My package arrived in the mail, and I could barely contain myself as I walked back to my house from the mailbox. I'd been reading about 4-ho-met (or "color", which is what i call it in non-RC company) for weeks both before ordering, and while waiting for my package.
T-0:00 - I pulled out my trusty car key (belonging to a car of which i know not) and scooped some of the tan, sand like powder onto the tiny paper i had placed on the scale. 15mg. I gently poured the color into a half-packed bong piece,blew gently to even the layer, and gently covered with more weed. I chose smoking as my RoA for the shorter trip length, and more intense visuals (as reported by the psychonaut wiki). I cleared the bong in four solid rips (god bless legal state tolerances), and waited patiently. I tasted nothing, but smelled a faint bitterness.
T+0:05 - Five minutes pass of me intently staring at the wood panels of our humble trailer. Nothing. Not even a wobble. Maybe you have to freebase it before smoking? Who knows. Dejected, I measure out 35mg and dump it into a shot of vodka, stirring gently to dissolve the powder. Surely, my two months of day drinking and general alcohol abuse had prepared me for this.
That would be an incorrect assumption. The overpowering taste of bile, so shockingly bitter and acidic that I nearly vomited instantly, erupted into my mouth. I clawed desperately for the soda I had prepared, and drank half of it before I deemed it safe to breathe. My stomach felt vaguely uncomfortable, but overall none the worse for wear. I poured soda in the shot glass to clear it, getting a gentle reminder of that hellacious flavor. (Note from the future: parachute this shit, it's the only way.)
T+0:10 - I was laying comfortably on my bed (read: couch layered in more blankets than a blanket store) watching cooking videos on youtube when i became aware of a restlessness in my legs. The sensation became warm, and spread up my body. It's a familiar feeling if you've ever done shrooms before. It was at this point that I became certain of one irrefutable fact, indeed the last realization I would have before tumbling into uncertainty: I had fucked up. The warmth grew more and more, and I realized my vision wasn't focusing correctly. The initial 15mg must have just taken longer than expected, and was now layering into the additional 35mg taken after. I had unwittingly hero dosed on my first trip.
I quickly closed my laptop. The walk to my roommates room was blacked out of my memory, despite only being 15 seconds long, and my memory returned as I sat down.
T+0:15 - I was sitting in a plastic chair in a heavy jacket. I wasn't concerned by my seeming teleportation from the couch. My skin felt warm and tingly, my nose was beginning to run. I bounced my legs in front of me in anticipation and stared at the floor, attempting to ground myself in reality. As I watched, the floor heaved slightly and began breathing. Small purple crystals formed every few inches on the surface of the off-white nearly shag carpet, glittering gently as I moved my head around the room.
T+0:20 - My nose was now violently running. Talking to my roommates was difficult, not just because the concept of words had become difficult in my ever-failing attempt to stay on Earth, but because a river was flowing down the back of my throat from my nose. I did my best to assure my company that I was fine, and lifted my head to look around. What were normally vertical wood planks had become deep, warmly glowing orange panels. The light from behind them flickered, as if lit by flame, and glyph-like images (notably wood colored) floated gently upwards from the floor to the ceiling. The glyphs sank into and away from the surface at will, implying a deeper world behind them than could physically be possible. One of my roommates (We'll call him B) was wearing a fur hat, which upon observation swirled heavily, blurring into his face as if he had been born with it attached to his head.
T+0:30 - I was now cuddling a roll of tissue paper, but not just for my nose. My eyes had begun watering. Not from any sadness, though I did notice that my emotions were increasingly unstable, and just thinking about people believing I was sad because of my watery eyes made it hard not to start crying when I talked. I had begun yawning constantly, not helping the eye watering situation. At this point the headspace had become fairly intense. I still knew I was high, and would eventually be fine, yet a switch flipped that I had not expected: my fear of time.
I became overwhelmed by the idea that time had stopped. I couldn't comprehend space outside of the room I was in, and couldn't remember getting here. It must exist in it's own place in time. How long had I been tripping?
"Hey S (other roommate), what time is it?"
S: Mmmm... (checks phone) It's eleven.
An incredible sense of deja vu washed over me. Surely this had happened before? I very clearly remember every part of that interaction happening before now.
"Hey S, what's the date?"
S: It's the eleventh.
My mind raced. This, too, felt familiar. I had to test it again.
"Hey S, what time is it now?"
S: Eleven.
An incredible sense of deja vu washed over me. Surely this had happened before? I very clearly remember every part of that interaction happening before now.
"Hey S, what's the date?"
S: The eleventh. You alright man?
T+0:45 - "There's no way this is the first time we've done this. I swear to fucking god that this has happened before. Maybe I dreamed it, I don't know, but it's happening again and I'm fucking stuck in time. S, what time is it?"
S: It's 11:15 dawg.
