MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
I've put off making this thread for a long time. I chalk this up to my natural perfectionism (and thus procrastination) in the face of anything so astounding. Even now as I type this, I'm tortured by the feeling that nothing I write can do the experience justice. My feelings regarding the whole matter are incredibly mixed, owing in no small part, as we shall see, to the profound effect of DXM on a person's emotional responsiveness to the outside world.
In early July of 2011, I was a third year medical student about to begin my required six week surgery rotation. The day my rotation began, I was just back from a very disappointing music festival where there was an invasive security presence and piperazines instead of MDMA. Now I'm not the type to go into any experience with dread -- I really try to start off any new project with a positive attitude and an open mind, including activities I've been warned are hard. That said, here I was sitting with my classmate "S", a wicked piperazine hangover, and a bitchy Puerto Rican lady who was secretary of the surgery department, telling us that since there were only two of us students on this rotation, and a student needed to be on with the residents every day, I would be on call every other night
. When I pointed out politely that this was unfair and unreasonable, and no other students other months had been subjected to such a demanding schedule, her response was "Cry me a river." My reserve for taking things in stride was exhausted in one fell swoop.
A few weeks prior, I had read on BL someone posting that he could feel doses of DXM as low as 60mg. I'm a big fan of minimum doses, so I decided to take 60mg of DXM (and toke a bit) and go for a bike ride. I ended up in an elated and motivated mood, my thoughts racing joyously and with surprising detail about how my wife and I might be able to stay in our quaint little town right opposite New York City on the Hudson River for years to come. I arrived home feeling slightly disconnected from my body, but absolutely pumped with the idea, and eager to sell her on it. She thought the idea needed more thought, but it didn't strike her as irrational in any way, and she didn't seem to even suspect I was on any drugs.
My first morning of surgery, on a whim, I decided to once again take 60mg of DXM. By this point I was truly not looking forward to being there, and I hoped it would give me a burst of positivity and motivation. I ended up getting a lot more than I bargained for. On the car ride to the hospital, I began to feel very stimulated and motivated, and ever so slightly dissociated. But I could speak and move with no difficulty. I felt absolutely no fear whatsoever, and don't know that anything could have made me feel fearful.
The surgery residents in charge of us, surprise surprise, turned out to be overworked and unhappy people, who had no motivation to be nice to S and I. The chief resident "D" was a first class asshole, who instantly did not like me, because I wouldn't just submit and do exactly as he said. (Thankfully I knew from the start he had no input into my grade.) I should mention now that I do not suffer assholes well, and never have. This is a combination of being a sensitive individual, and also having a strong ethical principle against hierarchies of domination. If some stiff sends me the message that he's the alpha dog and I should bow down, he's likely to get anything from me but submission. This may someday be the end of me, but it's how I am.
My first day on DXM went very well. I was able to weather the constant barrage of unpleasant interpersonal interactions with complete grace. Much to my happy surprise, I did not feel the familiar lump in my throat, racing vindictive thoughts, bristling skin, or twitchy muscles. I did not lose the ability to look the offenders in the eye or speak to them with calm confidence. Intellectually, I was aware that I was being humiliated. But somehow the message never made it to the emotional centers of my brain. I was able to pretend that I was being addressed politely, and reply as if it were a casual conversation with friends. In retrospect I think this pissed off D even more -- I think a part of him wanted to see me broken and intimidated. I think it vexed him that I did not seem scared to give a wrong answer, and did not fear his scrutiny. Perhaps the purpose of this humiliation was to motivate me into learning and always giving the right answers. But I don't learn that way.
So successful was my first day on 60mg of DXM, that I began to take it every day. I saw no reason not to. It had the added stimulatory effect of reducing my need for sleep and food (which all students and residents on surgery are perpetually deprived of). I would take the DXM right before the half hour drive to the hospital, and arrive at 4AM perky and absolutely pumped to see my patients and write my notes on them, instead of barely awake and grasping at straws for the motivation. I'd be making jokes and smalltalk with the nurses as I wrote my notes, something I never felt like doing before.
