DOSE:

120 mg

oral

DXM

(gel tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

I'm a 16-year-old Caucasian female with a few years' interest in psychedelics but very little experience outside of caffeine and alcohol. Minus a problem with my ankle I had no health problems.. I had heard about the potentials of DXM a long time ago and three months before this trip I tried taking 90 mg by drinking some cough syrup, and as I had no effects I figured I was safe from the CYP2D6 enzyme deficiency.

I decided to take it on a Friday night, during the evening so my parents wouldn't notice anything. I was in a good mindset and wasn't worried about anything. I ate a little less dinner than usual because the websites mentioned doses on an 'empty stomach' and opted out of chocolate or tea because I didn't want to disrupt it with caffeine. I was on no medications and hadn't taken anything since an ibuprofen two days earlier. At 9:00 PM I took 8 Robotussin CoughGels with 15 mg DXM each, so 120 mg or a middle 1st Plateau dose, and sat down to read.

At 10:20 I noticed slightly blurry vision and felt a little light-headed so I told my parents I was going to bed. I turned out the lights and turned on some Liquid Tension Experiment on my mp3 player. The room was still slightly lit by my alarm clock, moonlight, the crack in my door. I started moving my hand back and forth and noticed motion trails. I didn't notice any changes to music but I felt lightheaded and happy. I looked at my mirror on my wall and in the darkness I saw the outline of the mirror expand, but not the mirror itself, and then shrink again to fit the mirror.

At this point, around 10:40 my vision clouded up for about a second like it does when I get dizzy. The small black cutouts of hammers, nails, wrenches, and ladders were in the clouding. When it went away I noticed that my bedspread was much whiter than usual. I felt like I was in a dream and my thinking clouded. My bed began to feel like it was going backwards. I closed my eyes and imagined it was a carriage. (This seemed logical.) Then I saw the fuzzy outlines of horses pulling the bed forwards. I knew they were hallucinations even in my screwed up state and they didn't look real, but it still didn't seem illogical that they went forwards and I went backwards or that we weren't actually going anywhere. This state was very entertaining and remaining for some time. I also saw the fuzzy outlines of snakes come out of the dark, they came close to me but I was not frightened. At 11:20 I felt tired, turned off the music and went to sleep.

At about 2:10 AM I woke up and went to the washroom. Everything still felt dreamy. I walked in an odd, swaying manner with my legs not bending; I tried walking normally and could but this was much more fun. I believe this is 'motion euphoria.' I went back to my room and walked around for about twenty minutes, and went back to sleep.

I woke up again around 8:00 AM. I felt a bit nauseous. That whole day I didn't feel high, but I felt detached from the world, like it was a dream or wasn't really happening. I figured it was a hangover or afterglow. The day wasn't very eventful, I stayed home, read and studied; I saw no new effects. That evening, around 11:30 PM I was on the computer and noticed motion trails. I immediately went to bed. I noticed my eyes weren't adjusting to the dark, and I looked at my alarm clock - the numbers were shaking up and down. I turned on the light and everything looked like it was shaking, and I had double vision. For a few seconds I had 'strobe light' vision, everything would flash between being very dark and normal. I felt very hot and somewhat nauseous. Then everything went cartoony. For the best description it looked like the world was changed to 32 colour mode. I tried to get up but my legs shook too much to stand. I was terrified, because I knew this wasn't supposed to happen, and I started praying to God not to let me die. (By the way, I'm atheist.) Then I managed to force myself to go to sleep.

I woke up the next morning with no symptoms and a great feeling of relief. Then I noticed double vision and nausea. My main concern would be getting even higher that night. I signed on to a DXM-related Forum and told them about it and they said I was enzyme deficient and didn't need to worry, it would pass. That night, I saw shaking but no colour changes, walked normally, and felt relieved. Over the next week, I got double vision during the day and shaking during the night that slowly disappeared. A week later I started to worry because I still had double vision, and other symptoms I had noticed like static, easy to get afterimages, and flashes of light. These corresponded most likely to HPPD - but getting HPPD on a low dose of DXM was unheard of.

So here I am four weeks after the trip. I still have static, easy afterimages, and very mild double vision. At this point, however, the symptoms have stopped bothering me. In fact I actually enjoy some of them, like seeing people with an inch of transparent hair over their heads. But I just can't get over the fact that this is so unheard of: I permafried my brain at 120 mg, or the fact that I probably can't ever do any hallucinogens for fear of getting really bad HPPD. This of course may still go away. My advice to you? Nothing, really. I did nothing really wrong and screwed myself up, but I am certainly the exception rather than the rule.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 52021
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 16, 2010	Views: 68,215
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