I Love My Shrimp

4-HO-MET

I think it is important to describe my history, to understand my current state.

Seven or eight years ago I was doing a lot of psychedelics, acid and mushrooms every weekend or two. I was pushing the limits, seeing how far I could go. It felt like I was doing something really important. I was learning so much. But I was 19 years old. I didn't respect the substances, I didn't have the cultural frame to hold these experiences, and I ended up approaching them carelessly. I had a bad time. Like, a really bad time; nobody I've ever talked to has been able to relate. It fucked me up hard: dissociation and derealization, for years I thought I could never work a normal job again (I was a gifted-kid computer programmer before this, doing salaried work at 19, but after, even something like a cashier job seemed impossible). I couldn't take psychedelics again for over five years. I couldn't even smoke weed, it brought me back to the mental minefield of thoughts-I-cannot-think. There is still considerable psychic terrain taken up by this minefield, these boxed thoughts of unknown nature, apparent True Insights into reality that are so horrifying I will not even take the risk of gesturing towards them lest they see me back.

But, unfortunately, I love drugs. I read a lot of books about psychedelics and figured out what I did wrong. I healed, mostly, and it took time, more than it should've. I met a girl who introduced me to ketamine. I'd used it before, sublingual, threshold doses (as the research indicated these were still effective for depression, and my own self-tests with the Beck Depression Inventory supported). But now I got to do it for fun. Then I tried molly again, and I understood it for the first time. I fell in love - with the person I was with, and with the substance. I started easing into acid, never high doses, only ever stepping up by a half tab (or taking part of the dose an hour in, to have an option to go further+let tolerance effects bring the effective dose down). I think my highest dose of acid only was 2 tabs, and even this was a little much for me. (Though, the parties where I mixed it with 7 other things.... I miss those.) I could go on. Nitrous, phenibut, DCK, FXE, I got back into the swing of things, but there is still a limit I am too scared to approach. Twice I licked a ketamine addiction by accidentally doing too much and getting viscerally reminded of the worst experience of my life (I've never holed). I have not touched mushrooms since the one bad trip. What I mean to say is: holy shit I love drugs and I am so sad that I can't handle the kind of mind-blowing high doses I used to be able to take. I have to be so careful to not go there. But I love the things acid shows me, I love getting to hike or walk around in the snow, feeling ultimate beauty, seeing with clarity, descended upon by my greater self. I love to be in my body. I love to make art on drugs! I love to have a nice time, it's really good for me! So when I heard 4-HO-MET was a gentler, more visual, less cognitive psychedelic, I thought "this sounds a lot like 2C-B, which I've really wanted to try but haven't been able to get" and I got pretty excited. I wanted an "easier" psychedelic, something more recreational. I also heard that it's closer to mushrooms, which I want to approach again sometime. Maybe this could be a bridge.

The past few months have been really hard for me. I got broken up with in February. I am who I am now because of them. I loved them so much, I still do, I really can't convey here the degree. Or I could, but it'd take a page of text, and I don't think anyone wants to hear all that. I withdrew from all my social connections. For a few months, I took great care of myself. Got cool tattoos, started going to yoga, got gender-affirming surgery, went out all the time, got sober, made new friends, started going to physical therapy, learned to DJ. It was too hard to sustain, though. I've retreated from all that. The world is scary right now, as a trans person in the US. I am also a programmer again, and the things I used to love about the job have been sanded away by AI and are not coming back (not even considering the worse potential futures). I am not living the life I want to live. I have not found my people, should they really exist. I started doing ketamine every night, so I didn't have to think so much about how lonely and sad I am, how many things I need to do and am not doing. It got real bad; I ran lights for a show, but I found out I simply couldn't react to any of the music in real-time, so much was my brain fog. I hadn't even done any that day, yet. I couldn't bring myself to clean my apartment at all, there were ants in my room and so I just slept on the couch for a week, alternating between doing almost nothing at work and taking ketamine so that it would be later. And really, nobody cared. I slept with my ex, twice. It brought up so many confusing feelings and I just cried and then did ketamine until the feelings went away. Skillful processing, never met her. But time marches on, and I can't feel this way forever. I went a week without K recently. I'm good at pulling myself out of holes, one step at a time. And that's where I'm at right now, taking one step at a time, trying to trust there's something worth it on the other side, wishing there was someone to do it with me.

