Acid use, too much? Any advice needed.

[greenuser8]

Hi everyone, I wanted to ask those experienced with psychedelics what they take of my experiences, and what I've come out with.

My question was basically about what psychedelics could've done to me. Regarding bettering me and/or permanent damage I could've done to myself-

Firstly, I've been diagnosed with GAD and OCD when I was 16, although it was so much worse before when I was 15, 16, and 17. I remember panicking very easily, and my thoughts always controlled me.

I'm 19 now. It's been 8 months since I did acid. I first smoked weed when I just turned 18, and fell in love with it. I was pretty anti-drug before this. About a month after discovering weed, I started stoning daily. When I had a low tolerance, I had pretty anxious highs often, but it didn't offset me.

I also want to mention, when I started smoking weed, I also started 50mg of Zoloft a day. And stupidly enough never got to feel its full effects since I stoned the whole 9 months on it.

--

All my tripping took place during the summer of 2016.

In June, I did 1 tab of acid and felt the most euphoric I've felt in my life. I perceived everything like I hadn't seen it before, and it really got amazing once I smoked weed with it. Although, I didn't understand "tripping balls", or really tripping too much. All I can say is, my mind felt liberated in the most beautiful world.

^ That feeling was amazing. And so, I tried shrooms in July (over 1 month later). I did 3.5g, and again, had the most amazing trip especially while smoking on it. I remember one part of the trip, feeling all my mental stress/strain leaving my body, the most therapeutic and euphoric feeling.

Of course, now I thought I could handle anything, and wanted this feeling some more.

Here's where my question comes in:

Come August, my friend and I really wanted the experience of acid again, that same euphoria. We stupidly dropped 2 tabs of an unknown dosage (I heard they were strong, one of my friends estimated ~100mcg each)

And of course, after smoking weed, I went into a bad trip pretty quickly. However, after 1-2 hours of panicking, I escaped my bad trip and my friend went in his bad trip. I felt extremely relieved I escaped it, as it was the worst terror, but afterwards I thought how beautiful the world was again, and how it was all a manifestation of my own head. A weird trip for sure. My friend stayed psychologically messed up for the rest of the day, he didn't really get out of his bad trip like I did.

Now, this is the really dumb part. Me and my friend both didn't know much to think about the bad trips, we didn't know what to take from it. It felt bad, sure, but I remembered that amazing feeling off the other trips.

We both decided that we wanted another trip, with just one tab, and then we would be done. We wanted to "reset" the memory of the bad trip and have a good trip to end our tripping days.

Stupidly enough, we dropped one tab of the same batch a week and 5 days later. So 12 days later.

Immediately, I knew something didn't feel right. As we were slowly coming up, we both decided we felt ungrounded and popped a valium.

Basically wasting the whole trip and learning nothing off it. I swore not to touch LSD again. I had this whole revelation of "WTF did I just do, acid AGAIN so closely spanned?!"

Now, 8 months later, I can say without a doubt I learned a ton off my trips, including to not mess with your brain like that again, and that these drugs are such powerful tools that shouldn't be used to "get high" off of.

About a month ago, I stopped stoning so hard due to getting caught (which I'm sort of grateful for). I'm now smoking no more than once a week, and I feel my sober life is happy since I'm exercising and doing well in school. I did however smoke pretty much daily since the trips. And my weed high's definitely changed.

But sometimes, the thought of "I did so much LSD" can creep up and sort of upset me.

My questions are:

1) My OCD and GAD are so much better now, off SSRI medication and off weed for self-medicating. I feel it's so much harder to make me panic after my bad trip. I've experienced core fear, accepted my death, and now simple anxious thoughts don't effect my world anymore. Should this be attributed to the Zoloft I was on? The self medicating with weed? Or the LSD/shroom use?

For example: Before LSD, weed used to make me panic a lot. Now when smoking weed, even if I get derealized (which has happened twice, usually when anxious, and it seemed to have stopped) I can hold my shit very well. I have a greater understanding of me and my conscience, and it's harder to freak me out, actually hasn't happened in a while. My friend who I tripped with, actually can't smoke anymore now. He nearly panics when he has low tolerance, and he never did this before his trips.

Even OCD thoughts, I still have them, they just don't scare me like they used to. I get over them very quickly, and have a greater quality of life. Socially too, I'm much more confident.

Just not sure if this is related to my psychedelic use. I hope it is.

2) Did I overdo acid drastically? Could it have a permanent effect on me? In a bad way? That third trip in particular, of doing it 12 days later and then just taking a valium.

3) Visually, I do notice a lot of visual snow only in dark area at night. I also notice cool looking halos around lights. Although these don't really bother me- I assume just by smoking weed once a week I'm keeping them there. Would this go away if I stopped smoking completely?

