DOSE:

1 g

oral

Dimenhydrinate

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

54 kg

Beware of the true menace of the drug world that defies the toxic depiction of the deadly venom filled syringe that sits behind the reporters head, that vague yet lingering image that we become familiar with as yet another official sounding monotone drives the 'anti drug' message into this mindless society incessantly. Of course they pick out the biggest two nasties of the chemical world, physically dependable heroin and mentally captivating methamphetamine. Of course they will reveal the victims who have been lured and hypnotized by abusing drugs so strong that the little amount of brain-cells they did have to begin with were erased and replaced with a fond fixation to a strong chemical.

Without going into the gritty details, the suburban masterpiece of normality was never supposed to be for me because I went off track and any hope of that beautiful and ignorant normality was flushed down the toilet before I can even remember. Somewhere along the production line someone forgot to tighten the screws I guess. I'll cut to the chase anyway.

Some people say weed was the drug that opened the door to all other drugs, which is understandable. It's everywhere! But for me the one drug that kept my fixation climbing back up the stairs again and again for more and more was not one parents feared to find in their children's drawers, or one the drug tests ravage bottles of urine in hunt of discovering. In fact the drug that provided me with the longing to return to the land of intoxication was one that my parents fed me before long car trips at four years old. The one that is a common sight in many family medicine cabinets. There is no ghastly looking syringe to scare them away from this drug as it probably has been a familiar and friendly face since early childhood. It sits on the chemist in those bright coloured boxes and offers no scary symbols to foretell the potential danger that lies within that packet. No need to worry about breaking the law as it's perfectly legal. Most drug users have heard of this in whispers, many have tripped. Others are experienced with it, most just wonder and don't believe in the rumours.

I was sixteen and I had just been expelled from the first school that got rid of me. The Christian school, weed was off the agenda as my naivety was never told that nobody ever gets high the first time. So I assumed it was a waste because I coughed and spluttered for ten minutes straight and didn't feel a thing. I looked at all these stoners and pondered why they enjoyed something that was so dull. (That was changed quickly however but that's an entirely different story.) I really had no access to MDMA and my other drug knowledge was fairly restricted. However when it came to prescription meds there was a rather different story unfolding, at the time I had been on around five or six different antidepressants and antianxiety meds since year six, I had recently been hospitalized for overdosing on one of my wonderful prescriptions and now was drug free. Apart from two occasions just after my sixteenth birthday when my friend had stolen her sisters Ritalin on a few occasions and I wound up a very sick, shaking and stupid idiot after downing nine of the pills she gave me without even knowing what it would do. I had the weekend booze binges and that was enough. That was until I met dimenhydramine, the drug that changed my life.

Well it wasn't a meeting considering I had been a long time sufferer of emetophobia (fear of vomiting) and had kept travel sickness pills as a close companion for several years. It was a Monday morning and I had a fight with my mum, at the time I wasn't at school so I was filling my time by working full time at the local fast food restaurant. My life basically sucked and I had hardly any true friends left so I filled the void with lots of different boyfriends. So we were fighting about whatever and on impulsive as I often act upon the packet of travacalm sitting in my top draw sparkled and seconds later I had swallowed six pills hoping to be knocked to sleep so I didn't have to deal with the shit going down. This was around 8am in the morning and my life being as wild and unpredictable as I should have learnt at this stage resulted in me having to rock up to work a few hours later. My dad drove me and I remember the feeling that plagued my head being one of the most mentally baffling I'd ever experienced. Talking to him was very very difficult. I could barely speak. I walked into work and my surroundings moved around me violently. How many people can say that they had their first experience with the ferocious latch of dimenhydramine while working? Looking back I don't know how I managed, I remember being really thirsty and having to keep running my hands over the paper bags. How did I serve customers all day? My memory of this time period isn't vivid, but I do remember that in my dazed mental state I reminded myself to check the active ingredients of travacalm when I got home to see why I felt so fucking odd.