It's kind of cliche in a "tastes like chicken" sort of way, to describe any drug's effects thusly, but 60mg DXM reminded me a lot of MDMA. The increased sociability and lack of any social inhibitions, the stimulation and wired feeling, and the boundless motivation were remarkable. Unfortunately, also like MDMA, I found myself gurning, to the point where I ended many days with a headache. The mild dissociation, however, was where the analogy ended. This was at the same time the most interesting but also the weirdest effect of the drug. The dissociation took the form of decreased tactile sensitivity, especially to temperature, but to a smaller degree to proprioception, though never to the point where my coordination suffered. Visually, the world at times would take on a "washed out" look, somewhat like a photonegative, where the contours and hues of objects would take on a funny quality I find hard to put into words. I bet anyone who has used dissociatives at sub-hole doses knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Dealing with my attending physician was a lot easier than dealing with the residents. Though he was a tough teacher, Dr. J was not out to humiliate anyone. My respect for him was genuine. My complete lack of inhibition in piping up and answering his questions while we were on rounds seemed to impress him, and send him the message I was not at all intimidated by him or his trade. Thanks to DXM. I felt genuinely motivated to read and learn what he wanted me to learn, such that when he'd "pimp" me with questions, I'd give the right answers, with calm aplomb. I remember once Dr. J asked a question of all of us, which struck me as a trick question with a ridiculously simple answer. So without a second thought, I just spoke up and gave the simple answer which had first crossed my mind. Dr. J pointed at me, and at first I thought he was going to make a humiliating example out of me. Instead he said, "I like the way this guy thinks. He keeps it simple and doesn't overthink things. And he's absolutely correct." I glowed for the rest of the day. If only Dr. J knew what a problem overthinking things has always been for me!
At the end of the rotation, Dr. J took me into a room for feedback. S had just come out of the room pale as a ghost, and I had heard Dr. J could be rather harsh with his final feedback. I sat down across the table from him, a bit nervous. He said in his lilting Indian accent, "I'll keep this short, MDAO. I am recommending you for highest honors." I was stunned. For a split second, I wondered if it was a joke. It certainly didn't feel like I earned it. If only he knew, I thought to myself, that I couldn't have made nearly so good an impression without DXM.
Still, the results spoke for themselves. I began my fourth year of medical school still taking 60mg of DXM every day, and after my experience on surgery, I saw no reason to stop. Sure enough, I ended up making a strong impression on all of my fourth year rotations, and getting a couple of glowing letters of recommendation. I never felt the slightest twinge of nervousness as I went on day-long interviews for family medicine residencies, and ended up spontaneously telling a number of stories during my interviews that I could tell sincerely impressed and entertained my interviewers, and gave them the impression I was a highly interesting and articulate person with a lot to say. In the end, I ended up getting my number one choice, one of the most renowned and sought-after family residencies in my entire region of the US! And it felt effortless.
Many of my fourth year rotations took place at the same hospital where I'd done a lot of my third year rotations, including surgery. It's an old, highly traditional inner city teaching hospital, with a very hierarchical and high pressure work environment. It's populated with shark-like internal medicine residents, mostly from abroad, whose only professional goal is to score a high-paying medical subspecialty. In my third year days before DXM, I'd found it a highly intimidating place, and was definitely received by people above me as something of a lost puppy who's fun to kick around. Going back there my fourth year, on DXM, felt entirely different. Suddenly I was treated with respect, even friendliness. I chalk this up to carrying myself with more confidence and medical knowledge, and having made it through the gauntlet which is third year of medical school. I'm sure 60mg of DXM every day played no small role in this, though.
DXM changed the way my mind worked. Most detrimentally, I found it harder to write. I found I'd often "get ahead of myself" and write the second letter of a word before I'd written the first letter. My handwriting got worse. I found it hard to hold an entire long sentence in my head, and found myself having to go back and correct a lot of wrong verb tenses and run-on sentences. I no longer felt as eloquent, and no longer had the urge to express myself in complicated purple prose. For the first time in my life, I felt able and satisfied to state things simply, and use no more words than were necessary. This made me realize how much of my former speaking and writing style was borne out of repressed anger and frustration (as it is for many prolific writers, I suspect). With the anger and frustration completely removed, simple, logical ways of stating things just sufficed.
Less detrimentally, but still controversially, I found my emotional state completely disconnected from stimuli in the outer world. I found I could very easily choose not to attach any emotional content to something I was experiencing, doing, or saying, something I've never been good at or even seen the use of. This helped me countless times in plowing through tasks which were sheer drudgery, or discussing other people's great suffering without vicariously feeling any of it. At the other end, I found during my residency interviews that I could muster a warm, genuine looking and even genuine FEELING smile on command, whenever the logical part of my brian told me that the other person was inviting me to laugh or be amused. Again, I think this has gone a long way to convincing my higher-ups and patients that I'm a highly likable person. But inside, I mostly felt emotionally blank. My days had neither joy nor sadness. Only tasks to be done.
