Observations placeholder
A near death from GHB/Xyrem
Identifier
017666
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The wrong tunnel ................
A description of the experience
Pre-Sleep Hallucination?!?
GHB
by joshi
Citation: joshi. "Pre-Sleep Hallucination?!?: An Experience with GHB (ID 23151)". Erowid.org. Jun 2, 2003. erowid.org/exp/23151
| DOSE: | oral | GHB |
| BODY WEIGHT: | 170 lb |
This experience happened a long time ago, but is so idiosyncratic that I thought I'd write it up nonetheless. Before I had access to Valium, GHB was the drug I would use when I found myself in a position of NEEDING to go to sleep.
Anyway, at the time of the experience in question, I had been up late at night working on some paper or some assignment, and I had drunk a lot of tea so when I was done with the project, I decided to take some GHB to fall asleep. I have no idea the actual dose, but it wasn't huge.
So, I lay down in bed to go to sleep, and pretty soon, the GHB started to work, in a predictable fashion.
Then something weird happened.
I found myself confronted with STRONG closed-eye-visuals, of being in a very bright rotating tunnel. It lacked the beauty and complexity of visuals from some of the real psychedelics, but it was unquestionably there, and bright.
And now comes the really strange part. I heard music. Loud. Mostly, when I have had the experience of hearing music before I go to sleep (which happens sometimes under the influence of nothing), the music is on the edge of perceptibility. This music was quite perceptible.
The music wasn't very good, either. It was a kind of cheesy-variety downtempo electronica. I remember distinctly an electric guitar part. I could sometimes influence the music, like 'I really want a high-hat to come in here,' but it would only work about half the time, and the other half, the piece would just do what it wanted. This went on for a while, and then the song changed. The quality of the music was no better, nor was my ability to influence it. Halfway through the song, the audio started to glitch and hiccup. I actually stood up to go to the computer to fix whatever was wrong with the playback before realizing that the computer was off.
I think that this experience is some weird offshoot of a pre-sleep hypnagogic state. I was totally aware during the whole thing, and in no way did it have the character of most borderline-sleep SWS-1 dreams. Somehow the GHB caused a very different sleep pattern to emerge -- maybe this was even a form of lucid dreaming? I'm not sure; it's really at the boundary between psychedelic effect and dream. Nothing like it has ever happened to me before or since.