Alexander Shulgin wrote that “the optimum time for 2C-B is at, or just before, the final baseline recovery of MDMA.” He commented that “it is as if the mental and emotional discoveries can be mobilized, and something done about them” and that the combination has “several enthusiastic advocates in the psychotherapy world." I decided to give it a go.

I had originally planned to take the MDMA an hour prior, but trip anxiety delayed it. My day started off with a panic attack. At 3:00pm (T+0:00), my girlfriend encouraged me to insufflate 20mg of MDMA to ease myself into the drug slowly and calm myself down. The insufflated dose relaxed me in only ten minutes and at T+0:25 I took 130mg of MDMA orally in a capsule.

I was hit by a sudden wave of nausea at T+1:00. I smoked hash oil in an attempt to ease my stomach, but vomited minutes later. After vomiting, I remarked that I felt both strange and pleasant at the same time and that it felt like the MDMA had, at that moment, flipped a switch in my brain. I enjoyed the empathogenic properties of increased empathy and sociability. The drug allowed me to communicate effortlessly with my girlfriend without becoming defensive or insecure. I felt more empathetic towards other people and behaved more generously.

In terms of visual enhancement, I experienced an increase in the clearness of my vision (visual acuity) and noticed that colors appeared more vibrant and intense than before (enhancement of color perception). In terms of visual distortions, I hallucinated visual drifting (breathing) as well as the symmetrical texture repetition of random imagery, geometry, and patterns on my apartment walls. Upon closing my eyes, I hallucinated partially defined geometry (which was unimpressive). I had never had more control over my eyeballs and could not stop wiggling them around in strange, rapid patterns.

Another wave of nausea hit me at T+1:30. After dry heaving for five minutes, I smoked a dab of hash oil. I started to have a panic attack ten minutes afterwards. Josie guided me through a breathing meditation exercise which calmed me down significantly. The sharp increase in pre-existing tactile sensations took breathing to a whole new level. At T+2:50, I noticed that smoking menthol cigarettes and stretching my muscles were incredibly pleasurable. As I smoked, I was able to experience conceptual thinking about the cigarette in my hand.

At T+3:00, I asked Josikins to continue guiding me through breathing meditation. The exercise brought me euphoria and I felt as though I could meditate forever without losing attention. After meditating for thirty minutes, I heard a commanding voice from my subconscious tell me to “take 2c-b now.” Upon feeling anxiety at this request, the head voice reassured me that I still had a good time window to take the drug and that everything would be okay. I discontinued the breathing meditation and weighed out my dose of 2C-B.

I came out of the hallucinatory state at T+1:06 and continued chatting with Josikins. At T+1:20 we began mantra meditation again. During meditation, visual distortions manifested themselves as visual drifting (breathing) of the walls, color shifting, and the symmetrical texture repetition of abstract imagery (eyes and shrooms were common), patterns, and geometry. In terms of external hallucinations, I saw psychedelic mushrooms on my girlfriend’s shirt, giving me the impression that she was a shaman helping me on my spiritual journey. My feelings of profoundness for the universe got more and more intense as the meditation continued.

I experienced a change in perspective in which it seemed incredibly obvious to me that everything in the universe could be defined as the opposition or contrast between each other. After this feeling of duality, I feared that if I went any further into myself I would die and may never come back. Deciding that I didn’t want to die, I asked my girlfriend to stop meditation. I told her that I was exhausted and was “going fucking deep.”

After feeling a bit lost around T+1:30, I asked Josikins for some ideas on what to do during the trip. she suggested that I could snort more MDMA, listen to music, or discuss the event which triggered my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. After requesting cosmic music, my girlfriend linked me to a YouTube link of the Galaxy Song video from the movie Monty Python located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

Depth perception distortions manifested themselves while I watched the music video. In my vision, objects and actors in the music video that were in the background appeared in the foreground and vice versa. The layers in the music video were mixed up in organization, giving me the sensation that I was, too, in the music video. Cognitively, feelings of unity between myself and specific external systems arose. I experienced a loss of perceived boundaries between my sense of self and Josikins, the actors and directors of Monty Python, and the people responsible for uploading the music video onto YouTube. I felt like I had planned the lives of all of these people just for this particular moment. I felt as though the man singing in the video was singing to me specifically and I was completely immersed. On some deep level, I knew that the singer was both Josikins and myself. It was as though I had lived the lives of the actors in previous lives. When the universe takes the form of a pregnant lady and gives birth, I felt as though I had raped myself in order to create the universe as we know it. I was the creator of the universe.

