There's quite a few of the same questions getting asked again and again (no offense to anybody, you can't learn if you don't ask) and I thought something like this might be useful. That way, standard questions will be answered here so more unique threads won't be pushed down out of view.

I know there's already erowid for this, but some people tend not to use erowid, or simply can't find the info they're looking for. I've also tried to do it in order of how often questions about these substances get asked.

It's divided up into the same questions: what is it, is it safe, what's an appropriate dose, where can I find it, how do I take it, and what is the experience like? If anyone can think of anything to add, add it!

* If anyone has any corrections or anything to add, post it and maybe a mod would be kind enough to add your revisions to the master list.

DXM

Q: What is DXM?

DXM is short for dextromethorphan, a dissociative chemical that also works as a cough suppressant in low doses.

Q: Is it safe?

As with other dissociatives such as PCP and Ketamine, it's suspected that excessive use can cause Olney's lesions on the brain. There have been no human cases of this, however.

Also, it is possible to overdose on DXM. While an overdose level is dependent on the user's weight, the generally accepted DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200 limit is 1,500 mg.

On top of that, DXM can be addictive, and prolonged use can put you in a little haze for months afterward, even when you stop using it.

Used responsibly, though, it's one of the safer drugs you can take.

Q: How much should I take?

DXM trips are generally categorized into four plateaus, each of which can be controlled relatively easily by simply monitoring how much cough syrup you drink. The measurements are on the back of the bottle so there's not much guessing involved.

1st: 100-250 mg
2nd: 250-400 mg
3rd: 400-700 mg
4th: 700-1000 mg

Doses beyond 1,000 mg run the risk of overdose, but each individual reacts differently.

Q: Where can I get it?

You can find it in standard cough syrups. Check the bottle to see how much dex is in it, and dose accordingly.

WARNING: There is dex in Coricidin Cough & Cold. There is also another chemical, CPM, which is REALLY FUCKING DANGEROUS if you dose incorrectly, side effects may include permanent organ damage and you DYING, so don't fuck with Triple C's. Some people will tell you they always dose on CCC's and you have nothing to worry about--these people are idiots, and if I were you I wouldn't be taking no drug advice from no idiots.

Q: How do I take it?

Chug cough syrup. Seems easy enough. You can also buy powdered DXM from various pharm suppliers... don't snort the powder.

Q: What's it like?

The 1st plateau is a fairly chill stoned-drunk feeling. Simple.

The 2nd plateau gets a little weirder, but is still mostly free of hallucinations and dissociative activity. Also simple.

The 3rd plateau is where the line is crossed from "high" to "tripping," and some people find that stage to be a bit edgy. Other people love it, and enjoy the creeping confusion and separation of mind from body.

The 4th plateau is such an intense out-of-body-and-mind experience that few people ever reach it. One of the common phenomena featured in 4th plateau doses is the seeming appearance of aliens or ghosts, usually who talk to you and tell you secrets of the universe. In other words, don't fuck around with a 4th plateau dose unless you're ready to hear the meaning of life from a little green man.

The experience tends to last about in the neighborhood of six hours.

NOTE: Sometimes people can get the robo-itch. Basically, it means you itch. It's not going to kill you, so if it happens don't freak and call 911, and also be careful not to scratch your skin to shreds. Just smoke some cannabis and let it pass.

SALVIA DIVINORUM

Q: What is it?

Glad you asked. It's a sage that grows in Oaxaca, Mexico... and ONLY in Oaxaca, Mexico. It's also about the weirdest thing that will ever happen to you. It contains a chemical called salvinorin A, as well as teeny trace amounts of DMT, and the leaf can be smoked, chewed, vaporized or made into a more powerful extract which can then be smoked.

Q: Is it safe?

Yes, very. The only risks involved are the high temperature that some people experience (if you have a heart condition I'd suggest not tripping on salvia) and the obvious risk of doing something insane while under the influence. You may not think you need a sitter, and you may think you've done it all. Yeah, I thought so too. Twenty minutes later, I would have changed my mind about all that--if I could even find it.

Q: How much should I take?

If you have plain leaf, four or five of the biggest bong rips you can manage.

If you have extract, two or three of the biggest bong rips you can manage.

If you decide to bundle up the leaves in a quid and chew on em, use a good 20 or 30 leaves.

NOTE: For smoking, you need to get a butane or torch flame, and KEEP THE FLAME ON THE BOWL the whole time you inhale. It needs to be hotter than just a burning point, the chemical needs to vaporize itself. That's why you can really only do it out of a bong. Pipes work, but not as well, and a salvia joint just doesn't work at all.

