DOSE:

smoked

PCP

(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

This is a report of my (accidental) experience with PCP. I was visiting a foreign country, and wanted to smoke marijuana. I bought it from some guy on the street. It turned out not to be marijuana, but to be a non-potent green plant that was laced with PCP. I had never taken a hallucinogenic drug before (I had only smoked weed and taken Ecstasy) so it was extremely scary. Can you imagine tripping without expecting it!? Here is a breakdown of my experience:

I knew something was wrong when I got halfway through my joint and suddenly the smoke changed - I inhaled something very hot and vapory-thick with a strange taste. This was a rock of PCP.

Five minutes later, I was stoned like on weed, but 10 times worse. On weed I am confused, on this I couldn't hold even the simplest thought in my head. On weed everything is funny, on this things were inexplicably funny and I couldn't stop laughing like an idiot. Also, I had visuals like when I'm on weed, which are impossible to describe but basically involve paying attention to the small patterns in my visual field.

After ten minutes, things got crazy and I knew for sure it wasn't weed. It started with vision. The textures of objects were somehow 'wrong,' and things were the wrong shape. Somehow my sense of distance and size were distorted. Faraway things would seem very close, small things would seem huge, and vice versa. Next, my sense of temperature and 'wetness' were affected. My skin felt dry, then wet, then hot, then cold. These sensations moved in 'waves' over my skin. I couldn't control my eyes, they also moved across the room in waves.

More and more, my senses and thoughts were distorted in what I can only describe as waves. My taste and smell senses moved in waves through the spectrum of smells and tastes, salty sweet bitter etc. My thoughts too: I was very embarassed, then very confident, then embarassed, confident, etc. I would also vary between scared and normal. The craziest thing was the time distortion. Time seemed to move very fast, then very slow, then fast, etc. I kept asking my friends questions about time, like 'How long will this take?' 'How long have I been like this?' 'Am I talking fast, slow, or normal?' I was scared out of my mind and I was trying to hold onto a concept of time. My friends said I was talking at a normal pace, but it sounded slow to me. I looked at the clock on the wall, and the second hand seemed like it was moving in slow motion.

After thirty minutes, things got horrible. The 'waves' I described took over my physical motor skills too. My hands started shaking in waves, I swayed from side to side rhythmically, I drew patterns in the sky like I was doing a strange dance, and I chewed on my tongue uncontrollably. When I tried to talk, my mouth muscles felt like they were moving in “waves” and I couldn't control them, so I was unable to talk. My friend later told me that I was convulsing and shaking, that my hands had weird postures and contortions, and I was making crazy faces.

Despite my inability to think or speak, I managed to say 'Get me an ambulance.' The ambulance came and they say they've seen it before, it's PCP, and that I would be fine. They just left me there! It was odd, I felt like I was dying, but my vital signs were all normal.

When the ambulance left (about 50 minutes after the beginning), I was completely dysfunctional. I felt like the waves have taken over my entire brain, and things had become very 'simple.' I felt like I only have the most basic brain functionality left, and I was on the verge of seeing 'what is really important in the universe,' because 'when all my brain functions stop working except the important ones, I will experience what is most important.' These were my thoughts at the time. I thought I was close to 'nirvana,' but of course I was scared too. I thought I could see inside people, their egos, their selfishness. I thought that my brain was working less and less by the second, that I was dropping brain functions like flies. Since it felt like my brain was shutting down, I was actually scared shitless that I was going to die.

Finally, the drug reached its peak. My sense of time slowed down to almost nothing. I had the feeling that I was on the verge of reaching 'nirvana,' but I just missed it, and then my brain started turning back on again. My entire experience, all fifty minutes of it, seemed to happen again in reverse. I got my functionality back in the order I lost it - first my time perception became normal, then I could speak, then my motor skills came back, then my normal touch and taste, then temperature, and finally visual. It took 12 hours until I was completely normal again.

It is now almost three years later, and I have been permanently affected by this trip, which was by far the scariest experience of my life. Before the trip, the world around me seemed stable and predictable. If there was a red apple in front of me, it would remain a red apple, and it would not turn into plaid ostrich and start speaking Hebrew! I had absolutely no doubt that the world around me was 'real.' After the trip, after seeing my most basic perceptions distort horribly, I became quite disconnected from the real world, which seemed much less real. I became depressed for about two year, and considered suicide, and I still haven't fully recovered. Sometimes I still feel lonely, like I am living in a world that exists only inside of my brain and not in a real, solid, 3D world shared with other people.

In addition, it was impossible for me to smoke weed again, without having horrible flashbacks. Not a big deal, I wasn't a big user, but worth mentioning. Sometimes I get delusions and flashbacks when I am under stress. What has taken a long time to go away, but what is in fact slowly fading, is the loneliness and fear that comes from seeing something that I think most people have not seen, and can't possibly understand. It actually helped to talk to my Dad, not mentioning my own drug experience of course, about his experiences with LSD in the 60's. I talked to a shrink but she was useless.

Things ARE better three years later... :)

Moral - only buy drugs from known sources.

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 20934
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 17, 2017	Views: 2,577
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PCP (113) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), Post Trip Problems (8), What Was in That? (26), Difficult Experiences (5)