First of all I would like to start by saying that I by no means recommend this amount of DXM to anyone. Not because of the mental implications of such a trip, but just in the purely physical terms of amount of DXM and it’s potential for harm at such doses. In fact I strongly suggest against it! I had intended to take only 1350 mgs.
Background info:
29 y/o male, 215 Lbs. (97.5 kgs). I’m Pretty good shape and exercise very regularly. I run about 6-12 miles a week. I had been taking nootropics and fish oil for over a month to boost mental clarity and yadda yadda. I was in a good place mentally. I had been preparing for this trip mentally and physically for over 2 months. I had taken a good amount of dxm in my younger days, mainly ages 17-22 with highest dose being about 800-900 mgs. Within the past 3 months I had revisited dxm taking 1 x 600 mg trip and 2 x 900 mg trips. It had been about 6 weeks since my last trip. No other drugs for over 2 ½ years. Light alcohol use, very small weed almost non existent weed use.
Setting:
I had a Nice two story house all to myself, no responsibilities for the next two days. I had set up a trip room in the garage. I put LED party lights on, scattered glow sticks throughout. I chair to sit and mattress to lay down.
T+00 : 7:30 pm.
Ordered door dash and got two thai food entrees one for before my trip and one for later. I had eaten and hour ago and figure my stomach was settled and I was ready to dosed. I was feeling kind of bummed because I hadn’t predosed and grapefruit juice to potentiate the experience, I definitely did not need it! I poured 1350 mgs of pure dxm into a glass cup. Got it down in two chugs, almost puked. Brushed my teeth and sat on the sofa. I put on Mortal Kombat on netflix to pass the time as I came up. Horrible movie but I love it out of nostalgia.
T+30 mins : 8pm
Wow, it never hits me this hard this fast. All the usual symptoms of a come up are there, but much more intense. I start getting the lightheadedness and dizziness as per usual. I decide to get started with my usual DXM routine and set a bath and lay there until my stomach settles. I put my Bose speaker on and listen to one of the many spotify playlists I had obsessively spent months perfecting just for this occasion. As I lay in the dark in the bath, the nausea is there pretty good. I just closed my eyes and wait for it all to pass. I’m feeling odd and not as excited as usual. Think it may have been the nausea. I’m getting pretty disoriented. However the nausea passes and it’s time to get out of the bath
T+1 hour: 8:30 pm
I’m completely gone. Usually I can feel myself going through the different plateaus, enjoying each for just a little it before going onto the next but not this time. I sling shotted straight to a very high 2nd low 3rd. This is when things start getting very weird. I put on my pj’s and head outside and hang out for the hammock a bit. Hammock is awesome, it’s like being in some very weird spider web. I felt like a baby being cradled in a giant hand. Very cool.
T+1:30 hrs. 9pm
I’m having a lot of trouble understanding what is happening to me and why I feel the way that I do. I don’t know why I am the way I am. I feel like it must be my birthday or I’m on some kind of vacation. I stair to the open sky in my hammock, watching the eucalyptus sway in the wind. At some point I get off and lay in the grass. It was quite nice up to this point. I’m tripping pretty hard, no sense of Identity or anything, it’s too hard to think. I just am…
T+2:00 hours 9:30
This is when things got bad. I had a joint I pre-rolled and a lighter sitting outside in a chair that I had planned to smoke on the comedown around 1am. With all judgement out the window I say fuck it and smoke it there and then. I have no weed tolerance and this is a hefty J for me (for my tolerance at least) about a good sized bowl. The thing is, weed gives me really bad anxiety, like really unpleasant uncontrollable anxiety. I thought that after taking dxm all my emotions would be numb and the anxiety would not come like usual.I smoke the joint and that was it. I am completely gone. It was like a stepped into a portal into another dimension… Just completely zonked out of my mind. I start seeing my neighbor yelling at me, because in my mind she was outside trying to relax in her backyard and all the weed smoke was blowing on to her. She threatened to tell my parents and this just sent anxiety shooting down my spine. Looking back however this was all just my imagination, but I didn’t realize until almost a day later that this was all fake. And I kept going back to this scenario over and over about how fucked I was when this was all over. This is when I decide to say “Fuck IT” What is plateau sigma and what better time than now, nothing matters. I go and pull out my last 450 mgs and chug it straight down. I feel it burning down my throat and stomach but could really care less. All I can think about is my neighbor yelling at me, as I rest on the hammock. Full blown anxiety.
