What Happens in GainesVegas Stays in GainesVegas

            Hey everyone, just thought I’d throw together a little report for my most recent drug experience – my first encounter with 25i-NBOMe.  I’ll get right into it, but in summary, the day involved my good friend J and I and a 1000 ug tab each.  We dosed buccally at 8:30am and tripped all morning and afternoon, coming down in the early evening.  Overall it was a very positive experience with all sorts of vibrant fractal visuals, a unique look at my own ego, and a sense of feeling very much in tune with the energy of the world.  Largely it felt like basically a “fun” drug, but 25i also showed me a somewhat mystical potential and just was overall enjoyable, and I definitely will be experimenting with this drug further in the future.  My experience, probably due to my relaxed set and setting, felt very recreational and carefree. 

Stage I:  Up Early to Get Squirrelly

7:30AM – I awoke to the sweet wavy riffs of “Freedom” by Jimi Hendrix playing from my phone’s alarm clock and rolled off my buddy J’s couch and went to go wake him up.  It was like Christmas morning.  I enthusiastically perked up, despite barely any sleep the night before.  I had got in pretty late the night previous, and I had to turn around and make a five-hour commute to my college later during the Sunday of the trip, but J and I were determined to trip, as we live in different cities and have been trying to trip together for some time.  After waking, we chattered eagerly about the day’s plans over a cup of coffee.  J was relatively more experienced with 25i-NBOMe and had a handful of trips under his belt, whereas today would be my first adventure.   I explained how I was just going in with a very open mind and wanted to gain perspective, and basically just experience the drug for the sole reason of experiencing it. 

8:30am – “Put it on your gum.  Up here man.” “Like this?” “Yeah man.  Just like that.”  We shuffled nervously in the mirror, taking care to effectively secure our psychedelic launching gear.  After the tabs were in place, we reconvened on J’s living room couch to converse and ease any pre-trip tension with some comfortable Grand Theft Auto V Online. 

Stage 2:  Up the Tree 

9:30am – “If this is a placebo, then…what the f*ck is wrong with me?”  I thought as I stared deeply into the screen of GTA V, focusing on the lightly enhanced color spectrum through the lens of my dilated eyes.  I entered a giggly, light headspace, and distractive thought patterns were coming on strong.  Ahhh yes…this is gonna be quite the ride, I thought. 

10:00am – “Shit man, I remember being so much better at this game an hour ago.”  I mumbled jokingly as the controller began to feel like a foreign, putty-like, yet rigid entity connecting my two hands together.  I decided I was going to be a bit too incapacitated to be bothered with technical tasks and gladly gave up the controller to J.  Pre-trip anxiety was little to none, as I had been too excited.  And as the trip began to take hold, I shed my worries and ego like crusty snakeskin.   

10:30am – “I was up late at the girls’ house last night; I had to lick a girl’s toe, all right? It got fucking weird.”  (Enter D, J’s very odd, very short, very socially oblivious roommate) D murmured over the phone as he walked in, looking sweaty and agitated.  J jokingly prodded at D and sarcastically poked fun at his demeanor and mutterings.  I stifled my rush of laughter like the levees of New Orleans.  J said, “D, we’re tripping balls right now.  Do acid with us.”  Of course, D knows nothing about drugs and acted as if he didn’t hear or understand what J had said.  D barely skipped a beat to continue rambling incomprehensibly in our direction about his constant social troubles and less-than-ideal hangouts with girls that are god-knows-how-weird.  That only preceded more of an urge to laugh, and eventually I let it out.  Normally I would’ve predicted I’d get bad vibes being around this kid, but I was too in too happy-go-lucky of a headspace to even care at all.   I basically had no excuse when D asked what was so funny, and so I strung together a “Nothing, man.  Haha,” and returned to my dazed permasmile watching J play GTA V.  

Stage 3: Reaching Some Branches

11:30am – “You need to take us for a ride.”  J’s text, to our friend P, read.  We had been sitting around playing GTA V, which was altogether mentally captivating, and the game, much to the favor of our 25i-flooded brains, hinged on the apparent limit of visual overstimulation that proved so exciting.  J and I’s consciousness seemed to phase-shift into the game.  I began to forget about the gray, blank apartment walls and the simple stock furniture in the room, and become completely sucked into the visuals of this very-involved game.  I felt like I really appreciated the small aspects, the extra small developers’ touches throughout.  The game became all too real – the sirens filled my ears, the guns’ sound effects blaring through J’s surround sound system got wider and wider, the violent blood spatter jarring my delicate consciousness.  After quite a few times of removing myself from these constantly distracting dips deep into the world of Los Santos, we eventually decided to mix it up. 

