DOSE:

53 tablets

oral

Diphenhydramine

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

[Erowid Note: The dose described in this report is very high, potentially beyond Erowid's 'heavy' range, and could pose serious health risks or result in unwanted, extreme effects. Sometimes extremely high doses reported are errors rather than actual doses used.]

This was my first and only suicide attempt, as well as my first and only hallucination experience. I had been fighting with my parents for a few days, and on this night I had come back home. My parents had found out that I had been taking Ecstasy, so I was in a lot of trouble in the morning (I came back home around 10:30 and they were in bed). This added to my already depressed and suicidal mental state finally pushed me over the edge.

I had thought about several ways to do it: injecting air, poisoning, dropping an electric device in the bath. But I was scared of the possible pain. So I thought that if I OD'd on sleeping pills, I would just go to sleep and not wake up. Apparently I'm not always right. I took the pack of Benadryl, as well as a few more diphenhydramine sleeping pills that I found. I took about 6 pills, and while I was waiting for those to make me sleepy, I opened the rest of the pills. When the first 6 made me sleepy, I took the rest of them all at the same time. It took three handfuls to get all the pills down.

After that, it gets a little hazy. I remember walking around my house as if I was extremely drunk. My body just wouldn't cooperate with what I wanted to do. I was walking into walls, stumbling, and almost falling over. This woke my Dad up, who saw me in this state. I was aware of the fact that I was having such a hard time walking, but it didn't register that the reason was because I was so fucked up. So my parents called 911. While we were waiting on the paramedics, my parents got me dressed and sat me in the living room. I don't remember at what point the paramedics and police got there, but I do remember that they were in the living room talking to my parents. Nothing that was happening struck me as out of the ordinary. Every time I would try to get up out of the chair, they would tell me just to sit down and relax.

I don't remember being put on the stretcher, but I do remember laying on it while being put in the ambulance. It didn't register that it was an ambulance I was being put into, I was just being put into some vehicle. I remember that I thought the ambulance was infested with ants, and the little bastards kept biting me. Even though we were at my house, I thought we were at my friend A's house (this is where I would always go to do drugs). I continued to believe that I was at A's house for the remainder of the trip.

When we got to the ER, there were several people there with me. I remember my Aunt L, my Mom, and the Nurse, but the only person that I didn't think was someone else was my Aunt. I thought that my mom was one of my friends who was wearing a mask that looked like my mom, and I stared at her for a few minutes completely confused by this. They asked me if I knew who she was and I said 'It looks like Mom... but it can't be.' When the nurse came in and gave me the charcoal drink, I thought she was my friend Cameron, who is always drinking, so I thought that the charcoal drink was alcoholic. When I tried it and didn't like it, I asked 'Does anyone else want this’? But they told me to drink it, and I didn't argue.

After I drank the world's worst drink, the nurse gave me a pink bucket. I thought 'What is that for?', and about a minute later, I was very glad I had that bucket, because I vomited charcoal all in it. Then I handed the bucket to my Aunt like nothing happened.

After I drank the charcoal, they finally let me have some water. I had such bad dry mouth that I could hardly talk. It seemed like every time I drank water, my mouth just absorbed it like a sponge, and was instantly dry again.

The trip lasted through the next day in some aspects. I was having auditory hallucinations the next day, I was having paranoid thoughts, I was thinking things were happening that really weren't, and it still didn't hit me that I was in a hospital. I remember waking up hearing someone knocking at the front door of the house I thought I was at. They were yelling that they were the police and that they had an arrest warrant. I woke my mom up (in reality) and told her that the cops were at the door and that someone better go answer it before they kicked the door in. I was really worried that they were going to kick the door open (they said they were going to, and I couldn't distinguish reality from fiction). Needless to say, no one got up to answer the door.

For the rest of the second day, I slept a lot, and continued thinking things were happening that weren't, or not making sense out of things that really did happen.

It was the third day that my mind really became rooted in reality again. But I was still having some problems, mainly with conversations. By this time, I had told my mom what I did, so they had a psychiatrist come in to talk to me. He would ask me questions, and I wanted to answer them, but while I was answering the questions, I would lose track of what I was saying, then forget the question. I would be answering the question, and in the middle of the sentence, my train of thought would just vanish and I wouldn't be able to finish the sentence. It was very frustrating, because I knew what I wanted to say up until I was in the middle of saying it.

It was very hard to pee, because Benadryl dries me out real bad, and I couldn't hardly eat anything except the three or four bites that I forced down to get out of the ICU.

When I finally did get out of the ICU, they asked me to go to the psych ward for a few days, which I agreed to. That was pretty much the end of my experience, except that I had a really dry cough for about a week after that.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 54967
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 15, 2007	Views: 27,697
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Diphenhydramine (109) : Post Trip Problems (8), Hangover / Days After (46), Depression (15), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), Difficult Experiences (5), Hospital (36)