TIFU: I accidentally took too many antihistamines last night and started tripping absolute balls

TLDR: I’m a sleep deprived mom suffering from postpartum insomnia & I live in central Texas so I’m also dying from Cedar fever, and accidentally took way too much unisom and benadryl and starting fighting the hat man and his army of spiders.

Last night, I took 75mg of unisom (I know I know but I was desperate to sleep) when we got home from family Christmas, because the previous night I got 2 hours of sleep and just needed to knock out and rest. However, my husband is going on a hunting trip this weekend & was leaving me his truck, so he needed my car keys which were lost. So I got up to help him look after I was already almost asleep. That woke up me from the sleepiness of the unisom I had taken about an hour prior. After we found them buried under wrapping paper trash from presents, I laid back down to hopefully get some sleep. But then the baby wakes up. My husband is taking a quick shower, so I do this feeding. Now in Texas, we have what’s called “Cedar fever” this time of year, and my god is it HORRIBLE. I legitimately feel like I’ve got the flu and strep at the same time. So while I was prepping the bottle, I took 75mg of Benadryl without thinking. I know this seems extreme, but I’m pissed, tired, and I promise you a regular dose isn’t touching my cedar fever allergy and I’m desperate to sleep and not spend the night sneezing, swelling, itching and struggling to breathe with my sore throat. I feed the baby, get him back to sleep, get back in bed, and about 20 minutes later I start feeling drowsy again finally. I’m just about asleep when the baby wakes up AGAIN. My husband says he will change him and soothe him & do this feeding if I’d go make a bottle.

I get to the kitchen, it’s almost pitch black in the house save for the Christmas tree lights on, so that created a low lighting effect in the kitchen. As I’m walking up to my fridge, I glance at something moving on my stove, and to my absolute fucking horror, it’s a giant ass ball of WOLF SPIDERS. Now if you aren’t familiar with this particular brand of spider, they are crafted by a cruel god straight out of the 8th circle of hell. They’re the size of fucking tarantulas. I know logically they are good bois who keep away the other unsavory creepy crawlers, & I am forever haunted by that damn poem from tumblr written in the POV of a spider being killed instead of set outside by humans, so I typically leave them to their creepy devices in my garage. However, they are not welcome in my damn house, and definitely not welcomed to form a fucked up ball shape like they’re auditioning for a fucked up spider circus show on my stove, so I hurriedly flick on my kitchen lights, ready to scream, burn the house down, empty a clip into them, but instead, I am completely & utterly horrified when the ball from hell disappears as soon as the light turns on. What. The. Fuck.

This is when it clicked in my tired mom brain that I had astronomically, royally, horrifically, biblically, fucked up. I was fighting sleep on a higher than recommended dose of TWO antihistamines, and now they’ve kicked into deliriant mode. The hat man was coming. Now when I was younger & in college, I had tried shrooms once and had a horrible time, so I knew what was happening to me thankfully and I could ground myself when the hat man and his army of spiders inevitably decided to show up. I made the bottle, quickly passed it off to my husband, and climbed into bed. I didn’t say a word to him, because he’s never done drugs in his life and doesn’t drink, so I knew he would lose his absolute fucking mind if I tell him that his normally responsible adult wife and mother of his two children was tripping absolute fucking balls.

The baby goes down again, husband comes to bed, I close my eyes and spend about 45 minutes in hell as my brain decides to start visualizing in extreme and honestly impressive detail the faces of people morphing into the most horrific, distorted shapes. I’m doing my damndest to keep my head here and trying to gaslight my brain into pretending that I do not see, and my husband starts snoring. He’s in a deep sleep. The baby wakes up again. I go make a bottle(flipping all the lights on this time, fuck you spiders), and sit down to feed him with my phone flash light on. The hat man is smoking a cig in the corner of my eye and spiders are crawling on my fingers. I start mentally pleading with a god I don’t believe in that I will never take an antihistamine again if he’ll just make this shit stop. The baby goes back to sleep. I go to my bathroom, throw up, chug water, pee, stare at myself in the mirror trying to understand how I could fuck up this bad, flip off the hat man, and make it back in bed. I finally fall the fuck asleep for about 6 hours of blissful, dreamless sleep. I feel completely normal today, just a bit groggy, dehydrated, humbled, and maybe traumatized. I grabbed my Benadryl out of the medicine cabinet and chucked it.

Now I’m not typically a judgmental person, I don’t stick my nose up at those who use or have used drugs because raw dogging life as an adult in this economy is hell, but those of you who like doing this, you are an insane person. A different breed. You need to be studied and maybe locked away from society, because holy shit. I am horrified you would choose to do this, but also slightly impressed and definitely scared of yall, respectfully.