DOSE:

237 ml

oral

DXM

(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

This was my second experience with DXM. I am currently drug-free after several years of frequent cannabis use and occasional use of LSD. My first DXM experience surprised me in that it was unlike both of those drugs. I'd thought tripping was the same no matter what substance I used. Now I can agree with others who say that DXM is unlike LSD or mushrooms, but it is still a rewarding experience.

I began at 10:00 PM on a Friday night alone in my home by drinking a 237mL bottle of generic OTC syrup in sips, several swallows at a time much as I would drink a cola beverage. I followed the syrup with an 8-fl-oz. bottle of pineapple orange banana juice, put on my high-quality headphones tuned to an Internet radio station playing live trance, and laid flat on my back on my bed in total darkness with no outside noise but the computer humming. I wasn't familiar enough with this method of taking DXM to avoid moving around, and around 11:30 PM I walked (no 'sea legs' yet) to the bathroom and vomited a small amount of what I guess was red dye. It was not too uncomfortable, and I went back to laying down ready to enjoy the trip.

The first noticeable effects came on around midnight. I didn't get the music euphoria that was the most prominent characteristic of my first DXM trip. This time it was a more intellectual connection to the music, that I believed I was identifying the structure behind the music (i.e., how the musicians were communicating with one another through their instruments while making the music). My thought at the time was that it was like an interactive world. Visuals were still relegated to the normal kind of music visualization I do, which is very non-hallucinogenic in nature, more linguistic constructions accompanied by or influenced by the music. Tracers were absent. I did have some pronounced dissociative vertigo, with feelings of being lifted or lowered into hell (this was a combination of real physical symptoms combined with temporary psychological hallucinations).

The character of the music seemed to change with the hallucinations. A few times I was paranoid to the point of near-panic. I found that I would be confronted with some 'lesson,' as if the music as a whole or the musician were trying to teach me something difficult, and that if I submitted I was always rewarded by a new turn in the music resembling an epiphany, with accompanying euphoria.

Open-eye visuals were confined almost exclusively to the sixth-hour and later mark (the whole experience, while lasting almost 36 hours in total, would really be best described as peaking at midnight and maintaining that plateau for about eight hours -- here I am considering the physical effects as the peak -- with noticeable and even powerful effects lasting into the next day). The most plentiful images were of static red text scrawled on the white walls of my bedroom (these took the forms of scribbled mathematical formulæ, intimately personal notes to myself, neurotic obsessions and reminders). These appeared later combined with more notes this time in black, including graphs, diagrams, some in Greek & Chinese letters (I don't read either of these languages).

Fully-formed three-dimensional visuals including a black cat and a white cat chasing one another around a chest of drawers, a fog machine situated in the right angle connecting my ceiling and a wall pumping thick gray fog at me from its reflecting point on an opposite wall, and in the late morning just before sunrise, more red text moving much like a stock ticker on the individual blades of my Venetian blinds.

The major psychological state was of a heavy egoless guilt and need to change the conditions of suffering in other parts of the world. Later when trying to sleep I had intense paranoiac hallucinations with a basis in Christian mythology. I was convinced that Satan was outside my window and that I had to defend myself by invoking Jesus's name.

I live with my parents while attending university; I believed my parents were leaving me to my doom in full knowledge of the 'evil' thing I had done in taking this drug and that I had to move out on my own. Pointlessness of life and career, suicidal thoughts, etc. I received what seemed to be telepathic messages from my mother, mostly rebuking me for various things but primarily for taking the DXM. I found that taking a shower helped immensely with the negative psychological baggage that dominated the coming-down portion of the trip (around 6:00-7:00 am), even serving as the setting for a final confrontation and triumph over 'Satan' through prayer.

I did experience the same decrease in motor functioning as before, with great difficulty speaking and walking. These effects and some others lasted until about 36 hours after the dose. The more notable effects aside from the affected speech and walking were lasting pupil dilation, great difficulty sleeping or even being comfortable in any position for an amount of time, dramatic time dilation (minutes seeming like hours) to the point that I thought someone had rewired my digital clock, an intense light from my monitor combined with lasting pseudo double vision that made computing too intimidating to be worth the effort, and finally a general feeling of speediness that evolved into a tremendous sense of energy, weightlessness, and overall well-being for the rest of the next day.

As a caveat: this experience I am reporting on now occurred about a week ago; I repeated the experiment with the same conditions and with the same brand & dose size, this time without the juice, last Friday (this being the 10th day after the experience I address in the body of this report). I did not experience any nausea or vomiting, and I attribute this to not drinking any juice, though it may be psychosomatic due to my confidence with DXM after the recent successful experience (I consider it a success despite the difficult psychological issues, in fact working through those problems is my main reason for using DXM).

None of the warping so present before was seen, but, curiously, the same red scribble re-appeared, along with some other 3D visuals. I was much less entertained by the visuals this time, even to laziness in the morning. I think I'll want to try controlling or interacting with the visuals more during my next trip. I also noted that reading my critical theory textbook was easy, even seeming to be enhanced, though very different from sober reading. And combination with nicotine proved beneficial.

Overall, I think of DXM as a teacher and tool that is more than just a 'kick,' and that is useful in tapping into repressed memories and overcoming past trauma. The physical intoxication is a welcome change from normal physiological functioning, and the psychedelic effects are interesting as an abstraction without considering their content. Though I took DXM for the first time at a friend's recommendation in response to a lack of available LSD, and was most interested in the visuals I had experienced only at threshhold levels in prior experiments with LSD and mushrooms, I found that this drug provides a rewarding, surprising experience, respecting its nature as a powerful psychedelic substance and analyzing it for benefits it may hold for me.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 31208
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 7, 2006	Views: 53,354
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