DOSE:

6 mg

oral

Melatonin

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

I've taken quite a bit of melatonin before, and I always thought it was generally fine. Usually helped me sleep, unless I had smoked marijuana (which keeps me awake for some absurd reason) or taken LSD, in which case I would just pop pill after pill to no effect. It didn't become obvious until last night that the melatonin might have been playing into my bad experiences.

I have no idea how this happened, because I've taken 6 mg before and slept just fine, with the wonderful bonus of incredibly clear dreams. These are worth mentioning here though, because I've been wanting to write an Erowid report on that for a while. The best example is a dream where I was on a train. As is usually the case with vehicles in my dreams, the train didn't really have walls, it was a moving platform (I put this down to the brain not really knowing how to simulate the experience of being inside a vehicle and having scenery move by at the same time). In any case, the train was passing through this exquisitely detailed city. I saw everything that passed by me, everything: I saw my friend in the street and many other faces, I even saw a menu board in a cafe and I could read the words.

This may not seem remarkable, but text is usually unreadable in dreams; if you pay attention to your own, you might notice this. Usually I am trying to read a book, and I keep opening and closing it and losing my place, or I just can't get a hold on the words, or I am 'reading' something, but it's more like a narration over a sort of movie-sequence.

So, the point is, I've seen higher doses melatonin have remarkable effects on my dreams: I've had dreams where I've felt the sun on my shoulders and the ground under my feet, where time behaves in a realistic manner, such that an hour felt like an hour, such that I remember standing in a kitchen waiting for someone, a kitchen so detailed that there were magnets on the fridge, and contemplating the architecture of the house I was in. Usually dreams are just sort of a wash and, thinking that melatonin has proved itself to be mostly harmless (sometimes it would leave me groggy in the morning, but there might have been no correlation there) I figured it would be a nice thing to experiment.

So, last night, I thought I'd take 6 mg for fun. I laid down, tried to sleep, and sort of slipped into a contemplation-driven half-waking dream about a sort of gay pride fair happening on my college campus. Suddenly, I snapped out of it. I laid around for a while feeling awake and slightly nauseated, my heart pounding painfully. I was like 'oh shit, I took too much' and contemplated taking a shower, figuring I'd be nearer the toilet if I needed to vomit. At some point, my soundly-sleeping boyfriend stole the blanket and I was just said 'FINE' and went and the shower.

Ultimately, I didn't throw up. The nausea may have been more anxiety-related than anything, or I just didn't really have any food in my stomach. Taking the melatonin on an empty stomach may have caused this nonsense. Well, I sat in the shower feeling too awake, watching the water drops on my skin, which seemed more luminescent than usual. I had the impression that my reality had become a waking dream, which was very probably invented by me, as I was feeling rather stressed out by the whole affair therefore wasn't really in my right mind.

I started to have a sort of heavy feeling in my limbs, and then I took a dump, hoping that that was what had kept me awake. I laid in bed, discovered I couldn't lie on my side as is my custom because it made my heart pound even more. Thinking about the possibility of not sleeping also made feel really anxious and nauseated and then, on top of that, my body was periodically flooded with a warm, pleasant sensation. This sensation was a lot like the feeling of being on MDA or MDMA, that lovely rolling sensation, but at the time it was really annoying because I just wanted to sleep.

I started to drift off, having those half-dreams again, but then that body sensation would grow and grow, reaching a peak that reminded me of being on DMT – that feeling of pure intensity that is so overwhelming you think you'll just explode with it. The first few times I let my eyes flip open, became discomfited and tried to lie in a different way, but that wasn't working, so I reasoned that next time I would force myself to keep my eyes closed and breathe through it. So the feeling had gone away, I laid there and felt relatively calm, my heart was slowed down. Then out of nowhere it rose up, my heart was pounding, I found it hard to breathe. Kept my eyes closed, breathed...and it diminished. Shortly after that I think I fell asleep, and didn't dream anything particularly interesting.

I realised, however, that things like this had happened while I was on a lot of melatonin while too stoned or on LSD, a similar cycle would take place, but I always attributed it solely to the other substances. The other substances were making it worse, but I think the melatonin really didn't help.

Today, the day after, has been crappy due to various circumstances, and I don't know if it was due to that, the lack of sleep, eating wayyyyy too much burrito or if it was some bizarre after effect of this melatonin experience, but I had some tremendous anxiety at around 9 this evening that felt a little like being on too much melatonin. My heart was pounding, couldn't breathe right, felt sick, and as it is with anxiety, I felt totally unreasonable and couldn't think clearly. It was terrible and annoying. Even if it wasn't the melatonin directly, the fact that I slept poorly definitely contributed to the way my day went. In any case, I'll be putting this substance on the shelf for now; apparently it's too unpredictable.

One thing worth mentioning is that I routinely have idiosyncratic reactions to drugs, such as visuals while stoned, exacerbated pain while stoned, chest pains on Adderall. It sort of looks I just can't do anything and have it do what I want it to, so I wouldn't really expect this sort of experience with melatonin to be a common one. Nonetheless, I thought it worth documenting.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 108218
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Apr 7, 2016	Views: 11,967
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Melatonin (94), Dreams (85) : General (1), Difficult Experiences (5), Alone (16)