DOSE:

1 hit

vaporized

Cannabis

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

113 lb

This is my first time ever writing an experience report so I apologize in advance if some of this report feels a bit sloppy. In mid June of 2018, I had just graduated from middle school in May and would spend the summer vacation with a group of friends I used to have. This friend group were very into vaping nicotine which I would do occasionally when with them. Being fresh out of middle school, I had gone through an adventurous phase where I would basically try anything put in front of my face for the sheer sake of having tried it.

On one particular day, I was walking around in the town center a few minutes away from my house with some friends when some girl around my age that I didn’t recognize asked us if we’d like to smoke some weed with her. I had a clear schedule for the rest of the day and both of my parents were at work so I didn’t see any reason not to try it out. We walked into a nearby alley next to a deli where the girl pulled out a dab pen with THC in wax form. With my complete lack of knowledge surrounding weed, these terms meant nothing to me and I was just urgent to try it. I had one friend at the time who had tried it (presumably a low to average dose). He had told me that it only makes you feel “chill” and “mellowed out”. A couple of my friends took some small puffs while some didn’t even inhale.

When the pen was passed to me, I thought it would be impressive to my friends to take the biggest hit I possibly could. I would do this on occasion with nicotine to show off the fact that I never cough after inhaling for long periods of time. After about ten seconds of inhaling, I exhaled and coughed up a storm. For a brief moment, I felt nothing. After about eight seconds, I felt a tingling sensation in the top of my head accompanied by a severe nausea. I had noticed the girl who owned the pen was looking at me like she had seen a ghost. Her friend had said something to her along the lines of, “This dude just fucking killed himself.” Hearing this only worsened my concern. I told the group that I had to vomit and ran over to the end of the alleyway behind the building and bent forward to vomit. Nothing was coming out so I sat down behind the building hoping to wait out the nausea. When the nausea was gone, I was ready to stand back up but realized that I felt extremely weak to the point where I couldn’t move my legs. My friends noticed me laying down behind the building and ran to my aid. I could hear them talking about how I didn’t look so good and how my skin color had gone very pale. Two of my friends picked me up and put my arms around their shoulders to help me walk towards the exit of the alleyway.

This is where everything I heard sounded 8-bit like something out of an arcade game. When I had stood up with the help of my friends, my vision had completely gone. What I had experienced was comparable to that of standing up too quickly and everything going black for a few seconds. The only difference is that it wasn’t going away. The thought had raced my mind that I had gone blind from taking too much THC and had permanently damaged my hearing. Thankfully this was not the case as when my friends sat me back down in front of the deli, my vision had cleared and hearing had returned to normal. I assume in retrospect that these effects were caused by a sudden drop of blood pressure. This would also explain the pale skin tone.

After having been sat down, I felt completely paralyzed. This is when the psychoactive effects came in hard. I felt as if all of my thoughts and everything I saw were in slow motion. I was able to talk but every time I did, I could hear my voice echoing in slow motion inside my head which quite literally made my thoughts too loud for me to focus on completing any sentence. I basically just went through the process of knowing what I wanted to say but then being interrupted by the noise of my own mind by the time the words were actually coming out of my mouth. My friends had told me later on that many of the things I said would trail off into nonsense or sometimes even gibberish. My perception was heavily altered. I had felt as if I was just a pair of eyes sitting inside of a movie theater watching everything play out. I saw it as a second consciousness within myself. While I was talking out loud to the people around me saying gibberish, I felt as if I was viewing everything through the lens of my sober consciousness and unable to control anything my body does or what comes out of my mouth.

I didn’t know how to describe this feeling of watching myself lose control at the time so I would just chant things like, “I’m in here”, “these aren’t my eyes”, or “this isn’t me talking”. My friends told me after the fact that I had sounded like I went completely insane. I was also unable to improperly sense where my tongue was in my mouth. I had the overwhelming fear that my tongue had turned into a squid tentacle as when I would move it around in my mouth, my mind would picture it slithering around my mouth in unnatural ways. Once I hyper focused on my tongue, it became terrifying to speak as I believed it could accidentally slip out of my mouth causing me to bite down on it while talking. The town I had lived in was a relatively small town so I personally knew a lot of people from around the area. People I had gone to school with had been walking or riding their bikes before stopping to observe me. Employees briefly came out of the deli to spectate as well. In my mind, everyone I knew would eventually be here staring at me which led to me getting extremely paranoid. My sense of time was deeply distorted leading me to believe that half the day had gone by while the effects continued to stay at a peaking point. It was more likely only fifteen minutes in at this point.

I couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying to me. I just continued to ramble on despite all of the questions and suggestions I was receiving from everyone around me. I was very overwhelmed by everything that was happening and found it even more distressing that the effects hadn’t subsided even in the slightest. I started to believe that the only way out was to take the inner consciousness out of the shell of me that was losing control. I had told my friends “Trust me! I need to hurt myself to make it stop!” My friends got worried and debated with each other about calling 911. Luckily, I wouldn’t be able to move my legs any time soon so I couldn’t pull through with my plan to run into the street only five feet in front of me. A couple minutes after that thought had crossed my mind, a small part of me briefly woke up causing me to think, “What am I doing? I need help before I hurt myself” I had exclaimed to my friends to call an ambulance. The ambulance showed up in about five minutes. The paramedic in the back asked me about my symptoms to which I replied with the same description of my eyes not being my own. This statement on its own was enough to lead the paramedic to believe that the wax was laced with something. Tests had revealed that the cartridge wasn’t laced but I had just taken an extreme dose of THC straight to the brain.

For about a few days after, I still felt a small bit intoxicated but to a level I could function at. I have since been diagnosed with a depersonalization disorder. Today I vaporize delta-8 and HHC which help me ease anxiety. I am unable to smoke more than around a gram of delta-9 cannabis without having intense visuals and flashbacks. I know it’s virtually impossible to overdose on THC, but if I had to throw the label on it, I would definitely point to an experience like this one.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 116339
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 14
Published: May 18, 2022	Views: 1,682
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Cannabis (1) : First Times (2), Difficult Experiences (5), Hangover / Days After (46), Small Group (2-9) (17)