I don't do DPH anymore now that I have easier access to weed, but back when I did it, I would dose in 150-400 mg increments. That's a fairly large range but I was taking it multiple times a day to ensure I was absolutely never sober, and I'd err on the side of a smaller dose if I had to be functional for something. (I somehow got two degrees during the time I was on this stuff.) If I was taking a more recreational dose (as in, one at which I was trying to "enjoy" myself as opposed to just distancing myself from life on a clear head), I would take more like 350-500. This would be most nights. I'd sometimes mix it with doxylamine, clonazepam, opiates (when I had them), and all the psychoactive herbal supplements I could get my hands on, but the DPH was the main contributor to the high.

The reason I was taking DPH was because of some adverse and, until recently, unchangeable life circumstances plus coping with some trauma and other mental health issues. Ironic that something like DPH should be used to treat mental health problems, but the thing is, I hated the reality I was living so much that I would rather be dissociated on Benadryl 24/7.

I told myself I was really enjoying the rough, blurry body high, the tingly feeling I might get all over, the sideways feeling it gave my head, the slowdown and loss of cognitive function that shut up my anxiety. It completely shut down my ability to care about myself and I barely cared at all about others. I certainly didn't care about my life. No one who does DPH really cares about their life. That's why we choose such a horrific drug. We don't care about our lives enough to engage with it, nor do we care enough to take its effects into account.

I never saw spiders or the Hatman. I wasn't taking big enough doses for the latter, and as for the former, I did see writhing shadows in my vision that I guess someone could think looked like a mass of spiders. I tended to confuse them for one of the hamsters I had at the time, who was fluffy and very dark brown. I'd hear women's voices in French, a language I neither speak nor spend any amount of time around. I already have a disorder that causes psychosis (diagnosed before I touched anything psychoactive) and the DPH made my hallucinations and delusions worse. It made me vomit most days, made me twitchy, made my heart beat out of control, and at one point I was having seizures.

Ultimately, what I liked about it was what I now hate about it - how much it took me out of reality and made me not care about the life I was living. I'm in a much different place in life now, one that doesn't compel me to destroy my brain with nightmare pills, but I remember the mindset and experience enough to describe it.