Coricidin's Long-Term Negative Effects

It would seem that some people still think taking CCCs might not be harmful. The other day a person told me I could take CCCs and trip. This person obviously didn't know shit about drugs, but somebody told him that CCCs would be fun. (FYI, I told him to steer very clear from them) And then today I see a thread in which somebody was asking you guys how many CCCs he should take!

Maybe some of these people need first-hand evidence from those of us who have been damaged or otherwise negatively affected by the drug. So, in the spirit of harm-reduction, let's discuss some negative effects you guys have had from (foolishly) taking Coricidin Cough and Cold. I'll go first.

Dosage: 14 tablets

First time: yes

Negative short-term effects: double-vision (typical of dxm), bright points of light in the center of my vision which did not diminish for the duration of the peak; they looked permanent

Negative long-term effects: I see a spray of bright dots in the center of my vision when I look away from a brightish source of light (cigarette cherry, monitor, etc.)

I took these 14 pills in a single night, about 5 years ago.

Now, I know those annoying bright dots weren't there before the Coricidin. These aren't "visual snow" or "floaters." This is the kind of thing you might expect to see if a large number of rods and cones right in the center of your retina decided to burn out. I feel that Coricidin has permanently damaged either my eyes or the part of my brain which handles data from my eyes. I feel that the damage could have been much, much worse if the dosage had been higher.

Has anybody else gotten this effect from taking CCCs? What other negative effects did you get? Tell your story! Let's scare the crap out of the next fool who thinks CCCs are anything but a bad idea! Real stories only!

~mecaib

a friend of mine I met in rehab had his digestive system permanently botched from abusing triple C. he can't eat certain foods, and spent a long time in the hospital for it. I wish I could recall more precise details (what part of his digestive system, etc.) but alas, I do not remember and we don't keep in contact anymore.

I don't know that this thread is really necessary, but why not... I've seen alot of people ruin their potential in a serious way from Coricidin abuse, silly as that may sound. I also think it definitely has addictive potential more than straight DXM.

I used Coriciden quite frequently and had no adverse affects, except when I was on anti-depressants; I quickly learned that was a bad combination.
I don't touch it these days, but personally had very few problems with Coriciden.
Perhaps I was lucky?

Death is about as long term as you can get (antihistamines with anticholinergic activity have been known to cause fatalities in massively excessive doses)

This thread is a good idea, mecaib... the idea of Coricidin being used as a way to get fucked up or trip has got to go.

I have had experience with them... I took them about 10 times over my lifetime, 9 times over one summer and 1 time a year later over the summer after my first year of college. There was this girl who worked at the grocery store I worked at in high school who would go on and on about how mushrooms were an evil drug because she had a bad time on them and said it was the worst experience of her life. But she told everyone how awesome Coricidin was. We didn't know them as triple C's but as Coricidin. She recommended that we try them and said it was a lot of fun. At the time I knew basically nothing about drugs... I thought that dank weed was a bad thing (my hometown is filled with nasty schwag) and that anything that wasn't brown was "fire".

So I started taking them, 8 at a time. Once I took 12. At first I liked the effects because it was something new. But after the first couple of times, I noticed that it was starting to make my brain feel funny. When I was on them, I felt like my brain was sizzling... my head became really hot (measurably so). I had trouble thinking of the right words while I was speaking. Over the summer I started to feel like a zombie all the time, even though I only used Coricidin every couple of weeks.

After the 9th time I used it, I had a really bad experience. They had been getting woirse and worse. The 9th time, I just felt terrible, sick and wrong. I couldn't think straight for a week or two afterwards... the "afterglow" (aftereffects) lasted for a week even in the body. I told myself I'd never do it again.

