Experience: 450mg DXM + THC - A shallow dive into the 3rd plateau
- Substance(s): DXM, Cannabis
- Dose: 450mg, N/A
- Route of Administration: Oral, Smoked
Subject
- Age: 18
- Sex: Male
- Height: 168cm / 5'6
- Weight: 58kg / 128lbs
- Date: 06/2023
- Location: United States / California
Background
I am somewhat experienced with mind-alternating substances, as this experience occurred about a year and a half after my first experience with any. Throughout that time I have tried THC, 4-AcO-DMT, DXM, low doses of 1p-LSD and 4-HO-MET, and many more substances that I found to be not of interest to me, such as ethanol, Xanax, Adderall, and nicotine. Out of all of these substances, DXM has to be my favorite. Before this I did DXM 3 times - one first plateau dose and two second plateau doses spread out over the previous 8 months - all of which were enjoyable experiences akin to weed with a vibe that mixed with my brain in a better way due to the deeper and more dissocative headspace. This time I was going to take 300mg which was at the time the highest amount I had taken thus far, as a previous 330mg experience was an initial dose of 210mg with redosing to reach 330mg after around three hours. 300mg is a mid-2nd plateau dose for my weight, but as will be explained later, the cumulative dose I took on the night of the experience totaled up to 450mg, which is just about touching the 3rd plateau, and reaching it once THC was later involved.
Experience report
I had been waiting to take this DXM for quite some time now as I wanted the right conditions to do it. At last, those conditions arrived, leading me to take it. Between 7:15 and 7:45 pm, I took 10 RoboCough HBr pills, totaling 300mg of DXM. The consumption was spaced out to try to alleviate any nausea that could occur, as in a previous experience I got quite unpleasant nausea and threw up. However, this method ended up being similarly unpleasant as each pill was hard to get down my throat without water, and ineffective at alleviating nausea, as at around 7:50 - only 5 minutes after the final pill was consumed - my stomach started hurting. I was unsure how to solve this, as I did not have access to any diphenhydramine which I have heard to help alleviate this nausea. In an act out of desperation and curiosity, I ate 3 calcium carbonate tablets. After this, I went onto my computer to wait out the come-up and give myself a distraction from the nausea. I tried to play Rocket League with little success and instead watched a POV video of a person river kayaking. Although the distraction would at times help, the nausea continued and began to get worse and worse until I moved onto my bed and layed down. Walking to my bed was somewhat reminiscent of the robo-walk I have previously experienced, but I am unsure if it was just nausea or placebo. At about 8:30, I knew I was going to throw up and moved into my bathroom to wait for it to occur. As always, it was an unpleasant experience that was thankfully made somewhat less negative due to DXM’s sensory suppression beginning to take effect. Once I finished throwing up, no more negative body effects were present.
As I walk back to my computer to change the YouTube video to a new one, I realize typing is much harder to do now. This is where the first psychoactive effects of the DXM take place, which seemed to begin quickly compared to what I have read online, but this speedy onset makes sense as I had not eaten a real meal since noon and since then had only had around 10 grapes to curb the slight hunger I was experiencing at the time. As I always do on DXM, I grabbed out my phone, put my AirPods in, and started listening to some music, which in this case was a playlist composed of breakcore, ambient drum and bass, jungle, and other music from similar drum and bass subgenres. I felt the urge to dance as a result of how amazing the music sounded. I felt very energetic and happy to move around. Each movement I would make felt perfect and as if I was being pleasantly guided into them, rather than having to plan out how I wanted to move with the music. As I moved around my room dancing, I found myself in my mirror and realized that the movements I was making were quite funny looking from an outside perspective. What previously was imagined in my head as being the exact and perfect way to dance to this music now appeared to be random movements of my torso and limbs. This made me realize that DXM has somewhat of a “tweaker” feeling from an outsider's perspective, but that from the user’s perspective nothing weird is occurring and the actions taking place are enjoyable and normal. As the DXM further took effect, I would jump up and down for fun or run up to my bed and jump into it. When jumping up and down it felt as though I was going up five or ten feet in the air, even when in reality it was likely only a foot or two. The carpet in my room is very soft so I decided to roll around on my floor and do summer salts. Similarly, I would climb under my bed and sit there for fun or lay my body upside down against a wall. While sober I would not do things like this, but nonetheless, they were all enjoyable while on DXM.
