I have a cold and went out and bought some cough medicine. I got I.D’d without buying the nighttime version. Why would people go to the trouble of using cough medicine to get high in comparison to other drugs? How does it even work?
In: Chemistry
DXM can cause hallucinations at a certain plateau. You need the kind with only DXM and it’s not exactly a great high. I give it a 3/10. Better than something like Xanax of course but not as good as weed or opiates or any of those.
Was it a Pseudoephedrine decongestant product? That can be made into meth.
The phenylephrine containing products don’t do anything, but they have to restrict the actually effective stuff.
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Dextromethorphan is similar to PCP and ketamine, all antagonize nmda receptors. In low doses these drugs are similar to alcohol intoxication with a sensory strobing effect, higher doses producing anesthetic effects which can include hallucinations. Cough syrup can have other components like tylenol doxylamine and phenylephrine; all three of which can kill you in overdose.
Some cough syrups contain codeine which is a mild opiate.
And people have started drinking strait promethazine -which is an antipsychotic that causes severe drowsiness.
The prescription cough syrup is what people usually sing about.
It has an opiate in it.
Too much opiate and your muscle controlling the lungs goes nighty night and you become dead rip pimp c
You get ID’d when buying cough medicine because it contains pseudoephedrine, which can be used in the process of creating methamphetamines.
Robotripping has several defined levels to it depending on weight and desired effects. You can absolutely lose your mind in a dissociative way if you go overboard.
Dextromethorphan jams up your NMDA receptors which are like your mind’s connection to the outside world
it results in a feeling like youre in 3rd person. Its like your vision is a movie screen and youre sitting in the back row. The visuals are the most alien, incomprehensible things you’ll ever see.
AI imagery is very similar to dissociative hallucinations, actually
Dextromethorphan is an active ingredient in most OTC cough medications in the US, and is a drug of abuse, hence being IDed for it. It is a dissociative, similar to other drugs of abuse in that class like ketamine or nitrous oxide (laughing gas.) It causes euphoria, relaxation or stimulation (depending on the dose), heightened sensitivity to lights and sounds (causing effects like enhanced appreciation of music), and can cause a “trippy” effect similar somewhat to psychedelics. It can also reduce the sensation of physical pain, as other dissociatives do. I have heard a lot of people describe it as “baby ketamine” and having done both many times, I’d say that’s a fairly accurate comparison. It is a difficult drug to compare to others in its effects though, as it is a fairly unique feeling and changes dramatically depending on the dose.
People use it instead of other drugs because it is easily accessible over the counter. It also did not use to require ID, I believe, which made it popular for teenagers who couldn’t get weed or alcohol and were experimenting.
It’s used in cough syrup as the antitussive agent (to suppress your cough.) In most cough syrups, the dose is not high enough to get someone very “high” without ingesting a dangerous amount of the other medications in the cough syrup. There are some cough medications that are exclusively DXM, that’s usually what people actually use to get high. However people will use and abuse any cough syrup with DXM as an ingredient, though it is dangerous (acetaminophen/paracetamol is often included in cough syrup and is VERY dangerous at high doses.)
Its method of action is mostly as an NMDA receptor agonist. NMDA receptor agonists are well known for inducing “dissociative anesthesia” and having rapid antidepressant qualities, particularly with patients who are resistant to more standard antidepressants (it’s not entirely agreed upon how or why that works.) Note: There are a couple NMDA receptor agonists that are used as antidepressants that do not induce euphoria and are not common drugs of abuse, so there is more going on with DXM than just this—it also increases serotonin.
It may also depend on what cough syrup you bought, as pseudoephedrine is (rarely, in my experience) an ingredient in some cough medications and is used in making methamphetamine and will also cause you to be IDed.
Basically those drugs make the parts of your brain that tell you to cough ‘sleep’. In the process, it influences other parts of your brain and can get you high
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