DOSE:

33 mg

oral

2C-D

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

As readers of my blog will know, I am a staunch scientific rationalist - in fact, I once labelled myself as an antitheist finding any belief in god/gods to be abhorrent and a waste of time. Yet, there is an admirable beauty in organised religion, especially some of the finer examples of Holy buildings; the grandeur of cathedra, the arabesque intricacies of Arabian mosques, the fractallic arrangement of Hindu mandirs. As an avid explorer of altered states of consciousness, Christian mysticism has long intrigued me, and an experience with 82mg diethyltryptamine per os provided me with some experiential insight into the workings of ecstatic religious experiences. I listened to Hildegard von Bingen, naked and pouring with tears, writhing around on the floor, my eyes undergoing an oculogyric crisis, orgasmically screaming to the top of my lungs DET IS THE SAVIOUR!

With this in mind, I decided to embark on a journey to, unquestionably, one of the most beautiful cathedrals in my home country and ingest 33mg 2C-D. The day prior, I had a pronounced panic attack/sensory overload at a house party after smoking a spliff; the environment was emotionally constipated, the party-goers interrupted each other during conversation, stared at their Ganzfeld devices for unbelievable amounts of time and played terrible music that grated my ears - I was in a state of emotional disarray and decided to go to somewhere with a deep spiritual essence, the antithesis of where I had my panic attack.

The day started off drab, my mental state was erratic and paranoid - the deadening of thought felt after a day of heavy Cannabis use. I hopped on to a bus and embarked to the cathedral, reading 'The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross' during the journey. I ingested the 2C-D in the cathedral's toilet, an octogenerian was pissing next to me and asked why I licked a piece of paper from my pocket, I told him it was my sublingual medication and reflexively shuddered at 2C-Ds bitterness.

The onset was mild (35 minutes after initial ingestion), yet clarifying. There was a distinct contrast between mental clarities before/after ingestion. This state reminded me of pearls, a glistening prism, diamond purity of thought, crystalline sharpness to everything. I sat in an arranged garden and cried because it reminded me of my ageing grandma. The skies were a turquoise blue, the branches of trees took the form of the deeper sections of the Mandelbrot set (I had just finished reading 'Fractals: Chance, dimension and form' by Mandelbrot himself, this was noticeably fresh in my mind). Unaware of my whereabouts, I asked a man how to get into the cathedral. He had four eyes, which I found inconsequential and listened to him with deep interest. That psychedelic-mosaic-everything-has-eyes-the-walls-are-breathing! was absolutely apparent at this point.

2C-D tends to flavour my thoughts exclusively into metaphors, although this time I felt muted and in a state of pensive reflection. I put my ear next to the pinnate leaves of a fern and heard the Krebs cycle infinitely whirring in each plant. Psychedelics allow ideas surrounding the infinite, the recursive and self-reflective to become more tangible, more real. I noted in my note book: 'The plants are expressions at the crest of a gene stream that has spanned 4 billion years of time! And so is all life!' This excited me so much that I skipped around the garden like a giddy child.

I spent some time looking at the cathedral's exterior: a statue of Jesus loomed over its top, with His 12 disciples layered below, underneath were thousands of statues of priests long dead, all arranged in a hierarchical triangle. Perhaps this is how information propagates through time: from one person, to twelve to thousands. The birth of all ideas starts with One, and then percolates down through a population, like dripping soy sauce into tofu. It was at this point that I leapt up and decided that I will become the next Percy Shelley.

I spent over an hour contemplating in front of the cathedral, listening to the chiming of bells from its bell tower. Exquisite resolution to both sight and sound.

