LSD after a bad trip?

[ParallelGold]

Hi all, sorry to have my first post being on a negative note!

A small group of friends and I have been pretty keen on experimenting with pyschadelics for the past year or so, most of us have smoked pot fairly regulary and after some research we decided to open our doors of perception; went off without a hitch, had a blast.
About 6 months later, liberty cap season came about and we decided to organise a 'shroom trip. We tested them for legitimacy, weighed them and dosed them, I should of been on about a medium dose. There was myself and 3 others, all very close friends, and we took in a comfortable, familiar environment with chilled music, plenty of cushions, duvets etc.
The rest of them had a great time, all on different doses, however I had a nightmare of a bad trip, and I have yet to figure out why; everything, on paper at least, seemed positive. I vaguely remember experiencing something along the lines of ego death, which wasn't particularly fun, but I can only guess my tolerance is low to pyscilocybin?

Sorry about the rant, now to the point. LSD, around our parts, is really, really, REALLY difficult to come by, and now a friend has managed to score some. The temptation to partake is great, however I cant help but feel I'll carry my bad experiences from my last trip into this one, despite them being two different drug forms; the negative stigma just wont go away for me.

Any advice on how to go about climbing back on the horse would greatly be appreciated; I seriously dont want to miss this oppurtunity but at the same time I dont want to condemn myself to 7 hours of constant torture...

Thank you for your time...

 

[Nomada]

If you're doubting about taking the trip because you feel you might be haunted by this memmory/idea of a bad trip I say fuck it, go sadomasoq, you are either gonna be able to "ignore" the fear and miss a lot of the good stuff that might come or you are going to be complaining about your failed satisfactions for 12 hours pushing your fingers into your eyes, not wanting to see and making your head hurt.

If you can't ignore this fear then your time has come, rejoice brother! your enemy is at the gates! I say go trip and willingly go straight to hell. It is not suppose to be comfortable you know...

Play it loud if you want to become the martyr. Play it low if you are the innocent victim. There are no levels in-between. Violent and intense, it is a hell of an ordeal. But withstand and you are promised bliss.

 

[Terror]

Okay... going on a limb here...

Theres something in you life that remains unresolved that you have difficulty dealing with. My guess is something like a parent who passed away or just wasn't there. Maybe abuse...

I have riden the trip vortex many, many times. I have also experienced those who aren't weak in terms of drugs or intoxication but have had things happening for them and the effects of substances have hightened the overall sence of fear.

I tripped on shrooms one day with a girl who conveniently had a shopping bag full. Her father had kicked her out of home in an exceedingly aggresive manner, on that very day and she dosed an equal volume as I. We went to a church, when the psy came on it was intense.. like we dosed '10 shroom is enough'.. she started seeing all kinds of wack stuff which I imagine wasn't particuarly plesant given she was taken away in an ambo...

Terror

 

[deadflagblues]

hey i've actually been in a pretty similiar situation recently i had an intensely overwhelming trip on a 7gs of dried cubensis and i was ready to take a break for a while, so i did for about three months. a close friend of mine said he found a hookup on some extraordinary tabs and they were cheaper than anything available for a long time (has it dried up completely??) i was excited yet at the same time, extremely reluctant to drop these. i seriously thought for about half an hour and then thought what the hell why not. called him back, bought ten, took 4, and had one hell of a time! i rode my bike, drew a picture, baked cookies with my girl, and watched tarnation (anyone seen it?) then i went out to sit by the pond in my apartment complex as the sun was coming up while i was coming down. some life changing realizations dawned on me, and i just sat there and smiled for who knows how long. do some deep self examination, and decide if you are truly ready to face yourself again. if you are then go for it man and just enjoy the colors

 

[lapstro]

Hello, Parallelgold, and welcome ^.^ What I'm going to advise you to do is pretty much the same thing I tell everyone who has problems with tripping to do; just let go. If you keep stressing over the tripping, and worrying, that anxiety will manifest itself during the trip. It really sounds to me like you just gotta let it go, try not to think of the trip in terms of good and bad, which may be hard at first. I have found that when I try to force the trip into a certain direction, that usually ends bad, but when I have no expectations at all, when I simply take the trip knowing that I will learn and grow and mature no matter what happens, it ends well. It seems to me like you want to trip because you want to have fun, which in my opinion, is a recipie for disaster. I could be wrong, and I'm not trying to judge you here, but just be sure that you're not doing this for kicks, be sure that you have a genuine desire for growth, and a desire to learn what lucy has to teach. One of the things you have to accept with tripping is that lucy teaches many things, through many mediums, and one that I have found she frequently usues is pain. That's what makes tripping tripping, what separates it from "drugs of escape", is that you'll inevitable have what you perceive to be a bad experience. I really can't stress enough how much you need to accept this. For me, I don't expect that every trip I take will take me to heaven and hell and back; I know it. The most important thing though is that you learn from the experience, that's really why we trip in the first place, or at least I would hope so ^.^ I really hope that you learn a lot from lucy, and that she impacts you in an overwhelmingly positive way (which is almost guaranteed =D)

 

[ParallelGold]

Thank you for the replies all.

