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Falling Down the Spiral
DXM
by Hal
Citation:   Hal. "Falling Down the Spiral: An Experience with DXM (exp114847)". Erowid.org. Dec 9, 2023. erowid.org/exp/114847

 
DOSE:
350 mg oral DXM (liquid)
    oral Tea (liquid)
BODY WEIGHT: 120 lb
I was 18 at the time in my first year of college. For some background, I’m a bit on the small side, roughly 120 pounds and around 5’4”. Prior to this, I never had any experience with recreational substances of any kind, unless you want to count getting near blackout drunk at a party once. I always had a slight interest in other drugs ever since then, but I didn’t have much access to experiment until I started living on my own in college.

I was cleaning out my dorm room, as I had no classes on that day. I started in my desk drawers, where I found a couple of bottles of Robitussin, one half empty, the other unopened, both leftover from a cold I had a couple months back. I set them to the side, debating to keep them in case I get sick again or toss them, and continued to clean out my desk.

As I finished up, my thoughts went back to what to do with the Robitussin. It was around 3 in the afternoon by this point, and I didn’t have anything else to do that day. I opened up Discord, and I quickly messaged a close friend for a favor. I told him my plan to drink a couple bottles of cough medicine and asked if he could join a call with me for a little while just to make sure I don’t have some rare reaction and die alone or anything. I began to drink the half empty bottle of Robitussin first. I finished both bottles of syrup, which took around 20 minutes. I estimate it to be around 350 mg of DXM.

The first thing I noticed was that my stomach felt a little upset. I decided to make a hot cup of tea to fully get rid of the artificial medicine taste and hopefully settle my stomach a little bit. I left the call running, got my tea kettle boiling, and prepared my beverage. I spent the rest of my come-up sipping on tea and joking around with my friend. I didn’t feel anything else out of the ordinary for the next hour or so. If my stomach wasn’t upset, I would have completely forgotten about drinking all that medicine completely to be honest.

Once I finished my tea and my nausea started to subside, I stood up to throw out the used bag of tea and wash out my mug. But when I tried to take a step, I noticed something was off. My body felt heavy and weird, but not like being drunk. Instead of feeling like gravity was increased, it felt like there was lag between my brain and my body. I looked down at my feet, and the floor seemed like it was so far away, like I was a giant, and my head was in the clouds. Walking to the sink felt so foreign to me, it felt like I was a toddler learning how to walk again. I couldn’t be bothered to clean up my tea mug at this point, I was too entertained by the way the world felt. I was walking around my room, slowly lifting and lowering my arms, jumping up and down, spinning in circles, noting how strange these normal motions felt.

My dorm room had a decent sized closet, with two sliding doors that had big mirrors covering the entire surface of the doors. I stared at myself in the mirrors, and it took me a bit longer for me to recognize “oh yeah, that’s me isn’t it?”. I pushed my face and hands up to the glass, staring into my eyes. My eyes were wide, and my pupils were huge, what used to be blue was nearly all black, only thin colored rings remained. At first, I was a little freaked out by what I saw, but I couldn’t feel scared if that makes sense, I could only laugh at how ridiculous this all was. After continuing to make dumb faces in the mirror, I robowalked back over to my laptop, moving it from my desk to my bed. I put my headphones back on, and I wrapped myself up in this soft dark gray blanket I had.

My friend asked what the hell was taking me so long to simply put away a tea mug. All I could respond with was stupid laughter about how the drugs made my reflection look dumb. He shrugged it off and continued playing his games, still keeping me company in silence. Now laying down in my bed, I felt the urge to close my eyes. It was odd, as I didn’t feel very sleepy at all. However, I proceeded to get comfortable, readjust my headphones, and closed my eyes. When I did, I could see swirling patterns in dark colors behind my eyes. The more I relaxed and didn’t concentrate on them or move my eyes around, the more detailed and inescapable these visions of patterns became. “Dude… do you see those too?” I mumbled out to my friend. He said no, reminding me that I’m just fucked up right now.

