Erowid Canvas Tote/Shopping Bag
This reusable "Ecobag" is made of 100% recycled mid-weight
(10 oz) cotton canvas, printed with the Erowid logo.
Donate now and receive yours!
Bulimic With a DPH Problem
Diphenhydramine & Caffeine
by NotT
Citation:   NotT. "Bulimic With a DPH Problem: An Experience with Diphenhydramine & Caffeine (exp115977)". Erowid.org. Jan 4, 2022. erowid.org/exp/115977

 
DOSE:
90 mg oral Caffeine (edible / food)
  800 mg oral Diphenhydramine (pill / tablet)
BODY WEIGHT: 150 lb
Preface and a note on my history with dph:

This trip was originally meant to be a 1.3 gram trip, which would have been my largest trip in a long time, and the largest I had ever done second only to the time I took 1.5 grams. I would like to document the 1.5 gram trip but cannot remember enough of it other than “I drove and didn’t get pulled over, crash, or die”. My tolerance was higher back then, about one year before this dose.

Anyway, an online friend of mine (who also abuses dph, more frequently than me and quite often in higher doses, although not much higher) talked me down from a 1.3 gram trip because I had expressed to him that I planned to go in public on whatever dose of dph I was taking because I had an event I was considering going to. He knew he wasn’t going to talk me down from taking it at all, and I appreciate the dose he did talk me down to, because if I really did have a seizure that night I don’t know how my body would have reacted to 1.3 g on that particular day. However, he weighs about 30 lbs more than me and has a much higher tolerance to dph, and I think he gravely underestimated my ability to tolerate dph. I ended up calling off the whole idea of going to the event at around 4 pm. (It was scheduled for 7 pm. By then, frankly, I was probably sober enough that I could have gone without being noticed, but I didn’t feel like it.) I had drank a grande Frappuccino from Starbucks not too long before dosing, and only include it because, well, honestly I can’t think of what other variable could possibly have caused me to have a seizure on a little over half the dose that I have taken without experiencing any (known) seizures. Nobody in my personal life knows that I at one point abused dph very regularly
Nobody in my personal life knows that I at one point abused dph very regularly
and I have never had a trip sitter to confirm that I have or have not had previous seizures, or to confirm that this experience was indeed a seizure, though a few people online have told me that it sounds like it could have been one. Regardless, it was definitely “scarier” than my other dph trips, and I have a lot of dph trips to compare to, and mine aren’t usually even particularly nightmarish.

---Beginning the trip: 11:41-1:40 pm

I took the dose at 11:41 pm. I got this from a timestamp on a message I sent to the person who talked me down from the larger dose. It read: “32 in one gulp kek.” I would do this by putting all 32 pills into the cap of the bottle and then taking it with water almost as if it were a shot of vodka.

I was already getting visual distortions within an hour of dosing, not too long after I got back to my room after going out and eating lunch (for the record: I walked. I’m not as bad with delusions of sobriety as I used to be). The comeup usually takes longer for me, more like an hour to even start feeling effects, 2-3 for visuals. Sometimes on that dose, I don’t even get visuals or remember getting visuals. It began, as usual, with a smokey or hazy distortion appearing over everything, particularly visible on blank surfaces like walls or cleared off desks.The floor of the bathroom was turning red, redder and redder with every heartbeat (it already had a red tint to it when not on dph). It felt like I could see the blood behind my eyes turning the floor red. Somewhere around 1 pm I started getting these spasms that were in line with my heartbeat/skipped heartbeats. These are typical for me on dph but continued to grow worse and worse as time went on. It was still within the range of what my delusional self perceived as normal, though. I remember thinking from the start though that this was going to be a very strong trip, I knew that something was somehow off. I began to have hallucinations mostly consisting of spiders and solid black rectangular bugs.

---1:40-3 pm: Possible seizure and blackout
Shortly before what I believe was the blackout, my convulsions were so bad that my feet were hitting the floor up and down while my upper body and arms convulsed/twitched. They were only this bad for about 10-20 seconds I believe before I blacked out. I don’t remember really feeling any fear as I believe it would take a lot of physical pain for me to be truly afraid in that state. The only thing that really bothered me were the chest pains. However they had been bad enough that I was unable to ignore them and do other things for about one minute before the blackout. However, Benadryl does distort my sense of time, so this minute could have been shorter or longer, likely shorter because for me Benadryl makes time pass very slowly.

