DOSE:

80 mg

oral

2C-C

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

Personal History: I am a male in my early 20’s, urban white upper-middle class background. Near graduation from college. I never had a large group of friends or was particularly socially adept, but always had good support from a few close friends. Never formally diagnosed with any psychiatric illness, but in high school my psychologist said that in his opinion I was depressed, and in hindsight I concur.

Drug history: Regular marijuana smoker for the past seven years. Tobacco user. Never used alcohol on more than the odd occasion (less than once a month). Have used LSD over 2-300x in high school and early college. Have used “ecstasy” on more than 10 and fewer than 20 occasions, again in high school and early college. Probably at least a few of those times were really MDMA. Used DXM ~30x and Ketamine about 12x in the same time period. Also tried a couple different prescription pills (opiates and benzos) when in HS. Have snorted coke but didn't really feel much. Taken Psilocybin mushrooms 4x, twice in HS and twice in college. Have used Amanita muscaria (1x), Ayahuasca (4x), Salvia divinorum (~12x), and San Pedro (5x) over the past 4 years.

Perspective on drugs: I take drugs to expand my consciousness, learn about the workings of my brain and (I hope but do not demand) feel good. I have had powerful and spiritually important experiences while on psychedelic drugs and believe that the changes in consciousness induced by psychedelics can be beneficial. I am well studied for a lay-person about the pharmacology and behavioral effects of psychedelic drugs. I have an overall positive opinion of them.

June 2004
2,5-dimethoxy-4-chlorophenethylamine
80 mg
This report was written over four days, starting a day after the experience.

Location: Outdoor electronic music festival. Northeastern forest, cool, mostly gray (but not rainy) weather. Good vibes, things pretty calm overall.

Me: Calm, pretty happy, no major worries, well eaten over the past few days, with attention to balanced nutrition and microtnutrient intake (good balance of fats, carbs and protein, with a multivitamin to cover whatever I missed. Meals prepared from fresh ingredients at home.

I didn't have a watch and only asked occasionally what time it was, so the times are estimates.

~2:15AM: Took 80 mg 2C-C in water. Bitter, aspirin- like taste like. Not a particularly distinctive taste, just bitter like most drugs. No noticeable smell either (although I only gave it a cursory sniff to see if there was any kind of strong odor.

~2:30-2:45: First flickers of visual changes. Went out onto the dance floor and started dancing. The visuals got stronger and stronger and soon I was going pretty hard. Because I was also dancing hard and the music and the atmosphere on the floor was so intense it was hard to distinguish the effects of the drug on my appraisal of events from what was really happening, or to tell if this difficulty was mostly because of the nature of the drug (to mess with my ability to self-appraise) because of the novel setting. I tried not to think about that too much and just kept dancing. I knew that I was going really hard and that if I stopped dancing I might end up getting myself into an uncomfortable situation from not knowing what to do with myself. I knew how to dance though, so I kept doing that.

The music and the visuals became my world. I would close my eyes and look at some really beautiful geometric designs behind closed eyes. As soon as I closed my eyes I would get pulled into this amazing head space of changing designs with the music in the background. These moments when I closed my eyes seemed to last forever. Then I would open my eyes because I like to know what’s going on around me (even though I had no reason to be worried, and wasn't). The decorations adorning the dance floor did amazing things too. I hadn’t had such intense visuals (particularly closed eye) in a very long time. I was a little worried that I might have taken too much (I knew that 80 mg is a big dose), but I felt fine so wasn't too worried. My main concern was that I might be tripping too hard to know if something was wrong, but when I’d stop and pay attention I couldn’t feel anything to be concerned about, except for the occasional need of water, which I took care of when necessary.

Going back to the campsite to get water I realized how amazingly gone I was (which is why I tried to stay on the floor dancing as long as possible, because its easier for me to deal with tripping hard if I'm dancing). I felt very off balance, a lot like being drunk, except that I was tripping. It was very unusual to be experiencing this kind of drunken impairment while having visuals. The effects on my coordination and the feeling in my body were not at all of the kind that I associate with tripping from past experiences with other drugs. LSD, Psilocybe mushrooms, San Pedro, Ayahuasca all give me this feeling in my skin (esp face and hands) that's kind of like a tingle and a numbness and a pressure all at the same time.

I don’t know how precisely to describe it, but in any case this sensation was not particularly strong on the 2C-C, if there at all. I feel like most of my impairment of coordination on most psychedelics comes from this numb/tingly feeling preventing me from being able to feel what I am doing and therefore execute movements. For example I have problems rolling cigarettes on acid because I have trouble feeling what exactly my hands are doing with the paper. I don't think I’d have trouble walking a straight line on LSD, psilocybin or mescaline, and if I did I would expect it to be because I couldn't tell what was a straight line and not that I could not walk it. On the 2C-C, I felt like I was stumbling and zigzagging all around. Kind out like alcohol, except that I felt very light and had no hint of sleepiness as I do when I drink to much. Very strange combination of feelings.