I write all this so you understand where I'm starting from. Mind-altering substances have had this massive role in my life, deified as both savior and devil, Sophia and Tiamat, casting a shadow over all else. From them I have come and to them I shall return, in fire and flame. I miss them in their full glory so much - even the past few months without acid have been hard (I have plenty, but it's not the right time to do it, and I know I have to listen to that inner voice of truth!). They have so much power, in my mind, to shape who I am and who I want to be. And I want to be better! I don't want to feel like this! I know they have the power to show me what I need to see, to help me be who I need to be. They can be fun. Right now, I miss having fun. I want to have a nice time, instead of a bad time. Just one of those can sustain me for months, can help me set my course and believe in it. So I have perhaps unreasonable hopes (denying them will not make them go away) that this substance can be everything I need, here and now. So it is this headspace that I proceed from. Lonely, love-starved, hopeful, slightly desperate, once again pinning my hopes on a medicine, yet scared of what I might see. Returning to my once and future undoing - though I hope it is not this time. Pleading, praying, and working (as much as I can) to make this a good one.

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It is 4:30pm, a hot summer day. I decide I want to get a taste of the drug, to see what it's like - really, just so I can know what I'm getting myself in for, later, when I'll do more of it. This is my first time. But also, my attitude is somewhat careless, I recall thinking "fuck it." The stuff I have is 5mg per capsule, with a lot of filler, and I don't know if I should trust the accuracy of the label's dosing. I have tested it with a full reagent test kit and everything came back right. I have an empty stomach except for some herbal medicine (ADAPT-232), though I had a big breakfast. The only medications/supplements I'm on that I think could maybe interact are Progesterone, Montelukast, Buspirone (20mg) and low-dose naltrexone, all of which I last took the night prior. I have a tolerance to stimulants (but didn't take my Vyvanse today) and dissociatives (permatolerance + I took a smallish DCK last night) but nothing else. There is potentially residual dissociative effect; when I take them I get dumber the next day - though I would definitely not expect it to the extent I will relay shortly. I slept poorly. I am alone.

4:30pm (T+0:00): 5mg capsule (alleged)

5:00pm (T+0:30): Weird almost tugging sensation in the corners of my mouth to make me want to smile. Starting to feel something in my brain, like it's slightly electrified. Psychedelic. Too early to know what. There is something prickly happening and it doesn't feel bad. I drink some echinacea tea. I showered beforehand, so I am clean now, and I'm really liking being wrapped in a blanket.

5:23pm (T+0:53): I eat some cashews.

6:00pm (T+1:30): Kindof nothing. no visuals - everything seems maybe a bit more saturated/salient, but nothing is moving. no CEVs either. I eat some drawer candy (candy from a drawer).

6:30pm (T+2:00): Slight psychedelic detangling/relaxing feeling, slight tactile enhancement. Something is weird with peripheral vision, like it's more present but less focused.

6:40pm (T+2:10): It's been 2 hours, so I should be peaking, but I'm not feeling enough to say that I've gotten a sense of the drug (Shulgin +1). I take a second 5mg.

7:39pm (T+3:09): It looks like my stained glass has more detail than usual. It is more saturated - there is some color enhancement. Very slight visual breathing effects. No effects on mood, no cognitive impairment, I can type just fine, maybe even with fewer errors than normal. Mild headache.

8:00pm (T+3:30): I am able to entertain myself by moving sinuously and making faces in the mirror. (This is unusual behavior for me.) This is still a VERY light experience - I am getting almost no sense of the chemical (still Shulgin +1) - so I decide to take another 5mg dose.

