DOSE:

repeated

oral

DXM

(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

My Experience With Drinking DXM Cough Syrup

Over the years, I have used DXM many times, usually orally. Certain brands of cough syrup taste less awful than others, and I developed favorites and least favorites. My preferred method was to ingest it over a period of hours by doing 'shots' of it. I filled the dosage cup to the top, which is usually at least twice the recommended dose of 10ml, quickly drank this, and followed this by putting a peppermint candy or Tic Tac in my mouth to get rid of the flavor. I found this very much preferable to trying to chug a bottle. Chugging too much at once makes me nauseous and I would just give up. After a few minutes had passed, I would do it again until I had finished the 8 oz bottle.

Sometimes this would take a while, an hour or more, so the high would creep up on my gradually. I've read of other people experiencing 'music euphoria' and for me, this was very pronounced. Certain albums, voices, guitar tones, were suddenly impossibly beautiful. I would listen to the same song on repeat, or even sections of a song. The experience was very much enhanced.

Another feature was a difference in my thinking. It was like seeing things from a completely different point of view, stepping outside of myself and being able to analyze situations, ideas, and feelings with new eyes. I felt like I was being more objective in a lot of ways. This was also something that kept me coming back over the years.

When I felt the high going away a bit, or if I was getting tired, I would put on headphones and listen to music while sitting in the dark or lying in bed. If my eyes were closed, or if it was dark in the room, I would see swirling colors, geometric patterns, and sometimes what seemed like line drawings in neon colors on a black background.

There have been times I was probably taking it too much, especially when I was under stress or having difficulty coping with symptoms of bipolar disorder. I have used it to self-medicate. It seemed fairly harmless at the time, but there were also times I developed strange pains in the back and had bloody urine. After this happening a few times, including one time when I was in horrendous pain and needed to go to the emergency room, I learned that guafenesin (often in the same meds as DXM because it is an expectorant) at high doses over time can cause kidney stones! I have never heard about this in anyone's DXM experiences that I've read or heard about. It took me some time to realize that the episodes of pain and blood in the urine seemed to correlate with times I'd taken a few doses of DXM in a relatively short period of time. I am much more cautious now.

This doesn't really seem like a 'party drug' to me, and I've mainly used it alone, in the evening, when I knew I could sleep in the next day. One of the negative things that I've experienced is a sort of hangover the next day. I have little energy and want to sleep. Sometimes I also sweat a lot during or after use, and this can come on at all once; intense sweating and feeling overheated for a short time period.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 111268
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 26
Published: Dec 4, 2017	Views: 4,881
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DXM (22) : Hangover / Days After (46), Music Discussion (22), Health Problems (27), Retrospective / Summary (11), Alone (16)