By now it is 9:15 - about 2 hours since ingestion - meaning that over the course of the past hour or so, it has gotten much darker outside. Upon looking outside, I am struck with the idea of my room being suspended in the middle of the universe with pitch black surrounding it. As I imagined this vividly in my mind, the idea developed into my room being transported to another universe when I took DXM, where the laws of physics and other things were different. I told my friends over text about the current whereabouts of my room, to which I was told to look outside to prove that it wasn’t in the middle of nowhere. To this, I said that it of course would not be fully dark yet, as I am not fully tripping yet. I should note that this idea of the room in the middle of the universe was not what I actually believed to be occurring, but just an interesting idea in my mind that was likely in part created due to the effects of the DXM. At 9:50, I texted my friends telling them that I had minor closed-eye visuals. Sadly I did not describe what they looked like and have now forgotten what they did look like at this point in the trip. I remember that no open-eyed visuals were present at this point. Throughout my continued dancing around my room and other assorted activities, I began to become more introspective, which first arose in thinking about my future. I plan to become a doctor, which is a very hard path that requires incredibly good memory and high amounts of dedication. While thinking about this, I was met with the thought of my substance use affecting my success in actually getting into medical school, but those thoughts were watered down and distant, leading to me quickly forgetting about this idea. I then became very connected with the future versions of myself, and would vividly imagine what my life will be like in the years to come. Although everything else could be envisioned, my appearance in the future could not be.
I later returned to my mirror and thought about how it was like I was peering into a parallel universe, as I was quite fascinated with staring at myself up close for long enough that it would feel like another person was there. Overall, this part of the experience was stimulating and not too disassociative. Usually during the second half of my DXM trips, these switch, and I instead feel much less stimulated (likely in part due to being tired), and much more dissociated (along with more disconnective visuals as a result) Despite these somewhat introspective thoughts, changes in the way my movement felt, closed-eye visuals, and even minor visual distortions, I wanted more. I had previously planned to smoke weed during the comedown to extend the time of the effects, which I had previously not mixed with DXM. When thinking about how to proceed, I was met with the contrasting idea of taking more DXM. Although I did have the thought at the time that redosing may be a bad idea due to the risks associated with it on DXM, I also correctly knew that only redosing once and at an amount less than the initial dose is likely fine. Because of this, I took another 150mg at 10:30 pm, making the total amount consumed 450mg. This would normally be a low plateau 3 dose for my body weight, but given that this amount is separated, the true peak of the experience likely added up to a high plateau 2 dose, even if the overall peak of the first dose was still likely occurring at 10:30 due to DXM’s very long duration and peak.
I ate the 5 pills all at once and got them down my throat with some sparkling water. The intense rush of carbonation normally found in my mouth when drinking this was barely present, and I instead met with a distant and fuzzy berry-like taste. This led to me think about how the flavor and static of the carbonation are like the DXM experience itself. The flavor being the euphoria and other positive mental and physical effects from the substance, and the carbonation being the sense of dissociation and visual disconnection (which sometimes even can arise in the form of seeing static around you).
While waiting for the second dose of DXM to present itself, I continued to engage in my usual DXM activities - dancing around my room, staring at my wall, rolling on the floor, things like that. I eventually found myself on my bed engaging in yet another staring contest with the wall when I suddenly sat up and saw my window. I then got out of bed and walked over to the window to look out it, despite the fact that it was nighttime. This choice of my body walking over to the window was never chosen by my mind. Upon the walk towards the window, I would commentate the actions by saying “Oh well there he goes walking over to the window even though I never told him to” and “Yep you got your look out the window, now can we go back” upon reaching the window. Even this commentary felt slightly disconnected from my true subconscious self, almost as if this commentary replaced my now repressed train of thought, which would have been much more intrigued and surprised by this novel experience. This occurred at around 11:20 - about 50 minutes after the re-dose. This heightened level of dissociation may have been from the re-dose starting to take effect, but it may also be due to the trip progressing overall.
By 11:40 I could tell that the re-dose was now taking effect. This manifested in a decrease in energy and instead a preference for lying down in bed. It also manifested in heightened visuals, the most prominent of which was the double vision. This double vision primarily only occurred with objects close to me, if I looked out across my room little to no double vision would occur. The effects led to me having to open one eye at a time just to read the text on my phone. Interestingly, as opposed to the given object being duplicated and shifted to the side, it was angled differently. While one of my double-vision phones would be pointed slightly to the left by about 30 degrees, the other one would be to the right while the bottom of each phone would be at the same position which can be described as the shape of the letter "V".