As I recall others have made this comparison of 2C-C as being very visual, but with alcohol like effects on coordination and the light airy feeling. There is know way of knowing how that influenced my experience and what aspects of it I noticed most. These alcohol-like effects were very strong though, not at all ignorable, which makes me think that that probably was the 2C-C. My friend was sitting by the camp fire, which had really burned down. He needed some help to get it back going again, but I was in no condition to deal with fire. After fumbling around and getting some water to drink I returned to the dance floor, which was going completely insane (in the good way). I thought a lot while I was dancing. Not about anything particularly profound, but I was thinking quite intensely. The intense thinking, the music, the environment of the dance floor, and the visuals all blended together into one rush of experience.

I wasn’t experiencing synaesthesia per se, but the different modalities of my experience were felt as being very unified. I don't know that that's a very good description of the experience I was having, but I cant think of how to be any more precise. After all, experience is intangible. I don't have any idea how I was dancing, I could have been ultra precise or flailing and uncoordinated, I wouldn't know the difference.

As it started to get light (I guess that would be about 5-5:30) I started to get back to reality somewhat. I kept dancing for a good while, then stepped outside, smoked a cigarette and went back to the campsite to find a bunch of my friends chilling there. At this time I was still getting some nice visual effects off looking at the clouds and trees, but not as intense as on hour or so before.

I sat down with them and we sat around the dwindling fire laughing and talking. Every so often we would poke at it or blow on it and revive the flames for a few minutes, but we were all to lazy to go get more wood, so the fire stayed pretty slow. At this time I felt quite competent to work with fire, but it just didn't seem worth the work it would take to find enough wood to keep the flames going for more than a few minutes. Thus we contented ourselves to sit around laughing and talking for a good while. I hadn’t had laughing fits like that in a long while. They were almost as good as the laughing fits I remember from my early days of psychedelic experimentation when I was in high school. It felt really good to laugh like that.

As the day brightened I came down more and more. I felt completely down after a few hours of chilling by the fire and going back to dance, so that must have been around 8 or 9 AM, although its hard to be sure because I wasn't making much effort to keep track of time. I usually keep almost fanatical track of time while tripping but my watch ran out of batteries and I haven't bothered to replace them. I think I like tripping without a watch.

All in all it was a very interesting experience. I didn't have any profound insights or anything like that, also very little body feeling (although there were some tingles) or affective changes. I didn’t feel like my mood was any different, although I did have those laughing fits. I don’t remember remember experiencing any anxiety or being tense at any point in the trip, which is unusual for me, especially considering how hard I was tripping. The overall feeling of tremendous emotional WEIGHT that everything usually takes on while tripping was entirely absent. Being tripping and not experiencing this was unusual for me.

Cognitively, its hard to tell how impaired or altered I was because I didn't really push my cognitive abilities, didn't have to do anything more demanding than dance, drink water and have the occasional “are you ok?” “yeah are you?” “yep I'm fine, just checking” types of communications. I just know that that the music, my body, my thoughts, and my surroundings all became one cohesive experience for the duration of my peak during a particularly amazing set. I realize that unity stuff sounds like some Zen/Satori type of thing that people often describe their experiences in terms of, but this wasn't anything like I imagine that. In a way it was kind of mundane, its not as if I was thinking about the unity of my experience at the time, its just that looking back the memories of the music, by body, my thoughts etc all seem to be blended into one memory. So it’s hard to say if it was unity or blurring that I experienced.

I do not know if the apparent absence of an anxiety component of the experience was responsible for its seeming lack of weight and depth. It would be interesting if the ability of a compound to unleash feelings of epiphany and deep insight was tied to its ability to unleash feelings of anxiety and paranoia, as both were absent from this experience.

This experience made me question what a psychedelic really is. Is it defined more by its effects on sensation and perception or by its effects on emotion and cognition? If its visuals, then 2C-C is definitely psychedelic, if the latter choice I wouldn't have any idea how to classify it. All I know was that I was tripping extremely hard and that there was something missing that I'm used to being there at the same time I am having visuals. There may have been something else there that isn't there with other psychedelics, but most prominent was the absence of anxiety and depth. In this resect 2C-C was like a trip without the trip.

In any case, I had a very enjoyable and possibly informative experience from trying this substance. Whether I or not to take it again remains to be decided. I don't know if I trust the lack of anxiety. Although my experience was not deep, I could see how it could be therapeutic in certain contexts. It was an aestheticly pleasing experience, and I think that aesthetic pleasures are healthy. If the visuals without the anxiety effect is not due to placebo factors, I could see this drug as being used therapeutically. It would be interesting to see if the reduced feelings of anxiety (and anxiety-related behaviors such as checking, fidgeting etc, which I normally do a lot of while tripping) compared with other hallucinogens I experienced holds up to a double blind comparison with other phenethylamines and tryptamines. On the other hand, I can see there being real problems with an anxiety free-hallucinogen. If anxiety were not a factor maybe people would be more likely to abuse it. I don't know how I feel about this one, but except that I feel something.

Peace out all

Be Safe

Be Conscious

Be Good

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 34306
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 12, 2004	Views: 32,222
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2C-C (262) : Festival / Lg. Crowd (24), First Times (2), General (1)