Well there isn't anything that screams "potential issue" in regards to me and my personal life; I would say my relationship with my family, and indeed my friends, is healthy. I know that was just an example, but other than a few minor self-esteem issues in the past I can't really think of anything. If there is anything there, I just dont want to admitt it to myself. Oh, no mental health issues in the family or anything along those lines.

Pychadelics have always been about self-exploration for me; the friend whom introduced me to this universe was adamant that this was the sole purpose that I would embark on a trip, and thats what I've stuck by. I think my sub-concious rathers I am alone when I trip, I've always had the desire to be away from my fellow trippers for some reason...

But that does seem to hit the nail on the head; I need to let go. Anxiety will be downfall I guess...

 

[_Avatar_]

We tested them for legitimacy, weighed them and dosed them, I should of been on about a medium dose. There was myself and 3 others, all very close friends, and we took in a comfortable, familiar environment with chilled music, plenty of cushions, duvets etc.

That all sounds like a great setting, and good thing that you weighed them before ingestion. The only thing that is not clear from this description is whether the lights were dimmed or turned off. Especially with mushrooms (which give very vivid closed-eye visuals) this seems to be a major factor for me: lights on means a higher chance of feeling disoriented and uncomfortable, regardless of the music and company. With LSD this isn't so much an issue for me.

Most of my LSD trips were spent in bright daylight or social settings and I always loved that (with LSD the open-eye visuals are more pronounced), while an LSD trip in the dark tends to be a bit boring (unless you take a sufficiently high dose, but then you really need a sober sitter around). Of course, each mushroom and LSD trip is different, but this is my general experience with psilcybin and acid.

Do you recall or can you find out what dose of mushrooms you took?

Had you ever experienced the full-blown effects of psilocybin prior to this trip?

Have you read books or web articles on the effects of mushrooms? If so, which?

Can you be more specific about the content of the bad trip?

For example, were your thoughts going in loops?
Did you feel uncomfortable about particular visual effects, or was it a general feeling of anxiety?
Did you feel anxious about 'losing your mind' or 'losing grip on reality'?
Were you obsessed with making the trip stop?
Was there any physical discomfort?

If you want to try acid, start with a low dose (if it's a blotter of unknown potency, try 1/4 for example). Learning to meditate or doing breathing exercises to calm the mind may help as well. For lots of good articles, go here:
http://psychonautdocs.com/

peace

 

[ParallelGold]

We tested them for legitimacy, weighed them and dosed them, I should of been on about a medium dose. There was myself and 3 others, all very close friends, and we took in a comfortable, familiar environment with chilled music, plenty of cushions, duvets etc.

That all sounds like a great setting, and good thing that you weighed them before ingestion. The only thing that is not clear from this description is whether the lights were dimmed or turned off. Especially with mushrooms (which give very vivid closed-eye visuals) this seems to be a major factor for me: lights on means a higher chance of feeling disoriented and uncomfortable, regardless of the music and company. With LSD this isn't so much an issue for me.

Most of my LSD trips were spent in bright daylight or social settings and I always loved that (with LSD the open-eye visuals are more pronounced), while an LSD trip in the dark tends to be a bit boring (unless you take a sufficiently high dose, but then you really need a sober sitter around). Of course, each mushroom and LSD trip is different, but this is my general experience with psilcybin and acid.

Do you recall or can you find out what dose of mushrooms you took?

Had you ever experienced the full-blown effects of psilocybin prior to this trip?

Have you read books or web articles on the effects of mushrooms? If so, which?

Can you be more specific about the content of the bad trip?

For example, were your thoughts going in loops?
Did you feel uncomfortable about particular visual effects, or was it a general feeling of anxiety?
Did you feel anxious about 'losing your mind' or 'losing grip on reality'?
Were you obsessed with making the trip stop?
Was there any physical discomfort?

If you want to try acid, start with a low dose (if it's a blotter of unknown potency, try 1/4 for example). Learning to meditate or doing breathing exercises to calm the mind may help as well. For lots of good articles, go here:
http://psychonautdocs.com/

peace

Thanks for the reply,

As for the lighting it was dimmed; well, the main light was off with a kind of blue neonish bulb as the main light source (It wasnt too strong or anything, in fact it was quite a deal weaker than the main bulb) as well as the cliched lave lamp and windows media player visualisations in tune to the music (not that we paid much attention to it.) I remember feeling rather claustraphobic in this light though, almost as if I was in a cage or dungeon.

