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Amphetamine Psychosis-like Adverse Reaction
Piperazines & Tryptophan
Citation:   cky464. "Amphetamine Psychosis-like Adverse Reaction: An Experience with Piperazines & Tryptophan (exp80925)". Erowid.org. Sep 4, 2009. erowid.org/exp/80925

 
DOSE:
  oral Tryptophan (daily)
  3 tablets oral Piperazines  
    oral Unknown (liquid)
BODY WEIGHT: 250 lb
I just want to say to everyone off the bat that if you buy an 'ecstasy' pill LOOK IT UP BEFORE YOU TAKE IT. You never know what's really in it, unless you use one of the few sites where people take photos, test for substances and allow people to post review for the pill's experiences all in an organized search.

This all happened to me last night. I've finally mostly come down from the side effects so I'm able to cope with what happened a little easier and write it out.

A little background - I've been using psychedelics for about 4 years before this. I take tryptophan (a natural over-the-counter antidepressant) daily, which I found out probably made the reaction even worse due to high serotonin levels. I hadn't smoked marijuana for two weeks before this incident which was a huge lifestyle change in itself yet I was still binge drinking, and less frequently LSD and MDMA. I basically replaced the pot with more use of these drugs, which I realise is foolish. I had two injuries in the last couple weeks that were fueled by intoxication. One of the injuries resulted in cellulitis, a serious infection in my hand which eventually I treated with antibiotics. I've basically been a mess and wasn't able to give up the rest of these substances as i did with pot.

Last night I was already in a sort of bad mood, due to things generally going the way I hoped. I went at a sketchy rave in a bad neighborhood with lots of lights that provided many visuals later on. My friend who told me how to get there had pills. He had taken one before I arrived and when I asked him if I could get a few, he seemed hesitant. He said they were 'chill'. I had to keep nagging him to get them off him, which I realized afterwards was him not wanting to give me them because he could tell they weren't good.

1:00 AM I popped one and it tasted awful, and crumbly. I started to feel a slight rush, but not very euphoric. I'm not sure what drove me to take the other two but I did over the course of about an hour, thinking they were weak and hoping for a positive mood lift. After these three, I was feeling like I was tripping and having visuals, and at this point I suspected 2-CI or something similar. Boy was I wrong.

3:00 AM Before leaving the rave, my friends and I ask a stranger if we can have a sip of his water. He had a small amount in the bottle but gave it to us. He looked super messed up but we didn't think a thing of it because so were we already. I split from the guy who sold the pills to me and wait for a taxi with a few friends on the street. It took them what seemed like an hour to come, and I was getting extremely cold and shaky. Every car that drove by looked like a taxi or a cop car before it got close. A drunk old man outside of a bar was being short with me when I stood up, telling me to sit down. I finally sat back down when he said 'please'.

4:00 AM In the taxi, I got very nauseous and felt bad. When we finally got back to my friend's house, we all started to feel like we were tripping on acid. I look up the pill I took on an ecstasy data testing web site, and it said piperazine. We decided there had to have been something in the kid's water but for all I know I was simply messed up on pipes. My visuals got extremely insane but I still managed to keep conversations for about an hour and remain positive.

6:00 AM When my friends went to bed, I immediately started reacting badly. It was partly from being alone, but this was when the physical stuff got bad. I also went to urinate and it burned like crazy, not much came out and I had the feeling that I had to urinate nonstop for about 9 hours after this started. This is one of the side effects of PMB overdose, I also found out later on. I called out for one of my friends, let's call her K, to help me. She sat down next to me and calmed me with positive words and conversation to take my mind off this awful trip. I was having bizzare negative thoughts that I could not control, and they kept branching off and getting worse and worse. My body was convulsing, especially my stomach. I got up about every 10 minutes to painfully urinate. My body was hot as hell but my feel and hands were very cold. My breathing was slow and there were long uncomfortable pauses in between breaths. I told K this was the worst reaction to drugs I had ever had. And it only got worse.

7:00 AM I tell her she should go back to bed and thanked her repeatedly for helping. I started to feel guilty, as if I was a pain to deal with but she was very understanding and only wanted me to get better. When she went back to sleep, the psychosis kicked in full blown. First, I hadn't talked to my mother for a few days and assumed she was dead - then convinced myself she must be. I called her and my sister and made sure everything was okay, and told them what I had done. While on the phone with my sister, I heard a 'click' on the line which I assumed was the police tapping my phone. My parents both told me I needed to come home (in another city) soon. My mother suggested I might have a bladder infection because I had recently finished some strong antibiotics. Later I convinced myself it had moved to my kidneys, due to the pain in my stomach. I agreed to come home, and then had the same conversation with my father. It was a little calming.

8:00 AM My ego is shattered and I start criticizing and judging myself for every negative thing I had recently done to people and myself, most of which weren't in reality that bad at all. I couldn't sleep or lie still. I eventually worked up the courage to walk to my house. On the way out, I hesitated at the doorway, thinking that if someone were to rob my friends after I left, I would be accused - totally absurd, I know now. Especially because they trust me. I went back in and told K she should lock the door, but barely got a rouse out of her. Upon leaving I see a TV broadcasting a security camera and think that if a robbery did happen, I would have looked suspicious on video for standing in the hallway and going back in. Then the police would definitely come to me! Each ridiculous delusion I had like this seemed extremely possible and real to me, and I couldn't rationalize these worried thoughts.

