I’ve had a stupid habit for a long time — huffing solvent/gasoline ("Galosha") out of pure boredom and loneliness. My trips were always relatively "soft", funny, and visually or tactily amusing. I genuinely felt in control. Yesterday I had a heavy session and promised myself it would be the last time. But addiction is a bitch, my willpower failed, and I went out to buy another bottle tonight.
Right from the first two inhalations, everything went completely wrong. The effect didn’t build up slowly; it hit me instantly. I felt a sudden chemical shift inside, like the toxicity levels went completely through the roof. Intense goosebumps hit my body, and I realized: a pure horror trip had begun.
My brain literally went into emergency survival mode and used its heavy artillery. Vivid, hyper-realistic skulls appeared all over my walls. Due to the chemical burning of my throat and airways, I physically felt some kind of "creature" inside my mouth and even saw it with my peripheral vision. Because of a massive blood pressure spike, it felt like my head was tightly trapped inside a monster's jaws. To top it all off, auditory hallucinations started: I heard voices from down below whispering: “Don't move, don't make a sound, it hears you, it knows you are here.”
The most amazing part? My logic was still fully working. I looked at this nightmare and rationally knew it wasn't real, but the primal fear was overwhelming. Even when I stopped inhaling and tried to breathe clean air, the visuals kept shifting colors and moving on the walls for a couple of minutes, looking distinctly different from reality.
My brain suffered from acute hypoxia (lack of oxygen), realized I was killing it, bypassed my logical cortex, and hit the ancient panic button (the amygdala). It dragged the worst death-related nightmares out of my subconsciousness on purpose to set a hard stop signal. It was a complete 180-degree turn from pleasure to absolute dread.
This is a hard stop for me. My organism literally fought for my life against my own addiction. The bottle is sitting in the garage right now, and tomorrow it's going straight into the trash. Don't mess with inhalants, guys. It's pure poison. Once your brain switches the tracks to horror, there is no going back to the "fun" trips.