H'well it started off generally feeling anxious, despite trying to calm myself, a bit like I was ill or, say, nervous before some really important exams. So i seperated myself from the others by moving across the room. I can remember feeling really disconnected from them; their laughter was quite chilling and scary, as was their expressions. A massive sense of unrest came upon me, I spent a great deal tossing and throwing, then I decided to close my eyes...

The main theme seemed to be, bizarely, "Simpsons" characters, or more specifically they would stare back at me with massive grins and wide eyes in a pscyopoath-esque manner, then every pore on their body would burst into blood. There was alot of exploding/boiling blood throughout the trip. Exploding penis' aswell (yeeeeeah...). Opened eye visual were tortured, twisted clown-esque faces everywhere, as mentioned before the room no longer resembled my friends room but a freakish cave of despair.

I tried fighting it, which I now know to of been a bad move, and indeed it intensfied it ten-fold. Self-worth and self-esteem plummeted, past issues and insecurites long forgotten where brought to the service and metaphorically prodded and poked at; I remember looking at my skin and hating myself, oh I had 'ants' crawling all over me at one point too.

I lost all sense of time, place, who I was, If I actually exsisted or if indeed the world did, and that I was in some other hellish dimension. I considered asking my friends to kill me at one point, but thought in their respective state's they wouldn't be up to the task. (Note: Im not a particularly negative or pessimistic person, but any release from the torment at the time seemed preferable to putting up with it.)

To answer your question, yes I did think I was going insane; I had an image in my head of being carted off to an institution to spend the rest of my days and yes, I was obsessed by getting it to stop, all detrimental to my cause I would imagine.

I felt very much like I couldnt actually process any of my own thoughts; I had horrible, horrible thoughts and images running through my head and I couldn't change the direction and think of anything positive, it was like my brain was broken.

Oh and yes, it was my first 'shroom trip, we used the "The shroomery dose calculator" from the respective website to find out how much in grams we needed for a trip, ranging from 1 to 5 in instensity, mine should of been a level 3, I cant remember the exact weight, I'll see if I can find the link. Oh and the scales were accurate, they were bought specifically for the occassion.

Thank you for your time.

 

[_Avatar_]

That sounds like a very normal psychedelic crisis. This just goes to show that even with the right dosage and an excellent set and setting a person may have a challenging and frightening trip. I have a lot to say about many of the things you mentioned, particularly the claustrophobic feelings you experienced. I want you to consider these things for yourself and then share them with your most trusted friend(s), who will be the sitter(s) for your next session.

 

[ParallelGold]

That sounds like a very normal psychedelic crisis. This just goes to show that even with the right dosage and an excellent set and setting a person may have a challenging and frightening trip. I have a lot to say about many of the things you mentioned, particularly the claustrophobic feelings you experienced. I want you to consider these things for yourself and then share them with your most trusted friend(s), who will be the sitter(s) for your next session.

I will do good sir, thank you for the advice. H'well a close friend and I have decided to broach me back in to the psycadelic universe with a low dosage of Salvia, although admittedly I know very little about it other than it is comparatively short-lived. Research will be conducted first rest assured. Any thoughts/guidance on the matter would be appreciated.

Oh, and I realise now a typo from my first post; My first pyschadelic experience was with Mescaline at a low/medium dosage, which opened the doors of perception and thus my further interest in pyschadelics...

Thanks in advance.

 

[_Avatar_]

A low dose of Salvia probably won't hurt, but remember that it's very much unlike mushrooms and LSD. An interesting tool to study the workings of the mind, but perhaps not really appropriate at this stage of your exploration.

I said I wanted to comment on some of the things you mentioned, but I somehow didn't get to it yet.

What psychedelics seem to do, amongst many other things, is activate some kind of inner radar, an intelligent search light that brings memories into focus that are emotionally relevant and ready to be processed. This was first noticed by psychologists who did research into the psychological effects and applications of LSD. These memories may be clear remembrances of events in this lifetime, or occur as mythological sequences and fantastic visions, including 'past life memories' or even alien abductions. Whatever the visual representation may be, it is important to go with the experience and not resist the feelings that are experienced. Remarkable healing occurs when you stay with these feelings (this is where one or two sitters can be of great help) and express them fully. This process tends to be self-limited, meaning that once you've gone through the depth of the emotion and perhaps found the root cause of it, the energetic charge is released and you reach a state of tranquility and euphoria. In some people this means they first have to go through a very intense experience of ego-death and spiritual rebirth. This is another phase of the process the sitters can help you get through, because on your own you may not feel secure (and sane!) enough to let go, surrender and let the ego (the false self) die. Sitters can also be of great help putting on appropriate evocative music for the different phases of the experience.

