Experience:700mg Diphenhydramine trip

DISCLAIMER!!!* I do not recommend taking this much of anything OTC. I did it stupidly attempting to sleep one night sick as hell with the flu. This was not an intentional "trip" or planned out by any means, and I had no idea what was about to happen. Generally, I love psychedelics, but remember kids, this is a "deliriant" which means you're basically having the worst nightmare of your life while awake. If you're going to do it, have a sitter present, and be prepared for what's to come. Happy hallucinating!*

I couldn't sleep to save my life. I was in withdrawal from opiates (generally pain pills, which is an entire other story all together) AND sick with the flu/chest cold. I decided that taking a few sleeping pills would help me get a few hours of sleep. After about an hour, it wasn't working, so I took more, and more, and ending up taking the entire packet of 12, I could have sworn I took two more, but I don't know? About a half hour later, I went to stand up to use the bathroom, and everything had a strange feel to it. The room was suddenly darker and felt like something bad was about to happen. People didn't look right, things were alien in shape, ordinary things looked wrong and menacingly shaped. There was a constant black gellous ball that would be nearby. My legs and arms felt 1000lbs and I had the worst metallic taste in my mouth. I remember saying "Guys this isn't right." and my friend thinking nothing of it. I walked into the bathroom, where I proceeded to attempt to throw them all up because I realized something wasn't right. Yeah. That wasn't working so well. The pills came up but what was left of them. They were basically already "gellified" into my body and there was nothing I could but ride it out.

I realized this somehow in all my horrific shit but knowing I was hallucinating and it was simply a reaction still wasn't calming me down any because I thought I was going to die after that. I'll tell you what I remember. I sit down on the floor, attempting to relax but I look up and the digital clock is just counting up minute by minute, and it gets faster and faster until it starts going backward and ended up on 6:66. I swear to God I thought of that movie 1408 because it had just came out not long before that. This must have been where I fucked up. I remember saying "No, no no!" and terrified of what was to come, because I took that as where my trip really went downhill. It was almost like my brain was warning me with the clock. UGH. There was a woman I could see out of the corner of my eye, she was haggard, bloody, and wearing all white. For whatever reason, she kept asking me something and I couldn't make it out. I would get up to walk over to her, and when I'd get closer, she'd just evaporate away and reappear somewhere else. I was seeing children sitting in closets swinging around holding hands and then they would look at me and laugh. I kept thinking my friends were there when they weren't. I'd see Dan over in the corner doing routine shit like playing his guitar or singing a song or just sitting there, in the dark. I'd be like "What are you doing, Dan?" and every time I'd walk over to him, I would touch the back of his head and he would disappear. I moved on to a completely different existence after that. I can't even remember most of it because I literally went to another place. I thought I had died and this was hell. Just a constant feeling of a thousand people really close to my face and shadows behind me.

I called my Mom, but what I said to her was nothing like what I imagined or remember. The convo went something like this to me "Mom, I took too many sleeping pills and I'm seeing shit" Mom: Oh that's your own fault. Drink some water. Take a deep breath. Try to get some sleep. There is no point in going to the ER because they'll just pump your stomach and you don't want that." I seriously believed this was what she said up until a few weeks ago when we started talking about it and she tells me "Anna, that's not what you said!" and I was like "You're kidding me. What did I actually say?" She said I told her that my ex was "perpendicularly horizontal to the wall and the bed." and "he's levitating" and apparently went off about levitating people and how "there isn't anything to him, it's like he's clear and I can see thru him" and apparently "everyone is dissolving into shit" which that one I can kind of understand because it was almost like everyone and everything was 2D and there was no mass to them or anything. Like if someone were to sit down on the couch, they would have became a part of the couch (almost like a picture printed on a t-shirt, if you can picture that hahahaha)That conversation went down nothing like what I remember. After that, I managed to make it to the bedroom, where I laid down, only to hear the sound of music playing far away. It was like a radio was on and I couldn't find where it was coming from. That's when the spiders started. Quite frankly, I'm surprised it took this long because from what I've read from others reactions to this shit, they happen almost immediately. Well, these little bastards were forming out of the fuzz on the bed. Anything. Cat hair, fuzz, strings, etc. They would turn into this medium sized, black and brown spider with these clear, almost "fishing line" legs. I'd go to touch one because I had a terrible case of the "touch everything and it disappears" so every time I did, it would reappear somewhere else, and bring ten more with him. They never really bothered me much, except they would crawl on me, but after an hour of insisting to my ex that there were "spiders in the bed and I'm not imagining it" I started to just get tired of fighting them off and tried to ignore them.