I continued to lie down on my back, eyes closed and unfocused, staring into the darkness. As time passed, these visions became more intricate and complex. What used to be faint swirls of dark colors began to jump around, form shapes, and drift apart into little horizontally sliced chunks. I couldn’t help but smile, my body felt so comfortable, and everything seemed so entertaining and new, even an action as simple as closing my eyes brought a whole new experience. The shapes in my head started to form an abstract form of my dorm room. It was almost like I could see though my eyelids and see my room and everything else going on around me. But I knew my eyes were still closed. I sat up, and I looked down at my hands with my eyes closed, but I could still see them move as I opened and closed my fists. My room I saw in my head was all dark saturated colors and blocky shapes, but everything still looked correct for a while. The longer I was looking into my room through my closed eyes, the more things started to distort again. Where my ceiling should have been was just open sky, I swore I could make out stars and the moon above. I shouted at my friend slurring out that this was the coolest shit ever.

Then my friend suggested the best idea of the evening: what if I tried listening to music while watching my trippy closed eye visuals? I opened up my eyes, readjusted to the light, and I excitedly opened up Spotify and clicked on one of the first albums I saw, which happened to be Death Grips - The Money Store. Once I got the music going at a good volume, I took off my black t-shirt, wrapped it over my eyes as a makeshift blindfold, and laid back down, and let the music take over my closed eye visuals. At first, everything behind my eyes was just black, then it started to shift back to abstract dark colors, like it was when I first started closing my eyes. As the music started to intensify, the colors behind my head began to take shape. My eyes were full of colorful rings, slowly alternating between colors and black circle rings.

At first it felt like my vision was slowly zooming out or something, but something felt off. I felt tense, like something was coming, I just didn’t know what. As the next track on the album started, I nearly felt the wind get knocked out of me. It felt as if something was pulling me, but I couldn’t quite feel which direction it was taking me, I couldn’t tell if gravity was pulling me down through the floor, through the ground, and through the Earth itself, or if some powerful force and pulling me up, yanking me out of my room and into the sky, all I knew was that I was moving, and I was moving fast. Other than this strange directionless force, I couldn’t feel my body, I could barely move my limbs, my body felt gone, what even was a body anymore? The rings in my head grew brighter and brighter, moving faster and faster as this force grew stronger. My vision was now nothing but this bright infinite tunnel of spinning static pattern white and black rings.
what even was a body anymore? The rings in my head grew brighter and brighter, moving faster and faster as this force grew stronger. My vision was now nothing but this bright infinite tunnel of spinning static pattern white and black rings.


As the music continued, my brain began to panic. I had no sense of time anymore, I had no idea how long I was stuck falling or how much longer I would be stuck falling, I had no idea when I would hit the bottom. My body felt so far away and so gone, I couldn’t get myself free. But in some strange way, I didn’t want to leave. The music was reverberating in my brain in a way music never has before, it felt like the drums and the snares were pushing me down further and further, pulsing through my head with a powerful ferocity. I almost regretted taking the DXM altogether, as it felt painful now.

The last track began to start, and I recognized it, and something in my brain clicked knowing that once the album ends, I’ll be free. I gained my sense of time again, I knew I had around 5 minutes left, then it will be over. I realized that I wasn’t in a trap, I wasn’t stuck, I was just experiencing the music in a new immersive way. As I realized this, my whole feeling began to change. I was no longer being thrashed and pulled by the music through my visions, I was flying through, racing through this abstract space, it seemed as if everything clicked, and it was becoming enjoyable, a huge adrenaline rush, like going down a rollercoaster.

Once the music ended, I was able to open my eyes again. I felt dizzy, and everything looked a little off, but I was ok. I forgot my friend was still on call with me and was trying to get my attention to make sure I wasn’t dead as I was silent for the past 45 minutes. I told him I was fine now, just tired, and I could feel that the effects of the DXM weren’t getting any stronger and were probably going to start wearing off soon. We both left the call for the night, and I continued to play music while lying in bed until I fell asleep. I still had some abstract colors and geometry visions, but nothing nearly as intense or notable as earlier.

When I woke up, my head felt strangely clear. I was prepared for the worst and ready to feel like shit for the day, but I was pleasantly surprised. My muscles felt a little sore, probably from my body being tense and clenched up when I had my sensations of falling during my trip, but otherwise I felt great, almost a hint of euphoria.



Exp Year: 2018ExpID: 114847
Gender: Not Specified 
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Dec 9, 2023Views: 19
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Music (457), DXM (22) : Alone (16), Guides / Sitters (39), Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), Difficult Experiences (5), First Times (2), General (1)

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