                      Alas, we had had enough of GTA V and J had decided to call in his good friend (and my slight acquaintance) P, to come pick us up and go on some errands, and just cruise and listen to music.  P agreed, and showed up about 30 minutes later in a tank top and board shorts, armed with a to-go Panini and a pair of ridiculous sunglasses,  wearing a smirk on his bearded face that said “Let’s party babe.”  I chuckled at the thought at the time and shook hands with the man.  It was the first time I had seen him since high school, a couple years back, but he seemed chill enough, and I was in a very agreeable mindset.  He said he wanted to eat and chill for a while before we headed out, and I nodded, just sort of amiably ebbing and flowing with the tide of the conversation. 

12:30pm – The day became my personal canvas with no direction.  Not that I could’ve made for any direction anyway… all decision-making became very, very challenging and my natural brain filters slid off the slope of my mind into the nether.  With each 25i-spurred yawn, my thoughts became more and more disorganized, yet more and more enthusiastic.  I found myself closing my eyes and getting lost in thought and having lots of circular thoughts, all of which were very positive and appreciative.  Most thoughts seemed to go through an altered mental process, where my mind became a factory’s assembly line, analyzing each idea at different stations, from different angles, checking for impurities and unsound foundations.  I felt like I could better analyze my own ideas, as well as better access the words I wanted to use to describe things, but sentences were quite hard to flesh out.  I also remarked to myself that words were still, as a general category, never going to fully equate the meaning of something, despite them being the commonplace way we as humans communicate ideas.  Language, while under the influence of 25i, felt to me as if it were an imperfect practice, eternally damned from the start as a reluctantly accepted way to describe the energy of the world in all its forms.  But 25i though, man, it felt like clarity, it had its own language, and I was getting native-tongue immersion into its mystic, vibrant speech.

1:00pm – “Yo, let’s go.  You comin’ man, or…?” I jolted briefly out of my 25i-induced haze and muttered a “Shit, oh, yeah for sure man, let me just grab my shoes.”  P nodded and the three of us, P, J, and I, left D at the apartment and walked out.  Down the stairs we went and down the seemingly-endless hallway.  The day was as overcast as overcast gets, and the humidity wasn’t too great either.  But neither bothered me in the slightest.  My outlook was so thoroughly positive I couldn’t entertain a negative thought.  Visuals were technical and vibrant, flowing and digital-feeling, less natural and “alive” than the visuals of shrooms, but they had more of a rainbow “pop” to them. 

                      We climbed into P’s black BMW, which was effectively at the time, a Batmobile.  The rush of the industrial-sounding A/C sent smooth sensations over my skin.  The red-and-black leather interior oozed wealth.  Soon, sounds as diverse as Phish, to various hip-hop, to The Who, to even some trap mixes enveloped the cabin.  P drove fast with the windows down.  I closed my eyes and for a few moments half-entertained the notion that I was actually a drag-racing apprentice, along for his first ever ride-along, so as to learn respect for the vehicle and its power. 

Stage 4: The Top of the Tree

1:30pm – “Yeahhhh…definitely peaking.”  I thought.  Or I said.  Couldn’t tell you.  Thoughts and speech blended together and became one.  Anyway, we had arrived at P’s house and we got settled in his room to chill and smoke hookah and listen to music, a cool activity that P thought would be entertaining for all three of us.  I was tripping pretty hard at this point, and had been doing so on the car ride over and for a bit before that.  After a hookah hit or two and the bumping thuds of P’s home sound system, and the more relaxed company at P’s house without D, I eventually transcended the heights I’d previously reached in the day.  I laughed uncontrollably at times, and was calm and reflective a moment later.  I got lost in my own thought and just nodded and smiled in most of the small amount of conversation we were having.  I closed my eyes for probably thirty minutes straight here, and lie back in P’s leather office chair, letting P and J control the tunes as I drifted off into the field day that was 25i-CEVs.   Pink Floyd, Daft Punk, and some samples of reggae floated into my ears.  

                      All the while, P blew smoke tornados.  He was a hookah smoke champion.  It was like watching a snake charmer, except a little less Egyptian and a little more college-student.  The clouds of smoke took on their own character and demeanor in the air as they floated this way and that, puffing and bubbling along, careless and light.  I felt a lot like those smoke clouds. 

