I want to be honest in this report because I made a serious mistake and I’d rather someone learn from it than find out the hard way themselves.
What I Did
I dosed 600mg of DXM HBr. At my weight of 68kg, that’s about 8.8mg/kg — firmly in 3rd plateau. I did it alone. I had read the warnings about not doing 3rd plateau alone. I decided I knew better.
What Actually Happened
The come-up was fine — I’ve done 2nd plateau several times and was comfortable with the early stages. Around T+1:30 things shifted dramatically. The dissociation hit a threshold where I no longer felt like a person in a room. The room felt like a concept. I felt like a concept.
This sounds poetic. It was not. I experienced significant panic because I genuinely could not remember who I was or what I was doing. Not in a whimsical way — in a way where basic thoughts were unavailable to me. I couldn’t remember if I had taken something or was sick.
The Problem With Being Alone
There was nobody to ground me. The thing about a sitter isn’t that they do anything dramatic — it’s that their presence is a reference point. A real person who knows what’s happening, who can say “you took DXM three hours ago, you’re fine.” I had no reference point. My phone looked like a foreign object for a while.
I Made It Through
The effects passed. Total duration was about 11 hours. I was physically fine. But I was badly shaken and frightened for several hours, and there was a period where I was not capable of calling for help even if I had needed to.
Lesson
The warnings exist for real reasons. If you’re going to 3rd plateau: bring a sitter. No exceptions. I was lucky. Not everyone is.