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Reflections- A DXM Story

By Alex Bidwell

Authors Note: Dextromethorphan (DXM) is a powerful psychoactive found in most over-the-counter cough medicines. At high doses, its effects are comparable to that of LSD or psilocybin mushrooms. DXM has a long history of recreational use in the United States and Europe .

I first experimented with dextromethorphan in college, on a breezy autumn evening – a Friday, with six bottles of cough syrup divided up between my good friend Erik, my roommate Don and myself. This allowed us each 750 milligrams of DXM, enough for the so-called Third Plateau trip. This is at least what we read online about the drug. We certainly did the research, taking information from several trustworthy websites. We were all DXM virgins, and did not want to die or put ourselves in some embarrassing coma.

We drank the thick cherry-flavored cough syrup in the dorm, as a huge purple sun settled over the school. It made for a lovely introduction. All the lights in the room were turned off, leaving us in total darkness, but our ears danced to the incendiary sounds of a live Pink Floyd concert disc, blaring loudly through Don's mighty surround sound system. It was completely comfortable, drifting through each song, feeling the first waves of the DXM.

I sat, thinking, Is this it? Am I feeling it? Is this it now? Okay, this is it. Ok. I'm feeling it. So what now? Where do I go from here? Oh, okay. I understand. Ahhh…

And I relaxed.

My mind felt like a wine cork twisting and popping out of my head, as my body relaxed into a deep meditation, a definite focus. Very briefly, I became without emotion or ego. But it passed into simple enjoyment of my surroundings.

Don spoke suddenly and annoyingly, saying, “I don't feel anything.” The dull thud of his voice badly startled Erik and I, and then Don turned on his computer's huge monitor screen, the light very harsh on our now furiously dilated pupils.

Erik jumped, yelling, “Off! Shut the damn lights off !”

Reacting painfully slowly, Don flipped the monitor to blackness and left the room silently. I then heard him talking to my hard-drinking thuggish neighbors next door and felt the relief of his absence. I snapped back to a minor reality, still riding the smooth new DXM waves.

“Don…” Erik muttered, shaking his head, wiping away fresh forehead sweat, regaining composure.

“He's impossible,” I explained. “It's something in his blood. A kind of oafishness.”

Erik laughs, “A recessive gene maybe. Oh…man. Ha.” I realized then that he was in the same state as I, and the DXM was getting its grip tightened on his senses.

We decided to take our trip outdoors, thankfully minus Don, on a walk across campus toward a back sidewalk leading into town. Halfway across campus Erik stopped, sat on a block of concrete and vomited piles of purple goo. I laughed, secretly hoping I would not be next. Or maybe I hoped I would – I noticed that Erik's vomit gave him relief and a new wave of strength. His walk became bouncy and his eyelids opened wide.

We sit down for a breather on a cluster of metallic green picnic tables and benches. I stared downward, studying the tabletop pattern.

“Non-human formations,” I said, running my finger across and down the cold textured surface. I realized how absurd my words were, but I preferred to have fun, and not deny the seemingly instinctive words. They flowed from somewhere new. “I've seen these non-humans before. They're coming to get us and nothing will stop them. They're like the Stormtroopers in Star Wars. Cold…unfeeling…”

Erik understood, playing along. “We'd better keep going then, right? Those non-humans will kill us.”

“They sure as hell will,” I said, picking myself up, my body feeling drunkenly heavy but pleasantly electrified.

Of course we were not convinced that any sort of hostile troopers were closing in, waiting to pump us full of red lasers – The behavior was pure curiosity, picking at the brains to understand the dextromethorphan influence.

We walked further, merging with the sidewalk leading into town. The walk is a hundred yard journey uphill, but my legs did not mind at all, feeling very loose and tender.

The urge to dance came without warning, carrying with it a frothing wave of euphoria. I began prancing and skipping on the walk, not giving a damn who noticed the bizarre spectacle, but I stop as I realized the campus was practically naked, this night being one of those weekends when large droves of students return home simultaneously for unknown reasons. But some still wandered around. I wondered, Are these other people also getting their kicks from over-the-counter cough remedies? Maybe they'll want to party…

I continued my dancing but nobody paid the slightest attention. Erik did not seem to mind either, that is if he was aware of my garish display at all. He could have been too far gone to remember my existence at that point.

After clearing the campus border we trudged through a small grassy field sitting adjacent to the town's main drag Bridge Street , an endless array of fast-food joints, bars, and head shops.

Plodding through the tall weeds my senses numbed and faded to nothing. I frowned and concentrated, straining to understand my situation in the murk of the grassy field, thinking, Are my feet wet? Who cares…nothing a little dry air can't fix. Wet feet can be comfortable, anyway…Always a satisfying squoosh, like walking on sponges…

In reality though, no. My feet were dry and feeling very crisp, like warm Italian bread. I questioned my previous thinking – was I trying to convince myself that wet feet are comfortable and even desirable? What the hell?

Erik and I finally hit Bridge Street and sat down at a patio table outside of a sandwich shop, looking toward the street and seeing too many neon beer signs and halogen headlights. The brightness was uncomfortable but my head swam in sweet mental pudding, with the colors that pulsated with purple and green undertones.

Erik and I talked, and a great length of time passed. We talked rapidly, and in fragments, but the conversation had a comfortably discernable flow – Liquid words and gelatinous thoughts; garbled blobs of fleeting whimsy.

“The machines,” I tell Erik, very sure of myself.

“What? Oh. Oh, right. Yeah.”

“The machines.”

“Yeah, the machines. What's the deal?”

“Look at them all. There are so many .” I stared at a car, an ugly yellow Hummer driving by, looking like a metal Tonka truck. I wanted to play with it, fill it with dirt and drag it around a sandbox.

Erik looked around cautiously, pivoting his head quickly from side to side and over both shoulders. “Everything is so bright.”

I thought fast and hopped to my feet. “It's disorienting. Let's get out of here.”

We stumbled back to the dorms in much the same way we came. The rest of the night was spent sitting and listening to music and shooting the strange breeze.

Dextromethorphan is a dissociation trip. Forget the body and the brain. Or, embrace them completely. But do not dangle somewhere in-between. This could cause a powerful rupture of blood vessels inside the head and instant death. And what a way to go…just imagine the horrible report from the coroner to the deceased's parents:

“Well sir, ma'am…we saw that Alex drank four bottles of cough syrup and then swallowed seventy of these little tablets here for desert. He collapsed stone dead in forty-five minutes. His body simply could not take such a powerful dose. His neck exploded all over his pillow from the huge rush of adrenaline…his head flapped over the back of the mattress like a Pez dispenser. And the strangest thing is that his hands were still clutching the sheets on either side of the mattress when paramedics arrived. His last moments must have been terrifying…or wonderful. God damn this drug. We thought this stuff went out with the Sixties.”