LSD + DXM: Calibrating Effects and a Supernatural Music State

Trip number 19+. An old, good-friend combination revisited.

Background and Context

Old good friend combination revisited. LSD+DXM is a combination that occupies its own unique phenomenological category, not comparable to either substance alone or to any other combination. This trip served partly as a calibration: many effects previously attributed exclusively to LSD turned out to be DXM effects when compared side by side.

Key Rediscovery: Attributing Effects to the Right Substance

A significant realization emerged early: many effects previously attributed to LSD were actually DXM effects. Specifically identified as DXM rather than LSD:

Lightness of step and floating sensation while walking. Confusion about body position and shape. Sensation of e.g. the pillow I was lying on becoming part of the body. Forgetting one was sitting on the toilet, not feeling the legs and feeling as if I was levitating with my naked ass in the air jfl. Gravity becoming fluid and modifiable.

Neurobiological basis: all of the above are proprioceptive effects through NMDA blockade in the cerebellum, vestibular nuclei, and spinal cord proprioceptive pathways. LSD at typical doses does not produce significant proprioceptive dissociation; that requires NMDA blockade.

Visual Effects

Text reading observation: letters did not flow like melting butter as on pure LSD. Instead they moved like rigid planks going diagonally, forming Op-art-like images.

Neurobiological basis: NMDA receptors in V1 visual cortex are responsible for orientation processing and for interpolating between letters into continuous forms. Without NMDA, the visual cortex receives raw geometric elements (lines, angles, orientations) without the higher-order integration that normally assembles them into letters. The brain attempts to find global patterns in these elements and produces Op-art instead of text. Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely achieved similar effects through deliberate manipulation of the same V1 orientation mechanisms that DXM disrupts pharmacologically.

Deja Vu, Cinematic Reality, Gravity: The Dissociative Signature

Deja vu, sense of being in a film, and fluid gravity perception identified as dissociative signatures rather than psychedelic ones, specific to NMDA blockade rather than 5-HT2A activation.

Deja vu: hippocampal NMDA blockade disrupts the novelty detection system that compares current experience to memory. Without NMDA, everything is tagged as 'familiar.' Sense of being in a film: PFC NMDA blockade removes first-person anchoring in reality; the observer becomes separated from the experience. Gravity: cerebellar and vestibular NMDA blockade disrupts integration of proprioceptive signals, making gravitational pull subjectively fluid and modifiable.

Walking Comparison: Three Substances

A precise phenomenological comparison emerged between walking on each substance:

"LSD alone: like being thrown into hyperrealistic virtual reality, or being ejected from a video game into the real world."

"DXM alone: I mean literally like a robot. Stiff, but light."

"LSD+DXM: like a video game where the keyboard moves me by itself. The same sensation applies to lying down, standing up, any positional change."

Neurobiological basis: LSD maximizes sensory processing while preserving the observer's relationship to the world, hence hyperrealistic VR. DXM dissociates proprioceptive motor patterns from consciousness, so walking becomes conscious and mechanical, hence robot. LSD+DXM gives hyperrealistic world perception (LSD) while dissociating motor agency (DXM): you experience intention and execution of movement as separate phenomena. The keyboard moves the character while you observe the intention to move arising independently of its execution. Normally these are so synchronized they feel identical. LSD+DXM separates them enough to observe the gap.

Music Enhancement: A Top Life Experience

Music enhancement reached what can only be described as supernatural levels. All melodic lines simultaneously equally perceptible regardless of their normal hierarchical importance.

"Every melodic line charges like a herd of wild horses. Tiny fucking tambourines in the background seem as vivid as the lead vocal. And paradoxically it all sounds harmonious."

Neurobiological basis: LSD through 5-HT2A in auditory cortex A1/A2 suppresses inhibitory interneurons that create the normal attentional hierarchy of foreground versus background. DXM through NMDA blockade removes temporal gating that determines which signals receive processing priority. Together they eliminate the entire prioritization system. The tambourinist who recorded that track played it to be harmonically integrated; the composer heard all layers simultaneously. Normal listening filters out most of this. LSD+DXM removes the filter and delivers the full composition as intended.