After the video ended, I requested another video. My girlfriend linked me to the music video for the song What Fills the Gap by Will Cady featuring Alan Watts located at youtube

I was, once again, fully immersed inside the music video. As my screen showed a still-frame of the Earth in its entirety, I felt one with it. The video then switched to images of the microscopic level (bacteria, cells, etc) which resulted in conceptual thinking and feeling of profoundness for the complexity of our universe—both inner and outer. My sense of self became attributed to everything in the music video including Earth, bacteria, cells, humans, monkeys, a crowd of people, the actors in the film, the people responsible for the development of the airplane, and the men flying the airplanes in the video. When the music video showed scenes of destruction, I felt personally responsible for it. I watched airplanes and houses explode alongside the lyrics “time will pass and reduce to ash your bones.” I felt as though I was responsible for the atomic bombs and had killed (as well as died) millions of times. This moment seemed beyond perfect.

In the music video, I heard Alan Watts say, “We haven’t realized that life and death, black and white, good and evil, being and non-being come from the same sentience. They imply each other. What you are basically, deep deep down, far far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”

This reminder of duality pushed me into a state of level four unity in which, due to a loss of perceived boundaries, I became the entire universe within my internally stored model of reality (state of unity between the self and all external systems). I felt that I was, without a doubt, the universe experiencing itself through itself. I felt as though I had designed the universe with this one moment in mind. The contrast of the young, energetic couples dancing in the music video alongside the lyrics “time will pass and reduce to ash our bones” was too much for me. The men and woman were so full of life in the video, but I knew that they would all die eventually if they hadn’t already. I reached a state of level 5 unity where I became all of existence.

I heard Alan Watt’s voice saying from my laptop, ”There’s no point in just sustaining bliss. Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive.”

Depth perception distortions (similar to the Monty Python video) manifested themselves again as I continued watching the video. In my mind’s eye, I imagined myself living past lives while sustaining long-term bliss. Specifically, I remember imagining my life as an Egyptian ruler sunbathing. In this imaginary life, I had all the gold in the world and had fulfilled all of my desires, yet still felt as though something was missing. Eternal bliss did not go the way I had planned and thus I realized that long-term bliss was impossible and was not what I desired in the long run. By trying to live a life of pleasure with an absence of pain, I was essentially trying to have white without black. Long term pleasure was not ultimately satisfying in a way that a mixture of both pleasure and pain could be.

I came to the realization that I would not change anything in the universe even if I had the power to. I felt as if the universe was already perfect in its present time—both the good and the bad. I had designed it this way myself and to god, there was no difference between the two sides of the coin. Pain or pleasure, good or evil, yin and yang were the same to me and only differed in their contrast to each other. I realized that I could not have a game where everyone wins. I applied yin and yang to all situations in the universe.

Alan Watts continued, “And after several nights, of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say ‘now let’s have a surprise… let’s have a dream which isn’t under control… You would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream.”

I went into a seemingly timeless cognitive delusion where I was the creator of everything that ever was, ever has been, and ever could be. I was, without a doubt, the all-powerful god and could cause life to exist with my imagination. After I imagined myself into existence multiple lives of eternal bliss, I got more adventurous. I imagined into existence more ridiculous scenarios of how far I could go from god. I gained an immense amount of satisfaction by tricking myself into believing that I was not god. I loved making myself worship myself, argue about myself, live for myself, and kill for myself. I did this repeatedly because the moment that I became god got so much funnier the deeper from god I went. I imagined billions of universes into existence and every single one of them was exactly how I wanted it to be—the perfect mixture of pain, pleasure, and humor. I made it all into a cosmic joke.

As the creator of this cosmic joke, my jokes were both sadistic and masochistic in nature. I was responsible for billions of years of pain, horror, and destruction. I used them as plot devices for my jokes. These concepts had no emotional attachment at the time due to my strong feelings of duality. I tortured myself billions of times for the sake of a laugh. I wanted to experience all there was to experience—even pain. I created existences for myself in which I suffered from deliberating mental disorders and mental retardation. I knew that nothing could ultimately hurt me in the end. I had no choice but to use pain and pleasure equally. It was as if all of existence could be divided into two equal parts—the yin and the yang, the good and the evil, pain and pleasure, everything and nothing, life and death. I made all of my universes with this duality in mind. I warped the yin and yang into as many ways possible, but I made it satisfying and humorous too. I plotted my universes to the smallest detail on the cellular level.

It was a cosmic game at best, but a game worth playing to the ends of infinity, no matter how terrible it appeared to get. I had designed it this way myself in advance and was not afraid to live all of its existence. I had made it absolutely perfect for myself.

Alan Watts continues, “And finally you would dream where you are now.”