But lo and behold, the next summer I was going to be taking a drug test, and I couldn't smoke weed for a couple of weeks. So I got really bored and decided I would take Coricidin. I told myself I'd take 6 of them instead of 8, but I got impatient and took the last 2 also for a total of 8. That experience was the worst drug experience of my life. I felt a horrible sense of hurtling forward through space while turning slowly end over end. It made me feel nauseous and terrified. I just felt a general feeling of wrongness. My brain felt like it was melting... I could feel the fizzing and my forehead was running a temperature of 103. Literally, my brain felt like it was cooking. I was terribly depressed and felt like I was hurtling out of control. I was constantly on the edge of panic. It took 2 days to come down, 2 horrible days. I felt slow and had trouble speaking properly for 2 months. My brain didn;t feel right for at least 2 years after that. I feel very confident that I had brain damage from it. There were long-reaching consequences... I started falling into depression. I didn't feel like myself. And now I cannot handle even pure DXM in any amount. The last time I took DXM, it was 20mg in cough syrup that contained only DXM, and I took it because I was sick and couldn't stop coughing and needed to sleep. I woke up the next morning (I took it before bed) and felt that same horrible braindead feeling. I was depressed and apathetic and scared for the next 36 hours. My brain would literally not work, I felt like I was just there, a blank zombie. I went to take a math test (I was a sophomore in college) and I literally just sat there staring at it for the entire class period. I didn't even make a single mark on my paper because my mind was completely blank. Normally I was getting easy As in the class, but I just couldn't think enough to do anything but turn in a blank test which I got a zero on.

Needless to say I don't take Coricidin anymore, nor DXM in any form. I truly feel that Coricidin caused brain damage that has taken years to heal, and maybe it never healed but I just worked around it. Plus it made it so I could never take DXM again, even in medicinal cough suppression doses. So clearly it caused things in my brain to change.

The only reason anyone takes Coricidin is because of ignorance and misinformation. There are many products that are just as easy to get or easier that contain only DXM and are more enjoyable and a hell of a lot safer. I am going to start a thread where we can list products that contain only DXM, so that people researching Coricidin and/or DXM can have alternative, safe sources of DXM after they find out why not to take Coricidin.

I think I will link to this at the beginning page of the Big and Dandy DXM Thread.

Iv heard of CPM causing people to bleed from their fingernails, toe nails, eyes and ears.

Can anyone list specific health dangers of taking Coriciden? I was under the apparently mistaken impression that if you avoided the Coriciden with pain relievers, decongestants, etc, that it was relatively safe.

Is it the antihistamine? Fillers and dyes?

ATF: Coricidin has two drugs in it: dextromethorphan and chlorpheniramine maleate (CPM). CPM is an antihistamine which has anticholinergic effects. This means it blocks acetylcholine in the brain. Acetylcholine is a necessary chemical to have, that is if we want to make and retain memories. Both drugs (DXM and CPM) are metabolized by the same enzyme in the human body, if I am not mistaken. This can result in an overdose of both substances, one of the effects being suppressed breathing ability (to the point of death). Anticholinergics are also very bad for your eyes, and can cause permanent damage to them.

Xorkoth: I'm truly sorry to hear that you had to go through the nightmare of knowing you fucked yourself up, and then living with the consequences. It's good that you feel more or less normal now.

Something similar happened to my brother after we had been doing DXM in various forms for a while. He had been popping one or two CCCs day after day. At the time, he said that the drug's effects were like "background noise," and all he had to do was take one or two pills to boost the effects. He had also been on meth, but I didn't know it at the time. One day, he took a single CCC pill, and I took a large bottle of Delsym (888mg DXM poly). Things were going fine until that night when my brother went to sleep. I could hear him making robot noises and muttering something about "people." He was weeping for all the people. He got up, came into the living room, and looked quite confused. Of course I was freaking out, because I had taken such a massive dose of DXM, and could see that something was clearly wrong with my brother (I knew he had only taken one pill, so for him to look confused and act so strangely wasn't right at all).

He was very confused for over a week. He was blacking out, not making sense, wrecking things, and just generally scaring the ever-loving shit right out of me. This lasted for over seven days. We even took him to the emergency room, but they did nothing to help.