Let's fast forward a couple of weeks. After reading that people use this recreationally to trip out I decided to spend one Friday afternoon testing this out. I was going to see my boyfriend at the time and I thought hell why not, I don't remember how many pills I popped but it was less than six. Maybe five? I remember my first experience with the gravity feeling as I stumbled down his hallway laughing because he didn't know I was feeling this strange of travel sickness pills. I think I babbled a couple of weird sentences to him and eventually I fell asleep while watching a movie and somewhere in my first semidelirious state I remember seeing hundreds of salad bowls lined across his bed. I muttered to him 'babe why are there salad bowls everywhere' and he found the randomness hysterical.

I messed around with it even more, I told my friend of the joys and one afternoon my friend Tonique and I were bored and driving around with my friend (he was driving of course). We happened to bump into this friend who had just purchased his first pack of travacalm and was looking to search for the truth in all these articles on over the counter highs. This friend, Alex, was what I can now look back and describe as an experienced drug user. Anyway that afternoon we saw Alex and somehow Tonique and I ended up popping half a packet each and then going to a dodgy chemist when the five failed to take effect and she took five more. Ten is a lot for one's first trip, I only took seven again. The afternoon flew by and again my memory is hazy, but I do remember feeling very heavy on the drive home. I also remember being able to act straight when I got home and eat my dinner as normal around my parents, so I was becoming a seasoned traveler now, or I thought anyway. Later I found out from Toniques boyfriend that she had taken seven more pills of hyoscine hydrobromide from a brand of travel sickness pills she found in her medicine cabinet that are marketed as 'kwells'. She ended up running around the streets with her friend, delirious and psychotic. Getting caught by the police because they were acting like mad women, she smashed her new phone and got dragged to her front door by the police. After that she swore off it for good, although that's another story. I sat on the toilet later and I jumped back as I saw millions of spider legs poking out at me from under the door, realizing it must have been one of these hallucinations that were supposed to occur. Later that night while laying in bed I watched as spiders danced across my ceiling and spun webs up and down in pure fucking amazement. I could not believe that this drug I had used in moderation for basically a lifetime could make me see spiders when spiders were not really there. It was around this time I spent an entire day immersing myself in each online report I could find. I don't know why I was so attracted to dimenhydramine but I'm the kind of person that will do something just to say I've experienced it. Especially in regards to my drug use (as my future experiences have shown). After a day of reading of many full blown trips where people walk in and out of the room, jumbling words incessantly and see all these weirdly wonderful illusions I walked in an almost zombie like manner to the chemist and purchased a packet. The ten pills went down my throat and after reading so many reports I knew it would take about two hours to take effect. My boyfriend was at a concert and it was a Thursday night, I planned to trip safely in my room and watch secret window.

Just like the way my life tends to induce a reaction that was totally unintentional, I remember sitting in the lounge room and seeing the table move up and down really fast. I thought this is it and watched in awe as a pink butterfly flew across the room. Then I lost my mind. Luckily at this stage my parents were also amateurs in the land of drug abuse, added to my shaky psychiatric history and tendency to disassociate and walk around the house asleep with my eyes open, say weird things and have no recollection at all I was so lucky to scrape by with the art of denial. I have little recollection of this night in early November 2007, but my parents remember it well. The first sign of strangeness was when I asked my mum where my school scarf was, when she told me I didn't go to school anymore I told her I refused to wear a sausage on my head the next day. That was just the beginning of a night full of hallucinations and pure delirium. I recall reading the da vinci code with my eyes closed, although the book wasn't even in the house at that time. I met my first shadow person standing in the corner of my parents room staring at me for hours on end. Later it transformed into a security guard and walked back and forth non stop. Thankfuck I was able to control my body to a reasonable extent (unlike last week) and my parents called my psychiatrist and told her I had been delirious all night. I ended up getting prescribed seroquel eventually and this event was the catalyst, among my instability and general mood swings to try and calm me down.