8:30pm (T+4:00): I am enthralled by the idea of a rice cooker pancake, which I was just introduced to. Again, I am not usually so easily entertained. I am messaging a few people on my phone, with only slight difficulty.

8:45pm (T+4:15): (non-edited, because I feel it conveys the character) ok real visuals now!! stuff is movey and slidey and slippy, wavy and wiggly. i am feeling pretty happy and a little bit loopy. its been years, but this is mushroom-like, i think? i feel like a creature, like i am soft and i have round angles, like i am bouba and not kiki. colors more vibrant and have more depth. very unchallenging headspace. touch enhancement - i think that like poppers and cuddling would feel good as fuck right now.

(Record keeping begins to break down here, unfortunately. I am unsure of exact times when they are not written down.)

I get the standard, normal psychedelic insight that I can make my environment nice for myself. I've left some LED lights pink because it's too much effort to change them, but I don't want them that way, so I can fix them. I think about the line from poem 17 in Alejandra Pizarnik's Árbol de Diana (trans. Anna Deeny Morales): "La hermosa autómata se canta, se encanta, se cuenta casos y cosas, nido de hilos rígidos donde me danzo y me lloro en mis numerosos funerales" ("The lovely automaton sings to herself, she enchants herself, she tells herself stories and things, nest of rigid threads where I dance myself and cry myself in my many funerals.") The psychedelic state often feels like this to me, a time "when a distant world takes hold of me" (same poem) and I can canta, encanta, sing and enchant myself, try so hard to make it stick, but I know that these stories will become rocks I break myself on - trying to live up to them and failing. I will dance myself and cry myself in my many funerals. I do not actually fix the lights.

I am thinking in odd ways. For some reason, I am convinced a light and sound machine that also drives a TENS unit could be revolutionary. (In a more sober state later, I don't think this idea bears out.)

Getting a lot of reflecting done on my personal life. I think being dishonest is probably a bad thing in general. It makes stuff more complicated.

I'm enthralled by the idea of DJs right now. (A lot of enthrallment going on.) The idea that someone can just walk around with a flash drive of some music that's cool as fuck and plug into a system that looks exactly like every other system and play some stuff that no one local has ever heard. That's crazy to me. I'm using my light and sound machine and getting really cool visuals, and mild nausea. I wanted to take more and I think that I'm glad that I didn't take more.

9:30pm (T+5:00): It's hitting me more intensely now. The visual field is really breathy and dissolvey and it's almost like there's a fisheye effect at the borders. If I put my hands sort of above my head, they feel very good. (Editing note: I have no idea what this means.) I give up on texting the people in my phone, as this is too difficult.

(At this point, I mostly stopped taking notes, as I became more interested in managing the unexpected trip - Shulgin +3 - that I found myself having. Remainder of the report reconstructed from memory and some voice memos.)

10:00pm (T+5:30): Definitely straight up tripping at this point! Way more effective than I thought it would be. I've been drawing for a little bit, I drew a cool shrimp. (And wouldn't you know - I am enthralled by it.) The act of drawing is difficult, compared to drawing on acid. It is hard to figure out where the next lines should go; the drug isn't helping me here. It is hard to keep thoughts and ideas straight in my head, so I can't rationally plan my design either. I have to have a very narrow focus in space and time, and it takes a long time to add each line or element. I put on some music earlier. A friend was explaining the Grateful Dead to me the night prior, and so it was still pulled up on my computer and I let it autoplay. I did not really get it when she was showing me last night. But after seeing a video of a live show, seeing all the people there, thinking about what it meant to all of them, and listening to the music again on psychedelics, I think I understand the Grateful Dead now. I think it is stupid and cliché and funny that I took drugs and ended up liking jam bands. Oh well.

