Every time you close your eyes, the darkness is permeated by surreal images driven by your imagination. Everything behind your eyelids is in black and white, still, focused. Time freezes and speeds up at the same time. You open your eyes and it's still 1:30am. You're sitting in bed, nursing a slightly nauseated stomach and enjoying the fact that you can't focus on anything around you.
For the following description of my Friday night/Saturday morning, I ask that you not leave comments ripping into me because I did something that could have been potentially deadly. I've done my research, did my planning; I know my limits. I make sure I know what I'm doing before I do it, and have back up resources in the slim chance that something does go wrong. If you know me, you know that I don't rush into things like this. What I'm about to describe to you is a low-to-middle 3rd plateau DXM trip.
DXM is the abbreviation for Dextromethorphan. From Wikipedia:
Dextromethorphan (DXM or DM) is a cough suppressant drug. It is one of the active ingredients in many over-the-counter cold and cough medicines, such as Robitussin. Dextromethorphan has also found other uses in medicine, ranging from pain relief to psychological applications. It is sold in syrup, tablet, spray, and lozenge forms. In its pure form, dextromethorphan occurs as a white powder.
Recreational Use: Since their introduction, over-the-counter preparations containing dextromethorphan have been used in manners inconsistent with their labeling, often as a recreational drug.[12] At doses much higher than medically recommended, dextromethorphan is classified as a dissociative hallucinogen, possessing certain effects that are somewhat similar to the dissociative agents ketamine and phencyclidine. It may produce distortions of the visual field - feelings of dissociation, distorted bodily perception, excitement, as well as a loss of sense of time. Some users report stimulant-like euphoria, particularly in response to music. Dextromethorphan usually provides its recreational effects in a non-linear fashion, so that they are experienced in significantly varied stages. These 5 stages are commonly referred to as "plateaus."
Friday night, at approximately 6:00pm, my girlfriend and I began to take our legally purchased Robitussin in a not-so-legal manner. While eating bland food in an attempt to keep our stomachs strong during the procedure, we also consumed four Robitussin pills. Over the course of the next couple of hours, we consumed 60 Robitussin pills by fours, in intervals of ten minutes. Research on my part has shown that doing so in such intervals helps to lessen the strain on the stomach, as well as taking vitamin C (we used Tang for this). The entire operation should have taken 4 hours to finish, but we ended up rushing ourselves at the halfway point, and it only took us 2 and a half hours.
I have had a single previous experience with DXM, but because of how new it was and how different the experience was, it was so shocking on my system that I cannot remember the entire experience. What I DO remember is that while I took it slow and tried not to rush around (as per instructions researched), Pet grew irritable and restless and ended up causing herself to vomit at least half the amount of pills she took.
In an effort to not repeat the events of the previous DXM trip, I was put in charge of Pet's actions by her say-so. It helped that she's my pet (another topic for another day), and per my instructions, I helped her stay still and kept her movements to a minimum. She still suffered from intense gastrointestinal pain for roughly half an hour, but that was her only pain. I, however, wouldn't feel any kind of pain or discomfort until the next morning.
At roughly 9pm, we thought it would be fun to take one of her dogs for a short walk to a nearby park. The trip itself took only about five minutes, but during the trip Pet was hit by the first bit of gastrointestinal pain and began to freak out, thinking it was going to be a repeat of the last trip we tried to take. After sitting at the park for about ten minutes, we returned to the house where I told her to sit calmly on the bed and relax.
I began to feel the effects of the drug by 10pm. I figure that because medicine works differently on my system than most other people's, that would explain why it was hitting me so slowly. Pet's pain has passed by this time, and I can tell she's affected quite heavily already as standing takes effort and is usually followed by a little bit of unbalanced wobbling. Within 30 minutes, however, the full effects of the amount of drug I took began to effect me.
The first effects were barely noticeable. Upon standing, I felt light headed and woozy, my balance was thrown off center, and gravity felt heavier than normal. I'm told I looked pale and my pupils had reduced from their normal size to about pea sized. I wasn't having any trouble focusing, but my words were beginning to slur together as if I were a little drunk. Any emotions and feelings I may have been experiencing were replaced by feelings of peacefulness and nonchalance.
Pet was feeling nauseous and carefully took herself outside to calm her raging stomach. She returned fifteen minutes later, all sick feelings calmed. She told me she felt euphoric, and I recollect her words not slurring nearly as badly as my own.
I didn't gain much more feeling until about 11:30pm, and by this time the drug had peaked on me (I thought) with blurry vision and lightheadedness, as well as invading closed eyes with hallucinogenic visions of black and white. The most frequent image was that of what I called 'the moon,' as it most resembled the landscape of the moon as was produced by the game Mass Effect. I didn't like to keep my eyes closed for very long, but once I closed them and concentrated on this moonlike landscape, and found it was very much like a lucid dream. I could manipulate the things I was seeing to a point, but eventually the drug and my imagination took over.
