His Discord bio “Pioneering the evolution of intelligence through pharmacological means.”
In his Discord posts he documented his experience on TBG in almost real-time. The journey started with apparent panic: “200mg tabernanthalog was too much I think … Idk why everyone was saying it needed to be like 700mg … almost just threw up … I’m mildly disoriented at this dose.”
“Yeah I don’t like tabernanthalog”, he exclaimed to the channel, “at least not at 200mg”. Responding to questions, he added: “it’s psychoactive yes”, and explained that he was experiencing “a lot of peripheral side effects” such as “nausea, dizziness”. No hallucinations, though.
“Yeah 200mg tabernanthalog is a dose that will put you in the bed”, he went on. “I feel like I just unintentionally made my day all about tabernanthalog”
A few hours later, Sirsadalot returned with some more sober reflections. Tabernanthalog is “very potent and psychoactive”, he said, adding that “it feels a lot like other psychedelics”. “It’s not a crazy trip … but it’s an altered state of mind and sensation”. “So far it feels like shrooms minus the visuals, also some similarity to DXM”.
“Tabernanthalog is an interesting nootropic”, he proclaimed. “ I feel like some abilities may be impaired, but the ability to empathize and conceptualize is enhanced.”
At what appears to be around seven hours post-ingestion, Sirsadalot updates the group. “Tabernanthalog is fucking awesome”, he says, appearing to become more emphatic about the substance with every hour that passes. “As long as you didn’t have something else planned for the day”, he then qualifies, “because I’ve been so high I haven’t been able to do anything but text on my phone”.
He claims that he staved off the early anxiety, nausea and dizziness with Tropisetron, after which “everything got better” and it “became more therapeutic”.
“It increases empathy”, he added, speculating clumsily that “this may be good for autistic kids”.
Summing up the experience, he said:
“I was underwhelmed by the tabernanthalog anecdotes, with most people saying 500-1000mg was an active dose. So I did 200mg expecting a mild nootropic effect. In reality, I have been in a hypnotic, introspective, and overall altered head space even with an accompanying body high.”
As mentioned above, Sirsadalot spoke with me about this experience. I first sought to understand how he acquired the TBG and how he was confident in its chemical fidelity. “I received it from a friend who works with labs”, he told me. “He showed me the testing.” That was around a year ago, he said, adding that TBG has been hard to come by for quite some time since then.
I wondered why Sirsadalot, who told me he doesn’t normally like psychedelics, was interested in TBG. “I wanted to take it for the novel experience”, he told me, explaining that he tried it “only on 2 occasions”.
He told me that when he took the ‘proper’ dose of 200mg (“a guess based on the rodent doses”, he added when I asked him how he arrived at this) he felt nauseous and dizzy along with some come-up anxiety, as described above. I asked him to explain how TBG felt. While what he told me largely matches his messages in the chat server, I have reproduced some of his comments here:
“… when it kicked in I felt the urge to lay in bed, almost like a feeling of physical laziness but my mind was very active. It amplified the sensation of music, and made it special. Everything had a deeper layer of thinking, almost like I had unlocked a childish part of my mind that I had long forgotten of. I was mesmerized, talking to people felt amazing, my empathy was enhanced greatly. It was very physically euphoric and I felt the sensation of my body on the sheets, like a warm hug. It lasted for a very long time, close to 9 hours. I also commonly get this iron-y/ saline taste (surely a hallucination) from DXM, and I experienced it with TBG as well […] All in all, it felt like a weak psychedelic and serotonin releasing agent. Physically euphoric and sedating, mentally stimulating and welcoming. I talked for hours with people, completely stable yet altered in a unique way.”
I asked him if he had tried ibogaine. He hasn’t, and doesn’t plan on it. “In all honesty, I haven’t used drugs recreationally in probably 6 months. In general I stick to cognition enhancement, general health and other related things.”
(Note: the incongruence of the term ‘trip report’ for so-called non-hallucinogenic psychedelics is not lost on me. But, in at least one case a trip was certainly involved: a trip to the bathroom. “TBG makes u shit and fart violently”, said one chat server member in April 2023.)