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  • Trip Reports Moderator: Xorkoth

Diphenhydramine 800mg, hallucinations and delirium lasting 48 hours+

RobinGoodfellow

Greenlighter
Joined
Dec 23, 2013
Messages
3
UPDATE: I now go by the username Enigma and you may find a video report of this story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzXPgUTVLg0&lc=z23ajbcrkqauspqik04t1aokgqfpx1zmty4qwqul2lcprk0h00410

Preface:

edit: I mistakenly said I took 800mg in this report when I actually took 1000mg (this being what a full packet of Nytol contains in the UK.)

As you may have read in other trip reports Diphenhydramine unlike other more recreational hallucinogens which occur naturally in nature i.e Mushrooms, Mescaline, DMT etc. can produce very dark and vivid hallucinations which are said to be completely indistinguishable from reality and more similar to the hallucinations produced by the anesthetic dissociative drugs PCP, Ketamine etc. than anything else. When my friend first read about Diphenhydramine he found it hard to believe that such a readily available and inexpensive substance could produce such powerful hallucinations. Being a fan of dissociative substances he was intrigued and from this point onwards he felt he had a date with with this drug. He can now can confirm that Diphenhydramine is unlike anything else he has experienced. At points it reminded him of a variety of substances most notably alcohol, cannabis, ketamine, nutmeg and solvents but at the same time unlike any of them. He said there was a lingering and invasive darkness he had not experienced under the influence of any other substance he'd experimented with. He has described the experience as having a faintly clinical undertone to it which was reminiscent of the short couple of confusing seconds one remains conscious having been put under an anesthetic. My friend said that no amount of research nor any of his experiences with other substances could have possibly prepared him for what he experienced under Diphenhydramine

My friend was warned that he would not see the fluffy clouds and happy little gnomes he'd previously experienced on other hallucinogenic substances. This warning turned out to be well founded. He would now like to warn and inform others thinking about taking Diphenhydramine for the first time through sharing his experience with them. He does not usually post on forums.



A word of caution

Incase my friends report inspires anyone else to try Diphenhydramine he has included some recommended dosages below this paragraph but warns a mild dose to some might be a strong dose to others. He recommends that you know your body and know your mind before taking Diphenhydramine. He also advised making sure there is no paracetamol nor any other substances you haven't conducted prior research into included in whatever brand of Diphenhydramine tablets you use as some brands make these pills with other chemicals/compounds that have killed users. He says fatal allergic reactions are also possible and to employ as much common sense as possible. He also strongly recommends having a sitter keeping an eye on you for your first time. Lastly he advises that nobody should take this drug.

Mild = 100 - 250mg
Medium = 250mg - 400mg
Strong = 400mg - 600mg
Dangerous = 800mg+


The Trip

Times given by my friend are approximations as he maintains that time had pretty much gone out the window very quickly after onset. He wanted to make this report as detailed as possible as he found the trip to be the single most frightening, interesting, rich and puzzling experience he has had on any substance. He points out that the more frightening aspects of the trip began 24 hours after he'd initially ingested the drug and experienced the initial effects.

11:27PM - Common sense told my friend that the effects any particular substance/dosage has on a person fluctuate massively from person to person so he decided to start with a dosage bang in the middle at 300mg given his body weight and experience with other substances of a similar nature. My friend can usually keep his head in trips and has mechanisms he employs to alleviate himself from feelings of fear and uncertainty during bad trips and he finds it is worth mentioning here that before he had even swallowed one of these pills he experienced a strong feeling in his gut in which there was a very harrowing and certain reassurance and certainty that he was not really prepared for this. He dismissed this feeling as he had been reading some particularly detailed Dyphenhydramine horror stories prior to ingestion. When he looks back on the experience he says that in some kind of weird and inexplicable way the trip actually begun before ingestion occurred. He remembers distinctly that there was no sense of excitement after ingestion, just a sense of foreboding (which ironically excited him).

11:45PM - My friend had his dinner at this time and went out for a cigarette afterwards.

12:00AM - 12:30AM - Having read people reporting that music had taken on a certain 3d quality under the influence of this drug he decided to put some on. Not one to do things conventionally he ignored his relaxing trip playlist and played some death metal, the mesh of confusing droning which had previously sounded like metal began to set the tone for the trip. During this half hour period he became aware of a mild but sudden change in his consciousness. He said it became a harder to type and focus and he felt tired and faintly stoned. He put some of these effects down to placebo and felt convinced that nothing was really happening. He went out for another cigarette and says this is when the memory lapses begun as the amount of butts he found in his stub pot the following morning lead him to believe he was going for one cigarette after the other not remembering that he'd already been for one.