Another interesting effect found due to the dissociation was my thoughts on the idea of gender and/or sex. Due to the feeling of my ego’s disconnection from my body, it felt as though I had no gender, and that the entire concept of it was weird and foreign. This was a very minor part of the overall experience and something I only thought about for around a minute before it all went away, as I have never experienced any feelings like that while sober.
Midnight marks what I consider to be the peak of the purely DXM portion of the experience. At this point, I was primarily in bed listening to music, but I eventually got up to find my VR headset. Upon putting it on I felt more immersed in the VR experience than I ever had been, even though I was not doing anything in it and was instead only at the home screen. I first tried to play superhot VR, which was hard to do due to my mild fatigue and blurry vision at this point. Because of this, I instead chose to watch VR videos on YouTube. The first result was a compilation of CGI roller coaster videos. I could tell at the time that it was a low-quality CGI video but this did not bother me as everything still looked beautiful. At the peak of one of the roller coasters, I would look out and be amazed by the landscape despite the fact that it is somewhat bland and ugly to my sober mind. As the roller coaster began to race down the tracks, I could almost feel the sensation of the wind coming towards me and the g-force exerted on my body. This effect was exemplified when I sat upright in my bed and swayed with the movements of the virtual roller coaster. As I continued searching through the depths of what YouTube had to offer, I came upon a video that was a simulation of what it was like to be in a tsunami, which was also CGI. Although I was still aware of the fact it was just a video when I started it, this awareness began to slip as the video progressed and I became more immersed. At one point in the video, I became scared due to the massive tsunami that was coming my way, but once the commentary of the video said something I was drawn back into the awareness of it only being a video. If this commentary was not present I imagine it would have been quite a frightening experience, as while under the effects of the DXM the clearly CGI video looked like normal reality.
These experiences on the VR headset, along with periodic moments of dancing around and laying in my bed in the dark progressed until 1 am. At this point, I began to feel a bit closer to normal everyday reality and remembered my plan to smoke weed during this trip. I got out of my cart and prepared to take a hit, but before I did, I remembered some guidelines I had set up for taking weed on DXM previously. Even when not under the influence of DXM I have an issue with weed where I would wait only a minute or so after the first hit I took and think it isn't working, leading to me taking another hit. This oftentimes leads to all of the weed kicking in all at once, leading to me getting too high for comfort. This extreme level of highness is an experience somewhat unique to me, as my friends never report being able to get as high as I could. Part of this is my complete lack of tolerance to weed, and another part may be due to my previous experience with psychedelics, which are known to make weed more potent after their use. But even before my first trips weed would still lead to insane experiences for me, so I am not entirely sure why this happens to me. Anyway, even while under the influence of the DXM I was still aware of the risk of getting too high - as weed synergizes with DXM to a very heavy extent, which would be especially bad in my case due to me being prone to anxiety on weed. This cart is normally mildly rough down my throat and leaves a somewhat unpleasant taste in my mouth, but thankfully these senses could not be perceived. Despite my best efforts to avoid taking more before being 100% sure the first hit of weed had kicked in, I took another hit… twice. As expected, this led to it kicking in all at once. Suddenly, my entire field of perception grew gradually more and more distorted, colorful, and psychedelic. I would close my eyes and see mildly complex geometric patterns that were mostly black and white with some hints of green and blue. The state of extremely heightened visuals would last only for a few minutes before going back to a more normal state of what is expected when mixing the amounts of weed and DXM.
I should note here that the rest of the trip report was written about two months after the initial experience, as I completely forgot about the trip report after writing the previous part of it. As a result, the following will be much less detailed as I have forgotten much of the experience, especially the tail end of it. The THC not only led to more visuals but also increased the cognitive effects of the DXM. At one point my normally present internal monolog was replaced with a distinctly British-sounding person, who would stay there for around five minutes before going away back to my normal voice. Although my subconscious had the realization that something had changed, the internal monologue itself acted as though nothing had occurred whatsoever. At other points there would instead be multiple internal monologues going on at once, sometimes being indifferent to each other and at other times having conversations about what is occurring to myself. I would not consider this to be anywhere close to ego death, as my ego was still present, just that my internal monologue was replaced.
