DOSE:	300 mg	oral	DXM	(pill / tablet)
	600 mg	oral	DXM	(capsule)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

This is a record of my two experiments with DXM.

I first took 300mg in the form of tablets dissolved in the mouth, in the morning and on an empty stomach. The drug took roughly an hour to take effect, and I noticed the strongest effects about two hours after I took the pills. First and most obvious, my pupils were hugely dilated, lending me the appearance of a wild lemur. My teeth were chattering quite a bit. One of the most dramatic effects was a deadening of my sense of taste. About a year ago I burnt my tongue on a hot noodle which deadened my taste buds for about two days, and DXM produced the same sensation, or lack of it. I could feel the texture of the food in my mouth, but could barely taste it.

I felt a brief wave of nausea right before the peak effects rolled in. I didn't hallucinate, but colors in general seemed a bit darker, richer, and more 'grainy,' like an old color TV. Objects seemed to take on dark edges, and my peripheral vision darkened, as if I were looking through a short tunnel. These effects were pretty subtle though. Walking felt weird, I felt taller, as if I were tottering on stilts. Again, this was subtle. I didn't feel that my motions were particularly 'robotic' though, as some people experience. I tried juggling, and could still do it. Playing the violin, though, didn't feel so good, my movements were a bit shakey, not very smooth. I napped off and on for several hours, and wandered through what I'd describe as 'turbocharged daydreams,' which I don't remember very well.

Where my experience mainly differs from the others I read before trying DXM is in the length of the aftereffects, which gradually diminished over the course of about a week! By aftereffects I mean: dilated pupils, deadened sense of taste, chattering teeth, vision not *quite* normal, below-average coordination, and vague 'off' feeling. Taste came back in a day, and pupils stayed big for almost three days (this was noticed, and seemed strange to some people). For about a week my teeth would occasionally chatter a bit, especially on the tail end of a good yawn. I suppose it was some sort of spasm in my jaw muscles. Other people have reported leg cramps, I guess I got it in the jaw. And the vague feeling of lethargy, etc. lasted about a week. This put a bit of a damper on my daily routine.

Despite all this, I decided to have another go, and two weeks after the first experiment I took 600mg in the form of Robitussen gel caps (they're pretty looking things), this time on a stomach full of cheese, at 11:00 pm. It took two hours before I noticed anything, and the peak effects were in full swing about five hours later. No nausea this time at all. A few interesting things happened:

#1: While lying down on the couch, I closed my eyes, and suddenly felt huge (and warm). I'm not sure how I could have a sense of my size not relative to any other object, but there it is.

#2: Several times I had the illusion of 'seeing through my eyelids.' I looked at the bookshelf, closed my eyes, and there it still was in vivid detail.

#3: I was looking for the wall to move, but this didn't happen. I got the same 'old TV effect' mentioned earlier with more intensity. Very similar to the way a TV can tend toward more greenish, orangish, lurid colors that don't line up very well, with the edges of images slightly fuzzy and blurred, and straight lines tending to bulge and bend a bit. And again I would describe my vision as more 'grainy' as well.

#4: Most interesting: as I got into what I would describe as the peak, the room changed several times. I had gotten into a pattern of lying on the couch for a while, then walking around the corner into the kitchen to look at the clock and have a sip of water. For some reason I wanted to keep track of what time it was (I might note here that time seemed to lengthen, what seemed like an hour was only half that). The living room would get progressively more crazy until I took a break in the kitchen, which seemed to remain comparatively normal. Maybe it was the action of walking that tended to ground me more in the real world. As a side note, at one point I found it quite difficult to swallow even a small sip of water, although I took this in stride.

Each time I returned from the kitchen to the living room, I had a marked sense that I was entering a 'new room.' Which is how I actually described it to myself at the time. The room was the same, yet different, similar to the way one's house in a dream is the same, yet different from the house in waking life, and also to the way a room in 2006 is the same, yet different from the same room on December 26th, 1985. At one point it actually seemed to me that I had travelled back in time to that date in the same room, although what precisely it was about the room that gave me that date I couldn't say. I would (carefully) walk back from the kitchen into the living room, take a look, and chuckle to myself, 'Another new room.'

#5. Only once did I notice the 'flanging' effect, when a car drove by, instead of a steady hum, I heard more of a 'zum-zum-zum-ZUM-ZUM-ZUM-zum-zum-zum.'

And once again, four days have gone by since this experiment and I still feel a *bit* strange. Although after the first experiment this feeling eventually went away completely. The overall experience was very interesting and certainly gave me something to think about. I didn't enjoy the 'drugged' feeling of the 300mg dose, but the 600mg dose was more what I was looking for, although I would note two things about it: I don't remember it very well, it has mostly faded away from my memory just the same way as dreams do, and also I feel like by luck 600mg was a dose that left me just on the edge of still being able to control my mind to some extent, to pull myself away from the experience, walk to the kitchen, etc. Beyond that might lie some interesting things, but I would be giving myself up to it completely at that point. Just from the practical point of view, the long lasting aftereffects for me make DXM unappealing. Still I get a kick out of thinking there are time travel pills lurking in the cough syrup aisle.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 56439
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 21, 2009	Views: 39,898
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