Just to give an example of my current mindset after LSD (bad trip in particular) is: I was offered MDMA a month ago. My friend is still holding onto it actually. I drug tested it, and it's really good stuff. Pre-trip days, I would've been like "fuck yeah".

However, I am curious to use it, but decided I'm just not going to. I've felt extremely euphoric just off my trips, and now the image of my serotonin being depleted for temporary happiness (which I've already experienced) just isn't so appealing nor worth it, especially since I seem to have some minor HPPD.

--

But anyways, thanks to all who read this, and I look forward to reading all your advice.

 

[Clocktower]

1) Maybe the improvement of your symptoms is related to your LSD use, maybe not. With the current science as limited as it is, it's really difficult to be sure about how any drug or medication influences these conditions. It's not too crazy an idea, but it is by no means certain. The best thing you can do is embrace the positive change and make the most of it moving forward, without worrying too much about the why.

2) Four trips in three months? That's not drastic at all, and most people wouldn't even qualify it as a binge. Many people, myself included, find that we prefer not to keep up that pace for an extended period of time, but tripping a few times in a few months is no problem. It also seems that you learned that taking two doses and smoking Cannabis was not a good idea for you (as is true for many others.) So, keep paying attention to yourself and with time you will feel better than fine. Maybe cut back on the weed if you want to feel more normal more quickly.

3) As I mentioned above, smoking less will help you feel more normal. As for MDMA: You seem wise enough to use it conservatively, so I suggest that you use it if you feel like using it, and otherwise do not.

 

[Kaleida]

You've got nothing to worry about, friend.

There are people here who have taken LSD and other psychedelics literally hundreds or even thousands of times and in extremely high doses. Many of them tripped twice as much or more than you have total in their first month. Some of us have tried over twenty or thirty different kinds of psychedelics and our brains aren't broken yet.

You'll be fine, what you've done isn't even close to damaging. And it sounds like you've benefited from your experiences too, so that's good.... When you have a negative experience like that on a generally safe psychedelic like LSD it typically just means there's some form of discomfort you need to work past to be able to enjoy yourself again. If you know that that discomfort is there because of some unavoidable life situation then tripping at the moment might not be a great idea, but if it's just some psychological issue you can work past then it can actually be a really great opportunity to work past it. Many of us here have gone from totally euphoric trips to weird and panicky ones back to totally euphoric ones again. Just having a couple bad trips doesn't mean you need to call it quits, and if you do without resolving those feelings you may find yourself feeling even worse afterward since those things do need to be worked on....

Don't worry about mild HPPD either. Also very common here and not a problem at all if you just don't stress over it and ignore it.... It's been years since I've seen it at any time I didn't specifically look for it. Even tripping hard doesn't bring it out for me anymore.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.

 

[greenuser8]

1) Maybe the improvement of your symptoms is related to your LSD use, maybe not. With the current science as limited as it is, it's really difficult to be sure about how any drug or medication influences these conditions. It's not too crazy an idea, but it is by no means certain. The best thing you can do is embrace the positive change and make the most of it moving forward, without worrying too much about the why.

2) Four trips in three months? That's not drastic at all, and most people wouldn't even qualify it as a binge. Many people, myself included, find that we prefer not to keep up that pace for an extended period of time, but tripping a few times in a few months is no problem. It also seems that you learned that taking two doses and smoking Cannabis was not a good idea for you (as is true for many others.) So, keep paying attention to yourself and with time you will feel better than fine. Maybe cut back on the weed if you want to feel more normal more quickly.

3) As I mentioned above, smoking less will help you feel more normal. As for MDMA: You seem wise enough to use it conservatively, so I suggest that you use it if you feel like using it, and otherwise do not.

Thanks a lot for the reply, and interesting points. Will definitely cut back on weed even more-so after 4/20 hits.

You've got nothing to worry about, friend.

There are people here who have taken LSD and other psychedelics literally hundreds or even thousands of times and in extremely high doses. Many of them tripped twice as much or more than you have total in their first month. Some of us have tried over twenty or thirty different kinds of psychedelics and our brains aren't broken yet.

You'll be fine, what you've done isn't even close to damaging. And it sounds like you've benefited from your experiences too, so that's good.... When you have a negative experience like that on a generally safe psychedelic like LSD it typically just means there's some form of discomfort you need to work past to be able to enjoy yourself again. If you know that that discomfort is there because of some unavoidable life situation then tripping at the moment might not be a great idea, but if it's just some psychological issue you can work past then it can actually be a really great opportunity to work past it. Many of us here have gone from totally euphoric trips to weird and panicky ones back to totally euphoric ones again. Just having a couple bad trips doesn't mean you need to call it quits, and if you do without resolving those feelings you may find yourself feeling even worse afterward since those things do need to be worked on....