12:30AM - 1:30AM - Feeling slightly more aware that something was happening my friend lay in bed and turned his bedroom light off and chose something to watch (a documentary about crack addicts). No sooner had he got into bed than he noticed a slight glowing which was seemed to be coming from behind one his bedroom walls. In his fascination he shone a light on the wall and saw a little spider making it's way up to the ceiling. He touched the spider and it fell onto the floor. Having read so many trip reports about people seeing bugs he put this down to his mind playing tricks on him and concluded that it was a simple coincidence as when he'd looked at the spider he had observed it's shadow on the wall and exquisite detail on it's body, detail and realism he'd never experienced under any other hallucinogenic substance. Given what happened afterwards he will will never know for certain whether that spider was real or not but it did mark the start of the trip proper. After this he did not experience any other hallucinations (that he was aware of) for a little while. There was a definite body high (he felt like he was made out of jelly and co-ordination was becoming difficult), growing tiredness and it was becoming noticeably harder for him to stay focused and remember what he was doing or thinking about. He would stare into space for what felt like a minute, lose his train of thought and look at the clock again only to realize that half an hour had passed in which he had been staring blankly into space midway through performing various actions. He thought this effect was particularly enjoyable though he was also aware that it was incredibly bizarre compared to ketamine for instance where he could at the very least remember in some way what he had been doing or thinking during similar time lapses he had experienced under it. Suddenly he could not remember when this effect had actually begun nor when the trip had started but since he was not aware of any other hallucinations taking place he stupidly decided to take ingest another 100mg of Diphenhydramine and go out for a particularly chronic spliff.

1:30AM - 3:00AM - When my friend got outside he felt drunk, wasted, even a little euphoric. He stumbled around the garden and his legs felt very weak. He become aware that his jaw had started to clamp up as he had initially expected it to having read that Diphenhydramine is a SERT inhibitor. Yet when this happened it surprised him as if he had not been expecting it all. Just as these thoughts were going through his mind he looked towards the steps which lead up to his front door. At the bottom of the steps he could see a mysterious figure lurking in the shadows. A distinctly human shape in black garments and he was carrying something. My friend looked away thinking his eyes were playing a trick on him but the figure did not disappear and when the figure started walking up the steps to my friends house my friend very nearly ran indoors. My friend wanting to show his sub conscious mind that he was firmly control of the trip smoked the rest of the spliff at the top of his steps whilst the figure faded in and out of reality below him. Before he went inside he looked towards his shed and noticed that the door had disappeared and become a portal into what looked like complete nothingness.
When my friend returned to his bedroom he started making frequent trips to the bathroom. He was bewildered by the fact he had so much fluid in him when he had drank so very little fluid all day and up to that point during the trip. After this he remembered to drink more water, then forgot and remembered again each time upon he made a trip to the bathroom. These trips seemed to occur every 15-30 minutes but he doesn't know for sure. During these trips to the bathroom he would hear his Mum or his sister calling him. These audio hallucinations caught him by surprise and were particularly invasive in their realism compared to other substances, luckily his long term memory still served him correctly at this point and he remembered that his mum and sister were in bed and that he was tripping out.

3:00AM - 6:00AM - This is where things started to get far more surreal and weird than my friend had anticipated. From this point onwards whenever he went to the bathroom and ran the tap he could hear voices in the sound the water made. He observed something was dripping in the bathroom but could not find the source after inspecting all the taps. He could not hear what the voices were saying only that they were talking in conspiring and demonic tones. He was more bewildered and confused by this than he was frightened by it but he did take this to mean that his delirium was beginning to hit what he initially believed to be it's peak. Yet this seemed contradictory as at times he would suddenly become completely convinced that he was sober and that he hadn't taken enough only to start experiencing intense hallucinations and bewilderment seconds later. My friend maintains that this was the strongest characteristic of the Diphenhydramine delirium, he could not tell when he was tripping and when he wasn't, all he knows is that some point after this he ingested another 100mg Diphenhydramine. During the following hours his hallucinations became even more intense and real in nature. The dolphins on his curtain started swimming and turning their heads to look at him and he waved back at them. He would look at his clock and it would be 3am, then he would look again what felt like seconds later to see it was 4:00am or some completely different time altogether. He believes this might be because his memory was having difficulty determining what order to put events and he was having difficulty in determining what was real and wasn't. Time simply ceased to have any meaning. Toys on his shelf started walking about whilst hundreds of insects crawled about his bedroom. In hindsight one of the scariest aspects of my friends experience with Diphenhydramine was that he felt sure he was hallucinating as he felt familiar with the objects in his room which would become part of his hallucinations only to realize in brief fragments of sober thought the objects themselves had never existed and he had hallucinated them too. Cables and wires starting twisting and moving around his bedroom like snakes.

