I wanted to see what people thought of this so I registered here to see...

I have been doing reading on Diphenhydramine (benedryl) trips and almost all of them talk about seeing spiders. Even I saw spiders on my one horror night.

Why do we see spiders exactly...

Maybe it is a primal fear, and the drug evokes those fears.

Maybe it causes you to see dots (or maybe you just focus more on black spots that are already there), and your brain automatically links dots to bugs/spiders.

Dunno, thats just the way I've heard it explained before.

This makes the most sense. If you saw a little black thing move by the corner of your vision right now what would you think? Probably that it was a bug. Not much different when you're high and looking right at them.

Maybe over the millions of years, our minds have developed to recognize primal fears or creatures. I mean, arachnophobia or the fear of insects borders on the same notion. Seeing bugs on delerients is pretty common. Perhaps delerients somehow cause us to tap into our "hardwired" fears, or atleast allows our minds to express familiar shapes visually?

Edit: Woah... 23 pretty much said the same thing as me, just in fewer words.

That sounds reasonable for most cases, but the first time I did Diphenhydramine, I saw two bigass white spiders crawl in under my door.

Fucking excellent thread i know people laugh at diph but somethinf cool is going on here...

i seen the spiders even though i had NO prior knowledge of the possibility of these hallucinations thus ruling out all suggestibility.

i agree alot of it could be down to seeing tiny specks or dots in some cases...

but i clearly remember on my night of madness with diph seeing fucking big tarantula sized spiders in a well lit room, fully formed distinguishable features, and a fucking millipede. ever so realistic i even tried squashing the bastards with my shoe (thats when i realised it wasnt real - no dead spider).

seen a white spider web inside my shoe too.

something biochemical must be going on some weird shit wheres joe pedo to confuse us with an explanation.

Oh man I remember the one time I took diph. Was probably one of the most uncomftorable experiences, ever.
My wall just cracked into thousands of pieces and fucking millions of spiders were running everywhere. They were all running out of the cracks in my walls to my light. Fucking weird shit. I remember spending the whole night trying to kill them.
HAHA all I can think about is what if my mom walked in? What the hell would I look like? haha.

I saw spiders too.
I also saw shadows take form into horrible creatures.
I heard conversations that never took place.
And it was overall, The most terrifying night of my life.

Id do it again, in the day time tho lol.

Well the one time I did it... I was sitting on my computer chair reading about other peoples experiences and I looked to my left to a black dresser (plastic storage things you buy at walmart...) and there were lines on it. I looked closer and saw dots that then turned into spiders. And I am arachnophobic so this was horrible to me.

If I saw huge white spiders or tarantulas.. I would probably freak badly.

People see bugs a lot... must be something going on there. And yeah it makes sense that when you see dots or something in the dark, its a bug probably. And diph just increases it 200% worse.

I would do it again but like Toilet said... in the day time. lol

I saw shadows forming into silhouettes, and like dancing and melding together. It was weird.

I saw the girl from The Ring.

you can imagine the pure terror.
I must say though, at 75mg-150mg I really enjoy having conversations with the people I manifest but I always feel sad when I realize they aren't real and they leave.

I doubt you manifest whole persons with the ability to carry on logical conversations at any dose ranging from 75-150 mg's.

I dunno, which bothers me, as a future psychologist.

I've seen the spiders. For me, they come in massive armies, and cover everything.

mike

this thread brings back memories to my days of benadryl fun (or hell)... I never actually saw any spiders, I would see the legs of spiders. Like i would look around and see millions of little spider legs sprout out of the edges of surfaces. I did see a frog jump one time. And many other times I would think i was taking a drink of water only to realize that there wasn't anything in my hand at all. I would also get flashes like lighting, both with my eyes open and with them closed. Benadryl fucking sucks ass, but it does have some wtf quality to it...

QFT.
Amen man. They come in fuckin armies.
Never seen so many fuckin spiders in my life
haha

I take 100mg of diphenhydramine just for nausea, I don't see how you're seeing shit off doses like this. My first time taking diphen. recreationally I took 200mg and didn't see anything, I just kept getting surprised by nothing and it would give me this euphoric rush. Kind of odd considering the [i]discomfort diphen. is known for.

I took up to 400mg and don't recall any real significant hallucinations. Though I spent most of my time on diphen. walking around outside, so who really knows how many people or things I walked by that might not have existed.

There seems to be remarkably little variation in diphen experiences, actually, from what I'm reading here.

Someone mentioned the sadness you feel when the person you're talking to disappears. Tru dat.

As for the other person who mentioned trying to drink water that wasn't there, for me it was cigarettes. I'd be lying abed, smoking a cigarette, and I'd drop it. Not wanting to burn my house down, I would spend ten minutes or two searching for the cigarette before concluding that there had never been one in the first place.

Once, I climbed into a neighbor's car, thinking that I was meeting my friend to buy a gram. The next day, I found out he was out of town and I had no weed, which means I just sat in my neighbor's car alone and dropped a ten dollar bill on the seat.