After that November night my relationship with dimenhydramine spiraled out of control for the rest of the month. On one occasion I mixed it with alcohol and had one of the most intense panic attacks of my life where I spend six hours curled up in a ball shaking like a leaf because I was convinced my boyfriend was vomiting every hour. One combination which will never even cross my mind again it was so fucking horrible. My emetophobia was still pretty dominant at the time and when you're laying in the same bed as somebody who you think has vomited everywhere but your in a state that's to scared to even leave the bed so you curl up, face the opposite way and block your ears for hours and hours while you hallucinate retching and a bed full of vomit. Considering we had been pretty drunk the night before the possibility was also there. I woke up in the morning and clenched my eyes shut and leapt from his bed and ran downstairs to fetch his dad to help me out of this mess. After telling him that I'd spent the past 6 hours laying in a bed full of vomit his poor dad had braced himself for the worse. So you can imagine the reaction of both father and son when we entered a room that so didn't meet my vivid expectations of being wildly covered with vomit. There was nothing, he was sound asleep and I stood there in shock. He shook his head at my over exaggerated panic and went back to bed. I was in so much shock to find out the way I had pictured the previous night was a complete delusion. This brings me to the theory that dimenhydramine brings out ones deepest and darkest fear and makes it seem like a candid reality. Regardless that relationship ended a couple of weeks later.

There were more experiences, just regular haze added to the memory. Eventually I developed a resistance and steered clear for awhile. In this time I discovered the joys of illegal drugs and dimenhydramine seemed like a demon from my past.

Three days after my seventeenth birthday I had a movie date with a new boyfriend. (This one being the one I stayed with for the rest of the year and the one who broke my heart, but also the one who opened my mind with the use of drugs and love.) Again I did a stupid thing without thought and ended up taking ten before we went to the movies, I think I wanted to test if I was still tolerant to it. He had no idea, I told him I took nutmeg apparently. So he didn't find my jumbled sentences strange and my delirious vision odd. He did get grumpy because I kept asking him what something was about 20 times and he was watching the movie but when I'd point there would be nothing he could see and I'd make no sense.

As our love grew alongside our drug use, months after this we ended up taking dipenhydramine in the form of unisom sleep gels one night in his car in the usual place we went to smoke weed and chill out. He had tried dimenhydramine before and reported nothing but a sick feeling and tiredness. With a couple of cones though, my memory of the night consists of very little. I don't know how he drove on the shit, I don't want to know. We were both delirious and apparently I couldn't see him and I kept asking him where my boyfriend had gone. Later somehow he managed to get me home and apparently we were with this other guy John for about an hour. I was so fucked I couldn't move from the backseat. I have no memory of seeing John and thought my boyfriend had envisioned it, but sure enough John had spent some time with us and I can't remember even if I hound my brain.

Brendan also told me I tried to open my front door with a coin, I disappeared into the backyard for ten minutes and came back holding my jeans in my hands which were soaking wet (I don't want to know). It was the middle of a freezing cold July winter and I was walking around my front yard in the middle of the night in my underwear, classy.

Since July my interaction with this chemical that has fused a hole in my heart was very minimal. Maybe three or four times? Marijuana, amphetamines, LSD, DXM, MDMA have been drugs I've used recreationally and on a regular interval, up to the stage where I would be either smoking weed every day. Or taking dex every day for class or something. Regardless over the past two months my interest was once again evoked when it came to this friendly deliriant antihistamine. Something to do with reading something about shadow people I believe was the trigger behind my last and what I assume will be the final chapter in this wild storybook. Although even after pretty much losing complete and total sanity last Thursday night, the effect of a recreational dose of dimenhydramine is still one I ponder upon frequently. I hate the physical and mental degradation, but I always find myself going back for more months later.

Since the love affair began I've got around ten different people to trip from this drug, maybe a couple had the guts to repeat the experience. More are curious but in utter disbelief. Most of them are regular illegal drug users, but each and everyone has come to me wide eyed afterwards and told me of their dimenhydramine induced adventures, many say they have never experienced such an intense drug ever before. I've heard many amusing and down right horrifying reports that friends have had while tripping, but I don't really think that anybody could ever defy the one that I endured on Thursday night.

