Experience:40mg - Brothermind and the Forest's Hand

   "It lured us in
   we grew to kin
   entered a mist
   
   of groaning expansion
   through brambles, a mission
   we broke through to day
   the snow had gone away
   
   I closed my eyes, no sight
   immersed in delight
   of the vessel I’d become
   with galaxies inside my thumbs."

T+00
I got to my buddy’s house, he was house sitting for the day, we would have the place to ourselves except his brother would be in and out, I was informed. I weighed 40mg and made one capsule of 4-AcO-DMT, and weighed 50mg of 2C-C into one other capsule. My companion (2cc) and I (4-aco-dmt) both ingested at noon, ate some cookies, and started rolling a couple joints. We spent most of the come up listening to a Blackbird Blackbird Pandora station and smoking outside in his backyard. By T+00:30 I was feeling very euphoric and some pressure in my muscles, but no discomfort. I found music to be enhanced and I could speak much more quickly and adeptly than normal, a string of well thought out and presented ideas flowed from my mouth constantly for most of it, I felt very entertained by my thoughts and by T+00:40 I was noticing geometric patterns on walls and my peripheral vision yielding more cartoonish overlays to objects around the house.

T+1:00
By this point I was definitely up there, my companion said he had no visual overlay other than a deep tinting of colors and strong, sedative euphoria. I decided that we should soon go for a walk, so I sat down and started rolling again. When I sat myself down at the marble table, the texture to the table seemed to change places and then would all conjumble to create a cohesive geometric structure that would then duplicate and spread itself across the surface. Looking at my hands was like staring over someone’s shoulder, they did not appear nor feel to be my own appendages and seemed to be cooperating on a level outside of my conscious control. My vision was much clearer and more vivid, the closer I got up to things the more detailed and complex they would become, it was as if I could dive into single textures or pixels on a monitor and find worlds in them. My hands were completely fine but I felt anxious about rolling the joints because I felt as though I was not so much in control of my own fine motor functions.

I turned to my companion and he was staring excitedly outside, it had started hailing, we definitely needed to get going. Before going outside I noticed that his wooden floor was covered in little faces and beings that danced and laughed joyously. I felt wary, the hail came in seething waves of mild color shifts, the plants outside in the backyard shook and its leaves symmetrically repeated themselves, making them look like they were moving voluntarily and were conscious organisms. Suddenly it was snowing, I agreed, we needed to go outside. My companion remarked, upon going outside, that it was very cold, but I felt absolutely no discomfort, my whole body was warm and I felt incredibly alive and soft, waves of gentle euphoria rippled up and down my body. If I didn’t focus on anything I would have dazzling geometric overlays over all textures, similar to that of LSD, something I have never experienced with 4-HO-DMT. Out in the neighbourhood I had almost no visual distortions or obvious geometric overlays, I was mildly disappointed but kept walking to some forest that my companion said he had found.

We entered through a “trail” that was really just where there had been gaps in the tree cover and rain had hit the dirt and where leaves had fallen. When we reached the forest my visuals amped up really quickly, when I inspected the trees it was as if layers of the texture were slowly lowering and falling, sort of like melting but in a straight angle and without complete distortion. Everything was deeply saturated and the trees reached high above my vision, bleeding into some snow filled sky. I felt shock and awe at the combined beauty of the falling snow and the eruption of color and complexity that I had found inside the forest. We slid down some precarious slopes and I found my bodily control very good, although I felt almost physically removed from the situation. When I stood still the trees would tunnel and go forever, expanding and contracting and going inside out, my peripheral vision would stretch in impossible ways and dazzlingly intricate and cartoony faces and geometric structures would emerge over the trees. Staring at one point created a very intense visual field of distortion and alteration. I felt the trees reach out to me and hold me in a warm and loving embrace, explaining to me that I was a vessel for a greater message, and I was elated. We kept going down into the forest, not really paying attention to how far we were going. By the time we finished the second joint my visuals were very intense and almost overriding, trees’ faces changed and shifted quickly, one set of branches reached out in a dark mass of bark and roots, with bulbous bits at the end, almost like joints. It looked like a skeletal hand reaching up from the earth, and I decided that I was inside of the stomach of a being far more complex than I. When I closed my eyes I saw massive hallways of runes and eyes, millions of minute textures and pixels of deep blues and golds and reds and blacks, huge and endless expanding lands of diamonds and my own face repeated in front of me. We decided that we had been there a while, and my companion, who now expressed distortions and very confusing changes in placement of trees and objects, was feeling very cold. I asked him how he felt about the trees, he spoke about how they are ancient and predate most of us, that they have more deep understanding than us, and that they are incredibly useful.