Don't worry about mild HPPD either. Also very common here and not a problem at all if you just don't stress over it and ignore it.... It's been years since I've seen it at any time I didn't specifically look for it. Even tripping hard doesn't bring it out for me anymore.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.

Also very interesting, thanks for the response. I believe I know why I had such a bad trip. Before I even popped the tabs, I was worried they could've been research chems. My young, naive mind at the time simply thought "if it's not bitter and doesn't numb the tongue you're good!", and it was tasteless. But when tripping, the feeling of tripping once I smoked a blunt simply turned scary. I was getting very quick mood swings right after I smoked. They were either fun, like a rollercoaster, and then it quickly switched to scary back and forth, before entering the worst panic. I remember looking at my arm, and seeing my skin crawling. I knew this was just an illusion of the drug, and managed to stop looking, but clearly my mind was going to a negative spot.

The negative experience I had was simply being blown out of my body with sensory overload, mindfuck feeling, and me thinking I took fake shit and "losing it" (which I think was ego-death, hard to actually remember too well). I was grasping onto dear life.

I do remember during the bad trip trying to listen to the radio, and hearing nothing but gibberish. I also remember opening my eyes at one point trying to recognize what was in front of my face, and saw the whole world changing from green to red, and warping literally everywhere. Was pretty scary, and I believe I was derealized at the time since it was hard to even recognize what I was looking at.

Also- bad set and setting. In my car at a park. I even remember having the AC blasted due to my panicking, and I felt the vents and it felt like heat, I was panicking that hard. Was really worried I might just convulse/have a heart attack and die right there.

BUT- I saw my friend was holding up just fine, and since I was used to panic from a younger age, I escaped my bad trip with "oh shit that was nothing but a huge panic attack".

Once my friend entered his bad trip, I got bent on trying to bring him out of it, and I was actually super relieved that I wasn't abnormal here. I even drove him to a different spot, I was that confident I wasn't going to re-enter my bad trip. He had no experience with anxiety, and didn't enjoy the rest of the day.

I'd still be hesitant to take acid again today though, simply because the bad trip has caused on rare occasion the feeling of derealization only when I smoke weed, and I still really enjoy weed. Not so concerned about the feeling itself though, just knowing I had trauma that caused that to happen when toking.

I wouldn't want to panic like that again, that's the only reason I wouldn't touch L nowadays. I learned a ton off it and saw what it had to offer, and that's what my mind was curious about.

I'm off meds, and naturally an anxious person. Reading your responses, I think I made out lucky if anything.

Again, thanks for the replies. Really appreciate the info and knowledge.

 

[Volsam]

I agree with Clocktower and Kaleida!

I was grasping onto dear life.

^^^ Very important realization that psychedelics offer.

I'd also suggest trying to learn meditation techniques even just for the sake of better set/setting - meditate before going in to serious trip for just 10-15 minutes and it will make a HUGE difference.

Also, try finding a tibetan signing bowl and learn how to play it - that's what I use when I completely "loose my shit" on acid. It brought me and many of my friends many many times back from paranoia and delusions to feeling awesome and enjoying the trip fully. I highly recommend it to any psychonaut. IMO learning to focus your attention is critical with psychedelics and life in general, so meditation and especially meditation with singing bowls are awesome exercises for it!

Good luck and be safe!

 

[greenuser8]

I agree with Clocktower and Kaleida!


^^^ Very important realization that psychedelics offer.

I'd also suggest trying to learn meditation techniques even just for the sake of better set/setting - meditate before going in to serious trip for just 10-15 minutes and it will make a HUGE difference.

Also, try finding a tibetan signing bowl and learn how to play it - that's what I use when I completely "loose my shit" on acid. It brought me and many of my friends many many times back from paranoia and delusions to feeling awesome and enjoying the trip fully. I highly recommend it to any psychonaut. IMO learning to focus your attention is critical with psychedelics and life in general, so meditation and especially meditation with singing bowls are awesome exercises for it!

Good luck and be safe!

Volsam- thanks for your response. Also, for some reason, your post towards me about meditating clicked something in my brain. I just looked up meditation techniques for beginners, and I'm definitely trying it out. I could use peace of mind in simple day-to-day life, and this might just be the trick. Will do 5 minutes morning and night for the next week and see how it goes. Really appreciate that. Thanks again.

 

[Volsam]

Volsam- thanks for your response.

You're very welcome!
My first strong mushroom trip brought me to start learning meditation and so far it has been an exciting path to more wonders and learning the limits of control.

IMO meditation should be considered as a general subject for children in school starting from the very young age. Looking back in my childhood, if I'd know how to control my attention back then, I'd benefit in life A LOT more...