DOSE:	715 mg	oral	DXM
	48 mg	oral	Chlorpheniramine Maleate	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

79.5 kg

[Erowid Note: Most Coricidin contains CPM (Chlorpheniramine Maleate) which can be dangerous in high doses. See DXM Brand Warnings for more info.]

Introduction

Last night was my first experience on the third plateau of DXM. Previous to this experience, I have tripped on DXM maybe 30 times, all in the first and second plateau ranges. Most have been recreational trips, though a few high second plateau experiences were very dissasociative, leading me into worlds that I had never seen before, and forcing me to open myself to these new realms. Those few experiences are the main things that prepared me for the third plateau. It was a sense of opening up to a very strange and new world that could be anything, good or bad, and allowing this new reality to take over my body completely.

My roommate was going to be on a low second plateau trip, and he would be watching me while I pushed away from reality into the third plateau. He is experienced with the second plateau, and I felt that I was experienced enough with DXM that it wouldn’t be a problem for him to dose and watch over me as well. Another friend, Mouse, was doing DXM for her first time.

Part One: Last Hours with Reality

Mouse dosed first. She was small (120 lbs), and only took 1/6 of a 8oz bottle of Tussin (118.5mg) and 4 Coricidin pills (120 mg. And yes, I am fully aware of the bad things that happen at high doses and regular use on these.

My roommate dosed second, taking a low second plateau dose of 4mg/kg, as he would be watching me and Mouse. I normally keep a kitchen timer around for when I am doing DXM. I start it counting up from 0 when I dose, so that way I can always tell how long into the trip it has been. It is very handy, as time sometimes can be hard to keep track of otherwise. We hadn't remembered to start the timer for Mouse's dose, but we started it when my roommate dosed, perhaps 10 minutes later.

I went outside of my 6th floor room to the balcony and meditated upon my decision to take on the third plateau for about thirty minutes. It wasn’t as much meditating, as letting the thought go through my mind, and set in. I wanted to be fully aware that I was taking a dive into unfamiliar waters, and I was prepared to do it. I watched the world from the balcony, and leaned out over the edge. I let the feeling of complete openness and space fill my mind. I thought about the other DXM experiences I have had and the feeling of plunging head first into the deep, dark world of unfamiliarity that I had seen at high second plateau. Even though this would be a completely different experience, the feeling of being thrown into a strange place is the same.

I went back into my dorm after thinking. Mouse has a fast metabolism, and her trip was already beginning. She was getting a head trip, but not much sensory change (e.g.: change in touch sensory, etc.). She described lights being brighter than normal (from pupil dilation) and there being a dark outline around bright things (a significant increase in image contrast is one of the things I have noted before about DXM).

I took the first step of my dose, which was half of the 8oz bottle of Tussin. I chased it with water, rinsed my mouth out and then got a Starburst hard candy for the taste. About five minutes later, I took the second step of my dose, 12 Coricidin pills (360mg. I took as much of my dose in cough syrup form as I can keep down without puking, to keep down the amount of Coricidin that I would take. I know it is still a lot, and if I did that amount often. This put me at 715mg of DXM. I weigh 79.5 kg (175 lbs), so this put me right on 9mg/kg.

After a while, perhaps 15 minutes, Mouse began to get huge sensory changes. Her sense of touch began to be greatly increased, as happens on DXM, and she began to get the music euphoria. At the time I put on some Sasha K. We stepped just outside of our room on the balcony. Mouse wanted to dance with A. He wasn’t tripping yet, so he wasn't really in the mood to dance. Mouse danced to the music though. She looked so happy and free on the balcony. She didn’t have the Robo-movements yet and looked pretty normal other than the fact that she was dancing on the balcony.

We did a few things while Mouse was tripping and my A (my roommate) was still waiting for his dose to kick in. A and Mouse had gone off to watch the full moon at one point, and returned shortly thereafter. We wandered between the dorm, and the balcony just outside (our dorm is a renovated motel; small rooms with a bathroom and a balcony/hallway outside). We got Mouse to lie on the bed and we ran our hands and fingers down her back and arms and head. At this stage, there is nothing that feels better than a full overload of touch sensory input.

