Erowid - Honest Global Drug Information
We're an educational non-profit working to provide a balanced, honest look at
psychoactive drugs and drug use--to reduce harms, improve benefits, & support
reasonable policies. This work is made possible by $10, $50, & $100 donations.
Slightly Delirious
Scopolamine
Citation:   TBjorn. "Slightly Delirious: An Experience with Scopolamine (exp27661)". Erowid.org. Feb 24, 2007. erowid.org/exp/27661

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
3.0 mg oral Scopolamine (pill / tablet)
  T+ 1:30 3.0 mg oral Scopolamine (pill / tablet)
BODY WEIGHT: 68 kg
In my research of OTC highs, the two main ones that stuck out were dextromethorphan and dimenhydrinate. I have used DXM five times now and I have found the trips quite insightful. The physical discomfort caused by gulping down a whole bottle of cough syrup, however, adds a major mental obstacle to using this drug, and since where I live there don't seem to be any DXM containing tablets, I was eager to try something else.

I checked several pharmacies in my area, and all they had for motion sickness were hyoscine hydrobromide tablets. I went home and researched the recreational use of hyoscine and found that it is a synonym of scopolamine. I was unable to find much information about doses beyond what is used to treat motion sickness, and found no-one else's experiences of using it in high doses, except for reports that it is used as some sort of 'truth serum', and could cause hallucinations. I made the assumption that it would be similar to dimenhydrinate in its effect, so I went back out and bought two boxes of 10. The pills were chewable and each has 0.3 mg of hyoscine hbr.

On my way home (walking) I started chewing up the first box of pills. ~10 minutes later, still walking, I noticed some minor perceptual changes, but I find they are rather hard to describe. For instance, my field of vision seemed more vast, and I realised the extent to which the ground beneath me sprawled in every direction. When I reached home, I fumbled more than usual with the keys to get inside, and then had a shower.

After the shower it was about T+0:40 (mid afternoon) since I had taken the tablets, but I had taken them gradually so the onset was more gradual. I sat on the couch for a while with my cat and felt generally pretty mellow and pleasant. My vision gradually became quite blurred, and I constantly lost track of what I was thinking about. Standing back up to go to the kitchen, I realised how severely distorted my spatial perceptions were.

While I thought I was walking perfectly straight, I bumped into couches, tables, stairs, walls, etc. and when I tried to pour myself a glass of water, I dropped the glass, spilling all over the floor. For this reason, I strongly warn against using this drug if you have to do ANYTHING which requires motor skills. I eventually got some water to temporarily quench the cottonmouth thirst it was causing, and returned to the couch. By that time (~T+1:30) the effects were seeming to have plateued, but I was yet to have any hallucinations and the loss of motor skills and blurred vision was much lower than the ~600 mg doses of DXM I have experimented with previously.

I had originally bought the second box of tablets for use on another day, but I decided to see if there was anything more to this experience, so I ate the second box of chewable tablets. This should have brought me to ~6mg of scopolamine in my system. I felt dragged down by gravity and fell in and out of lucid dreaming sleep for some time. My perception of time by this point was poor, and my eyes were so blurred I was unable to read any digital clocks or written text.

I went back to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea, to wash the nasty sugary taste of the tablets out of my mouth and to stay awake. While standing waiting for the kettle to boil, absent mindedly openned the fridge and stared inside. I heard the voices of my parents standing near me talking about something, the way they often do. This seemed perfectly normal to me, and when they asked me a question (I can't remember any specifics) I turned around, only to find they weren't there.

I turned back to the fridge, and they were behind me again, and I could picture them perfectly in my head. I whipped around and poked at where they were in my mind with my fingers, making the hallucination vanish. I retired to my room, spilling some of the hot tea on my hand, and sat down. I sipped the tea and picked up a book I was reading earlier. The text of the book was unreadable, no matter how much I tried to strain my eyes. With DXM it is usually possible through extreme concentration to focus on something, but this is not the case with scopolamine. For some reason, the thought occurred to me that I'd be able to read the book better if I closed my eyes.

Upon closing my eyes, I realised that I could see the whole room much more clearly, AND I could actually read the text of the book. I read several paragraphs of the book, with my eyes closed, and realised that this was all random stuff my brain was coming up with, but the actual text still made sense to me at the time. I looked around the room with my eyes closed and could see everything perfectly. One of my friends was sitting on my bed, and talking to me, and another one of my friends who was also in the room. I tried to join the conversation but only managed to croak a few nonsensical words, and then I openned my eyes and realised that I was talking to nobody, and that the perception of the room had shifted considerably in the closed eye world from how it actually appeared with my eyes open.

This continued for what can roughly be described as an hour; me falling into a lucid dreaming state and communicating with people I very much thought were real, and then openning my eyes and laughing at myself for having been talking to no-one. If there was anything really profound here, I don't remember it, but in hindsight the ability to communicate with characters in your own mind could be very insightful.

At what I seem to recall as being 1900 (~T+4:00), I went back to the kitchen and microwaved myself something to eat. I wasn't at all hungry, but I knew it would be best to eat something. While sitting at the dinner table, I listened to conversations of many people on the table, and croaked my embarrasingly slurred replies. Every time I said something, I looked up to make sure everyone had heard it ok, if they needed it reapeated, but I realised again that I was just talking to myself. The food tasted absolutely awful, but I choked it all down. Perhaps through our lives we learn to like things that actually taste quite bad, and only drugs can remove our preconceptions of taste?

I frequently had to use the bathroom, because of the amount I was drinking. While sitting on the toilet, I saw what looked like black goo coming out from the edge of the tiled floor. I was absolutely fascinated by it and it seemed to be moving closer towards me. I gingerly reached a finger towards it and poked it, only to discover that it was the shadow cast by the towel rack.

I stared down at my shoes, one of which seemed to be shrinking at a constant rate. It seemed to stop after touching it, but I was thoroughly convinced my foot was shrinking, and made up some irrational explanation to why this was happening in my mind. Then I realised that it was the shadow created by my shoe that made the edges fuzzy, for lack of a better word, and all shadows seemed to behave in this growing or shrinking way.

My memory following this is patchy at best, but I remember sitting down, close-eye reading, talking to phantoms and being in strange places of my memory for a while longer. The scopolamine had made me very tired, so I crashed in my bed and slept the clock around.

It is now the next day, and the effects have almost completely subsided. I'm having a little trouble focussing on things, but it's not too bad and seems to be going away. My skin was flushed quite red (as a beet) during the whole experience, and my mouth was dry (as a bone) the whole time, but no-where near as dry as marijuana.

I think I gained a lot from the experience, perhaps given an insight on what it is like for people who 'hear voices' and have delusions. I'll probably try it again some time, but I'm certainly not rushing out to do it again. This is definitely not a party drug, more of an experimental drug for fellow psychonauts. I'm sure many people won't like it, as it did cause considerable physical discomfort, and I have a dull ache all over my body today, as well as a very fragmented memory of yesterday. From what I've read it seems to have had a similar (but lessened?) effect than dimenhydinate, and intend to try that next to make a contrast.

Exp Year: 2003ExpID: 27661
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 24, 2007Views: 58,552
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Scopolamine (134) : Alone (16), Entities / Beings (37), Health Problems (27), First Times (2), 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