12:00am (T+7:30): I send voice messages to my friend describing the experience, per her request. I relay the following:

The drug is visuals-heavy, melty, things "bloom into themselves." If I close my eyes and put my hands over them, I can see a lot of self-similar patterns that cover the visual field, like a mandala. It is coherent - not a bunch of separate things, there are global patterns. It makes colors saturated and bright, salient. Some psychedelics make things seem more real than what they are, but this one doesn't really do that for me. It just makes them pop. My whole visual field is pretty distorted and it's hard to tell what's where, like what's going on with my arm for example. Pretty lucid and clear headspace - though there is a definite headspace. Conducive to self-reflection, but also very "tripping over itself." I have not been getting thought loops. There is nothing spiritually or existentially challenging, this is just not a factor. Less stepping outside my normal self, less distance. No necessary connection to deeper truths (for this dose, this time, and this experience), should such things be said to exist. Much more uncertainty about what is right. I recognize I am just a person thinking these things. Very creature-focused drug. Aware I have a body, in a way that's similar to mushrooms. There's music appreciation, but not significantly compared to other psychedelics.

It is decently easy to do tasks in this state - like operate a computer - but it's harder to understand what things mean. I will relay an example in detail. I decide that I should be paying more attention to when I go to sleep. I want to wake up with the sun, so if I do that, when should I go to bed? I easily open my computer, and search the web for "sunrise time MyCity." I type every letter with perfect accuracy, and click on the first result. Nothing could be so simple, I am basically sober. But then it takes me a long time for me to parse the information on the page, to determine what the graphs mean, to figure out when sunrise is for the current time of year. I get very confused about nautical twilight and figuring out when exactly the sun actually shines through my bedroom window and stuff like that. It's difficult to see how all these concepts fit together, and to see what the webpage is trying to tell me. But it's very easy to zoom in on a particular part of the page. I say fuck it, I'll trust the time on the webpage exactly, so when should I go to bed? I expect this part to be easier because I have a calculator that I like for this. I pull up the webpage, but it's been enshittified and redirects me to a page that has an AI agent try and sell you a mattress. But it's easy for me to use the wayback machine to find the correct page, and I can see it at different times even, I go back and forth a bit. I put the time in, and it gives me times to go to bed to keep in line with your sleep cycles. I had forgotten about sleep cycles, even though that's the whole point of this website. But still I remembered that I needed to use it, which is odd. Unfortunately, these sleep cycle aligned times do not have actual time deltas - which one is closest to 8 total hours? This simple math is far beyond me, and I give up. Tasks of simple dexterity: easy. Tasks of comprehension: not so much.

Body load - basically none. Some nausea, but I might have been making it up, and I'm sure if I took anything for it, it would've cleared up immediately. The drug is kind of stimulating in a weird way. It's not quite anxiety - it feels like there's something I should be doing that I'm not. Like a muscle that I don't know how to stretch, or like I need to cut my nails, or a thought I need to think. I feel I gotta make the most of this, I gotta do this right, there's SOMETHING I should be doing and I don't know what it is. I give myself permission to do whatever, I move my body in all the strange ways it wants to, I think whatever thoughts feel suppressed, I dispense with the need to think certain thoughts, I try letting go of the idea that there's something I need to do, but nothing works. There's still this underlying tension. (On later reflection, I should've gone for a walk, I think it was maybe lack of physical activity+too high indoor CO2. It could've been a feature of the drug that will recur next time, though. It wasn't caused by the presence or absence any of my normal meds, I know what that feels like and this isn't it.)

2:20am (T+9:50): I want it to be over. I've wanted it to be over for a minute but it's not. It's fine, it's not bad. I'm just ready to go to sleep.

4am (T+11:30): If the sun rises before I'm able to sleep, istg I'm gonna crash out. This should be done by now.

I end up falling asleep sometime between 4 and 6am. The stimulating effects lasting this long was not something I was expecting - easily 8 hours from the last time I dosed, while psychonaut wiki said it would be over by 6 hours. It was definite comedown territory though, not an extended high. By the time I wake up the next day, I'm fully down. I notice some hangover-type effects, but I attribute them to lack of good sleep.

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So was it what I wanted? What I feared? What was gained, or lost? What did I learn?