The only other things I remember from this portion of the trip are that the music was absolutely beautiful, and my experience with thinking I had pissed my bed. At one point I noticed that the area around my crotch felt somewhat warm and wet. This feeling was distant and hard to make out due to the distinctive properties of DXM and because of that, I had thought I may have peed my pants. This would lead to me compulsively attempting to go to the bathroom many times and randomly checking to make sure I did not pee my pants. Thankfully, in the morning there were no stains to be found, and I attribute the sensation to being from sweat.
Although I do not at all remember falling asleep, at some point in the night I did. I woke up at around 9 in the morning, feeling very “off”, but not in an unpleasant way like that is felt with alcohol. I decided to take a hit out of my cart to maybe bring back some of the DXM experience, which surprisingly worked. I then took a shower as I felt very dirty after everything, which was a violent experience, as physical sensation came back to me all at once in the form of a shower head with too much water pressure after having pretty much not experienced any physical sensations for the previous 12 hours. My daily routine always involves eating breakfast in the morning, which I tried to do with little success as I had essentially no appetite. Talking to and being around my family made me feel like an alien sent to Earth to observe human behavior, as I still felt very weird around them. The rest of the day, which was spent in my room playing video games and watching YouTube, went by pretty normal, although I still felt somewhat weird. I went to the gym at 9 pm and was interestingly able to go very heavy on deadlifts despite my overall fatigue. I think this may be due to the inability to feel the fatigue due to the after-effects of DXM, but I am not entirely sure. However, the workout was quickly cut short as I became very tired very quickly.
I went to bed at around 11 that night and had a very nice sleep. The next morning I woke up feeling entirely normal. For my next DXM experience, I will likely take 510mg, as I want to be able to truly reach the 3rd plateau without the use of redosing or THC. I space out my DXM experiences by 3 or 4 months, as I want to be able to minimize any brain damage that may occur due to its use (if brain damage even does occur with oral and non-chronic usage of DXM, which is still not fully known). I am very excited when I do decide to revisit DXM, as unlike pretty much any other substance I have tried, it always leads to a fun time.
Timeline
T+ 0:00 / 7:15PM - Began the ingestion of 300mg DXM
T+ 0:30 / 7:45PM - Last pill consumed
T+ 0:50 / 7:50PM - Nausea begins
T+ 1:15 / 8:30PM - Threw up, very minor effects begin
T+ 2:00 / 9:15PM - Effects continuing to increase in strength
T+ 2:35 / 9:50PM - Minor CEVs present, no OEVs yet
T+ 3:15 / 10:30PM - 150mg redose taken
T+ 4:05 / 11:10PM - Dissociative effects begin to intensify
T+ 4:25 / 11:40PM - Redose clearly active, decreased stimulation as a result
T+ 4:45 / 12:00AM - Peak of the purely DXM portion of the trip, much-decreased energy
T+ 5:45 / 1AM - Beginning of consumption of cannabis
T+ 13:45 / 9AM - Woke up, unsure when I went to bed. After-effects very present
Submitted by WeedCat
Effects analysis
- Nausea - "my stomach started hurting"
- Gait alteration - "Walking to my bed was somewhat reminiscent of the robo-walk I have previously experienced"
- Vomiting - "I knew I was going to throw up and moved into my bathroom to wait for it to occur"
- Motor control loss' - "I realize typing is much harder to do now"
- Increased music appreciation - "I felt the urge to dance as a result of how amazing the music sounded"
- Stimulation - "I felt very energetic and happy to move around"
- Perception of bodily lightness - "When jumping up and down it felt as though I was going up five or ten feet in the air"
- Cognitive disconnection - "This choice of my body walking over to the window was never chosen by my mind"
- Sedation - "This manifested in a decrease in energy and instead a preference for lying down in bed"
- Double vision - "the most prominent of which was the double vision. This double vision primarily only occurred with objects close to me"
- Immersion intensification - "Upon putting it on I felt more immersed in the VR experience than I ever had been"
- Geometry - "I would close my eyes and see mildly complex geometric patterns that were mostly black and white with some hints of green and blue"
- Tactile suppression - "This physical feeling was distant and hard to make out"