Q: Where can I find it?

Mexico. Or the internet. Or some headshop. It's not exactly an easy plant to grow, and when it seeds on its own that's considered to be a big deal, so any salvia seeds you buy off the internet are not salvia divinorum seeds. Just go ahead and buy it, it's ridiculously hard to grow.

Q: What's it like?

Generally escapes description, but I'll try. You'll usually find yourself getting sweaty and feeling like you're being pushed or pulled by something you can't see. The best idea is to just lie down, because moving around can be dangerous. Completely new realities can manifest themselves around you, and it's easy to forgot you've just smoked something. Expect to turn into an inanimate object, to meet elves and space aliens, to fly, to wake up at the bus stop, etc. Beyond words, very heavy shit.

SHROOMS

Q: What is it?

When people talk about shrooms, they generally mean shrooms that contain psilocybin. There are also another kind, however, called Amanita Muscaria. About the only thing Amanitas have in common with psilocybin mushrooms is the fact that they're mushrooms. I have not had Amanitas personally, but I have gathered enough information to know that the experiences are not at all the same.

Anyway, psilocybin shrooms are fun little caps that grow in cow shit and my closet (whoops) and can be eaten for the classic "trip." While often compared to LSD, the experience is notably different, despite having similar effects.

Q: Is it safe?

Very. To OD you'd literally have to eat your own weight in shrooms, and unless you weigh below a pound I'd say that's pretty impossible. The only other risk is doing dangerous stuff while tripping. Try to avoid driving, rock climbing, pipe-bomb building, talking to police, etc.

Q: How much should I take?

If you're asking this question, it probably means you've never tripped before. If that is the case, then the usual answer is 3.5 grams (1/8th). That seems to be the magic number, as it's heavy enough for a decent trip, but still light enough that if it starts to go bad you can turn it around again. I've been able to talk to my parents on this dose.

Q: Where can I find it?

Fields in Canada and the UK and Florida and stuff. I don't know exact regions, so just google around if you want to go hunting.

WARNING: It's hard to identify magic mushrooms from any other kind, including poisonous mushrooms. Unless you know a mycologist, I'd advise against it. If you have to ask what a mycologist is, just ring up your friendly neighborhood drug dealer and get your shrooms from him.

Q: How do I take it?

As they so instructively told Alice: EAT ME. They tend to taste kind of nasty (having spent most of their lives in cow shit) so it's best if you put em on top of a pizza or in a peanut butter sandwich. Also, you probably don't want to eat for a few hours before the trip, or if it's too late for you to do that, at least take a shit before you eat em. Otherwise nausea is more likely to come up on you, and if you start puking during a trip that can be a downward spiral.

Q: What's it like?

It's like your subconscious and your conscious become one in the same. The example I usually give is that normally, a person who wears a shirt with vertical stripes may seem taller. On shrooms, that person will actually get taller.

Also, some blending of the senses tends to occur. Colors are smellable, music is orgasmic and delicious, and seeing someone you love can literally make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Expect the usual breathing walls and drippy wood grains. The mind trip is very philosophical and tends to bombard you with so many revelations and wonders that you can't possibly keep track of them all. Any information that normally registers in your subconscious is brought straight to the surface, and because of that you start to understand yourself and your surroundings a little better. It's nice.

Lasts about six hours.

LSD

Q: What is it?

Lysergic acid di-ethyl-amide. Acid. Tabs, doses, trips, blotters, whatever name you give it, it always comes up to mean the same thing: magic.

It's a highly potent chemical derived from the ergot fungus, and it's active in doses of micrograms. It's also easy to get into the system, as pretty much any point of entry that's wet will let it in.

Usually, LSD is to blame for that weird guy with no shirt and sometimes no pants who wanders around your town green looking for a bicycle every day. In the words of EverydayJunglist: "Every town has a permatripper."

Q: Is it safe?

Used wisely, yeah. It's pretty hard to OD on it, and about the only form of overdose is to permanently fuck your mind so bad that you never come back out of it. That rarely happens, though, and unless you have some pre-existing mental problems, you shouldn't worry about it. Of course, if you do have serious mental problems you shouldn't be taking any psychedelics, or even reading this guide.

Q: How much should I take?

It's really only available in two forms: blotters and drops. A blotter is a segmented piece of paper (printed with a trippy picture) that has perforations so you can break it into four pieces. Each piece will have a hit on it. It's best to start with two hits, wait for the trip to come up, and then decide if you want to take more.

There also used to be little pills called microdots, which in themselves are generally good for a whole trip. Don't expect to find those around, though, they haven't been popular for almost forty years.

