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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Challenge in the first place. But things remain weird there, too. Though most recreational Benadryl users seem to be teens and twentysomethings, they don’t appear to actually enjoy the high they post so much about. Rather — as can be seen in the posts and comments of Reddit’s many DPH subreddits — they tend to agree that getting high on Benadryl absolutely sucks. For starters, the trips — described by even its biggest fans as “hellish,” “grotesque,” “grating” and “fucking horrible” — are nothing like the beautiful, ego-ablating hallucinations of LSD and shrooms. Instead, they’re often characterized by teeming swarms of “Benadryl insects,” shadow people and a so-called “Hat Man” with white eyes who appears to haunt users even after their trips end. There’s no reward to these trips, either — mostly, they’re empty and meaningless, like walking through a haunted house alone.Likewise, its high-dose side effects — delirium, seizures, psychosis, liver failure, lingering depression and coma — are both rampant and debilitating, prompting most users on r/DPH and beyond to beg others to stay far, far away. Worse, its reputation as the “world’s least addictive recreational drug” seems to be patently false; many users say their trips have left them hooked, caught in Benadryl’s clutches with no way out. “People think it’s safe just because it’s sold over-the-counter,” says addiction counselor Athena Lennon, explaining that “most” of the recovering addicts she works with use it as a safe, non-addictive solution for anxiety, mood regulation and the insomnia that often accompanies withdrawal. (Benadryl is generally thought to be chemically non-addictive, though it can become psychologically so.) “But of course it’s fucking not! It’s a drug — if you take too much too often, it can absolutely create a dependence.” Joe, a 22-year-old from North Carolina who spends his time trying to steer people on r/DPH away from trying Benadryl, discovered this after he started taking it to escape the harsh reality of his severe depression earlier this year. He liked how it felt in the 300- to 400-milligram range, but after hearing that a dose over 1,000 milligrams could kill him, he bumped it up to 975 in the hopes it would end his life. But instead of slipping away in an antihistamine-induced stupor like he’d hoped, he found himself immersed in “one of the most horrifying experiences of [his] life,” snarled in the clutches of a dark and sinister force he hadn’t wanted to meet. Like Gabby, it started with spiders — thousands of them. “I could feel them stepping on me and biting me,” he remembers. “I could grab them and feel them in my hands. This led to the worst part of my trip, which was when I was watching Parks and Rec and suddenly, everyone on the screen started staring at me and bleeding out of their eyes and mouth. Everything in my room turned eerily silent and all the spiders began to flee.” That’s when the fabled Hat Man appeared, leering over him and staring
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