Coupled with whatever substance du jour that college me was able to lay hands on, DXM was guaranteed to have me stumbling and hallucinating like the true futureless human I aspired to be, for the low low price of $7.65.
So, hats off to the NC state legislature for giving me some cheap thrills through college just outside my dorm room, while the state liquor store was a few miles away. You saved my liver, non-sarcastically, and allowed me to experience first hand the precipice of drug culture so I could willingly walk away from it based on personal exposure.
I also can't stand the sight of cherry flavored anything anymore :)
FWIW, it's not particularly difficult to cause liver damage with dextromethorphan at recreational dosages
Back when I was on the forums at that time, we were much more worried about frying our minds with dosing 4000mg and disappearing for days at a time into the strangest and scariest hallucinations you could imagine.
It's also worth noting that DXM is being studied in research as an antidepressant. I'm aware of at least one company working on it in combination with wellbutrin: https://axsome.com/axs-pipeline/about-axs-05/
DXM has a pronounced antidepressant effect that lasts for days after a recreational dose. Users refer to it as an afterglow instead of a hangover. This effect is fairly well known but not currently commercialized. It's also a similar drug to ketamine, which is also being used as an antidepressant in medical settings now.
From my own anecdotal experience, I'd probably have killed myself in my early 20s without DXM to give some relief. Sometimes I'll still grab a bottle of it if I'm in a particularly dark place. It's sometimes a pleasant experience, sometimes an unpleasant one, but it always lifts depression for a few days.
From what I've been able to understand over the years from the literature, nobody's died on DXM alone without taking extreme doses (anything over 500mg is crazy IMO). Some people have died from taking products that contained other active ingredients. CCCs were common before people realized the antihistamine overdose is harmful. Tylenol is common in those products too and could be used by someone uninformed, though that's also true for most painkillers. Even in extreme cases of daily high dosages (which doesn't make sense because of tolerance, but people are crazy), organs don't seem to be harmed.
Obviously chugging cough syrup has a questionable reputation at best, but we'll be seeing more people become aware of it in the next few years as drugs get mixed with DXM and patented as anti-depressants.
There's also at least one company on Amazon selling 500mg+ bottles that look like they're "4 hour energy"-sized, with DXM as the only active ingredient, complete with headshop-aesthetic packaging: https://www.amazon.com/Cough-Suppressant-RoboCough-2-Pack/dp... Questionable for sure, but definitely less sketchy than the extractions and powders of years ago. I feel like I've seen less about DXM as cannabis has become more legal and as more odd chemicals, both legal and illegal, have become easier to order online.
edit: just to be clear, I haven't tried that product on amazon, I was just amazed to see that it exists and has such positive reviews.
I was pretty hungry after all this and glad the peak was behind me. Got a grapefruit out of the fridge. Wasn't even halfway through when I found myself back in the peak. Had to crawl back into my bed where the curtains were closed and endured another 20 minutes of that.
Grapefruit + <drug> has always been the source of superstitious arguments in uni among my drug-using friends. Does it enhance the effect? Kill the effect? Do anything at all? But my acid experience confirmed one pairing beyond all doubt.
And your experience matches mine. Washing down MDMA with grapefruit juice definitely makes it more intense.
In any case it's not something that plays out so quickly.
Waving in and out of tripping balls a couple hours in sounds pretty par for the course, I'd say :)