(Note: I gotta revise this a bit before final publication, prolly in next few days)

If this drug has something to show me, I'm not sure what it is. It doesn't feel like it has a body and a soul, the way some other things do. Not to say that it doesn't - we're just getting to know each other, really. I think it's special in its own way. I think it's gonna be good for combinations. I think it's probably a drug that's good for having a good time on. I don't think I'll be reaching for it over acid for insights on my life and how to fix it. I thought this one would be more visuals heavy and have less cognitive impact than it did. It is definitely still more visual than cognitive, I just had miscalibrated expectations as to the degree. It's a fun and friendly drug. Reflecting now, weeks later, my favorite thing I got out of the trip is my drawing of a shrimp. It looks so awesome and I feel so awesome when I look at it. I learned not to take 4-HO-MET at night unless I want to be up very late. I don't know why I ended up tripping so long. I think I should be more careful about redosing new substances in the future.

I was slightly scared, because I was not really prepared for an actual trip. So I needed to channel it, manage it, prevent myself from spinning out in all of the ways I feared I could. Especially because during the come-up, I wasn't sure how far up I would actually come. It also made it quite hard to think which didn't really help with that. But I handled it with aplomb, thanks in no small part to the overall friendly nature of the substance and a healthy dose of luck, but also thanks to my own skill - which I am a little more confident in now. I think that I could still hurt myself with this drug, but I also think that it's not as likely as with acid or mushrooms. It's not necessarily one for me to take carelessly, but I don't think it needs everything to be perfect, either.

It was sort of what I wanted. I got to know what the drug is like, which was a goal. But unfortunately, I don't think it's "all that." It's not quite exactly what I need right now. (Shocker.) I learned I actually like acid-type visuals best, but it was more mushroomy. So I'm not as excited as I thought I would be to see the pretty pictures again. I learned I am somewhat able to handle trips in the direction of mushrooms. I had a good time, I would do it again on purpose with more preparation and planning. Maybe with a friend. I don't think it would be a waste to do it at a show or movie night or something. Cooking on it would probably be fun, but I like doing that on psychs regardless. But for me, it's not a magic cure for anything, or even really a great pointer towards said cures. It didn't help me change anything about my life too much. It was nice, but not in a soul-nourishing way. I learned that what I wanted was contradictory - both total transformation, and easy recreation. These are not the same thing, as is probably obvious to most people.

This trip was definitely more casual. I am now once again more amenable to the idea of gradual improvement, it feels less immediately pressing that I get everything together right now. I think that means I can use 4-HO-MET for some of the stuff I wanted, but it didn't fix me. I'm gonna have to be the one to fix me. I'm okay with that. It's got a niche for me - pending future trials - and it doesn't replace acid or molly or ket or anything else, it's really its own thing. I can use it when I'm feeling bad or good or nothing and probably have a nice time. I think it will be something to sustain me until I can handle the transformative stuff, and combined with that, I'm excited to see what it can do.

I'm still repeating past mistakes though. I was careless, reckless, and not respectful of the power of the drug. I did not frame it correctly with ritual and intention; I did not do the pre-trip work or much integration at all. I was not punished for it, this time. When I say I want easy recreation, I think I actually mean "a drug I can abuse without consequence" - all of the power and none of the responsibility. I want to go back to how it was, or how it felt at least, but that's not really possible. I have started writing trip reports to reflect and begin the process of integration. It is working to the extent that I have now noticed these problems, this pattern, and I actually care about fixing it (which is surprising to me). I'm gonna go back to those books I mentioned, the ones I learned from after the bad time, and see what specific things I can start practicing. Is that desire enough? Or is it yet another rigid thread, another of my many funerals? Pizarnik, in the next sentence, calls the other self "su espera en hogueras frías" - "her hope in cold bonfires." The bittersweet contradiction I have come to is that I have this hope in this other self, and yet I know it will not be enough. Not only that, but the hope I have is in the fleeting state, the thing that I cannot measure up against, and I will self-flagellate over the gap. And still, I hope.