I have never noticed a blackout period on dph before, though I’ve been told by others that I most likely was having them if I was taking doses like 900 mg and not recalling hallucinations, and I’ll admit I do some things I don’t remember doing once sober, but never have I had such a long chunk of time vanish completely. This particular time I do believe I blacked out sometime between 1:40 pm and 3 pm. However nothing in my room was messed up and when I began remembering things again I was in my chair where I blacked out. I remember one brief period of the blackout where I looked at the clock and it said 2:00 pm and I thought it was 2 am until I looked outside and it was daylight. Frankly, it’s possible that I may have simply fallen asleep for an hour, though I would think that if that were true I would have stayed asleep for much longer considering that I was on 800 mg of Benadryl. Sometimes hard to get to sleep, but once I’m out I’m out, easily for 12 hours at times.

--After The Blackout

I determined that I regained consciousness around 3 pm from a few messages I sent to people. Here is one that I sent at 3:18 pm on a mobile phone:

“Honeestly ainthink ainblwkeeboutdt eoleeher beteeennthemnbkikkinhibc ass i. She did itbevey day inncollege s that diesn:tnmskr”

I switched to my computer quickly after realizing that this was almost entirely gibberish, and the messages I sent progressively made more sense from there on out pretty quickly. By 7 pm, I felt sober enough to take a college quiz, which I subsequently failed because I was, in fact, not sober enough. From here on out it was a typical dph experience and I felt pretty sober by 10 pm, but continued to have some hallucinations and visuals for the rest of the night and am still having a few occasional hallucinations as I type the next day. Hallucinations during this part of the trip included, again, spiders, a “hatmen” -esque figure which really just look more like a shadow on my wall (the bottom portion looked like that of a ghost, not human legs) I can’t remember what time I went to bed but I do know that I woke up at roughly 7:30 am. To estimate when I went to bed my best guess would be around 1-2 am.

---Strange experience of unknown time during trip, slight trigger warning for eating disorders:

One more really strange thing about this trip for me was that I tried to throw up something I hadn't actually ate because I am bulimic. I began freaking out when very little came up, but the reality is that's really all there was because all I had that day was a grande caramel frappuccino and a meal that wasn't super small but was my only meal that day. I thought I had eaten an entire pizza that night and not thrown it up. (Which, I had said screw it and ordered a pizza the day before, but I did end up purging what I ate of it.) I remember being so confused because I was so sure I had just consumed an entire pizza that it wasn't even a question for me. I ended up being really pissed at myself when I got hungry around 5 pm because "I LITERALLY JUST ATE A WHOLE PIZZA HOW AM I HUNGRY" when in reality, I had just thrown up when I was probably already under my tdee of calories. Oddly enough developing a habit of taking otc drugs has caused me to gain weight because I have (or had, at least) a habit of binge-eating on the come up, and then having the desire to get high/not sober overpower the desire to purge, because if I were to purge, I would not get high/as high. This of course does not happen super frequently or I would be 200 lbs, but it has caused me to gain about 20 lbs (to my current weight of 150) in addition to a summer where I had no access to a scale.

---Conclusion:

This trip was the first trip during which I was awake. (On other trips I typically voluntarily went to bed before the whole trip was over.) It was also one of the worst trips, physical-sensation wise, not mentally. My heart pains continued well into the next day, including a “squish” sound in my brain during some heartbeats.
My heart pains continued well into the next day, including a “squish” sound in my brain during some heartbeats.
This “squish” sound is common after I take high doses of dph, and coincides with my heartbeat. If you imagine that the valves of your heart are failing and the blood vessels in your brain have holes, this is what the “squish” sounds like. It’s somewhat of a mystery to me how I have never decided to stop doing dph entirely based on “the squish sound” alone. I didn’t get many “jerks” after this trip, which I describe as “your legs collapsing beneath you for half a second” and commonly occurs during a trip and as an after effect, to the extent that I did not drive the day after this trip because I was afraid of the jerks potentially messing up my driving.

To finish off this trip report, I want to say that I 100% believe that dph is only legal because the high is generally so bad that most people will try it once, maybe twice, maybe even 3 times, and then never touch it again. The same goes for other deliriants such as datura. If this drug were as dangerous as it is but as pleasurable as weed or as addictive as a drug like cocaine or heroin it would be very quickly banned or at least moved behind the counter. I have been using dph (on and off, sometimes with a month or more or break, sometimes once every other day or even daily) since I was 18 and I feel like I am now beginning to notice slight amounts of brain damage from it, particularly some of the larger doses I’ve taken.

Exp Year: 2021ExpID: 115977
Gender: Female 
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Jan 4, 2022Views: 2,059
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Caffeine (11), Diphenhydramine (109) : Alone (16), Addiction & Habituation (10), Health Problems (27), Combinations (3), General (1)

COPYRIGHTS: All reports copyright Erowid.
No AI Training use allowed without written permission.
TERMS OF USE: By accessing this page, you agree not to download, analyze, distill, reuse, digest, or feed into any AI-type system the report data without first contacting Erowid Center and receiving written permission.

Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.


Experience Vaults Index Full List of Substances Search Submit Report User Settings About Main Psychoactive Vaults