The kaleidoscope of shit that was going on when I closed my eyes was insane. That was probably the only nice part about this entire hallucination. The only time I didn't like having my eyes closed was when a face would bum-rush me out of the visuals and scare my eyes open. While laying there trying to fall asleep, I saw Barbie Dolls sitting on the tops of each door frame, and they were lined up, and they would all turn and look at me and kick their feet which for some reason was hilarious to me and didn't frighten me at all, in fact, it was probably the nicest thing they could have done! After that, I'd just keep seeing shadow people, and people outside my window looking in, people the closet, and more friends that weren't really there. At this point, I was able to finally fall asleep, and when I woke up the next morning, I must have only gotten 4 hours but the hallucinations weren't nearly as bad anymore. The spiders were still there for a few minutes, but they would just crawl back into the blankets and they were eventually gone for good. The last hallucination was my friend, Chris, peeking his one eye thru the crack of the bedroom door, and when he saw me, he smiled and asked me if I wanted to visit again soon and I got up to open the door to push him out and he disappeared. After that, things were back to normal. I managed to not suffer any serious repercussions from that one, and I'm glad to say I haven't had any "withdrawals" since that time because I'm now 6 years clean from the dangerous crap. :-) As always, please be safe about your journeys to the other world. Sometimes they can be scary. I don't know how it would feel to go into a DPH trip KNOWING the outcome. I'm sure you could make it nicer and a little easier to handle with the proper setting and mind. Peace & love, and remember, knowledge is power when it comes to anything, that includes drugs. <3

Submitted by AnnaElizabeth

• External hallucination - "People didn't look right, things were alien in shape, ordinary things looked wrong and menacingly shaped."
• External hallucination - "There was a constant black gellous ball that would be nearby."
• Perception of bodily heaviness - "My legs and arms felt 1000lbs"
• Gustatory hallucination - "I had the worst metallic taste in my mouth"
• Delusion - "I thought I was going to die after that."
• External hallucination - "the digital clock is just counting up minute by minute, and it gets faster and faster until it starts going backward and ended up on 6:66."
• External hallucination with autonomous entities and auditory hallucination - "There was a woman I could see out of the corner of my eye, she was haggard, bloody, and wearing all white. For whatever reason, she kept asking me something and I couldn't make it out. I would get up to walk over to her, and when I'd get closer, she'd just evaporate away and reappear somewhere else. I was seeing children sitting in closets swinging around holding hands and then they would look at me and laugh. I kept thinking my friends were there when they weren't. I'd see Dan over in the corner doing routine shit like playing his guitar or singing a song or just sitting there, in the dark."
• Unspeakable horrors - "I moved on to a completely different existence after that. I can't even remember most of it because I literally went to another place. I thought I had died and this was hell. Just a constant feeling of a thousand people really close to my face and shadows behind me."
• Auditory hallucination and language suppression - "I called my Mom, but what I said to her was nothing like what I imagined or remember. I seriously believed this was what she said up until a few weeks ago when we started talking about it and she tells me "Anna, that's not what you said!" That conversation went down nothing like what I remember."
• Auditory hallucination - "After that, I managed to make it to the bedroom, where I laid down, only to hear the sound of music playing far away. It was like a radio was on and I couldn't find where it was coming from."
• External hallucination - "That's when the spiders started. Well, these little bastards were forming out of the fuzz on the bed. Anything. Cat hair, fuzz, strings, etc. They would turn into this medium sized, black and brown spider with these clear, almost "fishing line" legs."
• Tactile hallucination - "They never really bothered me much, except they would crawl on me"
• Internal hallucination - "The kaleidoscope of shit that was going on when I closed my eyes was insane. The only time I didn't like having my eyes closed was when a face would bum-rush me out of the visuals and scare my eyes open. While laying there trying to fall asleep, I saw Barbie Dolls"
• External hallucination with shadow people and autonomous entities - "After that, I'd just keep seeing shadow people, and people outside my window looking in, people the closet, and more friends that weren't really there."