me to stop writing right now, gotta go. [So I actually did, and went to meditate, and these next notes are recalled from the tail end of the night. I snuggled up on the couch with a blanket, and immediately felt myself plugging into a new space through my crown. It was like a lotus on top of my head opening up into this vaulted, astral kind of cathedral spaciousness. A sense that other people and spirits are “here” tuned into this vibration, if not literally right now then in our current cultural moment and because this is the kind of music our community is using to expand our consciousness. By the way, the album is Kalya Scintilla’s “Open Ancient Eyes”.

[Some indeterminate amount of time passes]

?:?? (T+?:??) - That… was unreal. I just had the most luminous transcendent experience. The light that permeates everything and everywhen. I am dissolving with an experience of this room, in the most gorgeous sherbet tones. Everything glows with a luminous lime, pinks, oranges, purple underneath it all. No boundary between me and everything else, only a continuous field of vibration. I hold up my hands in wonder as they radiate green and turquoise into space.

This journey has been very much about the sensation of consciousness experiencing itself. Witnessing itself, from inside a human brain yet also as a delocalized field. I can feel the energies in space interfacing electrically with the folds of my brain and its networked structures. A particular momentary patterning lights up while a warm soul-field floats through my head or moves into a new part of my sixth chakra or sinus cavity. Quite a thing.

A moment also a while back: if this kind of magic is happening right here, then imagine what it’s like magnified by the entire planet! The enormity of this radiant field of complexity, life and divinity, powering into the star system and beyond. We zoom out and it begins to look like neurons flashing and signaling to each other across the vast expanses of spacetime. This human experiment here on this planet? We may rise and fall, but it won't be the end of us: we've indelibly painted on the tapestry of this local consciouness field. We’re sharing spirit with countless other civilizations and forms of awareness; some day even if we’re wiped out one may decide to take root on earth where there's adequate complexity (e.g. brains) and conditions… but no biggie, in the grand scheme it won't be the first or the last time a planet like ours comes along. So anyway, picture this: galaxies chirping and blinking across light-years and eons; and then imagine feeling this network of endless space *as your own body,* stars in your fingertips and swirling galaxies in your heart. Just dumbfounded - what a gift!

12:50 (T+5:05) - Thought I’d check in. What an unexpectedly glorious time. Very through-the-veil; the journey has had me tuning into different frequencies/levels and seeing things light up, in colors, as mythic stories are communicated to me. For example, spirit is explaining why the Hindu deities might be depicted the way they are, based on how human perceptual-evolutionary system interfaces with higher-dimensional entities: the projection of these beings into the sphere of human understanding has a structure and a consistency, but varying, fluid and informed by the familiar life forms we have on this planet. I feel I’m channeling very ancient stories about the history of the planet and my own soul, filling in a puzzle that’s really been taking shape this year. Meanwhile everything on this plane has soft, rounded edges and a fuzzy glow as we journey deeper into the mystery. Right now I’m very lucid and have been taking notes here all along, still feeling amplified and like I’ll be considerably *open* after the effects wear off.

1:10 (T+5:25) - I feel like winding down, got a lovely exhausted afterglow with just a slight headache. Pleasantly surprised how clear and easy this was physically (I always used to get a lot of stimulation and anxiety with phenethylamines). So I mix up some hot cocoa with ~3g kratom to sip on. Glancing back at the room, I wouldn't necessarily call it an 'after' glow… still a lot of things literally glowing in here. If I focus for a second, the physical objects drop out of the foreground and the auras come forward in different flavors, predominantly magenta, aqua, and deep earthy orange. It’s no coincidence that I love these colors deeply: developing this sight over time has involved deprogramming “noisy” or incorrect representations of energies, and replacing them with useful and beautiful-to-me representations of fields. For example: an energy around a person (maybe around myself) could appear as a multitude of bleeding eyes or disfigured faces. Not cool, right? So if I relax a minute my brain intuitively knows how to sort it out, gradually replacing the traumatic imagery with beautiful colors.

