Experience:120mg/170mg 4-FA - Substance Overview

Trial A

The morning

• Setting: Home
• Timeline: 8:00 - 18:00 (?)
  • Ingestion (40mg) - 8:00
  • Onset - 8:00 - 9:00
  • Peak - 9:00 - (redose)
  • Ingestion (83mg) - 11:30
  • Onset - 11:50 - 12:50
  • Peak - 13:00 - 17:30
  • Offset - 17:30 - 18:00
  • Afterglow - 7hrs (?)

T+00
Woke up, my 4-FA had come! Oh joy, I weighed 40mg and dosed nearly thirty minutes after being awake. First alerts came at around T+00:30, soft stimulation, steadily rising internal body temperature, the music slowly began to pull me in deeper. Nearing the peak, a sense of calm and complacent happiness washed over my body. At 9:00 I smoked a bowl and turned on the shower.

T+1:00
Colours were bright, the shower felt incredible on my skin. The depth of the sensation of hot water and steam embracing my surroundings was incredible. I was in ecstasy, how wonderful this morning was turning out to be. Wild Nothings “Paradise” was playing from my phone in my sink, the music keeping me moving. I showered for around 20 minutes, I didn't get very much cleaning done, it was mostly dancing. I was very clear headed, and very focused. The nature of my focus was hyper-attentive, but easily distracted, I would jump from very intense focus to another. Thoughts came easily, body felt good, warm, stimulated. I sat around dancing to music and talking to friends on the internet for a while, and then my friend showed up at my apartment.

T+3:30
After some talking and smoking, I decided to take another, higher dose, so that I would be pushed into a more (hopefully) MDMA-like experience. I weighed 83mg on my scale, put it in a gelatin capsule, and swallowed. We got in my friends car, and they drove us to a small lot of food carts. I wasn't hungry, the come up was longer than the first one. I felt good, talkative, interested in what my buddy had to say. We were discussing business things, and the more we got into the subject matter the more I felt myself understanding and absorbing it with a sense of meaningfulness. I tried to eat, taste was astonishingly rich, but not too much for me. The food I was eating tasted amazing, but I just wasn't very motivated to eat. At 12:40 I said we should head back, because I was getting bored and my friend had finished their food. They agreed, they had stuff to do anyway.

T+5:00
By this point, I had rolled a gram joint and was smoking it. I felt incredible, waves of warm tingling sensations ripple down my skin in spontaneous but frequent spurts. In terms of feel, it resembled the physical space of MDMA, with a bit of the mood boost, but it was definitely not the same. My head was clear, I could do things, but most of what I did was listen to music and enjoy myself. Fast forward to 16:10, I was still peaking, β had called me and wanted to hang out. They said they would be over around 17:30.

T+9:30
When β got to my apartment, the euphoria was fading. The stimulation remained exactly where it had been for the peak. β dosed 166mg, came up for an hour and left by 18:30. I had somewhere to go, another meeting, I hadn't expected the chemical to last this long. At 18:40 I left for the meeting, all mental stimulation and euphoria had subsided, but music appreciation was still enhanced and my mood was boosted until around T+12.

T+14
The afterglow persisted late into the night. It was not until 3:00 in the morning that I was able to get to sleep. My mood crashed at around 22:00, but it wasn't depressive, just dead. The following day I was tired, but not mentally drained. Very manageable.

Trial B

The evening

• Setting: Cocktail party with 22 people
• Timeline: 17:30 - 5:00
  • Ingestion (85mg) - 17:30
  • Onset - 17:30 - (redose)
  • Ingestion (85mg) - 19:00
  • Onset - 19:00 - 20:00
  • Peak - 20:00 - 3:00
  • Offset - 3:00 - 3:30
  • Afterglow - 3:30 - 7:00 (passed out)

T+00
Ingested at 17:30, slightly anxious about rolling, but ready. I had two joints prepared, I started smoking the first half of one of them at T+00:45 when out for a walk with one of the people at the party. I had ingested on a full stomach because I knew that I wouldn't have been hungry at the party and didn't want to try and force myself to eat in order to be sustained in nutritional energy. By T+1:00 I was perplexed but not worried about not feeling peak effects yet. I assumed it was lengthened by the food in my stomach.

T+1:30
I re-dosed when we got outside on the patio, I was tired of waiting to come up and impulsively swallowed the second capsule. I immediately experienced some anxiety and a strong physical rush that I still cannot explain. It must have been a mixture of the weed and the 4-FA, I may have started peaking on the first dose nearly immediately after my second ingestion. It was not a sensation I was used to, it was rather forceful, I am still not sure exactly what caused it. I waited for another while, finished the rest of my first joint, and spent the rest of that onset in a calming environment downstairs. I helped the cooks do some food prep, peeled potatoes, made them drinks. I had a glass of beer while doing this, I am not sure if this affected the 4-FA. I was cautious to drink and did not drink much alcohol that night, even though I was doing the bartending. I went about doing drink making and ensuring that everyone was happy.