I start walking down the street and feel as if I'm some kind of deranged Hunter S Thompson character. I sort of felt like old mom in the scene from Requiem For A Dream when she's having amp psychosis and walking around the city. I started thinking of all the people who had ever called me asking for help finding drugs and convinced myself they had gotten busted and were trying to rat me out in selfishness. I decided the police would already be at my home when I got there, if they didn't pick me up on the way.

8:15 I give up walking and call for a taxi. The whole time I thought the police were listening to the call, and when I hung up a man asked me if I was selling the newspapers sitting across the street. I told him no, but so he should just take one. He was taken aback, and said he wasn't going to take any. The whole time I was suspicious he was working for the cops. The taxi came, and at first I thought the driver might be in on this scheme against me too. After a while of talking to him I found out he was from Nigeria and so I asked him about some afrobeat bands from Nigeria that I listen to. To my surprise he personally knew the artist Femi Kuti, one of my favorites of the genre. We somehow ended up having a good conversation and he got extremely enthused about it.

9:00 AM I arrive at home, and expect to see police outside my house. I go inside, and to my surprise my turtles hadn't killed each other as I thought they might have and the house was not raided. Phew! I frantically went into my Youtube favorites and deleted any songs that sounded violent or evil - I was afraid of being accused of being insane by the police, which I now thought I permanently must be. I started looking up symptoms of my eczema which the doctor had already checked on twice recently yet I was determined that my insanity was caused by something else. I then thought I might have had a number of of terrible diseases I started reading about, and called my mother who is a doctor. She reminded me I was still out of sorts and not to worry. I had some DMT sitting around which I had never tried yet but I needed to find a hiding spot for it quickly before I got busted! These fantasies were as real as day and I could imagine the police going through all of my things, tearing them all apart. I decided it wasn't worth the risk and flushed it down the sink. I went into my roommate's room and told him about my night and what I did with my DMT. He thought I was ridiculous for doing such a thing so I rationalized that I didn't need any more drugs period. He seemed amused, and wasn't worried.

'You're alive though, eh?' he told me. It was true but I was still scared as hell and couldn't concentrate on anything he was saying. He played some music which I thought all sounded terrible and too loud. Music - one of the big loves of my life I thought might be ruined forever. I started slowly thinking maybe I would be mentally better after a long time.

2:00 PM After a few hours of laying in my bed and constant urination (Which slowly got more tolerable) I called another cab to the train station so I could go home to see my folks. On the cab ride, the driver didn't talk at all and his baseball game on the radio drove me insane. I started to think that I was most likely going to die in the next couple of days and tried accepting my fate. This was hard to do, because I was miserably judging myself for all of my choices. I watched as other people drove by in their cars, and tried feeling happy for them that they would at least still be alive. However, they all seemed to be sinister and in their own selfish worlds to me. I had lost connection to reality and all human beings on earth. Even my best friends seemed like crazy people when I thought about them and I felt like the most irresponsible and selfish prick in the world. I tried thinking of my idols and musical heroes to make me happy, but they quickly transformed into arrogant whores that were in love with themselves.

3:00 PM. I arrive at the train station. Although very antsy and unable to focus, I started relaxing due to the fact that I would soon be home from an hour and a half train ride, in the care of my parents.

3:30-5:00 PM The train ride wasn't so bad, and I was in awe of the amazing sky and fields of trees. Upon entering my hometown I started tearing up, which was actually a good feeling. I felt comfortable being in a smaller city and close to family and friends that I loved so much. My father picked me up and cried as I hugged him. I was so relieved to be there. After talking to him a while I felt almost sane. We made a grocery stop on the way and upon returning to his car, another car started and I hallucinated a dark figure in his. I thought for a second his car was being stolen. I sort of laughed at my self when I realized it was in my head - at least I could almost differentiate my paranoid ideas from reality now.

It took me a whole 24 hours to completely recover from all of the side effects mentioned above. I'm still not sure what was in the water - PCP, Ketamine, LSD or maybe even nothing at all, and the pipes just did it for me...

After talking thoroughly with my parents about it and assuring them I would try my best to be clean of everything for a long while, my confidence regained a small boost.
I'm hoping to change my lifestyle in a major way. I was in serious condition last night and I very well could have died - people have died from piperazines. All paranoia aside, I've read it's possible that I might have damaged some of my internal organs from this but I am going to check this out soon in a calm and positive fashion. For a whole 12 hours I didn't even want to be alive and I had completely lost all hope in my future. Luckily I wasn't irrational enough to take my own life while in this state. By now I'm mentally recuperating and very happy I'm still here. I hope to keep it this way.

Exp Year: 2009ExpID: 80925
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Sep 4, 2009Views: 11,273
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Piperazines (99), Unknown (120) : Combinations (3), Overdose (29), Difficult Experiences (5), Various (28)

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