Experience:300µg ETH-LAD - Turned Inside Out
- Date: 2015 (Posted date)
- Gender: M
- Experience: 20+ years of psychedelics, including mushrooms, LSD, mescaline, 2C-x, LSZ, AL-LAD, one previous trial of ETH-LAD at a lower dosage of 150µg. Also have used various other psychedelics, dissociatives and other drugs.
- Tolerance: No psychedelics used for ~7 weeks, so basically no tolerance.
- Setting: Mostly in my home, solo.
Report
Timeline
(h0:00 = 8pm)
h0:00 300µg ETH-LAD sub-buccal
h0:20 first alerts
h0:30 undeniably tripping
h2:00(ish) enter into a complete dissolution state, mind turned inside out
h6:00 back to earth, back to “normal” tripping level
h9:00 begin writing this report, still feeling diminishing effects.
h11:00 down to sleep, basically sober but tired.
Intro
I wasn’t properly prepared spiritually nor physically for this dose, and I experienced an overwhelming and complete dissolution of reality. My previous dose 8 weeks prior of 150µg ETH-LAD had been incredible, very strong, but easily manageable. I thought I could handle taking it up to 300µg. I was wrong. 300µg ETH-LAD turned me completely inside out, both metaphorically and physically. In my 20+ years of psychedelic usage, I’ve never experienced anything as extreme as the psychedelic dissolution from this 300µg of ETH-LAD. My reason for writing this report is twofold: to help myself to understand it, and to warn others regarding the potency of ETH-LAD.
The Trip
I put 2 of the current standard printed ETH-LAD blotters (300µg total) between my upper lip and gums, and then went for a walk to watch the sun set. As with my previous trial at 150µg, these tabs had an unmistakable sour taste, the same as how LSD tastes to me, but much stronger than any tab I’ve had before.
Within 20 minutes I could feel the first indication that the drug was working. By 30 minutes there was no denying that the ride had begun. By about 45 minutes I made my way back home as I could tell this was going to be a heavy trip.
I put on some meditative music on quietly, took care of a few minor chores around the house, started turning out the lights, which were already way too bright. Some neighbours were drinking and talking loudly, and it was very entertaining to hear their joyous laughter and chatter. By now it was about 1.5h in and I noticed that my neighbours voices were impossible to understand because they were echoing so heavily due to auditory hallucination. It was wild to listen to. After another half hour, they all went home, leaving a silent vacuum. I noticed that I was feeling a bit funny, trembling and a sense of malaise in my digestive tract.
At around 2h in I realized that I was going to have my first ever psychedelic vomit. In 20+ years of tripping, I’ve never once thrown up during a trip, not even from eating raw cactus. I partly blame the vomit on bad preparation food-wise, my body chemistry was way off from an overly salty bowl of pho I had eaten earlier. Purge was needed. I had to think through the protocol for throwing up.. where are you supposed to throw up? How does it work? I fished the tabs out of my gums and noticed that they still had a lingering sour taste, so I’m not sure I had even absorbed all of the drug. The purge proceeded beyond emptying my stomach, on to profound retching up of a metaphysical/physical goop from what felt like the deepest pit of my guts, until there was absolutely nothing left in me. I felt a good bit better, but I could tell there was still something to unleash. At this point I realized I was in for a purgative kind of a trip.
I then tried to cleanse myself with a bath, but was hopeless. I managed to disrobe and get into the bathtub, but couldn’t make any sense of how to operate the thing. Ended up having a few moments splashing around in half an inch of lukewarm bathwater as it ran down the drain. I couldn’t get it together enough to draw a bath. I think I managed to partially brush my teeth, and then ended up on my livingroom floor wrapped in a towel.
From here on it’s hard for me to remember where I was physically. I moved around a bit, mostly operating as a puddle on the floor. I wasn’t really interfacing with the physical plane for about 3-4h. My mind was turned completely inside-out. I couldn’t make sense of anything. I couldn’t understand my senses, they were just streams of unintelligible, undifferentiated, synaesthetic information. I remember the sensation that these sense-streams were infinitesimally fine intertwined filaments.