Simple confusion for a week may not seem like much to any of you, but this was full-blown Alzheimer's-like behavior. If you have seen an advanced AD patient, then you know how utterly fucked that condition is.

A guy I know used to hit the CCC's. He told me about it one time. He said he slapped down 12 and then another 6 later. I told him never ever do em again.

He said he already made that deal because he has dimmed vision out the corner of his right eye. Like in the peripheral vision it just looks darker, like say 50% tint. Even in bright light its darker.

Its a real shame that stuff has to be out there cause its caused lots of negative light on DXM and hurt many people.

Wow, ive never heard of this happening to anyone who's taken Coriciden, and with meth; yikes.

I think bottom line is people looked for DXM content and saw how wicked loaded the CCC's were and they went down easy without any syrup chuggin.

But if its too good to be true it probably is and thats what we've seen. I wish they'd get pulled off the shelves or some sort of reading material be passed along to young people who buy them. I am all for the legal sale of it, but too many people dont know shit.

^I didn't know enough before taking them. I had only researched the possible dangers of DXM before taking the little red devils. It was a "hey, let's trip tonight," type of scenario. Shame on me for not taking the time to research Coricidin beforehand.

If indeed both chemicals are metabolized by the same enzyme, then I am surprised an enzyme-deficient person hasn't sued the makers of Coricidin yet. Or maybe they have, and I just haven't heard about it.

It sucks, knowing that I've screwed my eyesight up permanently. I'd like for something good to come out of my foolishness, hence this thread...

I dont suffer any visual problems from a long term binge of 16+ a day. I now, however, find myself grasping for words on occasion during regular conversation (I used to be far more verbose and quick witted), and feel about 20% slower mentaly after the binge. Ive gone Years since use of coricidin, but I'm still slowly getting better. Ive seen pictures of myself during that period and they are just horrific. My skin had little color, my eyes were strikingly sunk back in my head and I just looked like a literal zombie. Nowadays, I have stopped ALL use of dxm and slowly recovering.

Male, 155 pounds currently 19 years old. My first time was @ 17

My first time taking triple C's, my friend was told by someone (my group of friends smoked pot daily) about Coricidin. So we all went to walmart and I jacked 8 boxes, my freind jacked 4 boxes of them. they immediately swallowed some, i didnt take any because i was questioning myself. so later i get home and i take 4 and by the time i was going to go to sleep, I started feeling high and i was very energetic haha. so i went to sleep and took 8 the next morning when I woke up.

After taking 8 Triple Cs that morning, I went to school and it took about an hour and a half to kick in...then i took another 8 when i started feeling it and doing 16 for your first time is INSANELY DANGEROUS without a tolerance. next thing i know, i was sitting in class and time became suddenly slower and I had weird tunnel vision that had this "Fuzziness" fading on the edges of my eyesight, as if i was looking through a scope. my vision was very near sighted, anything past 10 feet was so blurry. I went to the bathroom and looked at my self in the mirror. I freaked out when I saw myself, all my friends told me not to look in the mirror too! I looked like a freak of nature, or some ugly outcast. It was weird.

Later that day I go to gym class and it was very sunny outside, and my visiion got worse, instead of the fuzzy tunnel vision, it was now BLACK fuzzy tunnel vision. I could only see in the center, which was blurry. I had absolutely NO periphial (spelling) vision at all, it was almost like I was running around in a dream! I was in gym class, so we had to run outside and I had all the energy in the world! and I had no fatigue at all which was surprising. I felt like I was on STEROIDS. I had superior strength, and non stop energy. I ended up running a mile around 5 1/2 to 6 minutes If I recall correctly; finishing first in my class haha which was surprising. I was so sweaty after that, and i was pretty hot so i didnt go to my next class, and I went in my truck and had my freind drive me to my house and I smoked a cigarette. Smoking cigs on DXM gets you incredibly buzzed (lightheaded rush) more powerful feeling than smoking a cig for the first time! all my friends thought the same too.

