DOSE: T+ 0:00	225 mg	oral	Diphenhydramine	(pill / tablet)
T+ 0:45	150 mg	oral	Diphenhydramine	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

69 kg

I can safely say that I am a fan of 'a fan of creepy, disorienting trips. I'm the type of person that actually *prefers* the 'alien anthropologist' mindset of DXM to the 'I'm at one with the world' feelings of the phenylthylamines and tryptamines. I would have enjoyed my diphenhydramine experience much more had it actually been creepy and disorienting- even with the horrific side effects- but overall it was just plain stupid.

My highest dose prior to this experience was 6 of these pills, or 150 mg, and did nothing more than make me very sleepy.

This time, I had a bit of a cold, and additionally was a bit tired from the night before, as I had stayed up very late doing work for a class. However, although fatigued, I wasn't at all in a bad mood or otherwise unhappy. Basically, I was just bored. There were no substances to be had anywhere, with the exception of a certain green plant I have to stay away from for a month in order to pass an upcoming drug test, but I remembered diphenhydramine and dimenhydrinate and thought I might give it a try. I started off by taking 9 generic diphenhydramine-only allergy pills at around 2:00 AM.

I actually wasn't entirely unhappy with the experience the 9 pills were bringing on. Pictures on the internet seemed to look more alive somehow, sound seemed be altered somewhat in some way I can't entirely describe, and so forth. When I looked around I could see a few very faint transparent patterns moving across my field of vision. I felt a very strong body-euphoria (it was like there was a sort of happy electricity running through me) and felt giggly.

Feeling that if some was good, more would be better, I downed an additional 6 pills some 45 minutes after ingestion. Big mistake.

My memory of the period shortly after ingesting the additional pills is very fuzzy, so I have no concrete idea as to how long it took me, but I dimly remember putting on my sleep clothes and climbing into bed about 20 minutes after the 2nd ingestion. I remember being disappointed about the lack of weird visuals, which was generally the case throughout the experience, but, now that the substance has worn off, I do remember one particular oddity that- typical of diphenhydramine- I thought was normal.

Upon turning out the lights in my room and getting into bed, I noticed that everything in the center of my field of vision seemed covered by a transparent blobbish substance. It didn't exactly look like jello- it was more like the skin you see on the top of leftover homemade soup after it has been in the refrigerator for a day. It looked very organic, and it sort of wobbled a little bit. However, I wasn't impressed by this because, again, I was just delirious enough to think it was normal.

I also saw a number of things I knew were NOT normal. Most of these involved very brief (1 second or less) flashes of light that formed pictures looking for all the world like scrambled graphics from a dirty or broken Nintendo cartridge. Occasionally, a dark shadow would form on a door in my room.

On the ceiling of my room there are two light fixtures- the kind with the round translucent glass covering with the light bulb within. I saw one of these light fixtures appear at another location on the ceiling; when I realized 'Hey, wait- I don't have a light fixture there!' it disappeared.

That was the extent of the visuals. If not for the body load present in this experience, I would simply have thought 'Well, I just didn't do enough to get visuals,' and tried again some other time. But the body load was absolutely horrendous!

Before doing this, I wouldn't have been able to connect 'agony' with any state of being other than physical or emotional pain. I'm no stranger to either. However, there was no pain involved in this experience... but there was indeed agony.

The additional 6 pills made me unbelievably tired, yet not sleepy, which I find odd considering that lower doses of Benadryl can put me right to sleep. I decided to stay in bed, and wait for one of two possible outcomes: #1, something weird would happen, or #2, I'd fall asleep.

What actually happened, however, was that any time I laid down to go to sleep I'd get what I now refer to as the 'Benadryl twitchies'. This was an unending series of muscle spasms in my limbs that, although not actually painful per se, was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life.

My awareness was so contracted by that point that about all I could focus on was the fact that my limbs felt as if they were about to detach themselves from my trunk and start ambling about the room on their own. Only two actions relieved the twitching.

One way to stop the twitching was to get up and walk around the room/house. In fact, any time I sat with my trunk upright, I was fine. You would think that the answer to this would simply be to not lie down, but this was out of the question, because my body felt so incredibly heavy. I oscillated between twitching until I couldn't stand it any longer, then sitting up or walking around until I felt as if I was going to sink through the floor if I didn't lie down.

And, given my reduced mental faculties... my entire existence revolved around the opposition between twitching like a caffeine junkie while lying down, and staggering around the house feeling as if the entire universe was on my back.

One other effect I should mention, briefly, is that whenever I stood up after having laid down for any length of time, I felt as if the entire universe was shifting from horizontal to vertical along with me. It was immensely strange.

I did mention that there was one other behavior that reduced the twitching (and only very briefly), and this was perhaps the only worthwhile thing I brought out of the entire experience- and only because I have an extremely bizarre sense of humor.

I could relieve the twitching, which I knew, even in my be-Benadrylled state, was a form of muscle spasm, by moving spastically and thrashing all over the place (voluntarily). Since existence under the oppressive blanket of Benadryl did carry with it an immense sense of doom- was both boring and nightmarish, I decided to amuse myself by structuring my spastic movements into a form of dance.

To do this 'dance', first stretch your arms out in front of you, then bring them in close to your body, so that both your shoulder and your upper arms are tense. This is the position your arms will be in for the remainder of the dance. You should look a little like Igor from some of those old horror movies, or a tyrannosaurus rex, or, better yet, Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.

Now, still keeping your shoulder and upper arm muscles tensed, loosen your forearm and wrist muscles and thrust your forearms out in front of you as rapidly as possible. Your hands and even your forearms should flop around like noodles while your upper arms remain rigid; if they move at all, they should move only robotically.

Next, thrash your legs about chaotically. Alternate doing this and the arm thing until you're sick of doing so.

Then, if you want to see what diphenhydramine is like, make yourself do this little 'dance' again. And again. And again. In fact, do it for about two hours straight. That's about how long it took for the twitching sensation to go away, and I believe it only did so because I finally got sick of it about 2 hours after ingesting the 2nd dose and smoked a cigarette, hoping that the rumors I had heard about nicotine counteracting anticholinergics was true. It either was indeed correct, or was something of a placebo effect, but either way, it worked. About 20 minutes later (in all, T+3:15, aka about 5:15 AM), the twitches stopped enough for me to drop off to sleep.

Diphenhydramine does not seem to be worth it. I could even have put up with 'the twitchies' had there been a stronger visual/experiential component, but I had no such luck. Basically, it just felt like I had a bad (and very twitchy!) case of the flu.

When I was younger I did a somersault off a hotel bed and landed on my neck, subsequently fracturing a number of ribs and tearing a bunch of chest muscles. I have had 300 lb. men kick me in the crotch. I would much, much, much rather experience pains like that again than go through 'the twitchies' once more. It was absolute agony- and there was no pain involved.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 42975
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 25, 2007	Views: 25,767
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Diphenhydramine (109) : Alone (16), Difficult Experiences (5)