2CB: The Multipurpose Wonder Drug With No Consequences!

More psy­che­del­ic art made on a 90s com­put­er here.

It’s been said that tak­ing drugs is fraught with all sorts of aw­ful con­se­quences: you’ll be­come ad­dict­ed, your re­la­tion­ships will suf­fer, you’ll lose every­thing and it even turns out the girls in re­hab and men­tal hos­pi­tals aren’t as hot as the ones in Girl, In­ter­rupt­ed.

But, if you’re clever and a rea­son­able hu­man be­ing, you can have a healthy re­la­tion­ship with drugs for about 25 years (drugs af­ter 40 is gross if it’s not weed, and be­fore 15 is a bit bad if it’s not weed), it’s all to do with the type of re­la­tion­ship you have with them. In hu­man re­la­tion­ship terms, drugs shouldn’t be your wife, they should be your fuck bud­dy.

In fact, drugs should be the girl you knew at school and fooled around with a few times, who you then went on to see fair­ly se­ri­ous­ly in your late teens and ear­ly twen­ties, who it pe­tered out with around 24, but you kept go­ing back be­cause the sex was so good and you’re old friends un­til you were 30, then af­ter thir­ty you see her less and less un­til you get mar­ried at 35 and you’re not re­al­ly up for that stuff so much any­more (al­though she will be at the wed­ding and you may still hold on­to her num­ber un­til you’re forty be­cause you nev­er know).

That’s right, drugs are your first se­ri­ous girl­friend who even­tu­al­ly be­comes a good pal you have a laugh and a joke with. If she’s around af­ter you’re forty it’s be­cause your wife’s a friend of hers too, but you’re go­ing to live at op­po­site ends of the coun­try so you’ll see her every six months at best.

If you have too in­tense a re­la­tion­ship with her, how­ev­er, you’ll ei­ther get re­al­ly lost in each oth­er and you’ll be one of those guys who ditched all his friends for his girl­friend that his fam­i­ly al­so hates, or there’ll be such a trau­mat­ic break up that you won’t want to see each oth­er ever again.

The 7th re­sult that comes up when you google im­age ‘first girl­friend’, she looks like a blast huh?

There’s a chance that anal­o­gy might not have been worth sprawl­ing over three para­graphs, but you get the point. Drugs are about fun good times and re­lax­ing in good com­pa­ny, they’re shit if they be­come any­thing more. Ei­ther be­cause one of the things in the first para­graph hap­pens to you or you be­come the kind of bor­ing drugs nerd that com­plains that our blog­post about ex­tract­ing the codeine from Parac­eta­mol and codeine tablets was lame be­cause it wasn’t hero­in. Drugs aren’t about a piss­ing con­test, bud­dy, they’re about hav­ing a re­tar­do time with your friends.

The re­al prob­lem with drugs are the con­se­quences of do­ing them- if you woke up af­ter do­ing four pills feel­ing fresh as a daisy and not like you want­ed to cry and watch E4 un­til your jaw stopped hurt­ing, then maybe you’d avoid your moth­er’s calls less on the week­end, or be able to progress a lit­tle at work in­stead of drool­ing on the bot­tom rung of the work­ing world for the bulk of your twen­ties.

If coke left you feel­ing like you’d had a good eight hours and a grape­fruit for break­fast and didn’t make you crip­pled with para­noia and in­se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing the week maybe you’d be less sar­cas­tic and rude to peo­ple.

Well, there’s a chance that there’s a so­lu­tion that un­til now has on­ly been known to the kind of peo­ple that go on erowid.​org and at­tend par­ties that take place in fields in near Bris­tol (nerdy crusties, in case you were won­der­ing) but it looks like it’s slow­ly trick­ling down to oth­er peo­ple, like laugh­ing gas did a few years ago.