(Later) - Fucking ridiculous, this was. Really special stuff, I definitely had a moment of crisis there where it felt like it could be my *favorite* psychedelic. I've been very fond of working with the 4-substituted tryptamines lately, and acid will always be #1 for longer, more social trance dance occasions. I was definitely surprised by the deft workings of its spiritual opening. With attention, it definitely took me by the hand and showed me things about the fabric of reality. A recurring theme essentially: 'look, the fundamental field underlying physical reality, well you see it now yes? That's you, that's everything. It's alive and conscious with every god that ever existed, every form of life and mineral intelligence that's ever been. And it's endlessly folding, growing and teaching itself new styles of complexity because... well, because that's what it likes — and it has a sense of humor. It is both simultaneously as old as time and constantly inventing itself through us. The sense that in this very moment, the way I’m weaving energies with my unique perspective, making sense of these interdimensional spaces, is entirely novel in the universe.

Another scene recalled from the middle times: I was gazing at my altar, where there's an arrangement of crystals, shells, feathers, etc with a centerpiece statue of Ganesha. I think, “Why not smoke some changa?” So I put together a bowl, meditate on it for a minute but the signals are telling me it's unnecessary. Some part of me is still curious, so I bless and take a puff anyway. As the wave of tryptamine consciousness comes over me it’s *really* interesting to watch the interaction of the new spirit with my current radio channel / guide. Like EQing up several pieces of audio spectrum previously silent; visually it looked like shadows lighting up purple, a sense of connection to the forest outside, and what looked and felt like elf-presence scurrying through the weave of the fabric over the altar, running into the space around my feet and in the walls. It was giggling like a trickster, while whatever spirit I had heretofore been conversing with looked on in exasperation. As if the DMT entity was distracting me from the real class schedule. I sat back and had to laugh, “Well watching you both is pretty entertaining, and I get to experience both flavors! Why limit my perspective to just one?' You know how in some combination experience reports people say they feel one substance was 'fighting' the other? This wasn’t fighting so much as watching an adorable pair of siblings lovingly tease each other and roll around in the grass.

Another memory: swaying back and forth peering at a spot in my room with a couple of closet doors, and watching space bend -- making the walls bulge and breathe, frames curve in ridiculous shapes -- as my brain struggled to explain what it was seeing. I just thought, “Really, this now? What are we, 16 years old here with the melting walls? Give me a BREAK.' So I stared at it in challenge, moved around for helpful parallax info, and the distortion separated from the background into a field of colors, distinct in space, roughly a person-sized blob in front of the closet door. Try this next time you’re tripping and see something impossible or absurdly distorted: spend time gazing at it and let it show you what’s really underneath.

2:30 (T+6:45) - Still a bit tense and I wish I were sleepier; there’s a slight headache and I’m just *beat* from all this effort paying attention and stuff. Winding down, I poured a glass of my favorite Laphroaig 10-year scotch. Delicious! But check this out. Contemplating the altar again (same scene as above encountering the DMT spirit), I felt the buzz creep up. Where the elfspice was a playful forest creature flitting about with its own vibrant personality, the alcohol effects manifested like a tornado ripping through my spiritual awareness. From the lovely glowing energy fields, random chunks developed holes, flickering and fuzzing out to grainy dark gray like losing reception on a TV picture. Like a strong wind knocking down my antennae — you know how many people describe the brain as a radio receiver for a greater field of consciousness? — it was striking, and just a little bit sad, how pronounced this was with less than an ounce of scotch.

So there you have it. Second foray into the world of 25C: A+, would eat again. Definitely among my top 5 psychedelics, from countless experiences with dozens of classical + Shulgin-originated materials over the course of 15 years. I hear 500 mics is a low-to-middling dose, but honestly there’s plenty at this level to keep me occupied for a while.

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 107871
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 31
Published: Jul 5, 2016	Views: 2,655
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25C-NBOMe (540) : Mystical Experiences (9), Entities / Beings (37), Glowing Experiences (4), Alone (16)