I'm writing 30 posts in 30 days at Inkhaven. This is number 10.
There are a few hundred psychedelics. When I was 15 years younger, I wanted to try them all — or at least as many as possible.
I ended up trying two dozen. Not the great success I was hoping for. Please send me your virtual hugs and drugs.
I live in London now, but back then I was living in Moscow. Russian drug laws were almost as draconian as today, but the official list of verboten chemicals was a couple hundred of chemicals, mostly not psychedelics. Most existing psychedelics weren’t scheduled — and thus 100% legal.
So I’d order them from slightly sketchy websites pretending to sell “Research Chemicals” for research purposes. They would arrive in plain white envelopes blending with the rest of international mail.
Inside there would be small ziplock bags with white and brown powders. Bags would be properly labeled with a shorthand name, a full chemical name, and a weight, something like : “2C-I / 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenethylamine / 0.5 g / Not For Human Consumption”. That “Not For Human Consumption” label would provide the seller with a thin veneer of plausible deniability — they weren’t selling drugs, they were selling “Research Chemicals” for, you know, “research”. Feeding them to your lab rats.
I’m sure some people buying these “Research Chemicals” were actually university researchers, but I’m also sure they would ignore the “Not For Human Consumption” just like the rest of us would. University researchers also want to have fun. There are legit lab suppliers like Sigma Aldrich, but the stock lists of the sketchy RC websites would be almost entirely psychoactive compounds with great recreational potential.
To significantly simplify everything. The brain is a nanomechanical mechanism. Drugs are “gears” that you can “throw” into it so it “ticks” differently. A drug’s 3D matters — hence the gear analogy. Molecules with similar structures tend to “fit” similarly in the brain
Start with a known compound — say a naturally occurring one, like mescaline, psilocybin, or DMT. Then nudge its structure bit by bit obtaining new chemicals of potential interest.
Some will end up inactive because they cannot even get to the brain — they cannot cross the blood-brain-barrier which is there to prevent this exact scenario of weird foreign chemicals being in the blood.
Some cross the blood-brain barrier, but don’t really properly fit anywhere in the brain — so they are inactive for different reasons.
Some might end up causing severe unwanted side effects, e.g. significant vasoconstriction (tightening of blood vessels), serotonin syndrome (toxic excess of serotonin), and many others.
And some might end up being fun psychoactive chemicals, perhaps even at far lower doses and with a much lower safety margin — which creates its own set of dangers.
The chemicals in the picture before are all psychedelics. Notice their structural similarity. But their active dosages span two orders of magnitude — from ≈1-7mg (DOM) to ≈100-1000 mg (Mescaline). They are Sasha Shulgin’s “Magical Half-Dozen” phenethylamines — a set of particularly interesting Mescaline analogues he created.
The way you handle the risks is to start with an ultra-low dose and slowly increase it watching for side effects. That’s exactly what the American chemist Alexander Shulgin did. Over decades he discovered two hundred different chemicals. He described them in two classical books on psychedelics:
“Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved” (aka PiHKAL, 1991) about mescaline analogues
“Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved” (aka TiHKAL, 1997) about DMT, psilocin, psilocybin analogues.
Each book has two parts. The first one is a story of developing them. The second one is dedicated to listing them all with synthesis instructions and short trip-report-like descriptions of their action.
He’d test a compound on himself first, then — once it looked safe — share it with a small, trusted group of his friends.
Pretty much all of the psychedelics I tried were Shulgin’s creations.
Some people collect postal stamps. Some collect watches. Some want to climb as many mountains as possible. Some want to travel to all the countries in the world.
I was collecting psychedelic experiences. There was a brief, three-year window after I turned 18 and before Russia passed an “analogue law” banning entire structural families, not just specific chemicals.In that window I tried two dozen psychedelics.