We took a dry, small tipped paintbrush and traced invisible patterns on her forehead. The brush swirled around drawing circles that would flow into her mindscapes that she saw behind her closed eyes. Mouse also explored some of her hallucinations, which were very interesting to hear about. Various imagery that she told us about included pyramids in Egypt, fish in a fishbowl, and a house that transformed, and became a city (I have had cityscape hallucinations before) and panned out into space where a huge bomb was hovering over the planet. Her hallucinations were much more object oriented than mine have been.

At this point, A still wasn't feeling his trip. It had been around an hour since he had dosed. I reminded him that it can take longer, and we decided to wait for it to kick in rather than redose. Mouse wanted to redose and go higher than she was. She was doing really well at low second plateau, so I gave her some more Coricedin. I wasn't paying all that much attention to how much I said she could take, and she is so small, that what looks like a small dose booster for me, is a big jump for her (More on this later). She took four more pills (120mg).

After a while, A began to feel his threshold effects, and Mouse's booster dose hadn’t kicked in yet. Eventually, we decided to go down to the pool on the ground floor to relax. I have read about people who have gone swimming at recreational doses and have said that it is the most awesome experience. I have also read about people drowning very easily, so I made sure to keep an eye on everything that happened. At this point, Mouse was tripping on a low second plateau, A was just starting to get the second plateau effects. We went to Mouse's dorm to let her change into her swimsuit. For some reason, we decided it would be a good idea to take the outside stairs rather than the elevator. Mouse commented on how she was walking pretty fast, but still wasn’t keeping up with us. She was going really slow. When we got to the pool, we didn't go swimming, but sat on the edge with our legs dipping into the water. We watched the reflections ripple and move on the water surface, and watched the light that hit the bottom of the pool morph into various shapes. It was really relaxing.

If I were to guess, it took me roughly one hour and forty-five minutes to two hours to start to feel the effects of my dose. When we left the pool, I was beginning to get some of the signals that my trip could start soon. The threshold effects were not even apparent, but I was getting all of the indicators that they would show up soon. I knew that I would be into my trip within forty minutes. We left the poolside just as Mouse's booster dose kicked in. She was becoming more disassociated and we needed to find her a bed to lie down on. After going up a set of stairs to the second floor, we sat her down on a bench and helped her get a shirt on. She was just about completely immobilized. She kept on falling forward while she was sitting, and drifting into the disassociative hallucinations.

She wanted to know where her room keys were (she had given them to me for safekeeping) and where the things she brought with her were. We assured her that we had her things and that everything was all taken care of for her. We constantly let her know where we were in the building, and where we were going, and things like that to help her keep her familiarity to what was going on. This calmed her a lot.

We took her to the elevator and pushed the button for the floor my room is on. The elevator door closed. When it opened, we were at the first floor to pick up some other kids who had called the elevator before we had. We thought it was going to be the sixth floor where we could get out. Mouse tried to leave the elevator and we had to explain that we were on the first floor and how we were going to the sixth soon. One of our friends, Angel got on the elevator, but I wouldn’t let any of the other people on. We didn't need all those people around Mouse right then. Angel was sort of confused about the whole thing, but we let her know what was going on and that Mouse was ok, just in a very different world right now.

While we walked to our room, Mouse had to lean on my roommate because mobility was definitely something she wasn't going to be able to attain on her own. We got to the room, and put her on my roomate's bed. She stayed there for about twenty or thirty minutes and entered and explored the DXM-induced worlds her imagination created behind her eyelids. A was tripping pretty well at this point. It was around 10:30pm, and room checks (we have a curfew, as we are all minors at the program I am attending) would be happening anywhere from 11:00 to midnight, so we needed to get Mouse to her room. We helped Mouse walk to her room, which basically consisted of her leaning on A and somewhat walking, though with a lot of support.