The worst thing one can do whilst bracing their mind for a dram trip is to get overly cocky and believe they can control themselves on it. The one thing that will always get me about this drug is that each and every experience has a unique design of its own, and they can't be predicted or controlled. Maybe when I was a heavy abuser back in 2007 I had a chance, but since being prescribed Prozac last year the effects dimenhydramine has one me can be described as close to a deathtrap. Again my brilliant impulsive ideas decided last minute to buy two packets from a discount chemist and venture to the 1000mg mark in a really brazenly cocky manner, considering I was had never moved above my dose of 10 50mg pills.

I decided to try and film this experience. So I took the pills and choked them down with minor difficulties, but then went down. I was used to around a two hour onset and waiting wasn't really even an issue. This was at 19.01, I guess I decided to sit down and start writing because I have two pre-trip pages that start of reasonably coherent written, but end with phases like 'the paper is moving like an electrified version of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon'

If I ever bother making a plan for anything ever again I will neck myself. Here I am roughly expecting to have a solid two hour gap at the most before dram kicks me up the ass, but once again my plans ended up being scrapped as at 19.50 I begin to write about noticing the gravity effect, overactive peripheral vision and some nonsense about feeling like Neil Armstrong when he pretended to walk on the moon. The next page is victim to a purple texter reading the words '4.04 not found in Australia' followed by the scribble 'oh fuck that textic could be time is going so fucking slowly my wallet into a japanese'.

After that I have a vague memory of dropping my folder onto the floor and all this paper going everywhere. I remember a conversation with my best friend but that still doesn't stand clear in my memory, its only because I captured it on video that it helps jog my memory and after that are the three different accounts of the night that I have no fucking recollection of, curtsey of my mum, dad, grandma and various phone calls to my best friend.

The last my friend heard from me was when our phone call ended at what his phone clocked to be 21.45, my friend was aware of my actions and warned me against it because I had class the next day but I was overly confident and assured him I'd be fine and dandy for class in the morning, oh boy. The five minute fragment which captured a section of our phone conversations reveals a definite change in my tone of voice (it sounds like I've swallowed helium and the speed at which I'm talking is a million miles per second), Alex said I couldn't understand anything he was saying and asked him about a Christmas tree in his house. My memory is so very blurry at this point and the last thing I can recall before slipping into total oblivion is the fact that although I was on the phone, every few minutes I would put the phone down and lose track of the fact that I was on the phone. Alex backs up my hazy recollection by stating that there was about five minutes where I was talking to the phone which I had set down on the bed so he could hear me, but I couldn't hear him. The phone call ended at 21.45, almost three hours after consumption. I would kill to be able to recall the following ten hours which my memory has lost, so I must rely on the opinion of my parents and grandma.

From the end of my phone call to 12.30 AM will remain lost as it wasn't till 12.30 that my parents discovered me. But they speculated that I walked downstairs and walked into the garage, while engaging in conversation with myself for the entire time as my grandma assumed I was on the phone. Although I had temporarily misplaced my phone after the phone call. While in the garage I had emptied a box of fish fingers all over the floor trying to feed my cat although the cat wasn't even nearby. I had also convinced myself that it was class time and I needed to catch the bus. I can also assume that it was in this time that my pair of underwear found in the bar fridge in the garage the following day by my sister was placed here in this time as I attempted to change my clothes, as I woke up wearing a different pair of clothes to which I'm wearing in the movie! Close to two hours wandering around like a mad woman talking to myself, at around 12.30 was apparently when I tried to leave the house to catch a bus, with 40 cents in my hand. This was when the house was awoken by me fumbling with the keys and door and what not. My mum said she took one look at my gigantic pupils, the babble that was pouring from my mouth in which made no sense whatsoever, the weird orange skin my skin had acquired and she knew I had taken something. Of course nobody could get any sense out of me and they chased me around downstairs for around forty minutes trying to get me to come upstairs. I wouldn't hear any of it though and tried on eight consecutive occasions to walk out the front door, forgetting each time I failed that I wasn't allowed to leave! Somehow I was coaxed back upstairs and my parents were at the point where they didn't know what to do. I was calling everybody Alex (the name of my best friend). It was around then my mum managed to coax me back to her bed. It was here I asked for a cup of water, which when given to me I tipped upright all over the bed. So now my parents had a soaking wet bed and nowhere to sleep. I must of ended up downstairs again and I had three grown adults trying to restrain me and calm me down but I was off in my own little world. According to them I spend the next five hours talking non stop, like I was talking so much I didn't even stop for a breath and when I stopped I would freak out and scream out about bugs and spiders crawling all over me. My memory becomes useful at this point as I remember looking out the front window in awe as I saw a police car drive slowly up the street and feel enormous relief when it drove up the driveway next door. For thirty minutes my mum listened to me talk as I stood there looking out the window watching the policeman and my next door neighbor set up a crime scene. I was so fucking convinced of this that I was tempted to ask later the following day if they had a visit from the police, I was so sure there was something big going on and no one would believe me.

