DOSE:

360 mg

oral

DXM

BODY WEIGHT:

110 lb

An earlier experiment with 120mg of dextromethorphan yielded only mild dizziness (I was hoping for at least a first plateau trip). This time I tried a higher dose. I dumped 17 Sucrets lozenges (255mg of DXM) in a bowl of water, heated the bowl in the microwave at one minute intervals until the lozenges were fully dissolved, then waited for the powder to sink to the bottom. I dumped out most of the water, leaving a power-filled pink-gray puddle. I poured this puddle into a glass, mixed it with water, and drank (didn't taste too bad at all). I'm not sure how much powder was lost in the extraction, but it might have been quite a bit. Then I drank 3 tablespoons of Pharmasave cough-syrup (15mg per tsp). I watered it down a little so the thick syrup was easier to drink. As long as I took it in small sips, it wasn't a problem. A sip of lemon juice completely erased the aftertaste. My conservative estimate of total dosage is 360mg (accounting for lost powder due to extraction).

45 minutes later, I began feeling dizzy. Heat and light-headedness set in. I started getting nervous, like I have before when coming up on a new drug, but my previous experience with weed helped me not to freak out. There were quite a few similarities in the intoxication. Dizziness progressed to full-on tipsiness - movement felt very strange. I walked in a rigid stagger, what they call 'robo-walking'. I liked walking around my room - my motions felt graceful and balletic. By this time I was calming down and enjoying the buzz. I felt a floaty disconnection from the world - my physical being was a triviality. I put on headphones and listened to a Keith Jarrett piano improvisation. The music did not sound better, deeper, or richer (it sounded distant like all external sounds), but I felt 'connected' to it in a way I never have before. I danced to the music in an odd, rigid writhing. It was fun. I looked at my bizarre expression in the mirror - I was bug-eyed with a goofy grin.

I felt mild time dilation. Vision was pretty much normal but slightly blurry (I haven't yet experienced any visual enhancement or distortion on any drug) - sometimes I would see double if I let my eyes go out of focus. I noticed the 'flanging effect' some speak of - that is, when turning my head rapidly, my vision did not immediately catch up with my new point of view - there was a blurring, stretching, or slideshow effect for a split second. Another thing of note: when I stared at my computer monitor, I could see the screen refresh (like what you see when you look at a computer screen on film).

About an hour and a half after the onset of effects, I decided to shut off the music and lie down in silent darkness. I was hoping for some visions. I put the bed covers over my head and thought: 'Come on - show me things. I'm ready.' I saw nothing but moving shadows. At times, my black blurry field of view would suddenly take on an intricate texture, but this too was dark and shadowy.

I opened the window to my unlit room and looked up at the stars. As I watched them, they seemed to move in jerky staggers like my own robo-walking. I tried to force hallucinations into the night sky, with little success. Then I started slipping into a fever-dream delirium (with recapitulation of actual fever dreams). It began with a pulsing electro-static tingle felt primarily in my hands and arms. I noticed I was numb everywhere. Soon I was drifting into a disturbing stream of consciousness with mental loops, piteous pleas for sanity, and all sorts of anxieties being churned up inside my head. “Deja vu,” I thought. “I've been here before.” It made so much sense to me at the time. This was the peak of my body high and mental mindfuck. Thankfully, there were no particularly unpleasant physical effects associated with the body load, but during the delirium, I felt I was fighting nausea (“please don't make me puke, I don't wanna puke, stay calm...stay calm...”) I think that was probably just me wrestling with my hypochondria - I have a tendency to worry about negative symptoms, imagine them, then believe I'm experiencing them. Feelings of guilt and self-loathing set in. I asked myself, “why did I take this profane drug?” I started to wonder (I'm not sure how seriously) if I was ever going to get back to normal, or if, indeed, I was even going to live through this. Perhaps I deserved to die. Somewhere in this strange cerebral funhouse, I lost a sense of self - ego death or something like that. I pondered, unwittingly, on life and death. I felt as if I'd reached some plane of stoned objectivity - that I'd cracked the universal shell and extracted some gooey secrets. The universe was a ball of trivial madness but I was not outside it. There WAS no transcendence. 'Is this all there really is?' I thought. 'Is life a dream? Is this the reality? Cerebral chaos? Is this eternal?' [well that's as good a transcription of my mental state as I can muster in the aftermath]. During the delirium there existed a strange dynamic between wanting to go deeper into this realm, and wanting to keep myself tethered in reality for fear of what mental quagmires I might stumble into.

Finally I thought, 'FUCK IT, I don't need this crap'. I got up despite the dizziness, turned on my lamp, and tried to ground myself by writing a rambling letter to a friend. (It worked.) I was thankful that I'd escaped the delirium. It was now about four hours after I'd dosed. The physical effects were still strong, but mentally I felt a little clearer. Music sounded ugly to me so I just enjoyed the feeling of walking around.

I ended the trip by going back to bed and watching for CEVs. Finally, I got some visions, but first I started hearing music in my head. It was a complex morphing soundtrack to the crazy visuals that emerged from behind my eyelids. (It seems that for me, external [ie, not self-generated] music interferes rather than enhances visions when I'm on DXM.) The music kept changing from style to style - classical, rock, jazz, death metal, piano solo. Much of it was entirely alien in character - bizarrely beautiful alien sounds, unheard-of instruments and distorted versions of human instruments. This music accompanied the sights which flashed by in my mind - they were more dream-like and less DESIGN-like than my pot visions, but motific recapitulations of some of the abstract, colorful 'alien machinery' I've seen during my cannabis CEVs did integrate themselves into the landscape. There was much familiarity in the visions (ie, dredging up of the stored information in my brain), but much unfamiliarity as well. Alien alchemy, perhaps? Disguised interdimensional interlopers in my stoned brain? The experience was like a music video broadcast into my brain from another galaxy. I hummed along with it. I enjoyed this MUCH more than the fucking fever dreams, I can tell you! Still, I would characterize this as merely the fringes of a visionary state - the visionary wading pool. I couldn't quite cross over to the other side and ultimate hallucinogenic lucidity.

I went to sleep sometime around 2:00 AM and woke up with no physical effects other than mild lethargy.

All in all, it seemed a more 'serious' trip than I remember with pot (my only reference for altered states). I thought about life and death and existential questions. I'm not sure I really liked this aspect of it - none of my quasi-revelations seemed too comforting. Maybe I ought to try some shrooms. I'm left with the feeling that I've been playing with matches. I didn't get burned too badly this time, but I'm not sure if I want to hot-box my motherfucking brain. But if I do get up the nerve to try a third plateau dose sometime, I'll let y'all know how it turned out.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 14682
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 8, 2003	Views: 49,463
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DXM (22) : First Times (2), Alone (16)