Mouse's roomate was in the room, and we explained what Mouse was on. Her roomate had heard of robo-tripping before, but the explanation of her knowledge of its effects was basically: 'I had a friend who drank a bottle of cough syrup before and she said that was a huge mistake that she would never do again.'. But she was understanding to the extent that Mouse was pretty disoriented right now, and needed for someone to be there and sit her, as well as let the people who are doing room checks know that she is 'very tired'.

We went back up to our room on the sixth floor after dropping Mouse off. It was nearing two hours since I had dosed, and the signals were strong. I was feeling the threshold effects of a really low dose begin to take hold, and I was ready to enter third plateau. I started some Enya playing on my computer to keep me calmed, and my mood was very positive. It was almost inviting the experience to myself, allowing my mind to be open to whatever came my way. I got onto my bed and curled up into a fetal position. It made me feel really secure and ready to experience anything.

Over the next several minutes I felt myself passing through the music euphoria and body effects that I have experienced on first and second plateaus. They were familiar, but not anything I have felt *exactly* before. It was like feeling first and second plateaus going by very fast, and with a different feel than normal. I knew that this was what it felt like to be on your way to third plateau. I was experiencing what I was finally ready to do. I had read about third plateau experiences and I was ready to unlock my own mind and see what I had in store for myself at this level.

I closed my eyes for a minute or two, and felt the imagery that I saw start to move like it does at second plateau. Shapes began to pulse in greytones, and morph like Winamp visualizations. It was familiar, but like everything else that felt like previous experiences, it was tinted with the feel of something different. I felt, slowly at first, and then more consciously, my mind being pulled towards its destination: third plateau. I felt the space in my mindscape expanding at a great rate. Different forces felt like they were changing, preparing to become manifest to me.

I opened my eyes. I was ready for the experience. I took a last look at reality so I could keep it in the back of my mind in case I should need to hold onto it when I have nothing but what is in my mind left to hold onto. I set some Enya (Good relaxing melodic music) playing on my computer, and went back to my bed to close my eyes for the last time for the next several hours.

Part Two: Third Plateau

The second plateau hallucinations that I have had before this held a strong resemblance to what happened when I shut my eyes. It all felt like a second plateau experience (I was probably passing second plateau, but passing it and being on it feel very different). The difference from what was normal seemed to gradually increase, sending my mind a further from familiar ground a little bit at a time. I let go of the familiar and embraced the unfamiliar.

At one point, the second plateau hallucination (I am using this word loosely, it is more of a perceptual world of delusion, hallucination is just what I term it) shifted as it often does (rarely will my second plateau experiences stay the same, they shift from time to time, into random imagery and different places and settings). This time, however, it shifted to a solid black nothingness. And it began to lighten. It happened within the time that it felt like five seconds could have passed in. It got brighter, but not to a pure white, before it phased out and I shifted into third plateau. The best description of the light was the way you can tell something is really bright through shut eyelids. Like having your eyes shut, but pointed towards the sun. I believe this is one aspect of the transitional phase that I have read about between second and third.

After the final shift, my mind began to expand. The universe in my imagination propelled its boundaries outward until they had vanished from my consciousness. I saw black nothingness all around me. It was an empty black nothingness, not the nothingness I had felt with the light, but a very vacant universe.

During this time, I was conscious of my thoughts. I was thinking very clearly. I could recall things from the outside world and past memories. I still heard and could comprehend everything that I heard from the outside. I heard the plumbing in the bathroom behind the wall next to my head. I heard the music, and it felt nice and accepted. It didn't fill my body and flow through it as it does at lower levels, but it was welcome and definitely affected my mind.

I knew my eyes must remain closed to keep within this altered world. I called out to my roomate in a very quiet voice. At first it was just my mouth moving with little sound coming out. I knew he wouldn't hear that and called again in a louder voice. He came over because he couldn't hear what I was saying. I asked him to change the music that was playing on the computer to Crystal Method. I had to recall which buttons on Winamp to click to add new files (With the skin, you just have to know which buttons to click. Its different trying to explain to someone who doesn't use computers much.). I eventually had him go through the folders and drag-and-drop the files into the playlist. I had him turn the volume up.

