Diphenhydramine? Hmm

[opium]

never thought id say this, but i think i may find some fun in benadryls active ingredient.

i was 14 once, and we all tryed taking too much benadryl, tripping the fuck out, and being more scared than when we saw friday the 13th.

i never thought ever there would be a upside to that horrible shit..until i bought some ZzzQuil
weird? i know. But i took the recommended dose of it, which contained ONLY 50mg of diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in benadryl..and it felt good..almost like a semi-nod like experience. i know thats because its a sleep aid, but it was somewhat pleasant.

im not sure why..but it seemed nice. Now it makes cigarettes taste fucking disgusting, but thats about the only negative i saw. it also helped cure my insomnia, i took it 2 hours before bed, and i still slept like a baby.

Any input? this makes me kinda curious

 

[psykoman]

I buy the chemists own brands all the time they are great to have when you cant score anything to getto slepp with

 

[laCster]

it's nothing special. most opiate users use it to increase sedation or the "nod," duration of their DOC, and to help with itchiness. in addition, it is relatively safe to use with or without opiates for sleep because it causes minimal CNS depression and diphenhydramine is non-addictive. however, after taking DPH for extended periodiods of time, tolerance to sedative effects occurs.

 

[NeighborhoodThreat]

Diphenhydramine is useful, as laCster mentioned, if you use it every once in a while for sleep for for opiate potentiation and/or to negative the negative side effects of opioids. Believe it or not, its actually a very good anti-histamine (its actual purpose).

Please, please, don't try and get high off diphenhydramine. It, like nearly all other anti-histamines, are useful tools to have on hand, but that's really pretty much it. If you use opioids, diphenhydramine is a great drug to have around.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

It's very useful for sleep. But if you take too much of it, it becomes an SNRI, which can then cancel out the sedation. You also can't use it for sedation regularly, as tolerance to the sedation happens very quickly.

I took some last night and didn't feel drugged or anything, just fell asleep more easily. Got up, felt normal and not hungover or anything, had breakfast etc. Then a while later I started feeling weird and sleepy. I lay down and spent hours sleeping having crazy lucid dreams. I'm not yet certain if it was the diphenhydramine though since I also just started a new herbal medication, but the herbal med is not supposed to cause any effects like that. Will have to do some more experimentation to figure it out.

Diphenhydramine blocks histamine H1 receptors, which is responsible for the sedation, anti-anxiety effects, and reduction of allergic symptoms; blocks muscarinic cholinergic receptors, (which is responsible for side effects like dry mouth, constipation, confusion, and at high doses can cause anticholinergic syndrome); inhibits reuptake of serotonin (like an anti-depressant); inhibits reuptake of norepinephrine and epinephrine (stimulant, fight-or-flight response); and acts as a sodium channel blocker. Its highest binding affinity is for histamine receptors, so if you take a low dose you will mostly just get the antihistamine effects like sedation and allergy relief. The mistake most people make when taking diphenhydramine for sleep is that they increase the dose if it doesn't work - what you really want to do is decrease the dose, to get less of all the other things that could be stimulating (serotonin, NE, anticholinergic.)

Here is the affinity chart for diphenhydramine. Highest bar = highest affinity = "happens at lower doses".

I would NOT advise using high doses of this drug in an attempt to get high as that can be very unpleasant and even lethal. But if you find it pleasant at normal doses that's fine, just don't use it too often. There is info about recreational use and overdoses of dimenhydrinate, which is the drug in Gravol and Dramamine - dimenhydrinate is composed of diphenhydramine and theophylline, a stimulant similar to caffeine. I'd assume the risk profile for plain diphenhydramine is the same.

As mentioned already, diphenhydramine is also known to potentiate some opioids via enzyme inhibition. Be careful if you are taking it with an opioid and take less of the opioid than usual until you know how it affects you.

 

[opium]

nah man i dont use it to get high, maybe when i was like 13 me and my friends would sometimes get fucked up off it...just hallucinate and shit..back when drugs were harder to come by. very very unpleasant.
i just thought it made me relax a little bit, and felt nice at the recommended dose. im usually a very anxious person, but the diphenhydramine in my ZzzQuil made me a little less edgy...which was a nice change.

its also weird, because i had gone to my pharmacist down at the rite-aid and asked if he recommended any over the counter anti anxiety medications? and he suggested benadryl which i laughed off...yeah ok. After using 50mg of dph, contained in one dose of ZzzQuil, i could see how possibly..it could help a small bit if nothing else was available for anxiety. idk