Comparison: Pregabalin+LSD at Sleep Onset vs LSD+DXM Music

A precise distinction between the two best musical experiences in recent memory:

"Pregabalin+LSD falling asleep: like three beloved companions kissing me on the ears and every part of my body, and with every kiss the notes spread between us."

"LSD+DXM: like being in an alien spacecraft in a cinema hall prepared by aliens, who play familiar tracks specially for me and bombard me with waterfalls of increasingly powerful melodic lines."

Neurobiological basis: Pregabalin+LSD at sleep onset is intimate and relational: 5-HT1A oxytocin plus hypnagogic ACh plus pregabalin silencing of cortical noise leaves pure emotional signal without dissociative distance. Music becomes touch. LSD+DXM is cinematic and spectacular: NMDA blockade creates distance between observer and experience even while being overwhelmed by it. Sigma-1 through DXM amplifies emotional charge of each melodic line without oxytocin body anchoring. Music becomes an IMAX event. The alien significance enhancement through sigma-1 makes familiar music feel specially prepared for you by an intelligence that understands exactly what you need to hear.

Closed Eyes vs Open Eyes Music Ratio

DXM produces the highest closed-to-open eyes music enhancement ratio among tested substances. Mechanism: NMDA blockade in auditory cortex disrupts spatial sound localization; normally the auditory cortex places sounds in external space. Without NMDA this localization disappears and sound becomes internal, omnidirectional, surrounding from everywhere simultaneously. Eyes open creates conflict between visual spatial information and dissociated sound. Eyes closed eliminates this conflict and sound fills internal space completely.

Estimated ranking by closed/open eyes ratio: DXM and ketamine at top through NMDA spatial localization loss. Pregabalin+LSD at sleep onset through hypnagogic ACh and absence of visual competition. Pure LSD through 5-HT2A amplification with preserved spatial localization: high ratio but lower than DXM. MDMA through oxytocin: music more external and social than internal, lower ratio. Amphetamine: open eyes music nearly as good through DA motor activation, lowest ratio.

Oxytocin Component

Feelings of gratitude, love, and closeness toward people felt more frequently and intensely than on pure LSD. Identified as stronger in this combination.

Neurobiological basis: sigma-1 through DXM modulates oxytocin pathways in the hypothalamus through calcium channel regulation in oxytocinergic neurons, a separate mechanism from the serotonergic oxytocin pathway activated by LSD through 5-HT1A. LSD+DXM activates two independent pro-oxytocin mechanisms simultaneously, explaining why the social-emotional component is stronger than either substance alone. This is the same mechanism being studied in ketamine-assisted therapy for PTSD and attachment disorders.

General Observation: LSD+DXM as a Unique Category

This combination produces effects that belong to neither psychedelic nor dissociative phenomenology alone but to a third category created by their interaction. Dreamworks/AI-generated animation aesthetic of visuals (NMDA removal of natural edge irregularity plus 5-HT2A color amplification), supernatural music enhancement (two independent auditory amplification mechanisms), robotic-cinematic motor experience (proprioceptive dissociation within hyperrealistic perceptual world), and total collapse of auditory hierarchy (both inhibitory interneuron suppression and temporal gating removal) are all specific to this combination and not replicable by either substance alone or by other combinations.

Substances During Session

Nicotine pouch (saszetka) considered during session. Decision factor: at elevated heart rate from the LSD+DXM combination, nicotine through NA could further increase cardiac load. Physical state check recommended before use.

Music Played

Paradise by Purple Disco Machine, and Hounds of Love by Kate Bush. Both described as ideal for this combination state: layered productions that reward total auditory attention where every previously inaudible layer becomes simultaneously equally vivid.