And this is where the real trip began...

My friend went to sleep at what he thought was around 5am. He carried on waking up to go to the toilet but his body felt too heavy by this point and he didn't dare stand up. Instead he would wake up, reach for a cup on his shelf and piss into it and then put it back on the self only to wake up a few minutes later needing another piss at which point he would reach for the cup again and observe it was empty. It was weird. This happened 2 or 3 times but it could have been more. The last time this happened he realized there was a damp patch on his bed and could not determine whether he had spilled some by mistake or pissed straight onto his bed. He had felt the weight of the cup in his hand each time, he had felt it grow heavier as he had pissed into it. After this he was unable to determine what were dreams and what were hallucinations as whenever he closed his eyes he could see through his eye lids. It was like lucid dreaming yet it was like sleep paralysis at the same time. Everything seemed to be experienced in contradiction to something else. His mum and sister came in to talk to him a couple of times and he talked to them though he cannot remember what he talked about.

11:30AM - My friend woke up after what felt like the shortest nights sleep he'd ever had. All the tell tale signs of an MDMA comedown were present and everything felt very surreal but far darker than any MDMA comedown he'd experienced. His memory of the previous evenings events was shot and he didn't start to recall much from the previous evening until later during he day. It is hard to believe that my friends inital thoughts upon waking were that it had been a somewhat weak experience and something of a letdown in his books. He was still heavily under the influence of Diphenhydramine when he woke up yet he believed himself to be sober. He did not start recalling the previous nights events until he saw that he'd been out for a smoke more times than he remembered going as the number of butts in the stub pot provided a somewhat eerie testament. After this he began to recall some fragments of the evening in detail but it did not occur to him that he could still be tripping out.

12:00PM - 6:00PM - My friend realized at some point that neither his mum nor his sister had come in to talk to him the previous evening. Later on when he was tidying his bedroom and putting on new bedsheets on he realized that were no toys on his shelf and this scared him a little. As he held this thought in his mind he put the plastic strip containing the rest of the pills back into the packet. Worryingly several times throughout the day my friend would become convinced it was 11:27PM the previous evening just before he ingested the pills.

6:00PM - 9:00PM - My friend began to feel a little more with it during this time but with growing tiredness.

9:00PM - 12:00AM - Thinking it might be a good idea to get a change of scenery my friend walked to his friends house to write some music and smoke a couple of spliffs. When he was playing the beat he was working on he observed that it sounds 3d exactly the way as described in the trip reports he ahd read. "But how?" he thought, "how is this happening 24 hours after ingestion?". he started to become aware of things appearing in the corners of his eyes and equated these to be after effects similar to the light trails and mild hallucinations he would sometimes experience the day after being caught off guard by some particularly pure MDMA. During these 3 hours he felt with it at some points only to feel he was being overcome with delirium again minutes later. It was surreal.

12:00AM - 3:00AM - On his way home my friend saw two people walking in front of hi and he was shocked when they disappeared when he got closer to them only to reappear further up the road. At several points he thought he could hear people walking behind him but whenever he turned around no-one was there. When he got to his house he felt confused. He walked up the steps and when he turned round to shut the gate expecting to see nothing he saw the same figure he'd seen the night before running up the steps towards him. He nearly ran but again managed to keep his cool as he had the previous evening. It is interesting to note that my friend had imagined the scenario of a psychopath chasing him up the steps every time he'd walked back home in the dark. This is where the fun stopped. The fact my friend could still be experiencing hallucinations this real 24 hours after digestion brought a lot of things into question as he could not remember what he had done all day only that he had tidied his bedroom and walked home from his friends. He went up to his bedroom and rolled a joint. He had to carry on checking the date on his laptop whilst he was doing this as he was still convinced at times that it might still be the previous evening especially given the fact he was still hallucinating and also taking the time dilation and the realism of the hallucinations he was experiencing into account too. Such thoughts were madness and my friend began to feel like the trip was starting to get to him a little and no sooner did this happen than he saw a wolf walking down the road. The wolf was completely black and had no texture, it somehow seemed to be moving in the absence of light. he went back inside and into the bathroom to observe his pupils and when he did they were hugely dilated and he barely recognized his own face. All my friend remembers was thinking is "WTF how is this happening again?". When he got into bed he suddenly had thought. He looked in his bedside draw and found the tablet box. He pulled the plastic strips out and observed that all the pills were gone. Every single one. He could recall taking the initial 300mg and a further 200mg but after that he had absolutely no idea when he had consumed the remaining 300mg. It was on the back of this realization that fear truly began to grip my friend for the first time since the onset of symptoms had begun. He had consumed well over the recommended dose for a beginner and 200mg above strong dose at 800mg. He realized that if he had left more than 16 50mg tablets (i.e. he'd stocked up on a few boxes) he might well have taken them all and died without even realizing. He will never know or be able to recall when he took the remaining pills and knows it will trouble him for some time to come.