T+3:00
Now I was peaking, it was very strong. A high frequency of deeply comforting, warm, and visceral waves of euphoria accompanied me for the rest of the night. I was easily distracted, and spent most of my time listening to people talk. I found the social environment overwhelming, as the stimulation increased. I was very much physically enjoying this experience, but I felt kind of off kilter. I could sense everyone's emotions, I was very concerned with the well being of the other people at the party. I spent a good amount of the time having intimate one on one conversations, cracking jokes, helping food prep, and listening to this engineer talk about electron mapping to figure out stuff about Intel processors. At one point I left the party to sit in my car and smoke the other joint while being able to listen to my own music. Unfortunately the partygoers were playing classic rock, which really was not the vibe I was feeling at the moment.

T+5:30
The party had slowed down by now, we had brought everything downstairs and cleaned up. A good number of them decided they were going to go for a bar crawl, but I was feeling socially drained and decided to leave. [Disclaimer: I do not condone driving while in a state of any kind of inebriation, please drive sober.] I drove to β's house, they had messaged me and said that they wanted to smoke me out. Still clear headed, but a little bit impaired. I was missing random bits of information, like spelling things wrong without realising it, or saying the wrong word without realising it. I arrived, we smoked two joints while walking around a park nearby.

T+7:00
I got back home between 23:00 and 00:00. The rest of the peak is pretty nondescript, except for a couple occurrences of intensity. At one point I was listening to “When We Were Young” by Dillon Francis, and I felt spontaneously extremely sentimental towards someone I had recently been involved with. I was inspired to write, and delivered a very powerful (in my opinion) poem about it. While doing this I felt very intense surges of emotion, they almost inhibited my ability to write coherent sentences. The second, more concerning instance, was when my vision spontaneously improved. I noticed it around 1:30, suddenly I was unable to read things on my monitor clearly, even with my glasses on. I started to freak out a little bit, not sure why this was happening, and finally I took off my glasses and was shocked to find that as soon as they were off my vision was fine. Text was crystal clear. It seemed to me as though my poor vision had been rectified. A little worried about this, I didn't do anything, I just left my glasses off until sleep.

Afterthoughts

Trial A
This is a very long lasting and euphoric stimulant, this experience was wholly positive, it has a very clear headspace and is easy to maneuver around with. Not super sociable, or empathogenic in comparison to MDMA, but a perfect substitute. Honestly, it seems like a more introverted MDMA, willingness to talk was not as high as willingness to move my body to music. After taking my second dose, I had vasoconstriction during the offset, and was unable to sustain an erection. This is vasoconstricting, just like MDMA. I do not think it would be easy to perform intercourse during 4-FA at a dose higher than 100mg.

Trial B
I would highly advise against the use of 4-FA more than once every week. The following day I experienced very intense mood decline and profound exhaustion. I was a sad husk of the man I am the day after. My improved vision did not persist into the morning, I do not recall when it faded, or really when I fell asleep, although I know it was sometime after 3:00 in the morning, as that was when the euphoria started to fade. Weed very strongly potentiates effects, I would highly recommend mixing them, they operate perfectly together. This is, as I said before, a very long lasting stimulant, smoking weed will push the peak in length. I do not know the actual peak of the untouched chemical, at, say, 100mg. I would expect it is around the same as MDMA.

This is a wonderful stimulant, I have found it to be very calm and smooth, while exciting and alerting. I would caution users, as it has a very high potential for abuse. The lack of tolerance build, as well as the high amount of consistent euphoria, is dangerous for the reckless user. I would advise against doses higher than 200mg, 170mg seemed more unstable than 123mg did. This is not a good chemical for high traffic social situations, I have not experienced the same vocal motivation as I have with MDMA, it has a very different feel than MDMA. Physically it is identical, in my opinion. I have not experienced any drug induced negative side effects, such as teeth clenching, chatters, cold rushes, nausea, or muscle cramping during the onset/peak. During offset through afterglow there is a mild rushed feeling, and tachycardia is possible when used excessively. I did not notice any dangerous rise of heart rate at any point during either experience. It's involuntarily positive (which is nice), I'd say it does a better job of functional enhancement than MDMA, and should be taken at concerts, or in intimate groups. I would not consider this a “party drug.”

Submitted by - Phantasmagoria

• Stimulation - "soft stimulation," "I would jump from very intense focus to another"
• Colour enhancement - "Colours were bright, "
• Tactile enhancement - "the shower felt incredible on my skin."
• Focus enhancement - " I was very clear headed, and very focused."
• Appetite suppression - "I just wasn't very motivated to eat."
• Spontaneous tactile sensations - "waves of warm tingling sensations ripple down my skin in spontaneous but frequent spurts."