My first psychedelic was 2C-I — a mild, bright, fun and with lots of visuals. It’d often give me sound-vision synesthesia — regular visual geometric patterns on it would synchronise to music. Among other 2Cs I tried later, 2C-E stood out: it could feel, generating some sense of profound semi-disconnection from reality and immersion in the inner world. 2C-E’s geometric patterns would often tessellate 3D space morphing with music.
God, I miss that synesthesia of initial psychedelic explorations. My trips now — usually LSD or psilocybin — aren’t like that. Maybe it’s the substances or maybe the 2C family was just uniquely good at synesthesia.
I tried insufflating (snorting) 5-MeO-DMT and tasted that famous sense of unity with the universe — the sex on it was particularly fun. 5-MeO-DMT isn’t quite “psychedelic” in the classic, kaleidoscopic way; more “transcendelic.”.
I tried oddballs like DiPT, one of the rare psychedelics that warps hearing, shifting the pitch of sounds downward in a non-linear fashion. Music on it was a highly discordant experience. Once with closed eyes I saw the most beautiful spiral on it with impossibly pastel colors.
I tried Proscaline — a Mescaline analogue that wasn’t particularly psychoactive, but it injected nice sparkling novelty into the experience (the sex on it was fun).
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
My initial psychedelic exploration was akin to putting a screwdriver into a TV and watching it create interesting patterns on the screen. There were a lot of different substances, but not that much substance. I’d talk to people on Bluelight — a forum about psychedelics. I even wrote a few trip reports, one of them is on Erowid for a rare chemical that only has a dozen chemicals (not telling you which one because I don’t want to find out my old ). My English wouldn’t be enough to enjoy reading psychedelic celebrities like Terrence McKenna, so the psychedelic culture of my younger self is that of harm reduction forums.
I wasn’t really sure what to do with psychedelics beyond — you know — trying a lot of different ones. I was a student studying applied math and computer science — neither a chemist nor a neuroscientist. My most “scientific” habit was reading Wikipedia and staring at receptor affinity tables—numbers showing how tightly a drug binds to different receptors.
Here’s one for 2C-I, my first psychedelic. Lower numbers (Ki) mean higher affinity — a stronger interaction.
I’d stare at tables like this, trying to correlate them with my experience. Some correlation would show up, such as:
Stronger 5HT2A activation would produce a deeper trip that you couldn’t simply out-dose with a higher dose of a shallower compound. Imagine a psychedelic experience having two correlated-but-independent dimensions: intensity and depth.
Stronger 5-HT2C activation often meant a greater chance of nausea and that unpleasant muscle tension (aka body load).
Beyond those simple patterns — already known in the community — I wouldn’t see any grand unifying theory.
A psychedelic medicine company Mindstate Design aims to precision engineer mental states in order to heal mental health problems such as depression. Their plan is to create combinations of chemicals that reliably produce the exact necessary healing states — without the “hit and miss” “heal or bad trip” randomness of individual psychedelics. They are currently doing Phase I clinical trials for their first oral proprietary formulation of a mild psychedelic 5-MeO-MiPT (fun fact: I tried that one too).
Then they intend to use 5-MeO-MiPT as a base for combining with add-on helper chemicals. And to discover these they use a LLM-based platform that ingests tens of thousands trip reports online and combines with receptor/chemical interaction data (including affinities). Basically a far larger and far smarter version of what my younger self tried to do with a browser and a spreadsheet.
They haven’t said exactly which trip-report sources they used, but Erowid and Bluelight are the two biggest. Odds are, my Erowid write-up and a couple of Bluelight trip reports are in the mix.
It’s fun to see this personal quest make a tiny indirect contribution to the science of psychedelics. In the end “Research chemicals” people all over the world would turn into trip reports did end up contributing to research. The nominative determinism of the euphemism for the win!
Read the original article
Comments
There is something I don’t entirely understand about psychedelic use. While it might end up being temporary, there is a lot of data that it alters neural structures in fundamental and relatively poorly understood ways. Consciousness itself is very poorly understood. Why take a chemical that is a bit like rolling the dice on how it’s going to modify fundamentally what you are? If you are struggling with severe depression or anxiety or otherwise, I get it… but in most other cases, why? I post this as someone deeply curious about trying them, yet my mind and intellect are things I cherish when it comes to my enjoyment of life.
