DOSE:

3600 mg

oral

Pharms - Bupropion

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

Welbutrin XL 12 300mg pills at about 11:30pm

The events leading up to the overdose:

I had been taking Welbutrin for over a year. 300mg prescribed once a day for depression. I had also been dealing with a cocaine addiction for about 6months. No coke was in my system the time of the overdose. I was dealing with the mood swings, because I was a month clean. I had got into an intense argument with my boyfriend, and I needed a way out. I wasn’t sure if I would die, get knocked out, or have a seizure, but all of those options seemed a hell of a lot better than the situation I was in. I had no idea what I was in for.

The trip to the hospital:

I was dragged to the hospital by my boyfriend. The bitchy and judgemental nurses gave me a lecture, and a giant glass of charcoal sludge. The charcoal was supposed to absorb any medication I had in my stomach, so that they wouldn’t have to pump it. They pretended to hook me up to a heart monitor, which they didn’t turn on. We stayed there till 4am. They let me go home because my boyfriend would baby-sit me, and I agreed to meet with a psych nurse at 11:00 am the next day to talk about shit. No one warned me about side effects. I’m not sure if they knew there would be any. They just sent me home. I got up out of the hospital bed. I had no balance at all. We walked to the car. Went home got in bed. Dave fell right asleep, I couldn’t. I was wide awake.

The trip “My eyes are playing tricks on me, and my brain thought it’d be fun to join in”:

I lay in bed wide awake staring out the window. Let me just emphasise I had no idea what was about to happen. I have never done acid, or enough shrooms to see anything cool. I could will the curtains open and closed. At first I thought It was just my eyes playing tricks on me in the dark. When I realized I could control it, I started playing around. I could will clothes across the floor. Then in a second they were back where they started. It was kinda fun, so I played for a bit. I realized that this must be because of the residual medication in my stomach. I wasn’t too concerned. I lay there thinking about why my brain is doing this.

This is when I came up with “My eyes are playing tricks on me, and my brain thought it was funny and joined in.” In that I mean I started to belive what I was seeing to be true. If I thought I saw the curtain open and close by itself before, I wouldn’t have belived my eyes. I would have brushed it off as me just seeing shit. But I belived it. It was reality to me. I was convinced that I could bend a spoon like they do in the matrix. But I was too lazy to go get one from the kitchen.

I could see auras. I was seeing my boyfriend aura and auras of people that weren’t there. I figured they were spirits or aliens. Both of which I believed in before this event. I was amazed that I could see them. I know people say they can see them, and there are written historical counts of that sort of stuff, which I know nothing about. I was amazed that this change in the state of my brain allowed me to see this. I wondered and still wonder if this was some window into this sought after world of enlightenment.

I was hearing music. But, it was the same as the music I thought I had heard earlier that week. It sounded like a clock radio and someone was turning through the channels. Things in the room were dancing to the music (this brown bandana in particular. I now feel that this bandana and I have a bond … weird I know) There was a little man about a foot tall in the closet. He too was dancing. I could see through my boyfriends skin. I was hearing voices calling my name. This is when I got a little worried. I tried to wake him up, with no luck. I knew that voices meant schizophrenia. They were just calling my name, but I know If I had answered they would have started talking to me.

I didn’t want to go to the hospital in the morning, and have them tell me I was schizophrenic. That means your really crazy. Then my thoughts began to cycle around weather or not I was going crazy. Is this what going crazy is like? If this is schizophrenia then they aren’t crazy. Their reality is distorted. They just don’t know to not believe their brain! What if they shouldn’t be taking medication to stop the voices. Maybe we should be the ones to take the meds so we CAN hear the voices. What if they have some insight into life that the rest of us lack… What if…

I was freaking out. I began to twitch and sweat as the sun came up. Many of the hallucinations subsided when there was daylight. All except for the paranoid delusion of 3 people in the hallway. This became a bit of a problem when I became nauseous. There was so much I wanted to tell the psych nurse in the morning. I was counting down the hours when I could wake up my boyfriend and go see her. I needed to tell her, even thought I was scared she’d sedate me and lock me up for good. I tried to sleep. It’d make the time go by faster. I slept for 45mins. I woke up and was going to puke. I was too scared to run through the hallway, but had to. I threw up for about a half hour. It was black like the charcoal, and made me think of some sort of demon barf.

My boyfriend woke up to me hanging off the toilet. I tried to tell him what happened the night before, but I wasn’t making much sense. I had no balance whatsoever. I was thinking a mile a min. but couldn’t put together a sentence. I had the shakes really bad.

When I met with the psych nurse we tried to talk. I kept losing my train of thought mid sentence. That really upset me. I knew I had done some serious damage to my brain. I was scared it’d be permanent. I tried to tell her how angry I was that the doctors in the ER didn’t even give me a heads up. I don’t know if I got my point across.

After the appointment I went home. I needed to sleep. I turned on the TV because I needed noise to drown out any noises my brain was making up. I couldn’t understand what the TV was saying. I knew it was english but it was just noise with no meaning.

For days after I was scared to go to sleep. I couldn’t sleep alone. Couldn’t sleep in the dark. I was eventually put into a half way home for a week where I was sedated, and my medications were changed. Some of the doctors and nurses there believe I may have had serotonin syndrome. I have no noticeable after effects.

My entire outlook on life has changed. I feel like because of that night I have a greater understanding of my brain, and my perception of reality. People say I’ve changed. I now meditate, and I’m reading as much as I can about how the brain works, to get as much as I can out of that experience. I used to be too scared to try acid. I always thought it’d be cool, but was too scared of what my brain would or could come up with. I’m no longer scared of my brain, and I’m no longer scared of being insane. I am scared of the drugs that the doctors prescribe though.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 73591
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 10, 2009	Views: 43,253
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Pharms - Bupropion (87) : Overdose (29), Hangover / Days After (46), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), Alone (16)