3:00AM - 7:00AM Because my friend was already confused and could not recall when he had taken the remaining tablets he began to think he might be trapped in this trip forever given the insane time dilation. It seemed plausible to my friend in his state of delirium that hours experienced under Diphenhydramine could well be but seconds in the 'real' world. It was a crazy thought but then things had quickly gone from having a slightly threatening but exciting air to being just down right scary. Alarm bells were going off in my friends head and he wanted the trip to end. It took everything he had in him to maintain a bare minimum level of composure as he lay in bed and watched as disfigured faces appeared on his bedroom walls and dark figures crept in and out of the corners of his blurred vision. He didn't want to keep his eyes opened yet he didn't want to close them either as he was afraid when he opened them again he would see something horrible in his vision and experience overwhelming fear. My friend points out that the fear of having a scary hallucination was somehow greater than the fear when it actually happened i.e when he saw the figure outside his house, and he maintains once again that these hallucinations were very far removed than ones he had experienced on other substances including other dissociatives and deleriants. These hallucinations were so real that the threat of experiencing temporal insanity seemed very real were he to forget that he was hallucinating on the second evening and so he did not want to risk closing his eyes. At several points my friend could hear himself breathing only to stop breathing and hear it continue behind him. He felt something was pushing down on his head all night. He went to sleep at 7am still confused and still scared and he slept with his bedroom light on.

The next day: My friend said that next day was also very surreal and he still believed himself to be moderately under the influence of Diphenhydramine. Minor hallucinations and light trails still occurred well into evening.

After thought

My friend will never know exactly what happened during the trip nor what really happened the following day. He has recalled as much as he can and it was unlike anything else he has experienced. Whereas some substances he'd taken had successfully blurred the line between reality and dream Diphenhydramine first blurred it then removed that line altogether whilst he went on thinking that he still existed on the right said of it. My friend says that Diphenhydramine differs from other substances in that he didn't realize he was seeing things until they vanished. He can recall lengthy conversations with the object of his hallucinations and when they disappeared it would make all the hairs on his body stand on end. He advises those looking for a cheap thrill stay away from Diphenhydramine and says that DXM is far more enjoyable and less risky hallucinogen if you must do an OTC. My friend being a somewhat strange individual is more drawn more to surreal, dark and bizarre trips which is why he felt compelled to try it. He says Diphenhydramine invokes far more than just a dark and surreal trip but goes a step further and invokes something more akin to acute psychosis. He will certainly be using it again but will be careful to use far more caution the next time and have a sitter watch him. He will keep the remaining pills far out of reach. My friend is not the most experienced tripper but nor is he the average stoner and abuser of OTCs and as such he was stupid enough given his experience with some other hallucinogens to think this would only differ slightly but he was wrong. The bubble of fun and excitement of the unknowing burst when he realized he'd taken the rest of the pills and from that point onwards it became an increasingly insane and uncomfortable experience with intensely real, vivid and surreal hallucinations which were nothing like those he'd experience on other hallucinogenic substances. He feels compelled to say that only man could make something so fucked up as to turn all surfaces into mirrors for the darkest creations of his imagination. As such he has developed a certain respect for Diphenhydramine which he does not feel towards other substances but only because this was respect unlike his respect for other substances was earned through fear. He maintains there is nothing in the world like Diphenydramine though there are some substances which come close in similarity and others which are stronger but none which have such a potent and debilitating mixture of effects working in unison. He does not intend this report serve as a boastful testament to the fact he managed to survive an accidental 800mg ordeal (which is still nowhere close to the feats regular users of this OTC manage) but as a warning to others planning to try it because my friend could have died if he had left more pills lying about. Finally my friend apologizes for my bad punctuation and thanks you for reading his experience. Peace and blessings
 
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An idiot my firned may be juno but a drug by definition it is and some worthwhile insight it has afforded my friend in the fear he experienced.
 
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