For sure there are some therapeutic effects when kicking someone who is stuck into totally unknown territory. But as far as I've seen most of these people want to get into a mode to understand something better (themselves, the world, spiritual things...). I think some drugs are good at creating the illusion of understanding something.
As a mathematician I can assure you that the feeling of understanding is an emotion. It's mostly disconnected from truth/false values. People can be emotionally happy, be exited and have a group feeling of understanding - but then you give them a counterexample and it turns out everything was just wrong.
A drug might be able to trigger the emotions, but the things about deeper understandings are most likely just illusions. I think I understood that when some guy who was a very simple mind (he was into sniffing glue - and bummed for alcohol) told me about his wonderful experiences of understanding the world.
By tejohnso 2025-11-1115:41 It comes down to curiosity over caution.
But I think your concern about negative fundamental modification seems higher than the reports suggest it ought to be. There are thousands upon thousands of people who've used these drugs without serious consequence. I'd say that in general they're less of a concern than alcohol.
Here's one link I found supporting my intuition: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-say-psychedelic-drugs-lik...
By brookst 2025-11-1116:26 As others have said, some combination of perspective on realistic outcomes and risk/reward.
Every experience we have changes us; every job, every family interaction, every book we read and travel we enjoy (hopefully). Learning musical instruments of foreign languages changes neuronal connections. Is there a goal to maintain a static brain over time? (honest question, reasonable if some people think the answer is "yes").
I think there is a misunderstanding about the therapeutic effects of psychedelics. The drugs themselves may alter physical structure in your brain a little bit - but what they really do is temporarily give you a different perspective - they change your point of view. That skewing of perspective is (I believe) where the therapeutic effect from these drugs arises.
If you are deeply curious about these types of drugs, you need to remember that they all wear off eventually. Lots of very smart and happy people have taken these drugs and experienced no harm.
By JimmyBuckets 2025-11-1114:471 reply I think your definition of "understood" is too narrow and perhaps that is your challenge. People have been taking many of these substances (e.g. psilocybin, THC, DMT, etc.) for thousands of years. Their qualitative, long-term effects are extremely well understood by the cultures and peoples that use them. My assumption is that you are WEIRD (forgive me if I am wrong), and the tendency we have is to disregard any data that wasn't created in a Western lab.
By mock-possum 2025-11-126:451 reply Because it feels good.
It’s a shortcut to a wildly unique experience that you might otherwise struggle to achieve, or go a lifetime without finding. It also, in my experience, helps clarify what ‘normal’ is, by giving you first hand experience with something radically different by comparison. And this touches on every part of your being - your physical, mental, and emotional sensations can all be increased, decreased, blended, redirected, synthesized, or otherwise fundamentally altered in ways you might otherwise never even be able to imagine - or may have only previously experienced once or twice and never thought accessible again.
In short, it’s a trip, man.
By fallingfrog 2025-11-1121:01 Marijuana makes me feel like im living inside of a badly written play where the script was written by a new hire at the last minute, none of the actors know their lines and the plot makes no sense. I dont like it. Alcohol gives me migraines and degrades your body.
But shrooms have low potential for addiction, no hangover and its a pleasant experience. So that's my vice of choice. I take them in moderation in social settings. I generally feel like my mood is lifted and my mind is sharp following a dose.
By tmn 2025-11-1115:01 In my case, the people I looked up to generally had tried these things and reported them as valuable or interesting experiences. So I decided to ‘roll’ the dice and am glad I did.
By brailsafe 2025-11-1210:17 Most of the people I know who are into them probably were just struggling with a mental health problem, the others are just impulsive and don't seem to consider their actions so carefully. Either way, they seem to be doing ...fine
For me, I'm not really curious at all, but otherwise feel the same way that you do. Pretty content, faults included.
