Experience:1064mgs - Fascinating DXM experience - Unusual effects
- Date: 12/4/15
- Gender: Male
- Weight: 68 kg / 150 lbs
- Age: 19
Report
My friend and I decided to try a 4th plateau trip on DXM together. 1062mgs DXM (3 bottles of Robitussin), 50mgs DPH (attempt to counteract nausea, not to co-trip), 1-gallon white grapefruit juice and a single plain bagel each for the 20hrs before. My prior experience with psychedelics/dissociatives included only an earlier 3rd plateau trip a few weeks before, salvia, and borderline-psychedelic doses of weed (to the point of geometry); before you say it, I know, I was definitely a little too courageous. My friend had done everything you can name at least once, and at one point a few years back was using lower doses of DXM frequently, but never 3rd/4th plateau, and hadn't touched it since.
I'll skip the uninteresting parts that you could get from any DXM trip report, like projectile vomiting syrup and the expected dissociation, and I'll get to the goods.
Perhaps from lack of tolerance, my body had a very bad reaction to the stuff and I couldn't really enjoy the trip's peak. My mind would spend some time in a hallucinatory place (usually a static image of an inexplicable object, or a color field, or nothingness) before getting ripped back to reality by heavy breathing or my heart beating too fast, or perhaps another bout of nausea. At one point our friend stepped in (not knowing what we were up to) and he reported afterward that I seemed like I was in intense physical/mental distress.
That's all nothing very unusual; pretty much what you'd expect of a bad DXM trip.
However, my experience had some worthwhile moments. Later in the day, after I made it back to my place (aided by a sober friend) I was lounging around waiting for the trip to subside enough for me to get some sleep. Perhaps from the white grapefruit juice, I entered a state I can only describe as "semi-sigma." All the sigma effects were there, but only to a moderate extent, and I was still cognitively lucid, ie aware that delusions were caused by a trip and generally able to figure out what was real and what wasn't. I even had the notorious "wacky-cam," where closing my eyes would show me whatever scene I was looking at before but with dreamlike delusional additions, all completely nonsensical.
And the most fantastic effect of all, something I've never heard anyone report from a trip besides a few DXM/DPH accounts:
staring at the ceiling, the textured bumps would start to move and rearrange and swirl in patterns. But it wouldn't stop there! The swirling patterns would start to come out of the ceiling and form three-dimensional objects coming out at me, all made still of the same textured dots, like this but without the wires between the dots. I remember a formless beautiful fractal spiral coming out at me, a dragonfly forming from these dots and coming down at me, and a flower, all very clearly. I could reset the condensation of these objects by double-taking. It was very beautiful and helped me calm down after the incredibly unpleasant height of the trip.
Even more fascinating than that was my friend's experience. We haven't had a chance to talk for too long, but he says that at the peak of the trip his consciousness was off in some alien world with light beings who lived according to their own physics. This is actually semi-common with 4th plateau DXM dosages, if I understand correctly. He said it was hard to remember much of the experience and much of what the beings had to say to him, but that it was very pleasant and that he felt welcomed into this strange world. Incredibly, when the aforementioned friend stepped into the room and tried to talk to my fellow tripper, he responded "(friend's name) is not here right now, but he's okay," or so our unexpected visitor reports. My friend says that he did not actively perceive, see, or otherwise experience this interaction, but while he was in dissociative-headspace-land he for a moment felt the presence of this friend. It is bizarre and incredibly interesting to think that some automatic subconscious process could generate a linguistic response like that while the conscious mind was otherwise occupied. It's times like this that I wish I was a neuroscientist and that all this psychonautics was happening in a controlled environment with proper neurological observation.
But stranger than that was that about four hours in, my friend gets a text from his girlfriend about something and has to go meet her... and he does! All while I'm still more or less writhing around lost in some kind of cognitive time loop and feeling very sick (if feeling anything at all). He made sure I was alright with him leaving first, of course.
He somehow managed to put himself together and act normal enough that people didn't realize he was on anything serious. He said this was difficult, pretty much focusing complete attention on staying associated. I presume former experience with DXM and other drugs meant he had a pretty good grasp on how to handle himself under the influence.
A few days later he smoked some weed (normal amount, in his words "only one hit") and blacked out. His buddy says that he became completely nonsensical the whole time he was blacked out, and was constantly laughing and pretty much had to lay down. Very bizarre thing, especially for a guy who smokes a lot. Definitely related somehow to the DXM.
So yeah, rough summary is that DXM is weird and has potential to not be a fun time. You probably all knew that before, but I feel it's worth getting slightly unusual reports out there for the public consciousness, harm reduction, etc.
Submitted by - Hesychasm
Effects analysis
- Holes, spaces and voids - "My mind would spend some time in a hallucinatory place (usually a static image of an inexplicable object, or a color field, or nothingness)"
- Nausea - "another bout of nausea."
- Drifting - "the textured bumps would start to move and rearrange and swirl in patterns"
- 3-Dimensional textures - "The swirling patterns would start to come out of the ceiling and form three-dimensional objects coming out at me, all made still of the same textured dots,"
- External hallucination - "I remember a formless beautiful fractal spiral coming out at me, a dragonfly forming from these dots and coming down at me, and a flower, all very clearly. "
- Autonomous entities - "off in some alien world with light beings who lived according to their own physics"
- Thought loops - "writhing around lost in some kind of cognitive time loop"