My body was sooo numb too, I would tell someone at school to punch me in the face because it was so numb, it wouldnt hurt at all! haha I ended up punching myself so many times that my whole side of my face swelled up huge! but i didnt care because it was fun to do.

Thats how I fell in love with Triple C's (Coricidin Cough & Cold)

Just the fact that I felt like I was on steroids, had tons of energy; and was also a "cigarette enhancer" got me hooked right away. I am usually a lazy pot smoker. Even at work, I performed so much better when I was on DXM. But when I took too much, I had impaired speech, sometimes I couldnt move my lips to word out my sentences and it sounded like i just said "Fpppffhh phheff".

I than began taking it 5 days a week, or every schoolday. from 8 pills, to 10...then on to 12 and then 16 pills daily!!! this went on for about 3-4 months until walmart finally put it behind the counter, and you had to be 18 to purchase it! The reason why Walmart put it behind the counter was because me and my friends would go out to every walmart in town (we had 3) and steal dozens of boxes at a time, just because we were highly organized at theft in big box stores, and I was the most experienced and the best shoplifter out of everyone we knew. they would stock up the shelfs with 2 rows of 12 triple Cs sometimes twice a day, and we would get it all!!! we had so many boxes, we ended up selling alot to kids at our school, and i feel bad for getting half the school on DXM. we would just hand them out to people and they would come back and buy them. we made alot of money. we would take the pills out of the box and just sell 16 at a time for $5, $10 for dumbasses...we didnt want anyone knowing where and how we got them. we even smudged the candy coating so they couldnt see the C C C logo.

Its been a couple months since i have done DXM. i stopped for at least a year, got my tolerance back now.

Man I'm glad we don't have these where I live. They sound like utterly horrible pills.

we would take the pills out of the box and just sell 16 at a time for $5, $10 for dumbasses...we didnt want anyone knowing where and how we got them. we even smudged the candy coating so they couldnt see the C C C logo.

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If you have to trick dumbasses into buying Coricidin, how stupid does that make you?

About this stupid:

My body was sooo numb too, I would tell someone at school to punch me in the face because it was so numb, it wouldnt hurt at all! haha I ended up punching myself so many times that my whole side of my face swelled up huge! but i didnt care because it was fun to do.

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haha yeah it was dumb at the time...im more mature now

When I first began doing drugs, this was my drug of choice.
I was 14 at the time?
Although many people have told me that taking CCC's were terible for your health, I thought (hey so what... drugs are terrible for you in general?). But really there are better ways of taking DXM. My friends and I actually went on a 7 day binge, man was that messed up. The high felt like it lasted weeks after that. I experienced very severe mood swings, my vision was all messed up, my attention span was like 30 seconds, I was really pale, really weak, never felt hungry, lack of motivation, sleep schedule upside down(go to bed around 6am, get up at 5pm). It was pretty bad. I'm not saying all of those are because of CCC's, it was probably because of the binge. And now that I look back at it, I think "wow I was pretty stupid". If you're going to do DXM do it pure. Extract it ATLEAST. You don't want any of those other chemicals in your body, you could overdose on those alot easier than on DXM.

I haven't done DXM in over 2 years, I find it too harsh on the body.

I remember the first time I tried DXM/ Coricidin Cold & Cough like it was yesterday. I was in the 9th grade, it was fourth period, "Racket and Paddle Sports," which was a complete joke of an elective, devised last minute as an alternative only when the original class we signed up for(don't remember what) was canceled, but I digress. So my buddy Brian starts telling me about these OTC cold pills that get you messed up, and offered me some. So I, being only a pot smoker and weekend drinker at the time, decided to give it a shot, and took them right away.

After that class was up about a half hour later, I went to the cafeteria for lunch, and noticed I was feeling sort of floaty, even high, as if I had smoked a joint, though I hadn't. I told Brian that I was feeling funny, and he had taken some too, so we just laughed about it through our lunch period.