As for drops, two drops = two hits. Easy enough.

Q: Where can I find it?

Not many places anymore, unfortunately. Ask your dealer.

Q: How do I take it?

Blotter paper can be placed on the tongue, or any other wet spot on the body, and allowed to absorb in. Drops can be put on the tongue or in your eyes.

Q: What's it like?

Visual patterning galore, orgasmic body high, edgy metallic feeling, racing thoughts, creeping and swelling and exploding hallucinations.

Usually lasts around twelve hours, and most people feel physically and emotionally exhausted by the time it's over.

ECSTASY

Q: What is it?

MDMA, methylenedioxymethamphetamine (say that three times fast). You may notice "methamphetamine" jumbled in there. It's not tweek in any way, the prefix is used entirely differently. Ecstasy is a phenethylamine. If you really wanna know what that word means, google it, cause I don't feel like explaining.

Q: Is it safe?

Very. There are misconceptions about it making holes in your brain and such, but that stems from misread brain scans. There have been lots of studies done, and it's been shown to be very safe even in fairly high-dose, long-term usage.

The main thing to worry about is dehydration, just have a bottle of water handy. And remember, don't go overboard with the water either, there is such a thing as water poisoning.

There's also the danger of it not being ecstasy at all. Try and know your source, because people will pass of ketamine, dex, speed, caffeine and even sugar as ecstasy pills.

Q: How much should I take?

One pill is enough for your first time. If your tolerance starts to rise you can take larger and larger doses, but there are products available that should "reset" your brain and bring you back to your original spot so you don't have to keep upping the dosage. I believe one of them is called "After-E," and is generally very effective.

Q: Where can I find it?

Raves, dealers. Raves.

Q: How do I take it?

Swallow it, blow it, stuff it up your ass, it's all good.

Q: What's it like?

It's like heaven. You'll be floored by the beauty in everything. You know that movie American Beauty? That scene where Ricky talks about the plastic bag? That's ecstasy in a nutshell.

MESCALINE

Q: What is it?

It's the chemical in San Pedro and Peyote cacti that makes you trip. The cacti have other active alkaloids in them that make a cactus trip notably different from a pure mescaline trip, but the basics are all there.

Q: Is it safe?

I think one guy died from an allergic reaction to it once. That's about it. It's actually so safe, and the trip is so clear-headed, that I'm trying to amass a large enough supply to trip on it for one day of each week of school, when summer ends. Everyone reacts differently, but there are no physical or psychological side effects you should worry about.

Q: How much should I take?

If you're talking miligrams of pure mescaline, about the lightest you wanna go is 150 mg, and the heaviest is about 600 mg. Any lower is unnoticable, and any higher is overkill.

Q: Where can I find it?

If it's pure mescaline, it'll be in pills. If it's cactus mescaline, it'll... probably still be in pills. The actual cactuses are, amazingly, not illegal, so you can get em pretty much anyplace. San Pedroes are native to the Andes and Peyote grow in the American southwest, and probably some other places I'm just ignorant of.

Q: How do I take it?

If you have San Pedro, I would take a segment about as long as your forearm, dry it, powder it, put the powder into gelcaps, and swallow them. If it's Peyote, dig out the white tufts and eat five to ten of the funny, round cacti (called buttons). It tends to taste pretty nasty, so pills or some kind of delicious recipe are recommended.

Q: What's it like?

Visuals are way different from acid or shrooms. They tend to be more like, well, "visions" than simple distortions of images. It's not uncommon to look around a room and see it as perfectly normal, but then focus on a blank wall and see a very realistic sea creature manifest itself as a shadow, and then as a colored shadow, and then as a 3-D hallucination.

Also, your mind will be clear in the sense that you can do your daily shit on it, but you will still be learning the meaning of the universe at lightning speed and double-triple-quadruple-octuple-analysing everything you encounter. Everything becomes a metaphor or an allegory for something.

And you seem to get increased sexual energy, which isn't bad at all.




That's all I can churn out for now. If anybody is moved to, please, correct my shit, add onto it, write your own stuff along similar guidelines, etc. This is a work in progress, and we ought to pour as much knowledge as possible into it.
Dick Justice Reviewed by Dick Justice on . Other Psychotropics FAQ There's quite a few of the same questions getting asked again and again (no offense to anybody, you can't learn if you don't ask) and I thought something like this might be useful. That way, standard questions will be answered here so more unique threads won't be pushed down out of view. I know there's already erowid for this, but some people tend not to use erowid, or simply can't find the info they're looking for. I've also tried to do it in order of how often questions about these Rating: 5