Crystal Method was booming through the room from my Klipshe speakers. It wasn't unpleasantly loud at all. It was definately sufficient to assist my experience. I listened to Crystal Method's 'Trip Like I Do' and all of its electronic sounds and mixes as if the sound source was very far away. On lower trips, the sound always seems to fill me, but this felt exactly the opposite. The world I was in was still vacant, but I could hear the loud music as if it were not part of the world at all.

I told my roommate to take all of the other songs off of the playlist and leave just 'Trip Like I Do' and 'Busy Child' because those were the two I was most familiar with (I had just downloaded the songs recently, and had been listening to them a lot). After a while, my roomate turned down the music and put Enigma on ('The Screen Behind the Mirror', very, very good tripping music, by the way. Sort of a Jungle, dance feel, but in a way of its own).

The time that passed seemed to be an eternity. I knew it was only a few hours, but it felt like it had always been and would always be (The feeling of one setting feeling like the tripper has been it, it forever is a very typical experience for me.). There were not any clearly defined shifts in my world, as I experience frequently on lower plateaus. I noticed two distinct settings, but at times, they flowed into each other and became one.

In one setting, I felt as though my presence was in the ocean. My physical self became somewhat flattened and began to flow to the waves that were passing over me. The best way to describe the way I saw myself is to imagine a very large sheet of fabric in the center of the ocean. If the fabric were kept horizontal without doubling up on itself, and just rippled up and down as the currents passed it. The shape was similar to that of a sound wave, curving up and down and up along an axis. I felt distinctly at one point that I was at the surface of the water, rippling as described. I was near a shore, but not within possible reaching distance. It was completely dark, but I recall a lighthouse or some area of light in the distance.

The second setting I recall was a huge open space of nothingness. There was no air and no matter, except for my physical self. I was floating in this huge expanse of space, and was rippling like in the ocean. Slowly, beginning at the very top of my head, and very slowly moving down, my physical presence started to be pulled upwards into the space. I became aware that my body was a bright white glow in this dark realm, and I was observing myself as if from an outside perspective. As my head was being pulled away into the ethereal realm around me, the streak it formed became a bright white streak of light. The streak began to move and wind its way through the space, forming a huge, flowing ribbon of light that formed huge arc in the space. I also became aware of other entities that I could not see, but could sense, an astonishing distance from me, also peeling off light from their presences and creating similar arcs and circles in space.

These two settings shifted back and forth a few times. I recall the space setting first, shifting after perhaps twenty minutes (I really couldn't say, though because it felt like an eternity) into the ocean scene as I began to ripple in space. I shifted maybe once or twice more between the two mindscapes I had created. I never opened my eyes throughout the entire time that I was in the third plateau. I think that the entire hallucination lasted an hour and a half to two hours.

My mind and mental processes seemed untouched at this level, I observed the changes that were going on, and was fully aware of everything that was happening. At times I would contact A, usually talking very quietly at first and then realizing that I must talk a bit louder for him to hear me. Reality seemed like a very far way off, and I could only notice its presence by auditory means. I could hear the music and the sounds from the reality, and I remembered how things were as I had left them. I knew A was near, and could be reached by calling to him. Several times when I called and he didn't answer, I didn't worry because I just assumed he was out of the room or something at the time (I later asked him and he just said that at the time, he was having a pretty nice trip and tuned me out for a bit.). It wasn't at all desperately important that I contact him. It was just for small things like changing the music or pulling my blanket over me when I was cold.

Once, I am not exactly sure when (whether it was before or after I awoke from my major mindscape), I had to go to the bathroom, and A helped me get out of bed and get to the bathroom door. After that, I returned to my bed. (A minor note on bathrooms: flushing a toilet is one of the more disorienting things that you can do at high second and third plateau. Massive confusion can result from the noise and water moving and such. Even though I am used to it by now, its still a bit strange.)

