Spiders on Diphenhydramine: A Response.

[HotelZambia]

This thread is in response to the now-closed "Spiders on Diphenhydramine" thread made by JimenyRickets. The post is as follows:

Why is it that everyone sees spiders on diphenhydramine?

The psychedelic/hallucinogenic effects of diphenhydramine are twofold: on one hand, one has the ability to focus their imagination, allowing one to envision certain objects or creatures. This was most clearly illustrated when I made my hands into a little cave-like formation, then visualized a small mouse crawling from out of my fingers. Lo and behold, a little white mouse scurried from my palms, onto my legs, and up my arm. This was pretty cool, until a torrent of spiders crawled out afterward.

Second, diph tends to cause the user to see malignant spheres of distorted light, often incorporating spindly appendages on all sides. In his drug-addled state, the user will often begin to see this ball as being very slightly arachnid in appearance, and, by the power of suggestion, soon sees full-blown spiders crawling around his edifice. This, combined with the suggestion that the user will "see hella spiders, bro" often encourage the user to experience this predetermined hallucination.

That's my understanding, anyway. I've done a bit of diph in my day, but others have definitely had more. I'd love to hear a more psychosomatic approach to the situation!

 

[omicamushroom]

I've only done it once... back when I was 16 and just started getting experimental. Didn't find it very useful in providing for an experience - mostly just wasted time. I don't find myself to be very imaginative as you say. I just sat in bed for hours watching the most ridiculous shit happen. I think that my mind was disconnected from what was physically happening in the present moment, and that i started layering on pictures of the past onto the present.... hard to explain. A hallucination would come, I would watch, and I would laugh... and that was really all. That's most of the reason why I don't want to do it again... or any deliriants for that matter.

I haven't seen spiders, but I have seen spider webs in the corners of my room that were growing larger and larger every time I looked back to them. Maybe the spider was secretly spinning webs when I wasn't looking, and when I looked back he would hide... I'll never know though, cause its is most definitely not worth trying again.

I prefer acid to be imaginative with. If you get a good high dose, you can look at something and watch it morph before your eyes. You can become completely enchanted by what you see. I once watched a painting of 3 faces linked together. There was a face in the middle with a third eye, and then another face outside that face, and yet another outside both of them... can't really explain it. its sort of looked like this. { ( i ) }. So the i is the middle face. and then the other faces are sort of looking in at the one. So I looked towards the third eye for a good 10 or so minutes... I know it was long and think it could have been longer... but they may just be the time warp... It was at least 10 minutes. I saw the strangest things morph out of this artwork though. The best morph that happened was all the elephants marching underneath the faces, and their trunks would go up into their necks. It was pretty fucking awesome. This stuff can happen anytime you focus for a good while on acid... it generally happens in the periphery of your vision.

 

[alphabetalactone]

I used to love seeing the spiders, sometimes they looked more like crabs. My main thing to see were insects flying around my room.

 

[solistus]

I wonder if at least the negative experiences hallucinating spiders is tied to the arachnid response. A popular theory in evolutionary psychology (which in general I'm not a huge fan of for explaining behaviors but this one kinda makes sense to me) is that, over evolutionary time spans, humans have evolved special responses to organisms likely to be toxic/poisonous - it's called the arachnid response and is theorised to be responsible for most cases of arachnophobia and other zoophobias like fear of snakes or insects in general.

At any rate, I'd wager the 'cause' has more to do with the subjective/unconscious associations with spiders, not just a pattern of visual activity that happens to resemble them.

 

[JimenyRickets]

^This makes a lot of sense
I once read an article claiming that the reason people often see elf and alien entities on DMT is that these stem from certain archetypes within the human mind. It could be that the spiders and creepy creatures that one often encounters on high doses of diphenhydramine are the result of more malevolent archetypes (basically the arachnid response explained above).
Why is it that this drug only evokes such negative images, though?

 

[HotelZambia]

Just as LSD mescaline can elicit euphoria, Jimeny, dramamine and diphenhydramine can encourage dysphoria in an individual.

I don't know, it must be at least a little fun for me to keep doing it.

 

[thespiral]

I don't know about seeing spiders but during the time I overdosed on benadryl by accident (thought I had a tolerance but I didn't), I hallucinated that this huge yellow egg-sack was next to the couch I was sleeping on and it was busting open releasing hundreds of tiny leeches that made their way up my arm and under my skin. It was disturbingly realistic!

No me fucking gusta.

 

[JimenyRickets]

My favorite (albeit my scariest) diph hallucination:
I was staring at a stuffed bear sitting on my printer when it stood up and gave me the finger. Freaked the shit out of me, man.

 

[elroy44]

Yeah I'm not a fan of Diphenhydramine...I've only tried it once, but that one time was plenty. Unlike lsd or mushrooms, which make me feel amazing, it just made me see weird shit, and feel really heavy. Definitely not worth it for me.

 

[HotelZambia]

I had a little bit of DXM (75mg approx.) and 400mg of diphenhydramine, I saw a police officer on my balcony. I knew this to be a hallucination, but it was still pretty weird. Also, rays of light shimmering and shooting across my room. Diph+DXM, again and again.