All this time, I never experienced anything I'd consider a comedown or a hangover, nor any side effects that nagged me to quit. But then something slowly changed. I began to develop tolerance to the mild dissociative effect. I used to be able to count on the DXM to keep me in a relatively good mood. But more and more, I started having days that were marked by a low level of fear and paranoia. Like the perkiness and motivation I'd experienced before, this fear seemed unprovoked by, and unrelated to, anything in my external world. I began to feel that there was a wide gap between how I was perceived and what was really going in in my head, that I was just playing a role on a stage, and that no one at work knew the real me at all.
The way the DXM made incredibly daring served me well as a medical student and interviewee, but soon posed problems for me as a resident with responsibilities. On a couple of occasions I took the liberty of doing things without supervision or prior permission, and although no patients were ever hurt, I was criticized by my director for being a "cowboy". My wife also became concerned about me taking a psychotropic medication every day, without the supervision of a medical professional. So I stopped taking it every day. I still take it occasionally, at doses a little lower (around 45-50mg) when I'm having a tough day and would rather just glide through it.
Interestingly enough, some of the personality and thought process changes I've gone through over the past year have remained. I remain more sparse and to the point in the way I speak. I feel less moved to post on BL, and when I read my old posts from before my DXM year, I don't recognize myself and find them convoluted and hard to read. I remain better at working with calm, analytical people. I'm more self-confident and outspoken. I'm not as easily ruffled as I once was. I daydream less, and find myself living in the present moment, as opposed to needing some exciting future to look forward to. I'm also a more deeply spiritual person, with fewer lingering doubts in this area. I don't think I will ever be able to separate which of these transformations were a result of the notoriously transformative process of attending medical school, which were the neurohormonal effects of becoming the father of triplets that same year, and which were brain changes enacted by DXM.
I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone do as I did. Mania and psychosis are real risks of long term DXM use, and I definitely experienced a lot of the former and flirted with the latter over the course of the year. That said, I proved right the recent study that suggests that DXM is an excellent antidepressant and anxiolytic. This study noted that people with the gene for the faulty serotonin receptor who are naturally predisposed to depression, lowered pain thresholds, alcoholism, and opiate addiction, are the most likely to get these benefits from DXM. According to 23andme.com where I submitted my DNA for analysis, as well as family and personal history, I am certain I am one of these people. That said, I think more research should be conducted on this compound for its psychoactive properties.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. I have much more to say, and I think I'll be adding anecdotes to this thread from over the past year, as they come to me. Any comments are welcome.
In early July of 2011, I was a third year medical student about to begin my required six week surgery rotation. The day my rotation began, I was just back from a very disappointing music festival where there was an invasive security presence and piperazines instead of MDMA. Now I'm not the type to go into any experience with dread -- I really try to start off any new project with a positive attitude and an open mind, including activities I've been warned are hard. That said, here I was sitting with my classmate "S", a wicked piperazine hangover, and a bitchy Puerto Rican lady who was secretary of the surgery department, telling us that since there were only two of us students on this rotation, and a student needed to be on with the residents every day, I would be on call every other night
. When I pointed out politely that this was unfair and unreasonable, and no other students other months had been subjected to such a demanding schedule, her response was "Cry me a river." My reserve for taking things in stride was exhausted in one fell swoop.A few weeks prior, I had read on BL someone posting that he could feel doses of DXM as low as 60mg. I'm a big fan of minimum doses, so I decided to take 60mg of DXM (and toke a bit) and go for a bike ride. I ended up in an elated and motivated mood, my thoughts racing joyously and with surprising detail about how my wife and I might be able to stay in our quaint little town right opposite New York City on the Hudson River for years to come. I arrived home feeling slightly disconnected from my body, but absolutely pumped with the idea, and eager to sell her on it. She thought the idea needed more thought, but it didn't strike her as irrational in any way, and she didn't seem to even suspect I was on any drugs.
My first morning of surgery, on a whim, I decided to once again take 60mg of DXM. By this point I was truly not looking forward to being there, and I hoped it would give me a burst of positivity and motivation. I ended up getting a lot more than I bargained for. On the car ride to the hospital, I began to feel very stimulated and motivated, and ever so slightly dissociated. But I could speak and move with no difficulty. I felt absolutely no fear whatsoever, and don't know that anything could have made me feel fearful.