This was a kind of psychedelic dissolution that I’ve imagined, and heard about, but in all my years of tripping had never experienced. It was overwhelming, uncomfortable, and confusing. I was in “square root of negative one” land, where my mind was basically broken and turned inside out.
I did still have a have a grasp on shreds of reality here and there, but at many points my only anchor left was a faith that “TIME EXISTS”. This was an anchor I returned to several times, something that helped me not freak out under the absurd state of non-sense that I found myself in. It was a reminder or faith that eventually the state would subside and become more manageable. I was far enough out that I had no sense for what the quality of normal thought or experience was like, but I had the vague sense that there was something more reasonable that I would return to as time passed. But this notion of time, seemed more like a distant theory that I trusted in, because it was not something I felt I was experiencing. It wasn’t like I felt like I was in a time-less state, or a state that was existed in opposition to time, it was more like time was a completely foreign, distant concept. But I knew somewhere that it was a real concept that I could count on.
Having established some kind of sane foundation, I became more comfortable with this scrambled abstract state, and explored some of the mental terrain.
I became aware that there exists what I can describe as “intellectual black holes”, asymptotic thought coordinates that occupy space radically outside of the bounds of logic and sense. Analogous to black holes of physics, these intellectual black holes are mental configurations or modes of thought that are possible for the human mind to go into, but from which information does not escape. Because they defy rationality and normal modes of thought so profoundly, it’s impossible to store this information in memory. So when someone enters a “black hole” mode of thought, they appear as blackouts in retrospect as no memory can be formed of them. However, there is some way to cast some information out, by peering in from the edge, teetering on this event horizon, or stepping in a bit, and throwing a trail of breadcrumbs out. Then I realized that this idea of intellectual black holes wasn’t just an abstract idea, but that I was actually orbiting around the edges of some intellectual black holes, in this barely comprehensible state of inside-out chaos.
I think I dipped into some of these black holes, because I can barely remember what all this was like. Or it’s like I can remember the bits where I “came up for air”, and there are a few gems of profound thought that came back to me the next day
There were some moments where survival instincts kicked in, and I was able to gather myself enough to do some simple things like drink some water from the tap, or cover my shivering naked body with my soggy towel. There were also moments of self-awareness where I was like “ohhhh so *this* is how people have pyschotic breaks on psychedelics”. At times I felt like I was on the verge of running down the street naked save for a single sock on my head, yelling nonsense, like a nincompoop.
Around 2-3h after the onset of this complete psychic dissolution, I started to form actual thoughts that were marginally sensible - sensible enough to carry them forward from one moment-frame of awareness to the next. It was a relief to feel like I could hang my thoughts back onto the hooks of time. I thought it would be nice to make some mental notes to bring something back to earth. I thought the easiest way to explain the state I had been in would be to take whatever thought you could think of, but then think that thought inside out, so that instead of thinking that thought, you think the other side of that thought. I still have some glimmers of how that works, but I have to admit it doesn’t make much sense now. Even at the time I knew it wouldn’t.
I had a lot of spontaneous word-hallucinations. Strange goofy words came into my mind, things like: NurzleSnurf, WayambleSquanch, NoozleSkwoonch. NurzleSquirmf. These words seemed simultaneously hilarious and slightly disturbing.
Anyways, at 6h (about 4h after the beginning of the dissolution) I very abruptly found that I had touched back down on earth, into normal tripping territory with my feet on the ground. It was exhilarating to be back to “normal” (actually still full blown tripping, with long tracers and typical psychedelia, but I had my “ego” or whatever back), I felt a bit lucky to be back in control and that I hadn’t freaked out. It was a very sudden and distinct transition. I think my mind crossed some kind of threshold where the drug effects had diminished to the point where my mind was able to work coherently again. It was a bit like waking up or something.