This guy has prob­a­bly known about 2CB for years

As you might have guessed from the ti­tle, 2CB is the so­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to wikipedia and not erowid (the fun­ni­est thing on that site is the arts and cul­ture sec­tion, Erowid Cul­tur­al Vault,“I drew this while I was high” etc etc) it was first made in the 70s as a drug to use dur­ing ther­a­py, then it was sold as an aphro­disi­ac in the 80s in Ger­many and Am­s­ter­dam, and now it’s il­le­gal.

It’s a white pow­der (some­times a pill) and it costs 200 quid a gram, which sounds ridicu­lous (ap­par­ent­ly that’s the price of a re­al­ly good gram of coke in Shang­hai – com­mu­nists hate to par­ty to it’s hard to sneak it in) but it’s ac­tu­al­ly to­tal­ly rea­son­able, be­cause one gram is 100 dos­es! You put a tiny amount in the tip of your fin­ger and swal­low it or wrap it in a Ri­zla and do a bomb. Al­so, you usu­al­ly just buy it by the dose.

here comes the sci­ence bit!

So it’s cheap, but so is speed and ke­t­a­mine, and they are fuck­ing hor­ri­ble. What else is so great about it, I hear you ask? Well, the ef­fects are pret­ty much bril­liant- de­pend­ing on how much you do or whether you sniff it, it can ei­ther be the fun­ni­est night of wear­ing lamp­shades on your heads and bounc­ing on beds or a pret­ty full on but ul­ti­mate­ly com­fort­able hal­lu­cino­genic trip that means you’re con­tent to stay still slumped on a so­fa for five hours. Peo­ple say it’s eu­phor­ic, but it’s not ec­sta­sy eu­phor­ic, it’s be­ing in a re­al­ly good mood af­ter a course of Prozac eu­phor­ic – a man­age­able kind of eu­pho­ria that pre­vents you from gurn­ing or be­ing too much of a dick, but lets you know you’re al­tered and hav­ing a hi­lar­i­ous time.

The hal­lu­ci­na­tions are al­so great, like a syn­thet­ic ver­sion of mush­rooms- loads of colour, car­toon­ish­ness and stu­pid ideas. If it goes wrong (it usu­al­ly doesn’t) all that hap­pens is you smell things re­al­ly in­tense­ly and feel a bit sick, but you should be ok.

erowid have pho­tos of drugs

Fun new drugs are all well and good, but the spe­cial bit about 2CB is that un­like last year’s star turn Mephedrone, you won’t wake up the next day feel­ing like you caught an AIDS in­fect­ed can­cer­ous blood dis­ease, you wake up go­ing: ‘last night was fuck­ing hi­lar­i­ous, I’m run­ning a lit­tle late but I’m still go­ing to make my great aunt’s fu­ner­al with a few min­utes to spare to go over the eu­lo­gy I’m read­ing’. That’s right, noth­ing fuck­ing hap­pens to you! You feel fine, at worst like you stayed up a lit­tle past your bed­time (which you did) and you might sort of re­gret pour­ing wa­ter in­to your dig­i­tal cam­era or throw­ing the con­tents of your fridge off the roof, but ul­ti­mate­ly, you’re fine. No kid­ding around, you could take a load of this af­ter work on a Fri­day, have a hi­lar­i­ous time, be in bed by 12 and more than fine to turn up to a dis­tant rel­a­tive’s fu­ner­al on Sat­ur­day morn­ing. No para­noia, no crawl­ing skin. Maybe avoid op­er­at­ing heavy ma­chin­ery that morn­ing, but you’re sup­posed to do that if you have a Parac­eta­mol too.

It’d be great if this got big, every­one would be able to keep their lives to­geth­er bet­ter and week­ends wouldn’t just be about the evenings. Sure, it’s not as in­tense as some things, do­ing it won’t make you look cool in pub­lic (you’ll look ter­ri­ble), and you won’t feel spir­i­tu­al­ly awak­ened or any­thing like that, but if you think drugs are about any­thing oth­er than mak­ing life more hi­lar­i­ous, then you’ve missed the point.

see?