Diphen is not fun, but it sure is crazy.

No one knows why the spiders, though? I'm a student of psychology, and I'm just not buying the whole primal fear thing...

mike

its because anyone who does benedryl is a nigger on welfare and actually HAS spiders crawling on the walls, that's all.

The one time I tried to actually "trip" or whatever you want to call the experience, I took 350mg and felt kind of sick after awhile, and it was while staring into the toilet bowl (by the way, didn't throw up... it works as an anti-nauseant so that's not surprising) that I saw little bubbles come up, and when they hit the surface they popped into little white spiders that ran around on the water. I had never read about the "spider effect" or whatever prior to this.

It's pretty cool that it's a common effect, though.

I should of been more precise...
When i take those low doses and lie in my bed and try to fall asleep, I go on little mind adventures..similar to dreams I guess. In those "dreams" I encounter people and can talk to them but it is only with my eyes closed and I don't even realize I'm "dreaming" untill it ends...and it ends because I realize im "dreaming."

Does that makes any sense to you guys? :p

This.

I've done it recreationally three times, with two 750mg doses and a 1000mg dose and I can honestly say that anyone who ENJOYS that shit is a nigger.

Anyone desperate enough to get high that they'll resort to something that makes you feel incredibly weak and confused as fuck probably has a shitty life to begin with.

I agree... if you take this stuff because you enjoy it... you are beyond fucked up.

Still don't get the spider though... something is up with it. I have tried 600mg and 300mg. I went to bed shortly after the 600 fully kicked in because nothing felt right... 300 I can handle for a while till I fill like I am in hell.

Some weird shit with this stuff and spiders though...

no it is not just dots. i've had tomato tops turn into spiders, even scabs on my skin :/

I'm sure the drugs exacerbate the effect..so anything round-ish or remotely spider like looks like a spider.

I'm sure the drugs exacerbate the effect..so anything round-ish or remotely spider like looks like a spider.

I have to agree. I saw like a really REALLY small white fleck of paper. And when I looked closer it was a really tiny white spider. So that would make sense.

It's a primal fear thing.

I can't find the article, but a bunch of old cranky men tested babies by showing them some pictures; the babies looked longer at the spider drawing and the misshaped spider than they did a flower.

It has to do with our ancestors rising up in the horn of Africa; a place with a shit ton of dangerous spiders and snakes.

Besides entering hell with this stuff... why does the dark REALLY increase the weird/horror/etc shit you see? I was literally afraid of the dark lol.

Don't get me wrong, I am glad that people are making reasonably educated guesses as to the reason here, but you shouldn't take it to the point where you assume something to be true just because your psyche needs validation and "understanding."

I'm not buying the dots / primal fear thing. I also have no clue who I could pose this question to that might have a legit answer.

mike

because its not commonly studied.

I have to agree. I saw like a really REALLY small white fleck of paper. And when I looked closer it was a really tiny white spider. So that would make sense.

have u got dandruff?

Again, primordial/instinctive fear. We aren't naturally nocturnal, and the darkness presents a threat of the unknown, I imagine something like a bat, if it had the cognitive ability would look on the darkness as being safe, as it provides an opportunity to hide, or wait for prey. They would look on the light as being something that exposes them and makes them obvious to predators. Contrarily, we as humans, of the same genus as apes, are more likely to look upon the darkness as containing the predator.

This is all very subjective.

/waves hand

These are not the tracers you are looking for.

/shoots a flare

/dies

I dunno man, I take 75- 100 mg every night just for sleep and the one time I tried to trip off of it, I took 650 mg and all it did was make me feel really heavy and sleep for like 15 hours no hallucinations whatsoever.

Diphen. will build a tolerance quickly, so if you're already taking 100mg a day on a regular basis you'll probably have a hard time tripping [if that's what you'd call it] on it.

In fact, if you take a 'recreational' dose of it you won't get quite the same effects if you try and take the same dose the next day.

Go eat one or two bottles of unisom sleep gels. I don't know what the milligram amount you should be aiming for is, but you probably just didn't take enough. After a certain point, this shit actually stop acting as a sedative and will keep you awake while you lose your mind.

Okay, let me try to address my concerns with the available theories thus far. In regards to the "Dots Theory," what you people claim may play a role, but assuming that dots will transform when you're hallucinating is one thing, and could very well be true. This does not allow one to conclude, however, that the dots should always be represented as spiders. There are many things the mind could jump to when seeing a dot while hallucinating, other bugs not being the least likely option. And yet, you never see fields of ants or flies. Also, the dots theory may fail to explain how some of us see entire armies of spiders rather than individuals.