I found some water, some fruit and then a beer to mellow into. I gathered myself, and went for a walk to get some fresh air and stretch my legs. By 9h into the trip I was nearing some kind of baseline, and I decided I should start writing this report before it all faded away, and then by 11h I tucked in to bed and was able to sleep easily.
Looking back the next day, I feel like I came down from that mountain of psychedelic dissolution, mostly empty handed, besides a few nonsense phrases. I’m disappointed in myself for not trusting my instincts going into this. I knew when I was dosing that I wasn’t in quite the right place in body and spirit. I think it’s easy to get away with these things being imperfect when the dose is lower, but at that high a dose there is no margin for error. And even if I had been better prepared leading up to it, it still would have been a dosage to unhinge my mind, in a way that I'm not sure I see any real value in.
On the other hand, I’m kind of glad I found out what a psychedelic overdose is like. It’s pretty weird to unfold your mind like that. Never done that before. During the dissolution there were times when I was staring at something like what people might call the logos of perception and experience, and the parameters and bounds of reality, possibility and impossibility. One thing that really profoundly sat with me was the idea that mathematics is the most precise and high resolution study of the nature of reality, this plane of existence that we find ourselves in. I felt that I was wandering in the realm of the underlying structures of perception and existence, akin in some strange way to experiencing mathematical objects in a kind of fully synaesthetic manner.
Now that a couple of days have passed, I feel better about this trip. The negative aspects seem less important and I’m finding it easier to appreciate the wild ride, and am almost glad I put myself through this. However I have to remind myself that at the time, this was not a pleasant experience. I think it might be possible for me to enter a trip like this better prepared, and with someone to turn to if things got difficult. It is a little bit tempting to return to this realm under better circumstances, but I’m not sure if I ever will. I’m not sure that there’s any point in turning your mind inside out like that.
Summary & Conclusion
I’ve gained a healthy respect for the potency of ETH-LAD, and psychedelics in general. In my body at least, ETH-LAD is much stronger per µg than LSD.
For anyone wanting to explore this chemical, you should treat 150µg as your upper limit, and you might even want to try a 75µg dose first. My previous 150µg dose felt perfect. Strong, and perfect. I would never recommend someone takes 300µg of ETH-LAD, it was just way too much, at least for me. I imagine only the most hard-headed out there would need that kind of a dose.
I'm a bit concerned that my trip report might glamorize this kind of a high dose, because from the outside it might look like it was a pretty amazing ride. It *was* amazing, but it was not really what I would call a good experience, and I would not want to repeat this trip.
I feel like I got spanked, and learned a lesson in dosing safety. I wish I’d had a sitter or companion to turn to for help. I’m glad I kept my shit together enough to not do anything stupid. I feel like had I been a slightly less stoic person, slightly less experienced or had taken a bit more of the drug, I might have spent the night straightjacketed in a padded cell.
Effects analysis
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This analysis section is incomplete. You can help by adding to it. |
- Auditory distortion "neighbours voices were impossible to understand because they were echoing so heavily"
- Cognitive disconnection "I became aware that there exists what I can describe as “intellectual black holes”, asymptotic thought coordinates that occupy space radically outside of the bounds of logic and sense."
- Feelings of impending doom "At this point I realized I was in for a purgative kind of a trip."
- Language suppression "I had a lot of spontaneous word-hallucinations"
- Motor control loss "Ended up having a few moments splashing around in half an inch of lukewarm bathwater as it ran down the drain."
- Nausea "I realized that I was going to have my first ever psychedelic vomit"
- Physical disconnection "I wasn’t really interfacing with the physical plane for about 3-4h."
- Synaesthesia "I couldn’t understand my senses, they were just streams of unintelligible, undifferentiated, synaesthetic information."
- Time distortion "But this notion of time, seemed more like a distant theory that I trusted in, because it was not something I felt I was experiencing."