RoboTripping

“The couch turned into a giant fish, like the one in the opening credits from Spongebob, and then on the other side of the room, a giant potato appeared. I knew the couch wasn’t a fish, but my brain was telling me that it definitely was a fish and that it wanted me to eat the potato,” said a DHS student who has experimented with the drug Dextrometorpohan.

“Right before I threw up,” said another student, “my body perspective shifted to third person. I could see myself lying down, I could see my body, and then it condensed into a ball of human matter, like eyes and ears sticking out of a ball of body parts mashed together and then I shot back into first person and wasn’t aware if I threw up or not, so I asked, turns out I did.”

The recreational consumption of DXM, found in most cough and cold medicines, is commonly used among teenagers who are experimenting with drugs. The most popular slang term for the act is ‘Robo-tripping’, derived from the brand of cough medicine, Robotussin. When DXM is consumed in “recreational” doses, the drug has euphoric, psychedelic, and hallucinogenic effects that resemble drugs such as ketamine, PCP, and LSD. The drug does not produce a physical addiction or withdrawal symptoms but there have been cases of psychological addictions.

In 1995, an online essay, written by William E. White, was published that classified the effects of DXM into five levels or “plateaus” of high-dose effects. The essay distinguishes the plateaus by the amount of DXM consumed by the body mass of person taking the drug. The first plateau has effects that include, but are not limited to, alertness, increased heartbeat, increased body temperature, euphoria, and loss of balance. The more DXM consumed, the more intense the effects are.

Plateau Sigma, the highest level, is described as taking the maximum amount every three hours for 9-12 hours, and features severe visual and auditory hallucinations. White said that more than half of the reports he received about someone reaching the Plateau Sigma were described as “unpleasant.”

In multi-symptom cold medicines that include drugs such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) and phenylephrine, grave side effects such as permanent kidney failure, and even death are possible when consumed on the same scale as a casual user of DXM. So most people only experiment with cough medicines containing only DXM, yet excessive use of the drug can result in brain lesions.

“Every ridged surface became smooth, my house looked like it was made out of Legos,” said the same student, describing his hallucinations, “I saw red flashes of lights and I imagined God as a lightsocket in a cloud. The whole experience was like a different plain of existence.”

“I’d describe [robotripping] as kind of being drunk,” said another student. “I felt sensitive to everything around me, like when listening to music. I felt all the notes come through me and merge with my body.”
Side effects of DXM include, but are not limited to, delirium, muscle spasms, cardiac arrest (if taken in higher doses, a lower dose raises your heart beat and body temperature), and vomiting.The students said they experienced all of those effects in one way or another.
“There is a hangover effect in the morning too,” said a student, “but that’s probably due to severe dehydration, which made it neutral for me.”

“There is also no feeling of being tired,” said one of the students, “you get this huge burst of energy and then for the last four hours, you collapse and sink into whatever you fall on. During that time, my friend and I felt like we couldn’t move and talked to each other for a couple hours by touching each others heads.”
The student’s friend said at that moment they blacked out and imagined the universe turn into a purple walnut and watched it collapse into a black hole with only the sun escaping.

In the USA, there is no law that penalizes using DXM for recreational purposes rather than for a medicinal reason. Some states make stores that carry the product to restrict the purchase of it by requiring an ID, and a signature. Some of them even go as far as to limit their stock of cough medicine. There have been cases of people having to spend time in prison as a result of selling DXM in its pure powder form, but only for the resale of medicine without the proper warning labels.

DXM was also excluded from the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 and still is, yet officials have said that if the amount of people who abuse the drug raises that it may be added.