DOSE:	360 mg	oral	DXM	(liquid)
	50 mg	oral	Dimenhydrinate	(pill / tablet)
		smoked	Cannabis	(device)

BODY WEIGHT:

78 kg

I have practically no experience with hallucinogens; my only prior experience was taking 500 mg of dimenhydrinate 2 or 3 days prior to my DXM experience. I'm no newbie to drugs, however. I've had plenty of experience using alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis (yay Canada!), and I've been drinking tons of coffee every day for as long as I can remember. Hallucinogens in general both fascinate and terrify me.

Onto my set and setting, both of which were incredibly irresponsible and probably contributed a lot to why I had such an uncomfortable experience. My boyfriend of 17 months had broken up with me about 3 weeks prior. It was my first relationship and I loved him to death. I wanted to be with him forever, and the breakup was incredibly sudden for me. This put me into a deep depressive episode, and I started abusing drugs to cope. I first started with lots of weed, and when that wasn't enough I started mixing it with alcohol, which still wasn't enough for me. I had gotten some dimenhydrinate tablets to try to manage the nausea that developed from my poor mood, and when I found out it can be used recreationally, I took 10 50 mg pills, for a total of 500 mg. It was a pretty bland experience, and I wasn't satisfied. I bought some diphenhydramine instead, but the idea of taking a bigger dose scared me (as deliriants should). Not having access to more classical drugs like shrooms, LSD, or DMT, I started digging deeper and discovered DXM.

About a day later I had a day off from work, and I was bored out of my mind. I decided to pick up some cough syrup with DXM in it. Each 120 mL (4 fl oz) bottle contained a total of 360 mg of DXM, and I was planning on taking 600 mg, so I bought 2 bottles. Excitedly I drove back home, telling all my friends about the great time I was about to have. One of them thought it was cool and wished me luck, while another told me to be careful, which I kinda brushed off, assuring him that even if it went wrong, I wouldn't die or anything. I should have taken his words to heart a bit more, especially since I had made practically no preparations for the trip I was about to have.

Back at home, I took a test sip of the syrup, and it was absolutely repulsive. I knew I wouldn't be able to drink it straight, so I poured it into a mason jar and filled the rest with ginger ale. Ginger ale was chosen in a futile attempt to control the nausea I knew I was going to experience. I kept pouring more and more ginger ale into the jar as I drank it in an attempt to dilute it as much as possible. I think I probably drank about a liter of soda in total, which surely didn't help with the nausea. As an aside, I was doing all this on an empty stomach. I started taking the DXM at 1:00 PM, along with 1 of those dimenhydrinate tablets for the nausea, and 8 minutes after I started drinking my concoction I took a step outside for some weed in another futile attempt to control the nausea. I vaped maybe 0.05 g, as I didn't want the weed to interfere with the effects of the DXM, only control my nausea.

20 minutes after I started dosing, I felt like I was high. It was really similar to cannabis, only far more intense. I started feeling a tight feeling in my abdomen, which was the nausea starting to rear its ugly head. 7 minutes after this, at 1:27, I had to poop, so I did. It went well, although wiping was a very odd sensation. 3 minutes after this I started feeling shaky and restless. Time started to feel like it was moving slowly, and my vision was blurry and felt like it was delayed, as if it was taking my brain extra time to process the signals it was receiving from my eyes. Four minutes after I felt a bit cold, so I turned on my heater, which felt absolutely amazing on my cold legs. At 1:42 I felt nausea again, and at this point I had finally finished drinking the DXM/ Schweppes combo. Due to the awful texture and taste it had taken me 40 minutes to finish the drink, so I was sipping on it periodically the whole time. Four minutes later the nausea had gotten unbearable, and I was cold but still sweating buckets. I'm not sure if it was from the DXM or the nausea, but I felt a minor feeling of terror or impending doom, as if I had made a grave mistake. I have a really hard time dealing with nausea, and I figured I'd go take a bath and relax in the hot water.

I walked upstairs, where my mom asked me what I was up to. It was a bit hard to act sober, but I managed to talk to her and walk up the rest of the stairs just fine. I filled the bath, covered the window with a blanket to darken the room, and hopped in, browsing on my phone. I tried to close my eyes and relax in the bath, but after about half an hour I got bored and went back downstairs. It was now 2:20, 1 hour and 20 minutes after I started taking the DXM, and I had terrible stomach pain and felt like I had diarrhea. This is where the notes I was taking ended, as the discomfort was too intense for me to continue, and it's quite chilling for me to read them now. My previously detailed and clinical writing had turned into one or two word descriptions of my mood, and in the state I was in, I was unable to properly spell the word 'diarrhea.'