Next was American History, which I love now, but didn't care too much for at the time. I also butted heads pretty badly with my teacher. But by this time, I was feeling rather goofy and dissociated, and at the time I remember thinking that I felt as if I was outside of myself. So, where on a normal day, I might not say a word throughout the class unless called upon, I found myself strangely motivated to raise my hand and answer questions and offer input to the discussion we were having for whatever reason, even though the minute I began speaking and took the spotlight, I felt extremely awkward, but I continued to ramble off what I considered to be insightful remarks while my teacher looked on me with an odd expression. I definitely peaked during this time, and all I really wanted was to get out of that classroom. I had one more class, Algebra, then I caught the bus home and had to act normal in front of my mom, but at least it had worn of considerably by this point.

I took Coricidin a few more times after that, and in higher doses; 10-14 pills at a time. Had some good times, but nothing that spectacular. My final experience with CCC was only about five or six years ago, when I was taking a Greyhound from Charlotte, NC to the Northern California Coast. It was a five day trip that was as close to hell as I've ever come. I picked up a box somewhere in Texas and decided to take eight or so pills as we were coming into New Mexico. I got sick within an hour and threw up in the bathroom in the back of the bus, but felt better afterwards. I'll never forget how strange that New Mexico sunset looked that evening. Everything looked like the Nintendo Desert, like in Mario 3.

Since then I have become aware of the adverse effects CCC can produce, so I only take it when I have a cold or the flu, as I have high blood pressure, and it is a great medicine when you actually need it, and is taken as directed.

Xorkoth said:

So I started taking them, 8 at a time. Once I took 12. At first I liked the effects because it was something new. But after the first couple of times, I noticed that it was starting to make my brain feel funny. When I was on them, I felt like my brain was sizzling... my head became really hot (measurably so). I had trouble thinking of the right words while I was speaking. Over the summer I started to feel like a zombie all the time, even though I only used Coricidin every couple of weeks.

After the 9th time I used it, I had a really bad experience. They had been getting woirse and worse. The 9th time, I just felt terrible, sick and wrong. I couldn't think straight for a week or two afterwards... the "afterglow" (aftereffects) lasted for a week even in the body. I told myself I'd never do it again.

But lo and behold, the next summer I was going to be taking a drug test, and I couldn't smoke weed for a couple of weeks. So I got really bored and decided I would take Coricidin. I told myself I'd take 6 of them instead of 8, but I got impatient and took the last 2 also for a total of 8. That experience was the worst drug experience of my life. I felt a horrible sense of hurtling forward through space while turning slowly end over end. It made me feel nauseous and terrified. I just felt a general feeling of wrongness. My brain felt like it was melting... I could feel the fizzing and my forehead was running a temperature of 103. Literally, my brain felt like it was cooking. I was terribly depressed and felt like I was hurtling out of control. I was constantly on the edge of panic. It took 2 days to come down, 2 horrible days. I felt slow and had trouble speaking properly for 2 months. My brain didn;t feel right for at least 2 years after that. I feel very confident that I had brain damage from it. There were long-reaching consequences... I started falling into depression. I didn't feel like myself. And now I cannot handle even pure DXM in any amount. The last time I took DXM, it was 20mg in cough syrup that contained only DXM, and I took it because I was sick and couldn't stop coughing and needed to sleep. I woke up the next morning (I took it before bed) and felt that same horrible braindead feeling. I was depressed and apathetic and scared for the next 36 hours. My brain would literally not work, I felt like I was just there, a blank zombie. I went to take a math test (I was a sophomore in college) and I literally just sat there staring at it for the entire class period. I didn't even make a single mark on my paper because my mind was completely blank. Normally I was getting easy As in the class, but I just couldn't think enough to do anything but turn in a blank test which I got a zero on.
.

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do you remember if you were on an ssri, trycyclic, or other drug that would cause seratonin syndrome? that sounds exactly like dxm induced seratonin syndrome to me (which i have experienced.)