By butlike 2025-11-1221:48 Like anything in life, you can choose if the juice is worth the squeeze for you. But you have to decide. For me, it was a wonderful experience. I've done psychedelics a few times and do consider LSD one of the more important experiences I've ever had. That being said, I could also see the path where one arrives at reducing it to simply being a mechanism to shove serotonin up a receptor it's not supposed to go up, which screws up the brain.
Like an international vacation, it's really what you get out of the trip, and if you consider the ticket worth the price of admission.
By abraxas 2025-11-1115:29 > Why take a chemical that is a bit like rolling the dice on how it’s going to modify fundamentally what you are?
Because sometimes that is the last thing that's left. When everything else has failed it may be the only hope that stands between you and the abyss.
By r0me1 2025-11-1117:06 risk vs reward. I've had a few psychedelic experiences, and in my case, they either didn't lead to any significant changes or ended up having positive outcomes. But what I've also learned is that my gut flora has a huge impact on how my brain works. Diet plays a major role in how I feel and think. So while I might still try psychedelics occasionally, I'll avoid certain foods because of the concerns you mentioned.
By weregiraffe 2025-11-125:491 reply >rolling the dice on how it’s going to modify fundamentally what you are?
Rotting in the grave is also going to eventually fundamentally modify what you are. Why care about consistency when it's an illusion?
By SJMG 2025-11-1116:36 Feynman shared your hesitancy for very similar reasons. He states in Surely You're Joking that he was offered, but never took them.
By saulpw 2025-11-1114:50 You certainly don't have to! But yet for some reason you're deeply curious. Why?
By conradev 2025-11-1116:48 At the end of the day: it’s a one way door. That’s what is scary about it. It does change you in an un-reversible way, much like getting a tattoo or getting married or having a child. You will be a different person. Hopefully you like that person!
By eimrine 2025-11-1116:02 If something gets banned so heavily then it might be something good in it. Are there any reasons to trust some well-organized commies who bans anything for everybody for everybody's money for getting more everybody's money? Not all of users are Francis Crick and Paul Erdos kind of person but some of them... are.
Curiosity.
We only live once.
If your default live model is going to school, then going to unviersity, partner, kids, work, work, living daily live, getting old, dying and you are happy and content, great!
But that image is not true for a lot of people for a lot of different rasons.
LSD gave me a lot of empathy for people who have some mental illness for example. MDMA gave me a very empathic experience i never had before.
And just getting old might be a goal for people, also something like not dying but again, thats just a default thinking not necessarliy what other people conclude for their lives.
I am not a psychonaught, only started tripping more recently, and I have only used mushrooms. That being said, I was always anxious about using them as I was very freaked out by the idea of something that can alter your mind instead of merely becoming intoxicated like weed or alcohol. I thought it makes you into antoher person and loose control but that is bullshit - you are fully aware. After my first go I have no fear of them.
The feeling is fantastic, nothing like weed or booze. You feel relaxed and warm in the sense that you want to be around people and talk to people. Like it fills you with love for humanity (I wanted to call my mother and tell her I loved her and so on.) BUT it makes you hyper aware of emotions so be sure your environment is relaxed if you're inexperienced. As you come down you will then start to wrestle with your own buried emotions which can really be a roller coaster. However, as long as the environment is relaxed you will feel safe and be able to handle them.
The trick is go slow for your first time, take a little and see how you feel as it take 30-45 min to kick in (for me 45 min like clock work almost.) Make sure you are in a good mental state. Had a bad week or something really bothering you? Not a good state. Don't trip. Make sure the environment feels safe and relaxed.
By throwawaypqpqp 2025-11-1115:001 reply I’ve done ibogaine recreationally at lowish doses if anyone wants to ask me about it. I don’t think it gets enough attention. Maybe because there’s some danger.
By rsynnott 2025-11-1115:12 I feel like _order_ would matter. Like, surely by #24 you're probably getting a bit bored.
