DOSE:

1 cig.

smoked

Products - Spice-Like Smoking Blends

(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

55 kg

I am not, exactly, a connoisseur of recreational drugs. My only illegal drug experience is a few hits of cannabis, from which I did not get high due to my then-poor smoking technique. I do not smoke cigarettes. I do smoke hookah and, occasionally, salvia, but aside from those, the only drugs I take are melatonin pills. I am not a heavy user of recreational drugs.

I had tried damiana a few times before, and it had been pleasant every time. It made me feel mellow. This time, I ventured to try it on my own, without a sitter, and in a much larger dose. I realise now that I may have bitten off more than I could chew.

I rolled a joint of Black Mamba blend damiana and took it outside of my dorm to smoke it. As I finished the joint, a pizza delivery boy approached. At this point, for about 3 minutes after I smoked, I still felt completely normal. I let the pizza guy into the building and carried on a normal conversation while showing him the way to the room he needed. Then I retired to my room.

For another few minutes, everything was peachy. I was getting the beginnings of a mellow, stoned high, and I turned on the television, preparing to watch some stand-up comedy while stoned. My laid-back evening was coming together nicely.

As the drug really started to hit me, though, I started to worry that I might, in my drugged-out confusion, knock my laptop off of the coffee table or break something, so I set about clearing my immediate vicinity of fragile, precarious objects. But soon, my cotton-mouth and the terrible taste of damiana got the better of me, and I got up to walk over to the sink.

That's when the hallucination started. I didn't 'see' anything, per se, but time was a bit distorted. I thought had stood up quickly, but it was as if I was watching myself stand up in slow motion. As I walked toward the sink, the distortion magnified tenfold. It was as if my brain had already sent the signal to my legs to walk over to the sink, but time was moving so slowly that I had to patiently wait for my body to finish carrying out the action. I spat into the sink, and saw my spit leaving my mouth several seconds late, and travelling in slow motion to the sink. I was then stuck. Time had stopped entirely. It took a huge mental effort to push time forward in small bursts.

All this time, I was aware that none of these things were really happening, but the illusion was so complete that they may as well have. The distortion was becoming so great that, for my own safety, I decided to lay down. I sprawled on my bed and ran my head into a book. The bed was covered in junk, in fact, so I started clearing it off, taking great care not to damage anything. But then, I thought, if it was on the floor, might I not step on some of it in my blind stupidity? So I started putting everything away, tidying up.

Then it was very hot. Blazing hot. I stripped to my underpants and hobbled to the thermostat. But the debilitating distortion was creeping ever more quickly. Soon, I thought, I would be entirely incapacitated. So all at once I rushed to clean my room, turn down the thermostat, lock the door, wash my mouth out some more, and pick a television channel. All of these things needed to be done, and it seemed that each task was more urgent than all the others. I hobbled around, muttering, clutching the television remote control, brushing magazines under my bed with my feet, trying to remember what room temperature was in Fahrenheit so as to set my thermostat.

At some point in this frantic confusion, I fell. I clumsily crawled around on the tile floor. Too late, I thought. It's too late to do anything more in preparation for this high. I'm now nearly incapacitated. For the first time, then, it struck me that something was terribly wrong. My scatter-brained, frantic confusion was not a normal feeling. I tried to calm down, but that only made it worse. Soon, I was in a full panic.

What if I caused myself bodily harm? What if I had some kind of anxiety-related stroke or heart attack? What if I got the cops called on me?

Wait; that last one: maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea. I needed to alert some kind of authorities. I needed paramedics. I reached for my phone. As I struggled to find the dialling screen on my phone, I tried to talk to myself, in order to ensure I would be able to articulate my situation to the emergency operator. But I couldn't speak! Sounds just wouldn't come out. I tried and tried. I made every effort to scream. Nothing. I had forgotten how to control my voice, just as I had lost my balance and my grip on time.

For an indeterminate time, I sat, half-naked on my floor, fumbling around, trying to get up or yell or do something. All the while, a sensation was creeping on me. A loud sound from the television had startled me, and I had that familiar sensation of my skin heating up and my guts jumping. But rather than subsiding quickly, the feeling was growing. It was deepening, and soon all of my flesh was on fire. I tried to move, and my bones felt cold. It was like acid was eating my bones and replacing them with ice.

The drama of the situation may sound overblown; it was indeed outlandish to experience. The more intense it became, the more terrified I was. My thoughts were racing uncontrollably, time was inching along, and my body felt like it was being consumed.

All at once it occurred to me that I may not ever come out of this. After all, this was most definitely not the mellow, stoned high I was promised. This must be some kind of allergic reaction or, even worse, perhaps permanent brain damage. And then when paramedics found me, if I had the misfortune to still be alive and experiencing this hell on earth, they would try to stabilise me and keep me alive. They would take an overdosing, writhing mess of a man and turn him into a perpetually terrified vegetable. I couldn't have that. I crawled across the room and grabbed some sticky notes and a marker. I couldn't speak, but perhaps I could still write.

I scribbled down on a series of 53 sticky notes a message for any potential paramedics and for my family and friends. I also detailed much of the horrible trip I was having, as I've done in the above paragraphs. The difference was that I was frightened out of my mind as I was writing it. It read like a suicide note that one would write while being slowly eaten by rats or burned by embers. I scribbled any words I could think of to convey the overwhelming terror. I plead for death. I begged the paramedics to euthanise me. I said my goodbyes to my friends and family.

When I was finished, I bound the notes together with a paper-clip (it was a tremendous effort, of course, to crawl across the room to get said paper-clip) and sat down on my bed again, sweating and shaking. I sat there for an hour or two (by the clock, not my own distorted temporal estimation) before I started to come to my senses again. The panic faded far more quickly than it had started, as well as the burning sensation and time distortion.

When it was all done, I walked over to the couch, curled up, and wept for ten or fifteen minutes. The feeling of panic was gone, but the feeling that my very soul had just been stepped on was not.

The next day, I was not at all functional. I could scarcely hold a conversation, and simple tasks like making a sandwich were difficult. I feared I had permanently damaged my brain.

Fortunately, that wore off by the day after that. But I will never touch damiana again as long as I live.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 85174
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Apr 17, 2012	Views: 33,965
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