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The Shadow Was Scared of Me
Diphenhydramin (Benadryl) & Cannabis
Citation:   Lagstronaut. "The Shadow Was Scared of Me: An Experience with Diphenhydramin (Benadryl) & Cannabis (exp54775)". Erowid.org. Feb 6, 2009. erowid.org/exp/54775

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
375 mg oral Diphenhydramine (pill / tablet)
  T+ 0:30 125 mg oral Diphenhydramine (pill / tablet)
  T+ 0:47 1 bowl smoked Cannabis (plant material)
BODY WEIGHT: 130 lb
Let me start off by saying I have tried Benadryl once before, a dose of 250mg that had no effect on me whatsoever, other than common Benadryl-induced drowsiness. Feeling that 250mg barely changed my system at all, I figured doubling the dose would finally allow me to experience some of the things I was told about this substance. I felt it would be best to break up the doses into 15 pills at first, followed by 5 shortly after. Things that I write in quotations from now on are things that I wrote down during the trip, and any mis-spelling or alternating between capital and lower-case letters is intentional because I'm trying to re-create how I wrote it.


10:50pm - I was told this experience would be more enjoyable on a full stomach, so just after finishing a rather large plate of spaghetti, I swallowed 15 Benadryl pills (375mg).

11:20pm - I just finished playing a hockey video game, which was greeted by a feeling of overall drowsiness. Thinking it could be kicking in, I took the remaining 5 pills, making my dose total 500mg.

11:37pm - Smoked a bowl out of my old pipe, and for some reason I was able to clear almost the entire bowl in one hit with relative ease. I had never been able to do that before, especially considering how big the bowl was. Thinking back now, I figure it was the Benadryl that made that possible although no deep effects had kicked in thus far, so it remains a mystery.

11:47pm - The pot helped kick in the Benadryl I suppose, because soon after I was starting to trip nicely. My first hallucination was basically my doorknob letting off a sort of steam, as if it were burning really hot. I focused more on it, and the steam took shape into music notes that floated quickly towards the ceiling.

11:48pm - I layed back and started watching Trailer Park Boys, it was one I'd never seen before and for some reason I was questioning whether or not it was really Trailer Park Boys or some sort of rip-off of the show. After the show went to a commercial, something became very apparent to me. I don't have a TV in my room. Also, what felt like 15 minutes of watching TV, was only less than one minute of me staring at the wall.

11:52pm - I had to go to the washroom for a while now so finally I got up and went. I was in there for a while, I think I almost fell asleep. I was wondering why it was taking me so long to simply do my business, and eventually I gave up. I got up and looked in the toilet bowl to find that I actually did do what I needed to do in there, so I flushed the toilet. This seemed very odd at the time, so I ran to my piece of paper that I was writing all of my experiences on. I wrote everything down, but for some reason at the end of paragraph it said 'HardesT THING To WRITE EIL.' What is most weird about that is basically that it is written in a writing that is not my own, I seriously cannot recognize who's writing that is.

11:58pm - I decided to watch 'television' again, and I wrote that experience down as well: 'I CAN ACtUALL Y WATCH TV ON MY bedroom Window oooo sweet show I wouldn't mind see that again'

12:17am - I went into another room, where my computer is. I sat down, and I was about to go on the internet before I saw my guitar's shadow. The guitar itself wasn't doing anything, but the shadow of the guitar was twisting around in circles, forming what looked like spider-webs all around it, and it acted like a scared animal trying to hide. I found it funny that it hid BEHIND my guitar. Imagine seeing something's shadow hide behind the object that is actually causing the shadow! I laughed really hard at this and tried to grab it, but for some reason I wasn't trying to grab where it had gone to (behind the guitar), I tried to grab where it used to be. As soon as my hand was where it used to be, it appeared there again and started to wiggle away again. I got bored of it eventually and left it alone. I had also written something else that I could not really understand: 'heard people talk my. shadow of car, soccer with'

12:41am - I wrote down two things at this time. 'number with encys', and 'is it over?'. The first quote does not make sense to me at all but I find the second quote ironic enough to laugh at right now. I felt like I was coming down and it had ended, so I was disappointed and stopped writing things down, now I will have to tell the rest of my trip without any exact times next to events.