The cathedral interior was architecturally psychedelic, mind-manifesting. Intricate and grand. I sit at a pew and read a hymn, Samuel Crossman's 'My Song is Love Unknown', with one of the lines reading

O WHO AM I

This made me weep uncontrollably for some time. I contemplated on man's attempt to understand himself through creativity, through Art, through connection with God. I stared upwards, the welling of tears provided a diffractive glimmer to the aperture of my sight. Was this a glimpse of Heaven? Should I dedicate myself to God? Become a eunoch-monk and transmute my sexual desire into prayer and bountiful holiness? I call out for Jesus and ask for direction. No one answers my call. A priest gently approaches me, pats me on the back and says, with a real gentleness,

'You are loved...'

I cry out in palsied emotion, my tear ducts open with Leviathan floods, mucus bubbles out of my nose. A cathartic Flood of Biblical proportions. I can't seem to find the reasoning for my crying - I was lost to the wind of emotion. Whatever the reason, it felt GOOD. Every emotion distilled into a pure sensation of Love.

It took some time to stop the torrent of tears. I should note that there were very few visuals, but visual clarity was beyond 20/20... I toured the cathedral in a clockwise direction, entering every Prayer room, spending over 20 minutes in each in contemplative meditation. Pure black silence. In one room I began to write: 'Do I ask for forgiveness? For redemption? Surely Heaven cannot be ecsatic union with God. Ecstasy is a fleeting emotion, God is infinite. If one experienced Ecstasy for infinity then boredom would surely set in. Ecstasy can be appreciated by virtue of psychological contrast, the interface between Terror and Repulsion grants us Ecstasy. Is God a combination of the three? How do I enter God? I crave THEOSIS!'

Another room contained a cenotaph for a priest that passed away 1000 years ago. It was covered in chiseled graffiti, one engraving marked as being from the year 1300 AD. These engraved words by people long forgotten: the only goodbye their ghostly longing had been able to push through to this side...I shivered in existential dread. Graffiti at the interface between 1000 years and Now.

Each room had a deep historical gravity. I wrote 'I'm at the beginning of thousands upon thousands of ends, the crest of the wave that will one day crash with my death and everyone elses death, only to sprout the way for new life'. This was reflected by my staring at the crucifix. It was clear that 2C-D was a philosophical catalyst par excellence.

The same priest that accompanied me on my emotional meltdown told me that it was time to shut the cathedral for the general public. I felt an attractive force to stay, but the time had come. This was an experience of the most profound depth I have ever experienced, it was both human and Godly. The cathedral was the epitome of man's search for meaning. No wonder we have religion when we are all deeply lost in entropic chaos. This experience didn't convert me into a Christian, but it certainly left me with an utmost respect for It.

Prior to this experience I had been feeling a profound sense of loneliness and alienation. Afterwards, I became content in being alone. The trance-like meditative states I entered whilst in the prayer rooms have followed me to the present day (over 3 months). Loneliness doesn't feel so threatening, for isolation can be transubstantiated into adoration for the Divine. I would like to become more pious in my life, but not to Jesus nor his Father, but to Nature. Dedicate myself to understanding her labyrinthine complexities - Why something as complex as Christianity emerged from mud, shit and dust. I would love to join an ecstatic religious cult now...

I was also filled with artistic energy during, and well-after the initial ingestion. My spoken words became more carefully selected, turning my tongue into a florishing paintbrush. The Romantics would have loved 2C-D. Perhaps I should set up a literary school, where the pre-requisite to join is weekly 2C-D use, it will be the breeding ground for Hyper-Romanticism. 2C-D made me so God damn sentimental. The most inconsequential of objects started to drip with meaning and sentiment.

For the weeks after this experience, I became emotionally supple and sensitive. As soon as I arrived home, I called my grandma to tell her I love her and cried with her. I wept every time I saw a picture of my family or heard their voices over the phone (I was away from home for many months at this point). Fragility was felt at an intensity I'd never before experienced. I was adamantly more interested in life, the Grand Question Mark loomed over me more strongly than ever. Religious buildings don't have to be a place for worship, they can be a place for contemplation on the mystery of life.

Domine, dirige nos.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116137
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Mar 30, 2022	Views: 525
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25D-NBOMe (541) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), General (1)