When I grew bored my wandering had exhausted my parents who both had work the following day so my mum set up camp laying across the staircase, so every time I'd walk downstairs she could stop me. Before reaching a state of semi coherence apparently I walked from my room where my dad was trying to shut me up, to the stair case, told to go back to bed by my mum and then I forgot why so I'd walk back out. This was around 3.30-4.am that I began my decent back down to earth. The first thing I remember is leaving my bedroom to go to the toilet, of course everything is all misplaced so my dram infected mind comes to the conclusion that my mum has been vomiting. That's why shes sleeping in front of the stair case. Asking me why I would demand to go downstairs to use the toilet, I'd accuse the upstairs toilets of being infested with vomit. When she'd ask whose vomit, I would tell her she was vomiting. I have slight recollections of thinking my mum was vomiting, but again the dimenhydramine made it seem so real. I saw vomit all over the floor and I was so angry that my mum would let herself go like that where I would see it. Again chaos erupted because I demanded for twenty minutes nonstop to be allowed downstairs, when my mum said no I'd forget I had to use the bathroom return to my bedroom and then remember, walk out see my mum trip out freak out and think she was sick until eventually she just let me stumble downstairs to use the toilet. Here I looked out the front door (seeing as its all I wanted to do!) and saw a group of people breaking into my dads car, I opened the door and raced outside but was retained and made to return inside. So fucking determined to show my parents the people standing outside were really there, and becoming frustrated when they would tell me I was hallucinating. I then proceeded to sit down at the kitchen table and begin flicking through a newspaper. My family had learnt to just let me embrace my trip by now so they followed and asked me to read something. So here I sat reading my star sign convinced I was reading word for word but actually talking about complete bullshit.

I remember I kept seeing my cat walking around outside, but when I'd point and tell my mum to let her in she'd tell me the cat wasn't there and I was just seeing things. My memory was returning at this point and my mum asked me if I remembered what had happened earlier, I kept asking her what happened and who vomited, I was persistant that SOMEONE had vomited and my mum was telling me I should be the one vomiting! This made me very confused and mad. Nobody would tell me what had happened and I sure as fuck didn't know. I finally went and sat in bed with my grandma and began talking to her under the assumption she was one of my friend. Again I would get frustrated when recounting real events that had happened a day earlier with this friend I thought she was, and the reply would be something like 'it's just the drugs', and I would keep saying 'but I didn't have any drugs yesterday this really happened, I swear'. I had an experience with a pineapple at the shops and kept going on about a baby pineapple being thrown around and accusing my grandma of doing it. And because I thought she was this friend of mine I thought she was playing games and messing with me, so I began interrogating her. When she told me she spent the day at home, I would get agitated and tell her she was with me! This went on for several hours before I finally became completely coherent and realized my mistake. I then laughed. I had countless hallucinations as the morning light carried my insane mindframe away and they finally managed to coax what I'd taken to them. Special k my dad would accuse, no travel sickness pills sorry to ruin the climatic moment.

Days later and after they have read several reports of the drug online, they now finally fucking believe it was simply travel sickness pills. Ironic because I've been on many illegal drugs at home and been in complete control, and I lose control once from a legal drug. Dimenhydramine is a fucking death trap, use if your willing to induce a temporary schizophrenic episode.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 77124
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 22, 2013	Views: 7,334
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Dimenhydrinate (17) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), Small Group (2-9) (17)