The surgery residents in charge of us, surprise surprise, turned out to be overworked and unhappy people, who had no motivation to be nice to S and I. The chief resident "D" was a first class asshole, who instantly did not like me, because I wouldn't just submit and do exactly as he said. (Thankfully I knew from the start he had no input into my grade.) I should mention now that I do not suffer assholes well, and never have. This is a combination of being a sensitive individual, and also having a strong ethical principle against hierarchies of domination. If some stiff sends me the message that he's the alpha dog and I should bow down, he's likely to get anything from me but submission. This may someday be the end of me, but it's how I am.
My first day on DXM went very well. I was able to weather the constant barrage of unpleasant interpersonal interactions with complete grace. Much to my happy surprise, I did not feel the familiar lump in my throat, racing vindictive thoughts, bristling skin, or twitchy muscles. I did not lose the ability to look the offenders in the eye or speak to them with calm confidence. Intellectually, I was aware that I was being humiliated. But somehow the message never made it to the emotional centers of my brain. I was able to pretend that I was being addressed politely, and reply as if it were a casual conversation with friends. In retrospect I think this pissed off D even more -- I think a part of him wanted to see me broken and intimidated. I think it vexed him that I did not seem scared to give a wrong answer, and did not fear his scrutiny. Perhaps the purpose of this humiliation was to motivate me into learning and always giving the right answers. But I don't learn that way.
So successful was my first day on 60mg of DXM, that I began to take it every day. I saw no reason not to. It had the added stimulatory effect of reducing my need for sleep and food (which all students and residents on surgery are perpetually deprived of). I would take the DXM right before the half hour drive to the hospital, and arrive at 4AM perky and absolutely pumped to see my patients and write my notes on them, instead of barely awake and grasping at straws for the motivation. I'd be making jokes and smalltalk with the nurses as I wrote my notes, something I never felt like doing before.
It's kind of cliche in a "tastes like chicken" sort of way, to describe any drug's effects thusly, but 60mg DXM reminded me a lot of MDMA. The increased sociability and lack of any social inhibitions, the stimulation and wired feeling, and the boundless motivation were remarkable. Unfortunately, also like MDMA, I found myself gurning, to the point where I ended many days with a headache. The mild dissociation, however, was where the analogy ended. This was at the same time the most interesting but also the weirdest effect of the drug. The dissociation took the form of decreased tactile sensitivity, especially to temperature, but to a smaller degree to proprioception, though never to the point where my coordination suffered. Visually, the world at times would take on a "washed out" look, somewhat like a photonegative, where the contours and hues of objects would take on a funny quality I find hard to put into words. I bet anyone who has used dissociatives at sub-hole doses knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Dealing with my attending physician was a lot easier than dealing with the residents. Though he was a tough teacher, Dr. J was not out to humiliate anyone. My respect for him was genuine. My complete lack of inhibition in piping up and answering his questions while we were on rounds seemed to impress him, and send him the message I was not at all intimidated by him or his trade. Thanks to DXM. I felt genuinely motivated to read and learn what he wanted me to learn, such that when he'd "pimp" me with questions, I'd give the right answers, with calm aplomb. I remember once Dr. J asked a question of all of us, which struck me as a trick question with a ridiculously simple answer. So without a second thought, I just spoke up and gave the simple answer which had first crossed my mind. Dr. J pointed at me, and at first I thought he was going to make a humiliating example out of me. Instead he said, "I like the way this guy thinks. He keeps it simple and doesn't overthink things. And he's absolutely correct." I glowed for the rest of the day. If only Dr. J knew what a problem overthinking things has always been for me!
At the end of the rotation, Dr. J took me into a room for feedback. S had just come out of the room pale as a ghost, and I had heard Dr. J could be rather harsh with his final feedback. I sat down across the table from him, a bit nervous. He said in his lilting Indian accent, "I'll keep this short, MDAO. I am recommending you for highest honors." I was stunned. For a split second, I wondered if it was a joke. It certainly didn't feel like I earned it. If only he knew, I thought to myself, that I couldn't have made nearly so good an impression without DXM.
Still, the results spoke for themselves. I began my fourth year of medical school still taking 60mg of DXM every day, and after my experience on surgery, I saw no reason to stop. Sure enough, I ended up making a strong impression on all of my fourth year rotations, and getting a couple of glowing letters of recommendation. I never felt the slightest twinge of nervousness as I went on day-long interviews for family medicine residencies, and ended up spontaneously telling a number of stories during my interviews that I could tell sincerely impressed and entertained my interviewers, and gave them the impression I was a highly interesting and articulate person with a lot to say. In the end, I ended up getting my number one choice, one of the most renowned and sought-after family residencies in my entire region of the US! And it felt effortless.