From this point on, I'm not sure about the timespan of things, however I remember my feelings in great detail. I was sitting at my desk writhing in discomfort from the nausea and cold sweats, trying to relax myself by listening to trip reports. In hindsight, this may not have been the best idea. Eventually I had to pee, so I stumbled back upstairs to the bathroom, but I was unsuccessful. I came back down to try to relax again, but I was overwhelmed by my high body temperature. Being in too much discomfort to move, I called for my mother to get me a fan, as I had read that it helps calm you down during a bad trip. She walked down the stairs to my room, which is in the finished section of our basement, and the sight must have horrified her. I was laying on the floor panting and sweating and was gasping out my words, and it was at this point I realized I couldn't handle this alone, so I came clean and told her that I had taken DXM, which she had never heard of. I felt incredibly guilty worrying her like this, and I tried to calm her down by explaining everything I had done and that, while this was going to be a terrible and frightening experience, I wasn't going to die and would be just fine in a few hours. My parents knew about my drug use for the most part, but abusing OTCs was something new for me that they weren't aware of, and they didn't know the extent of my depression.

She never did get me a fan, but in an attempt to calm her nerves she started frantically cleaning my room, which was a complete mess. Meanwhile, I kept talking to her and trying to reassure her I would be just fine once I got through this. After some time of this, I needed to throw up. I ran up the stairs to the bathroom and hugged the toilet, letting out everything that would come up. I wanted to get this damn drug out of me, although at this point I knew it was too late. After a few minutes of this I felt some mild relief, so I went back downstairs and sat at my desk while my mother continued to clean and talk to me. Throughout this portion of the experience I felt an incredible amount of remorse, and I was apologizing profusely to her. Eventually I had to vomit again; this time it ended up in my trash can. It was slightly pink from the syrup, and although I couldn't smell it, my mom says it was atrocious and she changed the bin liner.

I laid on the floor shivering for a while, drifting in and out of consciousness. My sense of time was completely gone, and I have no idea how long this went on for. I never did get any visuals, but during this time I remember dreaming a bit. They weren't very noteworthy, and I have no recollection of what they were about, but they just felt like normal dreams to me, as if I had just gone to bed while sober. This went on for a bit, until I eventually threw up again, although it was mostly just dry heaving. At this point, the worst was over and I knew it. I felt far from good, but I was on my way back from hell, and knowing this made me feel much better than I had previously. Throughout most of this my dad was in the bath. He's much more anti-drug than even my mother, and I was dreading him yelling at me and making this nightmare even worse. I felt I had already learned my lesson, and being berated would just make me feel like shit again. Luckily, that's not what happened. My parents sat on my bed, and we had a heart to heart talk about how I had been feeling, and why I ended up on this drug binge.

At this point I believe it was around 5:00. My nausea had gone away completely and I was so happy to be sobering up. I was able to walk, so my mom and I decided to take a walk down to the lake. It was chilly, but it was still a beautiful, sunny day, and I felt an overwhelming feeling of pure bliss, from the talk with my parents, from my surroundings and from the fact that I was no longer shivering and vomiting uncontrollably. This was the only enjoyable part of my DXM trip, and I decided it wasn't worth the misery that preceded it.

When we got back from the walk, I was feeling nauseous again. Throughout this, I wasn't sure if I was going through caffeine or nicotine withdrawal, but I had absolutely no interest in putting any other drugs in my body, so I figured that was just how it was gonna be. My appetite was completely gone from the DXM, but I hadn't eaten anything that day. I tried eating bread, but the first bite made me gag and sent me straight to the bathroom for another dry heaving episode, after which I laid on the cold tile floor for a few minutes until I got cold. I put on a sweatshirt and sat on the couch, still determined to eat something. A cup of applesauce went down just fine, and I felt satisfied having eaten.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but when I tried to sleep, the damn nausea showed up again. My mother was kind enough to lay in bed with me, which helped. I did eventually manage to sleep, although not very well. I woke up multiple times throughout the night, and when I finally woke up in the morning, I still felt nausea. I had work later that day (closing shift, I didn't go in until 2:00 PM), and I was incredibly anxious that I'd still be feeling like garbage at work and wouldn't be able to handle it. I considered calling in sick, but decided it would be better to go to work so I could stay busy and distract myself from how bad I still felt. By noon, my parents went off to their own jobs, leaving me with two hours to kill. My anxiety was getting worse, and it was only 1:00, so I decided I'd just go to work early and walk around the store until my shift started. It's about a half hour drive, which went pretty well. Focusing on driving made the anxiety only a mild background noise in my head.

I walked into work and went down to my department to chat with my coworkers, who were surprised to see me so early.
Still having about half an hour to kill, I walked across the street to for a hot chocolate. We're not supposed to clock in more than 5 minutes later, but when I got back I figured I'd just work off the clock for 20 minutes so I didn't lose my mind. My shift went well for the most part, and I felt myself slowly getting better throughout the day. It was otherwise uneventful.

Stay safe and have fun, psychonauts!

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 113773
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Feb 26, 2025	Views: Not Supported
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DXM (22), Dimenhydrinate (17) : Alone (16), Hangover / Days After (46), Depression (15), Families (41), Health Problems (27), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3), First Times (2), General (1)