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Childhood Revisited - Dimenhydrinate & Caffeine by Xherrus EROWID [edited for brevity]

Recently a large pharmaceutical company in Australia, Pan Pharmaceuticals, had to recall a large number of products due to concerns about consumer safety. Among these products was a motion sickness remedy named 'Travacalm,' which many consumers were complaining about due to side effects of hallucinations and delerium. Having heard that such a product was being taken off the market for such a reason, and having read about the psychoactive effects of Dimenhydrinate, I decided to try the drug out.

It was a Sunday evening in the privacy of my own home. I took notes during the experience. It got off to a slow start, but I could never have imagined how deep it would be.

~ 6:00 PM: took 3 Dramamine tablets each containing 50mg Dimenhydrinate, and one 100mg Caffeine pill and sat down to do Math while waiting for any effects.

~ 6:20: small effect of altered perception, nothing strong enough to be definite

6:26: no real effect, may take more in a few minutes

6:31: little effects that disappear before I can determine what they are... will wait another 10 minutes before taking more

I was just about to take more when a friend called, I told him what I was up to and he said that one of these days I could kill myself on this crazy pharmaceutical stuff... I answered that I had done my research and had decided it was safe enough to try.

6:54: dropped 3 more Dramamine tablets, since no real effects by now. Sat down to study more Math.

7:01: a bit drowsy, took another 100mg Caffeine pill

7:16: took two more Dramamine tablets, hardly any effect up to now

At this point I wrote: 'Something coming up. Will drop more, I trust my interior monologue's judgment.' I was getting irritated at the lack of effects after over an hour, and decided to finish the packet.

7:22: Took two more Dramamine tablets, finishing the packet and making a total of 10 tablets taken by now.

I went inside to go to the toilet, looked in the mirror and analysed what small effects there were - I wrote on my notepad: 'Felt like how animals must feel, thinking it is a different creature [in the mirror] and reacting accordingly. Hard to think straight, a bit more drowsiness.' I felt a bit separate from my reflection... almost like it was another person. But these were only small effects at the time, perhaps even created by my attempt to analyse them.

7:30: 1 more 100mg Caffeine pill.

7:53: No visual effect... leads me to wonder what everyone who tried it was talking about [I had read reports on the internet of LSD-like visual hallucinations and such]... will wait and see anyway. Noticed more drowsiness, don't want to fall asleep and waste the 'trip' ……………………..After this I went inside to get some food, and started noticing some effects which I described:... got occasional stabbing chest pains but always for only a few seconds at most.'   ……..I had decided that I must not have taken enough, because I was only noticing small effects after an hour and a half. From this point, though, the effects started to properly kick in.

8:30: …………….I was looking at my hands when sitting at my desk and I noticed 'feels like fingers, hands in different positions from what I can see... crazy.'. …………….

8:52: I wrote more about the crazy bodily effects I was feeling at this time. The best way to describe it would be that I felt like I had another body inside (or outside) of my physical body, but this was the body that received sensations. …. I was feeling like some parts of my body were bigger or smaller than usual. … and at one point I imagined myself having a small head on a very broad body. I also felt limbs making motions that I was not in control of. Looking back on this scares the hell out of me... but at the time I took the effects as they came and was actually curious and not afraid. ………………Sitting at my desk I imagined myself to be some long-necked creature... my sense perception was distorted and although I knew that I was a human with normal body, I could just perceive myself differently and have the feeling of having different characteristics. …... I think I was very confused by now, getting up and moving around my room sometimes for no reason, having crazy thoughts, or a completely blank mind.

9:11: 20 minutes felt like at least an hour. 'Underestimated DMH,' I wrote, because by then I saw how intense it could be. I think I definitely underestimated the time required for it to take effect.

Now the most profound part of my night took place. I found myself sitting on a rug on my bedroom floor, driven there by whatever delusion I may have had, staring at the rug. I wrote about how I was feeling then: 'Evokes childlike states of mind.' Memories of the rug from my childhood came into my mind, because it had been in all the houses I had lived in and it was in my room now. I saw it where it was in the house I first remembered and was taken back into the child-like state of mind I had then - I was not only remembering this place in my childhood, I was feeling the feelings and thinking the thoughts I had then. In that mindset, I was inquisitive, constantly taking in information and learning about the world, forming associations.

I linked the colours green and brown on the rug to my mother and father. This was a very old, old memory of a childhood thought that welled up in my mind, that might have been lost forever. I knew deep inside that I had really made this association of colours when I was very young and was taken back to that state of mind.

I explored other parts of my childhood too, places I had lived and their atmospheres. I went back into my memories deeper than I had ever thought I could go. When I saw a place like an old bedroom of mine, it wasn't only a flash of the memory, like a photograph. I could actually feel what it was like to be back in that place, and most amazing of all, I could actually feel how mysterious and wonderful it felt to me as a child back then.

The delusions were frequent now, and they happened more when I was closing my eyes, because the caffeine was wearing off and I was becoming drowsy. When I had my eyes closed, I found myself in completely different situations and engaging in different activities - sometimes menial tasks like housework, sometimes talking to people at school. …………………I was very drowsy by now, dozing off and waking up every so often on my bed. I went back to my childhood again. I vividly remembered scenes from my old primary school that I thought were completely lost - the memories were welling up. Sometimes I was almost choked with tears - writing this makes me like that now. I had the chance to re-live the memories of childhood dreams that came to me,……... This part of the experience was awesome. I was actually reliving my childhood, I felt like I was there. Words cannot describe it.

When I opened my eyes and looked around, objects kept jerking and quivering. I had disturbances in the corners of my vision - like little bugs and spiders crawling in the darkness. Eventually I fell asleep.

I had trouble integrating this experience into my life. Reliving memories that I thought I would have forgotten forever was beautiful but confronting at the same time… looking back on how confused I was and the insane hallucinations and delusions I had makes me afraid. I am not likely to want to try Dimenhydrinate again …, because it was not really pleasant and did not seem like a good choice at all for a recreational drug; just because of how much it f***ks with your mind - it seems like anything can happen on DMH. You might have an intensely profound experience, but reading of all the reports of people who had a terrifying or unpleasant time, and experiencing all the fucked-up effects of the drug too, convinces me that it would be just as easy to have an experience that could unbalance you. The 'stabbing chest pains' were worrying and I had a nasty hangover the next day.