Why people abuse Dextromethorphan (DXM)-Robotripping, Dexing addiction

In this video, we're going to talk about the really super scary, maybe the most dangerous drug that I have ever even treated in someone. And I promise you, you've got it right in your medicine cabinet and you're not thinking a thing about it. Okay? So all of us these days are aware, you know, don't have your pain pills in your closet. If you've got kids or you got someone with substance use disorder, you know, don't keep alcohol out and laying around everywhere. We think about those things. We think about those prescription medicines and alcohol and we know there's kind of a protocol. We know we need to watch out for that and to put it up. Especially if, you know, you're dealing with someone that has a substance use problem. But what you might not be thinking about is some of that everyday medication that you're keeping around your house, like, for example, cough syrup. Especially if you're a parent and you're watching this video, pay close attention because some of these things come in the back door and you never saw it coming. Now almost everyone has a little cough syrup or cough medicine in their medicine cabinet. You know, we keep it around because we had the flu or we had a cold or, you know, we just leave it in there because we know somebody else is gonna have the flu soon. But there's an ingredient in some cough and cold medicines. They call it dxm. It stands for something really long. I think it's called like dextromethorphan. I hope I'm saying that right. You can look on the back of it and see if that is the active ingredient in what you have in your house. And let me tell you a little secret. A lot of people, especially young people and, or especially anyone that's in a, like, treatment or recovery program, they will abuse this stuff. And it is so scary dangerous. I am telling you, I've had more people end up in the hospital over dang cough medicine than anything else that I've treated. Because when people abuse this stuff, they take like tons and tons and tons of it. It's not like you take you one little cap full and get messed up. No, you gotta pretty much like take the whole pack or the whole bottle. Like Robitussin, they call it Robotryppin. Or there's some medicines, they call it triple Cs. It's in these like little peel push packs, you know, where you pop them out of the bag. I think they're red. Back in the day, they used to call them Skittles because that like Red coating on there has some sort of like sugary flavor. But when people abuse this, they take all of it and it gets them super messed up. A lot of times people will do this at night because they think everyone's asleep and they can get by with it. And people are particularly prone to do this when they're in treatment programs because they, they're trying to find ways to get high or get messed up. That won't show on a drug screen. That's right. This medicine is very hard to detect. It's hard to catch someone doing it. And so if you just give someone a regular, normal drug screen, it probably isn't going to show it. But I'll tell you a little secret tip here. If someone's doing dxm, a lot of times it will actually show up on a drug screen as a false positive for pcp. I've been doing this kind of work for a long time and I don't think I've ever seen anybody actually show positive for like, for real pcp. That was pretty popular a while back, but you don't see that much anymore. So if I ever see someone screen positive for pcp, then I know they've probably been doing dxm. So you can screen for it, but you can't screen directly for the dxm, but it will show sometimes a false positive for pcp. The symptoms that you would see would be. A lot of times they're like, they can have hallucinations. I've had a lot of kids end up in emergency rooms. I've had kids fall out of their seat in school and end up in emergency room being totally out of their head, getting every kind of diagnosis under the sun. And a lot of times because they're tripping on this dxm. So be careful. There are all kind of things. I mean, people are desperate. They'll do pretty much anything to get messed up. That's what addiction is. A desire and a need to escape or fix something inside or avoid. And you're just trying to find something to do that. So watch out for this one. This is the one that you never saw coming. And I promise you, it causes a lot of damage. It's so scary because people take so much of it. It literally shuts their liver down and can be so very dangerous. So watch out. If you're dealing with someone with substance use disorder and you got some in the surrounding house, just put it up. Take precaution. Don't even put it out there to be tempting. Oh, one last thing. And I totally forgot. Another reason why people get this stuff, and especially when they're in a treatment program or when they're young, is because it's cheap. In fact, it's so cheap, most time they just steal it. When I'm treating someone and their family's, like, monitoring all the money they spend, they want receipts and all that stuff. This is when they'll go to this medicine, because they can just take it off the shelf and there's no receipt or paper trail for it. Now, a lot of stores have chosen to, like, put this away or behind the counter. You have to ask for it. But there are other stores that don't. And trust me, your loved one knows exactly which ones those stores are.