I just finished saying that I found it ironic that I thought my trip was over. That is because the heaviest of my hallucinations were yet to come. I decided to go back to my bedroom, and my mom asked me if I wanted to go outside with her while she had a cigarette. I said 'in a few minutes', and within 5 seconds I went outside. We started to talk about things normally until she stopped making sense to me, and I stopped making sense to her.

She asked me how I was, and I replied '..what?'. I couldn't focus on her words at all. She kept talking for a while but I wasn't paying attention because I could see her boyfriend in his car making faces at me in the window. Thankfully I came to the conclusion myself that he wasn't in there, and that he was sitting in the chair behind my mom. Wrong again, he DEFINATELY was not in that chair. In fact, nothing was in that chair at all. I started squinting at the chair, thinking it intentionally played a trick on me. My mom noticed me not responding to her questions and asked me what I was staring at. I was very disturbed by my own response. My friend had died the day before from alcohol poisoning, and I responded to my mom's question by saying 'I don't think it was alcohol poisoning, I think someone was chasing my friend for a few weeks with a gun and I guess he caught him.'

My mom didn't know what the hell was going on so she asked me if I was alright. I responded by scratching my head for about 30 seconds and saying 'Well I don't know if he was shot it's just a theory I have.' Again, my mom asked if I was alright. I'm not sure what I said to her but it must have worked because she started talking about her boyfriend's son. I still could not focus on the words, so I decided it'd be a good time to get the invisible cat away from my lawn. After telling it to go away, I realised it wasn't actually there, and I was fortunate my mom didn't hear me.

I asked her if we could finally go inside. We had been outside literally 2 minutes, she just lit her cigarette, but we went inside anyway. At this point I forgot that controlling my arms and legs was very hard because I feel very much 'drunk' on Benadryl. I barely opened the door enough for me to get in, and when I got inside I ran directly into a chair. I then started swerving around as if I was a human car, and tried taking my shoes off using only the foot that the shoe was actually on. Needless to say, I gave up.

As I was about to go upstairs I noticed an entire family of spiders had created a giant web on one of the stairs. I told my mom to get me some paper towel as I frantically tried to destroy the web and all the spiders. After a job well done, I looked at the paper towel to see how many spiders I killed, there were of course no spiders. My mom was looking at me like I was crazy the whole time. After this spider incident, my mom had tears in her eyes asking me if I'm okay, telling me she loved me, asking me what was wrong. I said I hadn't taken anything. I said this with a big smile on my face and my eyes closed. I went to bed directly after this, but I didn't fall asleep for what felt like an hour.

The next morning (this morning) I had very cloudy vision, I tried getting clothes to go in the shower numerous times, and forgetting what I was trying to do everytime I got to my dresser. I realised I had used all the Benadryl that was left, and my mom would most likely notice as she uses it from time to time. It was at this time that I did not want my mom to think of me as a pill-popping addict, so I told her my friend sold me some weed that 'must have been laced with something.' I felt bad lying to my mom about this, but I'd rather lie than have her know I did something that her 3 sisters frequently did until they lost their collective lives.

Exactly 29 hours after I began this trip, I have not eaten anything, I have no appetite whatsoever. I am almost certain that I have not drank anything either, though the water bottle next to my bed is empty. I felt depressed all day, severly sad about life. I still feel somewhat depressed, but I have gained insight with this experience. I still have slight hallucinations such as black dots running across the ground and to be honest any loud music really scares me right now. I may do this again, but not for what I hope will be years from now.

Exp Year: 2006ExpID: 54775
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 6, 2009Views: 37,960
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Diphenhydramine (109) : Hangover / Days After (46), General (1), Alone (16)

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