I remember the images very well; grey rock as far as I could see, with nothing but black and scattered stars overhead. I manipulated my own body into the scene, folding my hands in front of my face and looking down over my chest to my legs, but from there the willful manipulation stopped and my imagination took over. The scene moved forward through no will of my own, and stopped me in front of a decorative red box. The box was the only thing on the entire landscape that was colored; a very deep, dark red reminiscent of a firetruck color rather than blood or anything menacing. The box began to open...
"Bryan."
I opened my eyes and looked at Pet. She was smiling. "I feel incredible. You were right, I just needed to slow down..."
Looking at the clock, it was revealed to be only 11:45pm. I closed my eyes again and was greeted by the scene of the red box, but nothing was moving or opening. I opened my eyes again and looked around, my eyes not able to focus on much at all. I was very talkative, about everything and nothing all at the same time. I asked for a back rub using a shoe shine brush I had found earlier in the day, and after rubbing on my back with it for five minutes or so, Pet put it to herself and I listened while she moaned in pleasure from the sensations.
We moved from the shoe shine brush to an actual hairbrush, then to skin-to-skin contact, reveling from the intense feelings that we really weren't feeling at all. I had, by this time, lost half my sense of touch.
Imagine feeling the pressure of your touch on someone. You can feel the temperature of their body, the texture of their skin, the moisture of their sweat, but try as you might you just can not sense yourself touching them. It's a sense that cannot be easily explained by words, but you know that something is missing. You touch your own arm and still cannot feel yourself touching your arm, though you can feel the touch.
Both our faces were numb, though hers moreso than my own. I could kiss her and we couldn't feel each other's lips, but her skillful kisses weren't affected by the lack of sensation. We declared that maybe we should get to bed, and before doing so I went to the bathroom.
In my influenced state, the trip took forever. I was infected by the Tussin High Step, a mode of walking where you lift your knees far above what is needed in an effort to keep your balance. I got to the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror, noticing my pupils were nearly pinprick sized. I finished my business and returned to the room, stripping down to nothing and climbing into bed. The time was nearly 2am.
I found I could not sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I was assaulted by a different image. Fluffy kittens. A brick wall. A stack of clean and dirty laundry. Broken glass flying at me like a Star Trek warp sequence. My body lying in a bed in a palace bedroom. Each image came in clear as day and unobstructed... it was like I had no rest from the images. I had no black eyelids to help me fall asleep. I closed my eyes and saw lights and colors I was unaccustomed to. I could not find sleep.
An hour and a half passed. I was zoned out for most of the time, closing my eyes and concentrating on the images I was being shown. Coherent pictures slowly gave way to masses of colors and shapes, no real forms given, no real idea or point made. I eventually shifted my form, and in the process accidentally elbowed Pet in the face (>.<), which caused her to wake up.
“Woah... Dizzles...”
“Yeah?”
“Everything is surreal. Was I asleep?”
“... yeah. I accidentally elbowed you in the face... sorry.”
“You did? It's okay. Thanks for waking me up.” She smiled.
Surreal. I never really understood the meaning of that word until that morning. I felt the same as her, as if I was outside of my own body and floating above it. My vision, in the time I had been trying to sleep, had become even worse, rendering me completely unable to focus on anything I looked at in the room, including things I had easily been able to identify and see only an hour before. I knew that if I tried to stand, I'd be unable to balance and would have probably fallen over.
I was incredibly talkative, as well as bluntly honest. I wanted to share things about myself; thoughts and feelings and past history that I did not have the courage to share while sober, because I feared the reaction. The only problem with me sharing was that I was slurring horribad, and it was beginning to aggravate me nearly to the point of anger.
Pet was patient and understanding. She knew how much I hated it when I stumbled and stuttered over words when I was sober, so I'm pretty sure she could see how much more I hated what the DXM was doing to my speech now. We talked about everything, and even shared an audio hallucination of a bell resounding with a single “DING!” as we lay in silence.
She related to me how much it meant to her that I made an effort to interact and care for her dogs. She told me that she had never had anyone actually make and effort. I told her how much I cared about her, how much I'd wanted to tell her that I loved her, and how afraid of the word I had been. I told her that I had caught it when she said it in a statement earlier in the week, and hadn't answered back... but now I can say it without fear, without hesitation, and I mean every word.
We stayed up for another few hours just talking, getting deep thoughts and fears and epiphanies off our chests. We relived memories of our meeting, of how shy and reclusive we were, and how much we had evolved through the things we shared since then.
At roughly 5:15am, she led me outside, helping me balance and walk, and sat me in the chair on the porch so I could experience and witness the morning light outside. It was refreshing and much needed, as I was still suffering from intense dizziness and nausea. By 7am, she declared she was coherent enough to walk and take care of her dogs, and I was still severely under the weather. At 8am, she left the house to take care of boarded dogs where she works, and I went to sleep. I slept til nearly noon, and was recovered enough to perform daily functions on my own.
It will be a long time before I do it again, but I feel privileged to have shared the experience with Pet. I still very much prefer to smoke marijuana, as the journey to getting high on weed is so much smoother and a lot less painful, but I will definitely be doing DXM again.
No comments:
Post a Comment