Back in high school around 2004-05 or so this drug called Tripple C got pretty big in my area. People were stealing it from grocery stores and pharmacies all the time. It's an over the counter medicine called Coricidin: Chest, Congestion & Cough (hence the tripple C name). It contains the active ingredient Dextromethorphan (or DXM for short) which when taken in high doses causes some hallucinogenic effects, basically it trips you out.
Anyways it came in boxes that contained 3 sealed packs of 8 pills each (I think). When I was first introduced to it my friends said a normal dose was 1 pack (8 pills) to get you fucked up. So, we all took our one pack and wait for the effects to kick in, they said it took about 30 minutes or so. Well, 30 minutes went by and they were starting to trip but I was feeling nothing, and I was pretty pissed bc it looked like they were having a blast. My friends says maybe I have a tolerance and says to take another pack, being desperate to feel whatever it was they were feeling, I obliged and took 8 more pills.
What hadn't crossed my mind for some reason was that it was pretty normal for my body to take a lot longer to see effects from medicine in pill form, when given prescription drugs it used to be 1-2 hours before I could feel the effects. Anyways, we were now 1 hour into the activity, I had taken 16 pills in the first 30 minutes, my friends were still tripping balls and yet here I was still feeling nothing. I ended up getting annoyed and frustrated so I walked home (we all lived within 5 mins walk of each other). I get home and decide fuck it, I took 4 more pills just to see if that'd tip me over the edge bc all this time I'm thinking my body has some kind of immunity (idiot teenager logic).
At home, the 1hr 30 min mark hit since I'd taken the first 8, the pills finally hit me. I was feeling pretty good, called my friends to let them know it finally was working but was already home so decided to play games for the remainder of the night. 30 minutes later the other 8 pills hit me, HARD. Very suddenly I became disoriented and unbalanced. I fell from my desk chair to the floor and laid there heaving. My breathing became extremely difficult, like I had to urge my body to accept each breath of air, it was horrifying. I felt immobilzed, like my body was shutting down, I could feel the pounding of my heartbeat in my chest so cealrly, I'm sure it was beating at an extreme rate.
This lasted for a little over an hour where I laid there focusing all the strength in my body to keep breathing. After that time I felt comfortable enough to move some of my focus to getting up and in bed. Once I managed that I laid there for several more hours just freaking out and letting things run it's course. I woke up fine in the morning, actually extremely peppy.
Never told my friends (didn't want to seem like a pussy, aren't we so stupid as children?) so of course, we continued using these drugs for about a year until some classmates of ours got busted stealing them and went to jail and we decided to just stop bc police were all over it now. I won't lie, I did have some enjoyable times once I figured out it took 1hr30 mins to kick in for me. Typically I'd take my stuff way before whatever activity we wanted to be tripping for and my friends would take theirs later so we could all trip at the same time. I actually had the most amazing time at Busch Gardens Williamsburg while tripping on these with my friends, we spend 6 hours there and never road a single ride. Just trip C'ed and smoked weed while looking at all the scenery and shit.
But now, man I feel like a moron, I actually get sick to my stomach thinking about the pills, their taste, the feeling of swallowing 4 or so at once and then throwing more in. Easily the stupidest thing I ever did in my childhood. It's weird too bc I was never really into any drugs other than weed but for some reason those CCCs just took off in our area.
TL:DR - took 20 pills of Coricidin and probably almost overdosed and died.