Ltd Ed 'Solve et Elucido' Art Giclee
This reverberating psychedelic giclee print is a gift for a
$500 donation to Erowid. 12" x 12", stretched on canvas, the
image wraps around the sides of the 1" thick piece. Signed
by artist Vibrata, and Erowid founders Earth & Fire.
Beautiful Visuals, Extremely Frustrating Headspace
2C-B & Cannabis
Citation:   lavendersheep20. "Beautiful Visuals, Extremely Frustrating Headspace: An Experience with 2C-B & Cannabis (exp118014)". Erowid.org. Oct 19, 2024. erowid.org/exp/118014

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
4 mg buccal Ondansetron (pill / tablet)
  T+ 0:00 30 mg oral Pseudoephedrine (pill / tablet)
  T+ 0:00 5 tablets oral 2C-B (pill / tablet)
  T+ 0:40 1 hit vaporized Cannabis - High THC (extract)
  T+ 1:00 2 hits vaporized Cannabis - High THC (extract)
  T+ 4:45 1 mg oral Pharms - Alprazolam (pill / tablet)
  T+ 6:25   vaporized Cannabis  
BODY WEIGHT: 135 lb
19F, 135lbs, semi-experienced psychedelic user, 5+ times a week cannabis smoker

Dosage: I obtained presses of 2CB (reagent verified) that the vendor claimed were 15mg each. The first time I took them, I took 2 (so 30mg) and it was a pleasant but very short trip (the main effects lasted for under 4 hours). I’ve been wanting to experiment with higher dose psychedelics, and I know that 2CB is said to have a more manageable headspace than more common psychs, and the headspace was almost close to sober when I had taken it the first time. So this time, I figured I’d take 5. Technically that would be 75mg, which is a very high dose for 2CB, but I figured the vendor had greatly exaggerated and I was probably consuming closer to 35mg. Alas, we shall never know.
I figured the vendor had greatly exaggerated and I was probably consuming closer to 35mg. Alas, we shall never know.


Setting: My roommate was out of town, so it was just me in my dorm room. Sadly I have to share a communal bathroom, which is a bit of a walk down the hall, but oh well, nothing to do about that. I made sure the room was relatively clean, and I initially dimmed the lights.

Mindset: I went into it with the intention to a) enjoy myself, and b) just see where the trip would lead me. I know 2CB is famous for not having very much “depth” to the headspace, so I wasn’t trying to figure out anything huge about my life, just open to some light exploration.

Report:

5:30pm: I take the five presses, after taking a 4mg zofran and 30mg of pseudoephedrine a few minutes prior (zofran for the nausea, pseudo because I tend to get very congested and uncomfortable on psyches, and I’ve found that it helps a lot). I then went to shower.

6:00pm: Nothing hitting me yet, but I set up my computer with my earbuds and the Eras Tour movie playing.

6:15pm: I can feel it start to kick in, and by 6:18 I have become extremely nauseous. At this point I have taken out my earbuds, but left the movie playing with subtitles (as usual) and an ASL interpretation in the corner (I’m hearing but ASL is my second language). The next 10-20 minutes I spend curled up in a ball on my floor, trying to cope with the nausea. I consider taking a second zofran, but the thought of having to dissolve the strawberry taste in my mouth is so repulsive that I can’t bring myself to do it.

The worst of the nausea slowly starts to subside, and the visuals are amazing. Lots of tracers and glowing and all that other psychedelic fun. My mind still feels fairly sober at this point, so I figure that a tiny hit of weed would help with the nausea and allow me to just be mentally a bit high and physically more comfortable (note that I have smoked while at the peak of psychedelics several times before and been more or less fine and usually happy with my choice to add the cannabis).

6:40pm: After taking a very small hit from my pen, the nausea is reduced by at least 80%. I turn back to my computer and continue watching the concert, but leave my earbuds out. Just watching the show and the interpretation is enough for it to be an incredible experience.

7:00pm: Time starts to get hazy at this point. I take another two small hits of my pen. Here’s where I went wrong. At first, I just zone into the concert. I eventually become confident enough to put my earbuds back in. Wow. The sound + performance + interpretation is incredible. And then…my earbuds die. Ugh. I didn’t want to play it out loud, because I really liked being fully immersed in the sound, but I’m not able to easily connect my headphones to my computer, and I certainly wasn’t going to be able to figure it out in this state. I get out my ipad, and connect my headphones to that. Then I pull up Disney+ and start playing the concert sound on my ipad, and synced it enough to the computer so that the sound pretty much matched up (I really wanted to keep watching on my computer because of the bigger screen plus I can’t run the ASL interpretation on my ipad). The problem is, because of internet streaming, even once I get the two videos perfectly aligned at one point, either the ipad or the computer inevitably ends up lagging behind and creating an imbalance.

At this point I’ve forgotten how technology really works. I was no longer able to fully conceptualize what was going on with my two screens, and I got stuck playing a constant game of catch up between the two devices. This triggered me to begin a thought loop. It was like my mind was desperately trying to make sense of something, and then just as I would begin to grasp it, it would disappear from me. On some level I was aware that the concert was not literally happening and that I could pause it and return to it at any time, but in the moment, I really believed that I couldn’t stop the audio or screen for too long, because I might miss part of it.