T+2:45
We decided that we were going to leave the forest, I said that I saw something that looked like a path, but when we got there we found it led to a thicket of brambles. My companion, feeling heroic, said that it was a challenge placed there for us by the psychedelic warrior gods, I agreed, he said we would break through and make our own path. In this moment it felt very important that we overcome the natural barrier and that we prove to the forest which had lured us into its depths. It was a slow and painful struggle, our clothes kept getting caught and I felt the heat of imagined fire breathing at my neck, it was anxious and stressful and I was ready to be out, but I knew an end was in sight and there would be no surrender. He kept pushing and slowly I helped him break through the bushes. The brambles held onto my sweater as if the forest was unwilling to let us escape in such a way, as if it were injustice. I heard it tremble and felt my body surge under an earthquake that seemed to be only inside of me. When we broke through the bushes the sun had come up and the clouds were parting, I felt my heart soar and the warmth return to my body. I closed my eyes in ecstasy, and was deeply startled to see the face of John Lennon (I am not joking) flash before me in a wonderful psychedelic art form, he smiled and blinked once at me, and then disappeared to an opening blood orange sun that engulfed my entire vision. I opened my eyes to see my companion grinning and panting, he said that was “a fucking journey” and I agreed excitedly.

We returned to the house to find his brother sitting on the couch. I had not interacted with the brother much, he said he was OK with the music we were playing. We ate some beef jerky and cookie dough, the beef jerky was VERY difficult for me to eat, almost like trying to eat bark, and the cookie dough was very rewarding. We went onto the back patio and smoked out of my companions invented bong. We got the bowl so cherried that we could just pull out of it without removing the bowlpiece, his brother remarked that he invented a glorious bong and blunt machine. In my head I thought “the blong!” and just as it floated across my vision in dazzling electric letters the brother shouted “YOU’VE CREATED THE BLONG!” We all burst into laughter and I almost had to sit down from laughing so hard.

We went inside and danced around a bit before deciding to go to 7-11. At one point they told me that I looked like a teacher and I assumed that, by that, they meant that I looked like someone with authority and knowledge, and they said they did not mean it that way. In the car everything felt very far away, and the world was flushed with purple. The brother played Ohm, some metal band I believe, and it sounded very epic and emotionally passionate, as the trees flew by us they reached out and looked absolutely magnificent, like giant crowds of nature beings cheering us on. I was stuck in silence watching this beautiful progression of purple tinted wood wrought gladiators waving their arms and peering out of their crowds to get a good look at me. Inside of the 7-11 sounds were very strange, everything was chirping and sounds meshed together to make strange concoctions of combined samples. The sound distortion was very similar to LSD in that it made all surrounding and not direct sounds muffled and indistinguishable unless I focused on them, and then I could understand a single sound in perfect acuity.

T+3:30
After this point the trip was full of random stress because of a clash of personality/interest between myself and my companion’s brother. He continuously played upsetting music after I asked politely and then angrily for him to stop rudely changing the music without asking either of the rest of us. He could not decide what to watch, and finally he just decided to turn of all music and I decided that it was time for me to go for another visit to the forest we did previously. I rolled a joint in great anxiety and booming silence, my mind was nearly silent at this point, and my companion got ready. When I was out the door the brother decided he would come with us, obviously not sensing the level of uncool between he and I.

