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Long Term Usage
Diphenhydramine (Benadryl)
Citation:   Bemushroomed1. "Long Term Usage: An Experience with Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) (exp35562)". Erowid.org. Jun 26, 2007. erowid.org/exp/35562

 
DOSE:
  repeated oral Diphenhydramine (pill / tablet)
BODY WEIGHT: 130 lb
A while back I had bought a bottle of diphenhydramine allergy medicine. There was 400 25mg pills. Normally that would last someone 3-5 month. It lasted me 1 month, I believe. Then I immediately went out and bought another 400 pack, and cleared that in less than a month.

At first I started out with smaller dosages of 200mg. At this level, there was a strange prickly feeling all over me, as well as a butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling. At this dose, I become very sleepy, and often I would decide to sleep once I started tripping. It caused me to sleep for about 15 minutes, with really strange dreams, then wake up drenched in sweat, then fall asleep again 5 minutes later with the same effect. Soon I began doing 300-400mg per day. At this dose, there was the same feelings, as well as some strange visual effects.

It’s hard to describe what I saw, because it’s not really hallucinations or delirium at this point. I would be sitting in a chair, and I would 'see' what appeared to be tiny spiders, made of what seemed to be clear water crawling up my legs. It wasn't frightening or anything, and it was kind of fun to watch. Other things that were fun to do was look at the ceiling, which had the popcorn on it, which is basically tiny stalagmite looking things on it, used to reduce echoes in a room.

On benadryl, the little stalagmite things looked like they were popping in and out of the ceiling. Now it was more of a 'too tired to sleep' feeling, that was kind of unpleasant, but I could ignore it by focusing on something else. Some weekends when there was nothing to do, I would take 500-600mg of it, and this is where full blown delirium sets in. I would be sitting there and suddenly my friend would walk in from the kitchen I didn't even think anything of how he got in, or when he got here, I just thought, 'Hey M is over!' So we would make plans to go skating or smoke, and then I would stand up and he would disappear. This happened quite often, and was very fun, unless someone was actually there watching me talk to people who weren't there.

The only downside was the dehydration. My mouth was so dry that I would drink a few glasses of water, then 10 minutes later I would have to piss. After pissing, I would be parched again.

One particularly boring night, I had just rented Eurotrip (funny ass movie for those of you who haven't seen it). After watching it once, I decided to take 700mg of benadryl and watch it again. Strangely, at this dose, I never actually saw anyone, but while watching Eurotrip, I would suddenly be watching Scarface or something, the it would go back to Eurotrip again. Because this stuff makes me have to constantly piss, on one occasion I walked down to the bathroom and lost my senses and found myself pissing in the corner outside my bathroom. Luckily we were remodeling, so there was no carpeting, just concrete. All the same I freaked out and stopped myself in the middle of pissing, which hurt like hell, then spun around in the darkness a few times looking for which door was the bathroom.

Also, another problem I seemed to have was counting stairs. Because we were remodeling, there was no lights by the stairs, so I would have to count the stairs as I walked down. I would always count all 12 stairs, but for some reason I would only go down 10 before I thought I reached the bottom. This happened a good 5 or 6 times, no matter how slow I went.

Eventually even 400-500mg was becoming very not fun, so I had to quit. Surprisingly, there were no withdrawal symptoms like I thought there would be after doing an average of 400mg almost daily for 2 months. Looking back on it, it doesn't seem like it was that fun, and now I wonder why I did it. I'm sure some organ is fucked up now as a result, probably my bladder or something, but I haven't actually noticed any side effects, aside from the fact that water still goes right through me.

Exp Year: 2004ExpID: 35562
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 26, 2007Views: 29,877
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Diphenhydramine (109) : Alone (16), Retrospective / Summary (11)

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