Now here’s the real theme of the whole experience: I came into a state where I had mostly forgotten who I was and what I believed. Every possible decision I could make--like if I should turn off the concert and do something else, or if I should move around or not, or anything else--I just couldn’t seem to decide what to do, because every decision I could make had implications about what I (as in the sober me) believed.

Eventually, I managed to pause the concert and enter into my real world surroundings. I decided to make an audio recording for the sober me (who had then become a completely different person) to listen to. As I write this report, I have not listened to the audio, because it is nearly half an hour long, and I actually do remember a lot of what I said in it. I found myself completely paralyzed by any decision.

Every thought I had, I felt I had to choose a way to interpret it. And because I had no beliefs or worldview to base my interpretations upon, I didn’t know what to do. For example: one loop I kept getting stuck in was whether or not I needed to try to enjoy the experience I was having and make something constructive out of it, or if I needed to accept the fact that I was suffering and just try to get through it however I could. I couldn’t decide if sober me would advise me to try and relax and enjoy or at least analyze what I was going through, or if she would tell me that I don’t need to get anything out of it or force myself to enjoy it and that I should just do what I could to make myself comfortable. (Big surprise: sober me actually also has no idea, although I would lean towards just getting through it).

When I am sober, I feel strong in my belief that it is important to just “let go of control” during a trip and just see where it takes you. I know that trying to control a trip isn’t a good idea. But as I thought about this in my high headspace, I realized I didn’t know how to give up control! Did giving up control mean trying to escape the thought loop and not have these circular arguments in my mind? Or did it mean just allowing myself to continue the arguments?

9:30pm: Around this time, I had spent what felt like hours going through the thought loops. I decided maybe the best thing I could do would be to put the movie back on and enjoy it as much as I could. (For the record, despite the fact that I still was stuck in thought loops during the rest of the concert, it was still an amazing experience which I greatly enjoyed.)

At some point into my second dive into the movie, it dawned on me that I did know one thing that for sure sober me would agree with: IT DOESN’T MATTER! All of my frustrating thought loops and arguments--I didn’t actually need an answer to them! Of course now, sober, this seems like an obvious conclusion, but for me then, it was a huge breakthrough. Every time I felt myself going into a thought loop (which was still pretty frequent) I was able to end it by saying “it doesn’t matter”.

10:00pm: After I finished the movie, I realized that I really did need to pee. So I hyped myself up to make the trek to the bathroom. The big issue wasn’t moving, it was simply that I couldn’t stand the thought of having to interact with anyone else. Thankfully, I made it to and from the toilet without having any human interaction.

10:30pm: After turning back on all the lights and sitting on the floor of my room for a bit, I started debating taking a trip killer. The worst of the thought loops were over, but I was still uncomfortable. But the decision to take it or not felt monumental. On the one hand, I knew that sober me might tell me that I was perfectly fine, I could deal with this discomfort a little longer, and that if I just sat there and waited, I would be out of the woods eventually. I wasn’t in any danger, all I had to do was just sit in the room and wait. On the other hand, sober me had already planned on taking a benzo after the experience was mostly over, just so that I could assure some sleep at a reasonable time, and I figured that sober me was also compassionate and wouldn’t want me to suffer unnecessarily. Once again, I was stuck in one of the arguments where I had no answer because I couldn’t figure out my belief system.
Once again, I was stuck in one of the arguments where I had no answer because I couldn’t figure out my belief system.


10:40pm: After lots of internal debate, I decided that I would take 1mg of alprazolam to bring me down a bit. I figured that since I was going to take it eventually, I might as well do it then because there was no point in prolonging my suffering. I wasn’t sure if sober me would agree with the decision, but I decided I was just going to let her make those judgments in the morning.

One thing that both sober me and high me are deathly afraid of is taking drugs (specifically benzos) and then not remembering that I took them, and then taking more. Nothing I have ever done has suggested that this is actually a serious risk for me (I keep a detailed log of every single drug I take and the precise time that I take it), but I am so scared of this that I have actually had nightmares before where I black out from taking too many benzos. So to combat that fear, high me got two 1mg pills of alprazolam out, and put them on my nightstand. I then made another video in which I extensively explained my logic to sober me (because I really believed there was a possibility I wasn’t going to remember any of this experience in the morning lol) and told her that if there weren’t any benzos on the nightstand in the morning, it meant that I took a second one. I then swallowed the first at exactly 10:45pm (I never ended up needing the second).

11:30pm: By this point, I was significantly calmed down. The visuals had almost entirely disappeared, which was disappointing, but the thought looping headspace was gone, and I felt like I had become “sober” me again (note that the whole time I have been talking about “sober me,” I actually just mean “any me that is not in the very high psychedelic headspace I was in then”). I decided that I really deserved a treat after getting through all of that, so I doordashed a bunch of food.

12:25pm: The food arrived, and I felt easily confident to venture downstairs to the main door of my building to pick it up. I then had a few small hits of some indica, which didn’t make me particularly high, and ate. I can’t entirely remember how long I stayed up after that, but by 1:30am I was fast asleep, and I got a solid 9 hours.

In conclusion/TL;DR: I will absolutely not be smoking weed on high doses of psychedelics again, and need to research what the best coping strategies might be for if I ever find myself in those horrible thought loops.

Exp Year: 2024ExpID: 118014
Gender: Female 
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Oct 19, 2024Views: 15
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2C-B (52), Cannabis (1) : General (1), Combinations (3), Alone (16)

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