State During Documentation

Notable: analytical capacity remained active throughout the trip. Observations were formulated with neurobiological precision in real time rather than in retrospective sobriety. Characteristic of the subject's profile: the external analytical observer persists even during states that typically disable metacognition in most users.

Post Scriptum

I've solved a riddle that should have been haunting me, but wasn't. I mentioned before that the 3rd or 4th trip of my life (now I think it was the 3rd) was the best one ever. I also mentioned it was LSDXM. I don't know, maybe about 3 or 4 hours before taking a full dose of LSD, I took 200 mg of dextromethorphan. Thing is, it was completely accidental. As a beginner psychonaut, I was such a massive idiot that I didn't even suspect there would be any interactions. I just thought, "Hey, I have this craving for LSD, so I'll just take some DXM on my way across the city to pick up the acid to keep me company."

And I noticed right away that the acid was kicking in too fast, the visuals were becoming way too pastel, and when I was running, it felt like I was flying. I thought it was just standard for acid and that they had simply hooked me up with a higher dose.

And at one point... a bad trip? Fuck, it seemed like it would be a perfect streak of no bad trips. If I felt so amazing on my 1st and 2nd attempt while doing everything wrong that could only be done wrong, no trip sitter, terrible setting... And now I'm finally experiencing the dreaded hallucinogenic nightmare I heard so many times before of. Thoughts like ever-fractalizing infinity: I was seriously losing my mind, panicking that I'd be stuck forever in this state of ego death where thoughts make no sense. But it passed quickly. I mean... "quickly." It could have been 15 minutes, it could have been an hour, I don't know.

(Of course later it turned out that it's basically impossible for me to bad trip even for a couple of minutes with a standard dose of acid alone.)

And at some point, I start listening to music. Be'lakor's Of Breath and Bone. Lying there in the sun, I feel like I'm levitating to the heavens, and at one point, for the first time in my life, I seem to grasp the essence of God (He is that ever-fractalizing infinity or something, except back then I actually felt the gravity of those words, which is hard to put into prose). It literally blew my socks off.

Later, I listen to Intestine Baalism's Banquet in the Darkness and Peste Noire's La sanie des siecles: Panegyrique de la degenerescence. These two albums (which I listened to once I got home) paradoxically made it so that whenever one ended, I'd go, "How the fuck did that go so fast?" and when I looked at the watch, I'd think, "No way, how have so few minutes passed?"

And... here is the weirdest part, forgive me... I started fantasizing (and at that moment, the imagination was exceptionally vivid) that I was my crush who rejected me for another dude, that I had female anatomy (when I touched myself, I actually kind of got that impression), and that I was having sensual sex with her fiance xD Yes, it is twisted, but at that moment, it felt to me like it was showing: "Don't envy others; why should you be angry that someone else is experiencing something so pleasurable?"

Furthermore, listening to Banquet in the Darkness and Peste Noire, I felt as if every pluck of a string was a powerful electrical spasm on my body. And in a way, I felt like I was electrically connected to the whole world through those spasms.

Only a few days later, without connecting the two events, did I start using LSDXM consciously, after finding out it's one of the methods for cheaply potentiating acid.

Conclusion: This experience unconsciously spoiled me. And the later LSDXM trips (which became my standard) did too, in a way. Taking pure LSD (which I used to consider my best friend), even though it's still more interesting than 99% of other substance experiences, now feels relatively flat and shallow. Candyflipping, let alone pure MDMA, is at best pleasant dishwater compared to those more powerful, more euphoric experiences.

And I only realized this today. I felt just like that scene in Despicable Me 2 during the El Macho reveal. Ah, so it was you! It wasn't a higher dose of LSD, it wasn't "before it lost its magic." It was simply a full dose of both substances without cutting corners, just slightly separated by the time of ingestion.

And the worst part is that this joy won't be discovered by anyone else until I convince my friends not to worry about American kids chugging a half-liter jar of cough syrup with 4 tabs of acid, and to just do it smarter. And that is going to be incredibly difficult.