T+3 hours 10:30
I realize somehow, that chugging that last bottle was probably a really bad idea. I shove my fingers down my throat and make myself puke on my feet. (thank god I made myself throw up) I spend the next hour or so wandering in and out of my house. I keep checking outside to see if I smoked the Joint i had prepared ( I had) . I must have checked at least three different times to see if there was that Joint to smoke. I couldn’t remember anything. I kept going back to certain images of my neighbor. My short term memory was that of a goldfish. I spend an uncertain amount from laying down in the middle of the living room, to the garage just trying to figure out what is going on and what I have to do next. Constantly going outside to check for the Joint and imagining my neighbor is mad at me like a madman. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.
T+3.5 hours 11pm
I’m in my garage laying down and I feel stuck and frustrated at least I think I was in the garage but I could have been in the living room. At some point I stand up frustrated and start yelling
“ THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE” and “Nobody can do this! “ or something along those lines. I start getting images of my neighbor again because i was yelling and anxiety shoots down my spine. At some point i’m start thrashing around in a little play tent that was in the living room, breaking it. I realize i’m indoors again and feel a little relief.
I’ll try and put into words what I was feeling in regards to the DXM. I had spent months choosing music carefully, and making playlists. I had my headphones on and could not recognize a single song that was playing. None even sounded vaguely familiar. And I’m sure it was not helping because one of the playlists i made was heavy drum and bass which i had labeled “HYPERXM” as in to play when i wanted to get hyper (bad idea). I felt like pure liquid, i had never known dxm could feel like this, Tracers were incredibly vivid. I felt like I was controlling them with my mind. Little indicator lights on the laptop were making huge spirals and long strings out of their light because of the tracers. I can’t explain how intense all of this was. My heart was pounding. I felt like dish soap (weird but those were my exact thoughts), everything was moving so damn fast, this did not feel like dxm at all. In fact, it felt a lot like MDMA, that “liquid feeling”... DXM is usually choppy with a lot of frames and flanging, this was most definitely not.
T+4 hours 11:30 pm.
This must be about the peak. I end up upstairs in the master bedroom on top of the bed. I’m sitting up. I’m being just completely yanked in all different directions and rooms in my mind. One second i’m in some weird technology mechanical control room and different pieces of furniture come flying in from side to side up and down and I’m in a different place ( I was actually in just one spot the whole time). My mind can not stay focused on any one scene for very long before I’m taken somewhere else mentally. I can never tell what i’m looking at because it so quckly turns into a hallucination. I don’t know where I am or what’s happening, I just kind of know it’s supposed to be this way. I think a lot of the anxiety from the weed must have worn away because this is actually slightly pleasant and amazing.
T + ??? hours
The weirdest part of this trip, I’m staring at myself, as an amputee, both legs and both arms just nubs. I have sunglasses on and I’m trying to move but I can’t, just my torso and head trying to jump and my nub flailing around (i’m guessing I was stuck and couldn’t get up or move as to why i pictured myself as a handicap trying to move) I’m a little torso man on a stage at some sort of chaotic concert. There is helicopters flying around me. I can’t see anything real anymore. Nothing makes absolutely any sense. I check the time on my phone and it says 4:34 am… I am high as shitt still. I end up downstairs and back in the garage somehow. I lay in the dark for another hour until i realize light is starting to shine through the garage window. I realize my body is very tired, even though I am not. I decide to take my headphones out and it finally feels like this is ending. I decide to try and go to sleep there and then but feel cold so I head inside to get in my bed. I try and sleep but can’t. I go back in forth moving from my bed to the living room, the crazy hallucinations have finally stopped and I at least now where I am, what I am seeing and what I did.
