There was this synthetic cannabinoid called Up Yours XXX. I have no idea what actual compound was in it, but taking small hits out of a pipe would give effects almost identical to weed but with much more body load, but there was something menacing about it; just a slight bit of anxiety, nothing to really worry about since I was in a new environment with people I had only met that day. It was when I took a huge bong rip months later after buying another baggie from the smoke shop down the road, that I realized this substance opened doors and peeled the brain's natural filters away, at times I could almost see the individual atoms vibrating, thinking about those microscopic universes that make up the entirety of existence...oh shit....existence, it has to end, the universe will end at one point, and I will have never existed.
Absolute terror set in, I grabbed hold of my girlfriend (now fiance) and tried walking with her to a room, any room, in a desperate attempt to keep myself within the reality I concocted for myself in my sober life. She asked me, "where are we going?" and I thought "where ARE we going? such a mundane question in normal life took on a philosophical meaning....more terror. I managed to find my way to the kitchen and stood by the refrigerator. I felt a presence, it was a somewhat familiar presence, while not entirely familiar, almost like some extension of my own personality I haven't discovered yet.
It was telling me I was going to be ok and I had nothing to be afraid of (Apparently I enacted both sides of this conversation out loud, although not as coherently as I had heard it in my mind). Long story short, a trip to the emergency room and a diazepam later, and I was back in the "real" world once again. Looking back on some of the things that happened, this was probably some highly potent salvia divinorum extract rather than the "artificial weed" the shop employees told me it was. Even worse, it could have been a combination of the two, which only a sadist would dream to mix together.
Anyway, I can't smoke weed without a benzo first anymore.