Second session, higher dose — what changed at 4g

My first session was 2g, at home, with a friend sober-sitting. It was significant — introspective, emotional, occasionally visually interesting. I felt I'd handled it well.

Three months later I prepared carefully for 4g. I had read extensively, set clear intentions, arranged an excellent sitter. I thought I understood what doubling the dose would mean. I did not.

The Difference Between 2g and 4g

At 2g, I was a person having an unusual experience. At 4g, around hour two, I stopped being a person in the way I understand that word. The familiar boundary between self and not-self didn't dissolve gradually — it became irrelevant, as if it had never been a real thing. What remained was experience without an experiencer.

I want to be careful not to mystify this. It wasn't peaceful or beautiful — it was profoundly disorienting. The ordinary cognitive scaffolding — the sense of time, of being a self with a history and a future, of having a body in a specific location — was gone. I knew, on some level that remained functional, that I had taken mushrooms and this would resolve. That knowledge was enough to prevent panic, but not enough to make the state comfortable.

What Surprised Me

The sitter, who is also a close friend, was exactly right in their approach — present, quiet, not intervening unless I reached for contact. What surprised me: I didn't reach for contact. At 2g I'd checked in with them periodically. At 4g, I was not present enough for that. This is worth knowing in advance: a high dose may mean longer periods of being somewhere entirely elsewhere.

The music became overwhelming around hour three and I needed it turned off — also something I hadn't anticipated. Silence served the peak better than even the most carefully curated playlist.

The Return

Coming back was gradual and took longer than 2g — the last residual effects weren't fully resolved until hour seven. I felt entirely fine physically. Emotionally, there was a quality I've seen described as "soft" — very gentle, slightly raw, not distressed but close to the surface of things.

What I understand now that I didn't before: the reports that say "the experience is not proportional to the dose" are true, but in a specific direction. Higher doses don't produce a more intense version of the lower-dose experience — they produce a qualitatively different kind of experience. 4g is not double-the-intensity 2g. It's a different territory entirely.

I would do it again. With more preparation for what "letting go of being a person" actually requires — which turns out to be more than intellectual understanding.