Suddenly I imagined myself into my current life as a twenty year old human. At this point I felt the sensation that I had literally tripped myself sober. I had tripped so goddamn hard that I had looped around and gone full circle into sobriety. It felt like god had taken a psychedelic drug and became a twenty year old human instead of the other way around. After the video ended, I regained my long-term memory, though my short-term memory remained noticeably impaired. Still in a state of level 5 unity, I resumed conversation with Josikins. I expressed difficulty with communicating what I had just experienced, so I simply remarked that “2c-b is a great therapy drug” and thanked her for helping me through this.

After smoking hash oil at T+2:04, my short-term memory disintegrated to insane levels. Josikins told me my options once again and this time I tried to process my sexual assault. After experiencing difficulty, Josikins tried repeating the phrase “the nature of the incident does not affect your value as a human being and depending on your own perspective you can allow it to make you stronger if you choose to” for three minutes. At first I questioned the phrase, but was able to answer the questions as I went deeper and deeper inside of myself.

Finally the only question left unanswered was “how do I allow it to make me stronger?” By T+2:20, my short-term memory was extremely impaired to the point where I forgot what I was doing. Josikins reminded me that I was attempting to process my rape. I remarked that it was too big to process and my girlfriend replied that “you only perceive it as big because you choose to do so.” I started feeling anxious about whether my girlfriend would leave me at this moment.

By T+2:30, my short-term memory was fucked up to the point where I would start saying a statement and then forget what I was saying halfway through. Eventually I remembered that I was processing my sexual assault and Josikins repeated the phrase “I was raped and this is okay” for seven minutes. I questioned the mantra and eventually accepted it. I came to the realization that although I had a negative attachment to the traumatic event, it was in contrast to a state of positivity and part of a bigger, harmonious system.

Upon declaring the need for a new mantra at T+2:40, Josikins came up with the phrase “I designed it this way myself.” As she repeated this for a total of twenty minutes, my feelings of profoundness for the universe grew more intense. Audible hallucinations manifested themselves after ten minutes of the mantra. I hallucinated my girlfriend alternately repeat two statements instead of one, hearing “I designed it this way myself” as well as “I designed it to slay myself.”

A couple minutes after this, the phrase turned into six different phrases. I hallucinated hearing “I designed it this way myself. I designed it to slay myself. I designed it to persuade myself. I designed it to weigh myself. I designed it to dismay myself. I designed it to save myself” repeatedly. I was euphoric that the single phrase had been able to change into so many other true phrases.

These six sentences kept repeating until finally the mantra stopped making sense completely. My feelings of duality got more apparent until all I could comprehend in the mantra were the words “I” and “myself.” With this, I realized that I was all there was and ever would be. I went into a cognitive delusion in which I became the creator of everything that I could imagine in all time frames of existence. I created universes that are completely ineffable to me when sober. By pure thought alone, I was able to imagine into existence highly complex alien societies and universes. I felt one with all of imagined existence including the alien, the ineffable, and the human. There was nothing that was not me.

Rape, death, pain, and destruction were nothing to me at that moment and I used them as plot devices in this cosmic joke of mine. My joke was absolutely perfect in every single way. I had designed it this way myself to slay, persuade, weigh, dismay, and save myself. The feeling of becoming god from something so much simpler was the ultimate high. I had tricked myself and I loved it. I had acted so goddamn convincing as a twenty year old human. I felt as though I was in the fabric of existence and the moment could not have felt more perfect.

I came back into reality at T+3:00 and resumed casual conversation with my girlfriend. I got some water and food after noticing that I was hungry and had a headache. I tried to eat processed food, but it turned into a sticky goop inside my mouth which then turned into abstract representations of molecular structures before I was even able to swallow. I was not satisfied with it at all and could not take another bite. The food tasted like foam and all I desired was fruit.

While coming down from the 2C-B, I talked to Josikins about my trip and various topics. For the next few hours, the cognitive effects of connectivity of thought and level 4 unity remained. Time seemed to move slowly. I smoked more hash oil and watched Sympathy of Science’s Brain music video located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB7jSFeVz1U

I also repeatedly rewatched the previous two music videos. Josikins left at 1:30am. I continued to watch the music videos and smoke hash oil until I felt like I could sleep.

When I awoke I was greeted with feelings of rejuvenation and sustained unity. Although I still have symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I feel as though they have been greatly reduced thanks to my trip. My anxiety levels have gone down and I finally feel like I am processing my sexual assault instead of living in the past. Overall, I found the combination of MDMA and 2C-B to be extremely helpful for therapeutic purposes.