T+ 11 hours 7am.
I want to sleep so bad, but I can’t. I am at second plateau at least. I still can’t believe how high I am and why this doesn’t seem to be ending. I start worrying that I am still going to be messed up even the next day after this. I end up sleeping for an hour at some point maybe from like 9am to 10 pm. I wake up and get out of bed. Afterglow is really just a complete after high and very unpleasant at this point. I’m scared, trying to think about what I did. The feeling does not fade. I start thinking about life and how much evil there is in this world. And how desperately I just want to go back to normal and forget about all this.
T+14 hours 10 am
My whole day is spent in a complete existential crisis. I try watching Part’s unknown (the anthony bourdain travel show) to distract myself but it only makes things worse. He’s in myanmar and all the images of poor people barefoot on dirt roads and him talking about people getting thrown in jail for no reason by oppressive governments and openly killed in the streets by the police. I see all the evil that drives those people, all the struggle people face everyday just trying to survive. I think about how Anthony bourdain willingly killed himself even though he seemed to have it all, and kate spade too. Which in my mind just proved that there is an evil that drives life and we can try and escape it all our lives but it follows us no matter what. I realize how much I’ve blocked out these feelings my whole life and how weak I am as a person and I could never endure any of these things even in the slightest. I feel so alone. I’m broken. So consumed by evil.
I try and walk it off, i just know that I can’t be in this house anymore, I want to get as far away from it as possible. I end up walking about 4 miles total to a local health food store to get an iced tea, i’m starving and thirsty. It looked really fucking weird once I was inside it, people are all around me but I can barely notice them. I don’t care about them or anyone. I have no emotions what so ever. I’m still pretty dang high, probably first plat.
T+20 hours 4pm
I finally feel like it’s pretty much over. I end up sleeping at 6 or 7pm. I’m so exhausted, but I feel so scared and lonely in this big house by myself. I’m scared to sleep. But at some point I fade away into sleep. Waking up every few hours because I’m drenched in sweat and drool and dying of thirst. I sleep a good 12 hours of intermittent sleep.
As of writing this report it’s been about 45 hours. I feel mostly back to normal, however I can’t shake this existential feeling. I still feel the effects of dissociation, i don’t know what I should be doing in my life, and can not find the motivation to do anything. I have a hard time feeling emotions still , I’m forgetful and keep losing things and overall I can’t shake this lonely feeling I have. I’m amazed at how much I was looking forward to this trip, only to find out it wasn’t at all what I hoped it to be…. I feel dumb, I feel wrong for thinking this was going to help me in some way. It’s hard for me to change activities because I stay focused on one thing for too long, when I force myself to do something else it’s very unnatural. My body is doing weird stuff, some slight muscle twitches. But I know in time it will be ok, these are just after effects i’ve had before except more intense.
Looking back I may have actually been able to enjoy it more, but it was that goddamn joint that kicked my entire night downhill. Otherwise I think i could have damn well enjoyed more of it. However, at 29 years old with the responsibilities I have now as an adult I don’t feel like I can ever take time out of my life again for something like this. It was so much more draining and intense than I thought it was going to be, the comedown just dragged on forever and the entire experience lasted WAAAAYYYY too long. There are just some corners of my mind I don’t ever want to explore again, I was not ready to explore questions of life and death so vividly.
TLDR: Be careful and hide your stash so you don’t end up re-dosing. Be smart and realize you may see and feel things you never wanted experience. I have nothing more to gain from DXM and will not be taking any more again.
Edit: Added bold formatting to font for readability.