In regards to the "Primal Fear Theory," you need to read up a bit more on psychology and philosophy (Kant) to see that this is unlikely. You're assuming that we are genetically hardwired to fear spiders. This is very, very improbable. Very few things are included in the human mind instinctually beyond the reaction to pull your hand out of the fire when it burns you. For a trait to become so widespread, it would have to start as a random mutation in some of the population. Then, it would have to have evolutionary value, so that those with the trait of the fear of spiders would survive, while all others died. Then, it would have to be dominant, so that it could continue to be passed on in every situation, even after society progressed to the point that lacking a fear of spiders was no longer a death sentence.

However, when the "Primal Fear Theory" touches on our fear of the dark, this is completely different. This may indeed be instinctually hardwired into the human mind via genetics and evolution. This is almost certainly why all human beings are diurnal; it served such great evolutionary purpose at one point that it became the dominant genetic trait for our entire species.

Thinking it over, I can't offer a much better solution. Keep in mind that my understanding of the brain structuring in this idea is very limited, and I'd love for someone with a bit more knowledge on the subject to take a crack at it:

Okay, can we assume that there is a specific region in the brain responsible for storing visual memories? Probably. Can we assume that this region may be further subdivided into areas that store visuals of certain different types, and that the structuring of this region may be relatively common between all human beings? I don't know, but let's say yes and keep going. Perhaps then, there is a certain area of the brain that is destined to hold the memory of what a spider looks like. Obviously, this data must be stored somewhere in order for us to recall the concept of a spider when we next see one. I'm just taking that a step further on the hypothetical that there is a specific physical location in the brain where all human beings store the concept and image of a spider.

I don't know exactly how diphen works in the brain in order to cause the delerium hallucinations that make it infamous on sites like totse, but we can assume that, like all other recreational substances, it acts on a specific set of chemicals in the brain. Lets say that these chemicals were fucking around in a physical location in the brain right near the location where we store the concept of a spider. Perhaps somehow, just through chance, diphen happens to trigger the visual cue for spider in most people. If the area that diphen acted upon was positioned slightly differently, perhaps we would receive images of bunny rabbits instead.

Yeah, my theory is pretty shaky at the moment. I'll do a little research and see if I can back it up or find another alternative, but like I said, I'm not buying the "Dots Theory" or the "Primal Fear Theory." While either or both of these may have some merit in describing contributing factors, neither (nor the combination of the two) has the ability to adequately describe this phenomena.

mike

I don't know exactly how diphen works in the brain in order to cause the delerium hallucinations that make it infamous on sites like totse, but we can assume that, like all other recreational substances, it acts on a specific set of chemicals in the brain. Lets say that these chemicals were fucking around in a physical location in the brain right near the location where we store the concept of a spider. Perhaps somehow, just through chance, diphen happens to trigger the visual cue for spider in most people. If the area that diphen acted upon was positioned slightly differently, perhaps we would receive images of bunny rabbits instead.

Yeah, my theory is pretty shaky at the moment. I'll do a little research and see if I can back it up or find another alternative, but like I said, I'm not buying the "Dots Theory" or the "Primal Fear Theory." While either or both of these may have some merit in describing contributing factors, neither (nor the combination of the two) has the ability to adequately describe this phenomena.

mike

I highly doubt there's a part of the brain for the concept "Spider"

More than likely it is a combination of the "dot theory" and "primal theory", along with a healthy positive feedback loop. Though I would think primalcy has nothing to do with it. Many, many people are afraid of spiders, and whether that fear is hardwired via evolution or just a learned social trait, makes little difference.

You see a dot, your mind thinks, ah! a bug. Whats the bug you fear the most? The spider. And then you've got spiders on the mind, every dot you see is a spider, until you're creating spiders out of tomatoes and pennies and such.

I think I'll skip the delieriant trip trip, I consider myself lucky it didn't work and actually don't want to mess up the normal effect I get from the benadryl which I hear you can do if you overload on it recreationally. I'd rather sleep good for months than hallucinate for hours

I highly doubt there's a part of the brain for the concept "Spider"

More than likely it is a combination of the "dot theory" and "primal theory", along with a healthy positive feedback loop. Though I would think primalcy has nothing to do with it. Many, many people are afraid of spiders, and whether that fear is hardwired via evolution or just a learned social trait, makes little difference.

You see a dot, your mind thinks, ah! a bug. Whats the bug you fear the most? The spider. And then you've got spiders on the mind, every dot you see is a spider, until you're creating spiders out of tomatoes and pennies and such.

Thats the thing, though, I am not afraid of spiders. I had a pet tarantula a few years back; nigga was cool as fuck. I once had a bad experience with fire ants. You'd think I'd be seeing them if this theory was correct, but its always fucking spiders.

mike

It has to do with our ancestors rising up in the horn of Africa; a place with a shit ton of dangerous spiders and snakes.
Thats bullshit, I'm not a nigger.
I'm not gonna tell you where my ancstors were specifically from, but i'll tell you this... There was a lot of rattle snakes, but none of my ancestors were afraid of them... so i guess i'm not afraid of snakes today cause i think they're cute. but spiders scare the fuck out of me.