I put my headphones in, listening to a compilation of beep boopy IDM songs, which included XXYYXX, Jan Jelinek, Aphex Twin, Teen Daze, and some Tycho. Again, visuals were not very prevalent when I was walking around the neighbourhood, but in the forest they were even more intense than previously. I hung behind and didn’t stay close to them, I tried to stay in my own space. When I lit my joint they came running up to me and smoked it with me, and then said they were cold so they were gonna go. I stayed there and dove into my mind. I thought about my monologue, why I think the way and talk the way I do, what I should be doing, why I always think about things as if I am explaining them to someone? This thought process led me to believe that I had been made a vessel for information relaying by this forest that had accepted me. I actually kept getting stuck on words and realised I was thinking in circles. It looked like a bmx course that had been haphazardly made by neighbourhood kids, and they had dug these mounds out of hills and made jumps. It basically looked like a bunch of small (4 foot top elevation at most) hills with big holes in the middle of them. These mounds appeared to me to be a bunch of opening and closing mouths. While I was talking aloud to myself I would sometimes receive a surge of information regarding the questions I had been posing to myself, and when these surges would occur I would stop speaking. It appeared to me that some other force, larger than me (perhaps the forest), was giving me information and the mouths seemed to be the ones speaking to me. After some time of reflection I went back to the house and watched some South Park.

T+5:30
I got back and came down for a while, tried not to interact much, eventually got home when I was more down. At T+8:30 I felt completely down, other than being sedated and feeling very inspired. Overall I was impressed, my dose was perfectly intense and resembled my reaction to psilocin but with some different hallucinations and not as much visual drifting. If I were to compare it to dried cubensis (honestly I found this to be very different from 4-HO-DMT), this level of intensity was more intense than 3.5g and just a little less intense than 5g, I think that 60mg of this would be the perfect amount for me, but others seem to react far more acutely to less amount of the chemical. I felt absolutely no negative side effects except for a muscle cramp in my foot that lasted around 10 seconds and happened nearing the end of my peak.

Submitted by - Phantasmagoria

Visual effects

Enhancements:

• Visual acuity enhancement "the closer I got up to things the more detailed and complex they would become"
• Colour enhancement "Everything was deeply saturated and the trees reached high above my vision, bleeding into some snow filled sky."
• Pattern recognition enhancement "dazzlingly intricate and cartoony faces"

Distortions

• Melting "layers of the texture were slowly lowering and falling"
• Recursion "When I stood still the trees would tunnel and go forever, expanding and contracting and going inside out"
• Symmetrical texture repetition "The texture to the table seemed to change places and then would all conjumble to create a cohesive geometric structure that would then duplicate and spread itself across the surface."
• Perspective distortions "my peripheral vision would stretch in impossible ways"

Geometry

• Level 1-5 I would say that, compared to 4-HO-DMT, which has very organic geometry, and LSD, which has very digital geometry, this was somewhere in the middle. Geometry presented itself very naturally in its transformative effects on larger visual data, but yielded the same creativity, and fast moving artistic style that is both associated and to be found in LSD's geometric effects. 4-AcO-DMT's geometry is very unlike 4-HO-DMT and is more similar to that which I have experienced with 25i and LSD. I imagine at higher doses it would appear to be more similar to 25i's symmetrical geometric override than 4-HO-DMT's more internal and asymmetrical nature.

Hallucinatory states

• Internal hallucination "When I closed my eyes I saw massive hallways of runes and eyes, millions of minute textures and pixels of deep blues and golds and reds and blacks, huge and endless expanding lands of diamonds and my own face repeated in front of me."
• Settings, sceneries, and landscapes "I decided that I was inside of the stomach of a being far more complex than I."
• Perspective alterations "Looking at my hands was like staring over someone’s shoulder"
• Transformations "one set of branches reached out in a dark mass of bark and roots, with bulbous bits at the end, almost like joints. It looked like a skeletal hand reaching up from the earth"

Suppressions

• Ego suppression, loss, and death (only suppression)

Novel states

• Introspection "I stayed there and dove into my mind."
• Conceptual thinking "At one point they told me that I looked like a teacher and I assumed that, by that, they meant that I looked like someone with authority and knowledge, and they said they did not mean it that way. "
• Novelty enhancement "In this moment it felt very important that we overcome the natural barrier and that we prove to the forest which had lured us into its depths."
• Autonomous voice communication "I would sometimes receive a surge of information regarding the questions I had been posing to myself, and when these surges would occur I would stop speaking. It appeared to me that some other force"
• Thought loops "I actually kept getting stuck on words and realised I was thinking in circles."

Physical effects

• Euphoria "I felt incredibly alive and soft, waves of gentle euphoria rippled up and down my body."

Auditory effects

• Distortions "everything was chirping and sounds meshed together to make strange concoctions of combined samples."