                      At one point, I have to pee and excuse myself to the bathroom, working on some kind of autopilot.  I make it to the toilet, and while washing my hands, I really feel separated from myself as I peer into my skin in the mirror.  My normal ego-dominated perspective was far removed.  I really enjoyed looking at myself in the mirror – I felt as if I was evaluating myself the way another person might see me, it felt like a more genuine perception of my actual appearance and what I look like to others.   My demeanor seemed friendly enough in the mirror, and I remember thinking to myself about the man in the mirror, “Yeah, man I’d probably hang out with that guy.  He could use a slap in the face to wipe off that weird f*cking smirk he’s got on, though.” 

                      I return to the chair and we listen to music, converse slowly and quietly, and mainly get lost in the peaceful hookah vibe.  I look around at J and P and feel that I can really understand them as people, as if the 25i made it feel like I was the best judge of character, ever.  Each of my companions had an intangible “character aura,” a phrase I arrived at while dissecting this odd perception.  Both of their “auras” were cool and collected, tainted a calm blue.  They felt like they each had their own “energy.” Earlier, when in the company of D, his “aura” was negative and red. 

Stage 5:   Back Down the Tree

4:00pm – We eventually head back to J’s apartment.  The trip seems to come down now for me by a noticeable degree, and I begin to settle back into my familiar consciousness, but I can tell it’s going to take a while.  Everything is still extremely disorganized and sentences and complex decision making are still daunting challenges.    We smoke a bowl on the porch together and J and I discuss the visuals we still had, describing what it was like to P, who had never dabbled in anything past weed.  We formed a lot of abstract sentence fragments.  P urged me to complete one of my such thoughts, as I had apparently grabbed his attention, and he said “Just make a sentence, man; just tell me what you see!”  I nodded, looked through my 25i psychedelic lens, and calmly whispered “Hahaha, it’s not all about sentences...”  J emphatically agrees and we all laugh, understanding how high-on-drugs that sort of statement sounds, yet how right it feels.  We continue to relax on the back porch listening to music for a while. 

7:00pm – The trip is nearing a close, and all that’s left is a disoriented thought process and some seemingly obnoxiously persisting visuals, accompanied by a kind of bothersome body load and some dull muscle aches.  Of course, reveling in today’s glory, the pros far outweighed the cons.  It’s about time for me to head back to my college, so I say my goodbyes and thank J and P for the hospitality. 

Stage 6:  The Obstacle

7:17pm – “Fuck man,” I pull over, my heart throbbing.  The car wobbled and made all manner of purging sounds, clanking and cluttering, screeching and whistling to a putter and stop in the middle of the street.  “Shit.”  I had cut a U-turn too lackadaisically and I hit the far curb going about 15 miles per hour.  The tire popped and who knows what else.  I panicked, the 25i leaving my consciousness in a very vulnerable, disorganized state.  I threw on my hazards and got out and put it in neutral.  A few strong, exuberant pushes and I had the truck into an old parking lot on the side of the road.  In a bad section of town though, and it was dark.  Thoughts are extremely displaced.  Sentences are still hard.  My situation goes from a calm, reflective road trip home to a stressful rush in a matter of seconds.  

                      Then, matters got more complicated…midway through dialing for AAA, my phone died.   (I don’t have a spare tire to change for myself, and that would've been too much to do anyway.)  I looked hopelessly into its black screen, and all around at my not well-lit surroundings. 

                      Neighborhood locals eyed me as they passed by and muttered incomprehensible things.  A large German shepherd abruptly charged a fence that I had my back to and barked aggressively, jarring me.  All right, focus, I thought.  I need to find a phone.  Eventually I made it a few streets down to a Dollar Tree and asked the cashier to borrow her phone and was able to call AAA.  The mechanic showed up a little while later and I was back on the road with a fresh tire.  I thanked him kindly for his service – he symbolically represented the key to relief, control, and restructure. 

                      Soft color and light enhancement, and a general notion of “settling back into my consciousness” characterized the solo journey home, feelings that shared the stage with a slew of reflective thoughts tuned to the hums of Grateful Dead and The Doors. 

12:00am – Finally pull into my driveway, home, safe and sound.  My, what a long, strange trip it’s been.  

                      Overall, my first 25i experience was thoroughly positive and recreational, and it’s an experience I’d recommend to anyone interested.   Just try to avoid stressful situations.  Cheers.