I remember feeling rather claustraphobic in this light though, almost as if I was in a cage or dungeon.

What is of importance here are the feelings and sensations you had. In the psychedelic state this claustrophobic feeling may manifest in a variety of visionary experiences: being in a cage, a prison or dungeon, or feeling stuck in a cave or some kind of futuristic machine. There may also be remembrances from this life, like being trapped in a broken elevator when you were a kid.

I cannot say what it is exactly that made you experience these feelings, this is something you must find out yourself, in the psychedelic state. I will however point out that you did experience something (long ago) that may very well have given rise to these sensations. Let me first comment on some of the other aspects of your report, however.

The main theme seemed to be, bizarely, "Simpsons" characters, or more specifically they would stare back at me with massive grins and wide eyes in a pscyopoath-esque manner, then every pore on their body would burst into blood. There was alot of exploding/boiling blood throughout the trip.

If these visions were somehow powered by something you experienced in the past, what could it be? Which psychopathic energy threatened you? When did you witness blood everywhere?

Exploding penis' aswell (yeeeeeah...).

Of course, the sexual energy, for that event you experienced long ago was your first sexual experience as well. It was the first sexual experience for all of us. In the psychedelic state this energy may be experienced in visions of harems, orgies, BDSM chambers etc.

Opened eye visual were tortured, twisted clown-esque faces everywhere, as mentioned before the room no longer resembled my friends room but a freakish cave of despair.

You're stuck, it seems the world wants to crush you, but you can't go anywhere...

I tried fighting it, which I now know to of been a bad move, and indeed it intensfied it ten-fold. Self-worth and self-esteem plummeted,

Yes, agonizing guilt, absolute despair, intense feelings of worthlessness, even suicidal thoughts.

(Note: Im not a particularly negative or pessimistic person, but any release from the torment at the time seemed preferable to putting up with it.)

Yes, it's hellish. You want the torture to end, whatever may be required. But nothing can be done. You can only wait and push through.

I had horrible, horrible thoughts and images running through my head and I couldn't change the direction and think of anything positive, it was like my brain was broken.

Heh, that's your ego that was sorta malfunctioning. Your defense mechanisms were failing you, and material from your unconscious was flooding into your awareness (to some extent distorted by the synesthetic effects of psilocybin). Unless of course you want to believe trips open the mind up to either fantasy or a real hell.

I believe they do involve the imagination (fantasy) as far as the thematic renderings of the visions are concerned, but that the feelings are not imagined, they are real, in the sense that they were once experienced but not integrated, and so 'stuck' in your 'emotional body' with corresponding blocks in your physical body. Those feelings and experienced that were not properly integrated are spotted by the inner radar of the psychedelic state and then re-experienced.

So again, I cannot say I know what caused your feelings of claustrophobia, but it very much sounds like you were re-experiencing your own birth. Because birth is the only experience we all went through that involves blood, being stuck until the uterus opens (which typically is a state that generates deep feelings of inadequacy and guilt), being threatened by 'evil' contractions that suffocate and hurt us, intense sexual arousal, destruction of the old world and an explosive release into a new world of blinding light.

When tripping for the first few times, everyone may suddenly re-experience his or her own agonizing birth, but it is especially likely if for some reason the birth had been problematic.

So ParallelGold, if there were complications during your delivery or if it took many hours, your claustrophobic feelings may have been generated around that time. As a small baby you had enough awareness to notice and remember the agony, but you lacked any intellectual or verbal means of explaining to yourself what happened, and because you couldn't cry in the birth canal, there was no way of expressing these intense emotions (fear, pain etc.). Next time you have such feelings during a trip, simply go with them. Keep your eyes closed and let your friends assure you that your body is in a safe condition and that you should keep your attention focused within. Let it be spooky and crazy, just keep paying attention, and if you feel like crying or shouting, do so. If you experience the moment of your birth itself, surrender to the sense of dying so that you may be reborn. Once reborn, your friends should hug you like a loving mother and father would. This experience can be profoundly healing and aside from that a gateway into vast mystical dimensions. Once the birth trauma has been worked through, the journey doesn't stop. At that point, with the tension released, one usually experiences feelings of cosmic unity with all that is (resembling the feelings of unity and maternal sustenance experienced by the baby during the pregnancy itself). This opens doors to all kinds of profound spiritual experiences.

You can find several documents about this approach on the page I mentioned earlier. Most articles were written by transpersonal psychologists. You can find an overview of transpersonal theory and the relevance of the birth trauma here.

 

[Crimzen]

Thank you very much avatar!