When I talked to A, I thought clearly, but my talking sometimes didn't reflect it. I would ask things sometimes slowly and might take pauses in odd places. I thought of what I wanted to say, but it never seemed all that important that I was communicating my thoughts slowly or sometimes not at all. It didn't seem too important to maintain contact with reality for longer than was possible, and I knew if I opened my eyes, the mindscape would dissolve and I would be pulled back to my other senses. I maintained my contact with the DXM world and when my minor requests from A were fulfilled, I allowed myself to lose track of reality completely(with the exception of the music, which I listened to contently), once again, to return to my world.

Part Three: Return to Reality

After roughly an hour and a half to two, I departed from my mental world to return to reality. I opened my eyes, and the spacescape vanished. I seem to recall when I first awoke from the hallucination, the first thing I said was 'Wow' in a very amazed voice. A was standing by my bedpost, as I assume he had been for some time, watching me absorbed with third plateau. He prided himself with being 'The Watcher', as he put it.

I recall several times after I woke up from my major hallucination, closing my eyes for short times and slipping back into visions for short periods of time. I got up from time to time, and walked around the room, very awkwardly at first. I felt like I was having a very intense second plateau experience, with the typical visual flanging and motor skill impairment. I was getting a very strong stimulant effect, as I do when coming down from DXM.

It was perhaps a half hour or so before I could see clearly enough to read things on my computer. I chatted with one of my friends who was still up (She has tripped several times with me on DXM). I told her that I had gone to the third plateau, but didn't really delve much into the details. Chatting was difficult, as I had a very hard time reading what was on the screen just yet. I set my monitor to a lower resolution so it would be easier to see the letters. When typing, I would often have to focus on my fingers and look at the keyboard to see what to press.

Coming down from the trip was the same as coming down from second plateau, with the typical disorientation and lingering effects from the drug. It seemed a lot more intense than when I came down from second plateau, with increased vision problems as well as the stimulant feeling. It also lasted quite a bit longer than I recall coming down from second plateau does.

At around 3am, I took a trip down to the ballroom (As said previously, the dorm is a renovated motel. The ballroom is basically the community living room, and where people go late at night when they aren't going to sleep.). There were about 12 people there, about half on the computer terminals surfing the internet or checking their E-Mail, and the other half gathered around a board game. I settled down by the board game, and watched several people play LIFE.

One of the people I had met earlier that day was very interested in the fact that I was a bit .. different. In a very amusing playful voice, she said something along the lines of 'Oh, you are acting different.. Ooohh, let me take a look at your eyes. My, those pupils are big. Have you been drinking cough syrup?' I replied that I had been doing something like that, and she continued in a tone that reminded me of a mother disappointed at her little child who had made a mistake: 'Cough syrup is bad for you, we don't do cough syrup, do we? No more drinking cough syrup.'. I got a little slap on the wrist as my punishment. It was very amusing.

Later one of my other friends entered the ballroom and came over. We talked for a little bit about different things. After a while, everyone else had cleared out of the ballroom to go to sleep. It was around four in the morning. My friend said that she was going to bed, and I left the ballroom as well to go back up to my room.

After a few hours of restlessness, I got to sleep. I slept for quite a while, waking up several times that morning and going back to sleep. I talked to Mouse's roomate over breakfast, and she said that Mouse was fine, just sleeping. I talked to Mouse later, and she told me that she was never going to trip on DXM again. She had felt as if she were dying, and also met God (who was a gold box in two-point perspective).

The whole day had the typical day-after effects, and I wandered around in the familiar half-dreamlike state. I reflected on my third plateau experience quite a bit, and slept for long periods. My roommate slept quite near the entire day.

It will be a while before I return to the third plateau, or perhaps before I do DXM again. I am very glad to have visited this realm, but with the frequency of my DXM use as of lately, I am ready to take a break from it again and live in reality for a while. I have no doubts that I will use DXM again, but it won't be in the next week, perhaps longer.

I am very proud to have gone to third plateau. It wasn't a life-changing experience, but it does mark one of the highlights of my experiences. Third plateau isn't something that is for everyone; I am glad it was for me.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 8600
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 6, 2006	Views: 138,052
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