Fourteen Days of Planet Earth (Or the Time I Had the Worst Trip of My Life)
This happened roughly 7 months ago now. I learned about Delta8 at my job (I work in marketing and one of my clients was getting into distribution). If you’re unfamiliar with D8, it’s essentially supposed to be a more mild form of cannabis. It’s also completely legal in all 50 states. It sounded perfect for me since the psychoactive effects are supposed to be so chill. I’ve had horrible THC trips in the past (complete disassociation for hours and hours on end, utterly terrifying), so I thought, “hey maybe now I can finally enjoy a gentle high.” I couldn’t have possibly been more wrong. I’ll start off by saying all of this was entirely my fault! I’m not blaming anyone other than myself, I just want to share my story and find out if anyone has gone through anything close to what I did. My friends and I have spent so much time looking for answers and never found anything.
Anyway, on to the actual story. After some poking around, I found a local shop that sold D8 gummies. The guy there was super nice, told me that it was cool to only take half of one if one was too strong. I thanked him and went on my way.
At the time, I lived all alone in a city about 40 minutes away from all my friends and family. A couple of my best friends were coming up for the weekend and we were all excited to try the D8. For whatever reason, I decided to get an early start on them. I took one gummy and started a 30-minute timer (which is about how long the bottle said it would take to kick in). Nothing happened. Like, nothing whatsoever. I felt completely, utterly normal. A few hours passed as I waited for my friends to get off work and drive up to me. Still nothing. My friends finally show up and I tell them, “I think this stuff is a bust. I haven’t felt anything at all. Kind of disappointed, it was expensive!” My friends all took one and then I made my first real mistake. I took a second gummy. About an hour passes and still, I’m feeling nothing at all. One friend is starting to feel it but nothing too strong. She takes another one. I make the biggest mistake of my life. I take a third gummy. Reader, please recall, at this point, it’s been all day and I’ve had no reaction whatsoever. I thought the gummies were duds.
Then the night took a turn. I did start to feel the effects. I could feel the all-too-familiar sensation of losing my grip on reality and myself. I start to feel like I’m not a real person, can’t keep up with the conversation, heart beating out of my chest. All the normal bad trip stuff. The whole night passes like this, with me having the most intense trip of my entire life. I wake up the next day feeling a bit better but still kind of off. My friends stayed all day, we hung out, I was doing my best to act like a human being. (Side note, I didn’t eat anything all day.) Eventually, my friends have to go home so I’m all alone in my apartment, just me and my pets.
The next few days are incredibly fuzzy for me. I only have flashes of my memory. I think I spent the vast majority of it sleeping, to be honest. I sent messages to my supervisors at work telling them I had a stomach bug and needed to work from home, though no work was actually being done. After a couple of days, my sister started to get worried. She knew I’d had a bad trip but had no clue the extent of what was going on. Everyone in my life thought I was back to normal at this point. My messages to them were sort of strange and I was taking much longer than normal to respond, though. I’m not sure exactly what transpired that made my sister do this, but she sent her friend over to check on me. We spent the day hanging out, I was able to mostly hold a conversation with her but everything was… strange. I wasn’t me. I was barely even on this earth, to be totally honest with you. I kept forgetting who I was, where I was, what my life was. I was too far gone to even be afraid at this point. Nothing felt real it was like I was… I don’t know, living in a video game or something. I don’t even know how to explain it other than that literally nothing whatsoever felt real.
Another day or two passes. At this point, I think it’s been somewhere around 5 days since I took the gummies. The whole time, I’ve barely eaten anything. I can’t take care of myself because I don’t even know that I exist. My sister was finally able to come to check on me and that’s when things got serious. My whole memory was wiped. Everyone describes it as though I regressed to a younger age. My sister had to spoonfeed me because I kept forgetting to eat. I went to the hospital and they did nothing for me. Told us it would wear off eventually. I had to go stay with my sister. The whole time, I’m very slowly starting to come back to myself. This is the point at which I knew enough to be afraid. I had to go to another hospital and got a full neurological workup. Nothing. Again, they said it’ll wear off. My sister was so worried about me that she wouldn’t even let me stay at home without supervision. I either tagged along with her at work, or her lovely finacè looked after me.
Reader, it took over two full weeks for me to come back to myself. The whole time my family and friends were terrified that I would never be me again. Did I have a psychotic break? What happened to me? Has anything like this ever happened to anyone else? I feel so alone in this experience. If you have anything similar, please tell me about it.
(Also just a side note, the gummies were fine. They weren’t laced or a bad batch or anything like that. My friends took them and all enjoyed the rest of them. It was just me.)
