i wanna preface that this is the first time i've ever taken something without doing extensive research into it first.

i've never taken acid or mdma or wanted to, and i don't respond to psilocybin at all. so i don't have any experience w psychedelics, but heard it can get u in a similar headspace to ketamine, which i've been using the s- enantiomer of regularly for ptsd, and it's made a huge difference. this was "tested" as the s- enantiomer via chiral separation, and i also did racemic ketamine infusions (542mg, 62kg, over a bit less than 40 minutes iv) but those didn't effect me at all. i was told by the nurses i was too stubborn and it was my own brain that wouldn't let me dissociate. i mean they kept raising my dose to make me "k hole" until i was a serious stroke risk. the rate and dose i was on was more than double used for surgical anesthesia, but id sit there wide awake and chatting w the techs monitoring my vitals. Now s-ket, the first time i tried it, i tried to adjust for iv vs intranasal bioavailability when i took it. lol. big miss steak. i thought i was a blue iphone 5c for an hour. was funny. i learned to dose it and since may went from having my d-ptsd and flashbacks at a level that were so awful i had intentionally went to go live in my car and eventually the woods, to having nearly no flashbacks, and when i do they're not as upsetting or disruptive. my "life" is almost fully rebuilt, as in i appear to be doing really well in life to others, and feel it too mostly. i took all my nice belongs out of storage and am in an apartment again, i picked back up options portfolio management for my old client, it saved my life. Period.

that being said, I never had an ego death or anything scary at all on ketamine. i thought maybe this was because i've always been extremely self aware and actually intentionally embraced both "good" and "bad" parts of myself. i've never been scared of looking in the mirror and seeing nothing but a mask, a mask with 2 extremely different faces on each side, and which paradoxically is just as real as what's underneath. ketamine didn't show me anything about myself because it couldn't show me anything i didn't already know- because it couldn't pharmacologically- I have a severe lack of empathy. I have 2 diagnosis that go w that (lol) but i still think that empathy is an inherently selfish emotion, and that compassion even w no feeling, ultimately makes more of a tangible difference. Ketamine couldn't show me anything new about myself because it couldn't induce empathy.

Ok now to finally get into 2-cb. I didn't think i had anything to be worried about other than the chance that i'd be too stubborn to feel anything from this either. WRONG! I was SO wrong! I was suddenly feeling empathy for the people i was texting, then for myself, then empathy 3 merged into 1 version of me, and then empathy for all the people who didn't understand her. bc for a second i understood that they didnt understand. and what you don't understand is scary. and then after that thought i empathized with everyone who sees me as scary and i saw me as scary. this was all thoughts, not visuals or anything or anything even remotely psychedelic feeling tbh. it was just empathy. It was self realizations my brain isn't structured to access. I still believe empathy is an inherently selfish emotion. purely actually. and can be crippling and counterproductive. Sympathy is condescending. compassion is the "good" one. If i didn't firmly hold these beliefs and have for a while, i would've had a mental breakdown and ended things after seeing things with empathy. because good or bad person aside, people with empathy are naturally confused by or even scared of someone who acts like me. and if empathy is standard, then will my outward peace with my lack of empathy combined with compassion, confuse and worry others to the point of out weighting the good of the actions i can only do BECAUSE of this lack?

I took it again a day later and just talked to a bunch of random friends i had been accidentally distancing from and just laughed a bunch. super fun time. still too stubborn for visuals i think. but 2-cb is the first drug thats ever done whatever that was. but also the first that's FUN. never ever had fun or euphoria from any substance before, they were all being used for a reason.

im curious abt anyone else w a severe lack of empathy trying 2-cb and their experiences?