Many of my fourth year rotations took place at the same hospital where I'd done a lot of my third year rotations, including surgery. It's an old, highly traditional inner city teaching hospital, with a very hierarchical and high pressure work environment. It's populated with shark-like internal medicine residents, mostly from abroad, whose only professional goal is to score a high-paying medical subspecialty. In my third year days before DXM, I'd found it a highly intimidating place, and was definitely received by people above me as something of a lost puppy who's fun to kick around. Going back there my fourth year, on DXM, felt entirely different. Suddenly I was treated with respect, even friendliness. I chalk this up to carrying myself with more confidence and medical knowledge, and having made it through the gauntlet which is third year of medical school. I'm sure 60mg of DXM every day played no small role in this, though.
DXM changed the way my mind worked. Most detrimentally, I found it harder to write. I found I'd often "get ahead of myself" and write the second letter of a word before I'd written the first letter. My handwriting got worse. I found it hard to hold an entire long sentence in my head, and found myself having to go back and correct a lot of wrong verb tenses and run-on sentences. I no longer felt as eloquent, and no longer had the urge to express myself in complicated purple prose. For the first time in my life, I felt able and satisfied to state things simply, and use no more words than were necessary. This made me realize how much of my former speaking and writing style was borne out of repressed anger and frustration (as it is for many prolific writers, I suspect). With the anger and frustration completely removed, simple, logical ways of stating things just sufficed.
Less detrimentally, but still controversially, I found my emotional state completely disconnected from stimuli in the outer world. I found I could very easily choose not to attach any emotional content to something I was experiencing, doing, or saying, something I've never been good at or even seen the use of. This helped me countless times in plowing through tasks which were sheer drudgery, or discussing other people's great suffering without vicariously feeling any of it. At the other end, I found during my residency interviews that I could muster a warm, genuine looking and even genuine FEELING smile on command, whenever the logical part of my brian told me that the other person was inviting me to laugh or be amused. Again, I think this has gone a long way to convincing my higher-ups and patients that I'm a highly likable person. But inside, I mostly felt emotionally blank. My days had neither joy nor sadness. Only tasks to be done.
All this time, I never experienced anything I'd consider a comedown or a hangover, nor any side effects that nagged me to quit. But then something slowly changed. I began to develop tolerance to the mild dissociative effect. I used to be able to count on the DXM to keep me in a relatively good mood. But more and more, I started having days that were marked by a low level of fear and paranoia. Like the perkiness and motivation I'd experienced before, this fear seemed unprovoked by, and unrelated to, anything in my external world. I began to feel that there was a wide gap between how I was perceived and what was really going in in my head, that I was just playing a role on a stage, and that no one at work knew the real me at all.
The way the DXM made incredibly daring served me well as a medical student and interviewee, but soon posed problems for me as a resident with responsibilities. On a couple of occasions I took the liberty of doing things without supervision or prior permission, and although no patients were ever hurt, I was criticized by my director for being a "cowboy". My wife also became concerned about me taking a psychotropic medication every day, without the supervision of a medical professional. So I stopped taking it every day. I still take it occasionally, at doses a little lower (around 45-50mg) when I'm having a tough day and would rather just glide through it.
Interestingly enough, some of the personality and thought process changes I've gone through over the past year have remained. I remain more sparse and to the point in the way I speak. I feel less moved to post on BL, and when I read my old posts from before my DXM year, I don't recognize myself and find them convoluted and hard to read. I remain better at working with calm, analytical people. I'm more self-confident and outspoken. I'm not as easily ruffled as I once was. I daydream less, and find myself living in the present moment, as opposed to needing some exciting future to look forward to. I'm also a more deeply spiritual person, with fewer lingering doubts in this area. I don't think I will ever be able to separate which of these transformations were a result of the notoriously transformative process of attending medical school, which were the neurohormonal effects of becoming the father of triplets that same year, and which were brain changes enacted by DXM.
I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone do as I did. Mania and psychosis are real risks of long term DXM use, and I definitely experienced a lot of the former and flirted with the latter over the course of the year. That said, I proved right the recent study that suggests that DXM is an excellent antidepressant and anxiolytic. This study noted that people with the gene for the faulty serotonin receptor who are naturally predisposed to depression, lowered pain thresholds, alcoholism, and opiate addiction, are the most likely to get these benefits from DXM. According to 23andme.com where I submitted my DNA for analysis, as well as family and personal history, I am certain I am one of these people. That said, I think more research should be conducted on this compound for its psychoactive properties.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. I have much more to say, and I think I'll be adding anecdotes to this thread from over the past year, as they come to me. Any comments are welcome.
