DOSE:	1440 mg	oral	DXM	(pill / tablet)
	192 mg	oral	Chlorpheniramine Maleate	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

180 lb

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

This experience is about my boyfriend, who has been using Coricidin Cough & Cold Tablets regularly for the past 5 months. It wasn't really like he just wanted to get all fucked up and DXM was easy to obtain, my boyfriend is a very spiritual person and found DXM to be a great tool to use in meditation. My boyfriend is also a very intelligent person, a genius. I say this not to flatter him, but it is simply the mere truth.

Now some may say genius borders insanity and people of high intelligence are susceptible to psychotic breaks. In my own life experience I have found this to be true several times, including with my own father who is a very intelligent veterinarian, yet he suffers from bipolar disorder. My father didn't experience his first mania break until he was 25, so these conditions may not occur to midlife, as it has for my boyfriend, who is 29.

This event started when I went over to my boyfriend’s house to find him fucked up on a box of DXM (480mg). I had been trying to kick the habit, but seeing him all messed up made me want to join him in that world, so we went down to the CVS, which is so conveniently located down the block, and bought another box. So we went back home and I took a box (480mg). Me, being the DXM veteran, wasn’t satisfied with just one box, so I waited till my boyfriend came down a bit, which was quite a few hours later, and drove me to the CVS again. He bought 2 more boxes and I stole 2. I am also quite the little shoplifter. We went home and dosed, taking 2 boxes each (960mg each).

I became ill after a little while and threw up, most of the drug being absorbed already. I kinda tripped out in the bathroom and had my own delusion of me waking his roommate up with my vomiting and his other roommates coming home and being mad about me being sick in their bathroom. But I was just hallucinating. Nothing had happened at all. I went back out and went to sleep, which could have been just a big hallucination I thought was a dream. When I woke, I asked my boyfriend if he threw up at all and he told me he didn’t. This is about when the trouble began. He started to have seizure after seizure. He remained conscious during the seizures and would mostly have them when he would lie down. I was so scared and wanted him to go the hospital but he told me he would be okay. His seizures lasted all day and into the night. He had 2 the next morning and I think they stopped just around then.

The madness begins here. My boyfriend starts raving about this “hoax” that people at work are playing on the internet. He claimed they were trying to ruin his life. He stopped going to work because he was sure they were going to fire him anyhow. The past month we all had a fall out with most of our friends who my boyfriend works with. These were the players in his delusion. He believed everyone who he was talking to online was a character made up by these people and are having other people act out. He read to me peoples journals and showed me the deep cryptic message they held which talked about this hoax they were going to play on him. He was convinced that I was part of it too which got me so upset because nothing I could say or do could convince him otherwise. He would believe me sometimes then be like, “oh you almost had me!” He kept telling me he didn’t know what was real. At this time he seemed to become suicidal. I was now afraid he was going to hurt himself because he took his shotgun out of his trunk, put it in the passenger’s seat, got in the car and told me he was going home. I took the keys to his car and wouldn’t give them back until he went inside the house to go sleep, which he hadn’t done in days.

Of course I was confused, upset, sad, and nervous by this point. He wanted me to believe him so bad about this story he kept telling me, but I knew deep down in my heart he was being delusional. He got very upset when I called him schizo and made me talk to his grandparents on the phone to tell me he wasn’t crazy. I eventually went home, but he called me and wanted to come by because he told me he was going to go to his aunt’s house. I had him come over and talk to me. He apologized to me for everything and told me he needed to apologize to everyone. He seemed more stable. I convinced him not to leave and go to his aunts and he eventually went home, telling me I would see him the next day.

The next day I went to his house in the morning only to find that he had left an hour prior to “take care of a few things.” I stayed there the whole day and he didn’t return. I had no idea where he was until the next day when I called his grandparents. They told me he was at a hospital, but since his grandmother is very senile I got a totally different story from her which I will not explain. I finally got in touch with my boyfriend yesterday when he called me from the mental hospital he admitted himself to. He told me he was so afraid that someone was going to hurt him that he had to go get help. He even told me that he saw people he knew follow him to the hospital. I knew at this point he was really out of his gourd. But he knew he was being crazy and told me that’s why he went there. He wants to get off all drugs because he can see they are what got his life off the tracks. I still don’t know how I am going to handle that, being I love psychedelics, lots of marijuana, and Grateful Dead. I am a throwback to the 60’s and can’t help it. My boyfriend told me he is going to get help and will be home this Wednesday. It is still Saturday as I write this. Tomorrow I will visit him and see how he is doing.

Hopefully he will recover with help of medication and therapy, but I can’t really say what will happen at this point, it is still too early to tell, I just want my story to be heard. Thing is, I am the same as anyone out there reading this. I have been reading experiences and information about DXM and other drugs for years. I thought research about the substances I put in my body would keep me safe, and they have, but no matter how much knowledge I know and share about drugs, things can still go terribly wrong.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 31341
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 29
Published: Feb 1, 2011	Views: 23,426
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