BREAKTHROUGH. My brain cleared itself of the horrible loop I had stuck myself in, and as I crawled out of the deep dark retches of my mind, I became aware of something that may not have existed until that moment: I could barely see.
To be clear, I could see fine. My eyes still worked. The problem was all the goddamn letters in the way. A sphere of letters had surrounded my head, appearing as though they were several inches away from my face despite me being unable to get my hand in front of them. The letters were all blocky and capitalized, a translucent pink core, almost shiny, gently bordered by a thin white. Mostly consisting of AHMNT, the sphere moved with me, ensuring a constant obscurement of my vision.
MATHTAHAHTMNTANMATNTHMNMMNAHATNMAT, meaningless. I searched desperately for a pattern and found none. Math, maybe? But I am incapable of staying attached to my current realm, let alone calculating anything. I frowned with frustration, and then laughed as a brief wave of sobriety fell over my mind. I was frustrated because a letter sphere was theoretically asking me to do math. What would my dad say? This smile stayed attached to my face for some time.
T+1:00 - The math-nazi letter sphere had subsided. I was no longer in a loop. It was time to explore. I climbed slowly off the cot I had claimed as my own, gently cradling my tissues. I stopped to gether my surroundings, unobscured. The carpet had devolved into a field of purple crystals and gently flowing cream. The bowl of weed S was trimming swam like a bowl of emeralds, laying peacefully on a raging sea of black and red that had once been a flannel blanket. The wood paneling had quenched it's flame, and instead appeared to have a clear liquid flowing down wood-colored fur. Attempting to touch it revealed that the flowing was actually just below the surface, as if under a layer of polyurethane. I giggled quitely and left the room.
The kitchen was a cacophany of stimulation, so I decided I needed to pee first to prepare myself. The marble-like linoleum on the floor swirling under my feet, I attempted to check my phone. I was assaulted by a nonsensical screen, ghosts of words peeled themselves away and floated gently across the screen in shades of neon, making it nearly impossible to read anything.
The water on my hands was a welcome sensation. It did much to calm me, though i didn't realize I wasn't calm until I touched it.
T+1:30 - The kitchen was my home now. The fluorescent lights shone down through the neon bubbles of what would normally be a plain old diffuser panel. The textures on the refrigerator bubbled and swirled. The same linoleum from the bathroom danced beneath my feet. It was colorful here, and I liked it. I stumbled around, staring at various surfaces and ranking how much each pleased me. My brother walked by, commenting "You look fucking crazy, leaking out of your face and staring at the cabinets with your hair all crazy and half a beard."
I felt as crazy as I looked as I adjusted to my new reality, and I was okay with it. I shrugged, gently caressing the surface of a cbinet, mentally assuring it that it was my favorite cabinet.
T+2:00 - What time is it? Only 1230am? Fantastic. I followed B outside onto the porch. A gentle rain swirled through the air, doing loop-de-loops before hitting the ground, and the wood panels moved to fall beneath my feet. In the distance, a greenhouse glowed like a jewel on the landscape, light pulsing off of it slowly. B and I discussed how I was just an animal being poisoned. I was not distressed by this statement.
B: Aren't you cold? You left your jacket inside.
"Hm? Oh. No? Is it cold out?" I realized at this point that I could see my breath. B had on a jacket and a fur hat, I had on a long sleeve shirt and jeans.
B: Yeah, it's like forty degrees out here.
I grunted acknowledgement and stopped to ponder the idea of cold. Was I cold? I don't think so, but I'm having a hard time remembering what cold feels like. The warm embrace of the 4-ho-met shielded me from the temperatures of all things. I decided I was safer inside.
T+3:00 - Open eye visuals have subsided to gentle breathing and melting, intensifying if I focused on any particular object. I put in headphones, an album (Chemical Brothers - Further), and laid on the floor in the living room. The songs I was so familiar with took on new life, as if I could seperate the individual tracks and focus on them directly. I closed my eyes, and was greeted by swirling clouds of colors and geometric pyramids stiffly inverting on themselves, similar to editing terrain in Rollercoaster Tycoon. I pondered the idea of my brain being inspired by video games for my visuals, and zoned out into the peaceful world that my mind had become.
T+7:00 - I was tired. Visuals had subsided to gentle breathing, and the preceding hours passed uneventfully as I watched various tv shows, ate grapes, and listened to music. The yawning and various fluid leaks had subsided, and my body felt gently tingly all over. I noticed a distinct lack of noise, realizing suddenly that my tinnitus wasn't present for the first time in years. I smiled to myself, curled up in my blankets with the window open, and slowly drifted into sleep for 14 hours.
All in all, I rate 4-ho-met as my favorite substance. Even an accidentally large trip was fairly manageable, and even during the very intense parts I felt a general sense of warmth and calmness. I can't recommend this enough to people looking for a colorful, melty, wet trip.