Are bad bad trips worse than nightmares?

[electronDegenerate]

I have heard really bad trips described as an inescapable nightmare before so perhaps at a certain level there isn't much of a difference.

 

[Img_9999]

but I definitely have a fucking trauma from spending my entire childhood afraid of going to bed.

Yeah, I can see how consistently having disturbing dreams could do that, but that sounds more like parasomnia than simply "having a nightmare". I guess the influence a single nightmare can have over you psyche, no matter how vivid or terrifying, will start to fade away after a couple of weeks at max. A single bad trip, on the other hand, can have consequences lasting months. I mean people can have psychotic episodes during bad trips. I don't know if its possible to go psychotic while dreaming. Maybe it is.

Anyway, kind of a pointless discussion, because what one experiences as "worst" will of course vary individually.

 

[deficiT]

They both suck in their own ways. Although I think sleep paralysis is the worst type of sleep conditions. That can be absolutely terrifying, especially if you start seeing/feeling the dark presence or whatever it is.

I feel like our brains can go to similar places when we're dreaming and when we're tripping.

 

[burn out]

You must have cute nightmares, or very bad bad trips

90% of my dreams have been nightmares since I can remember, and they fucking get me by the throat every time. In a trip, at least I know I'm tripping - my nightmares are super tricky at making me think I'm awake

I've had lots of bad dreams and nightmares as well, probably not as bad as some other people, but the good thing about nightmares is that usually when I wake up I feel a ton of relief or at least the horror fades as I go about the day. Not so with bad trips. Of course I am talking about really bad trips, not I had a scary or emotionally unpleasant experience but I'm fine now 6 hours later, I am talking about the type of bad trips where you permanently lose a major part of yourself, the trips that completely shatter your mind and cast the shards into every corner of the universe, stripping away any sense of meaning in anything and leave you in a state of utter hopelessness where absolutely nothing makes sense.

 

[Chris Timothy]

I mean I guess when you dream and when you're tripping, you're sort of in the same realm of subconsciousness. You're just hooking up to the supercomputer that your brain actually is.

Pardon the upcoming derailment, I've little to say on the topic of dreams as mine are generally uninteresting. I've only achieved lucid dreaming once after a stim binge, and torture of a conscious actor can't compare to torture in a less involuted state. But this kind of metaphor has become a pet peeve of mine, please grant me a rant / public service announcement. Because there are multiple chasms of complexity difference missing in the comparison of a mind with a computer, or with a supercomputer, which conventionally denotes a merely extra powerful, still mere computer.

First of all, if we do insist that this time in history we've got the identification of ourselves with our technological trinkets right, then calling a brain an Internet might be closer to the truth. A single neuron is complex enough to warrant comparison with a whole computer. The first model of this reports preliminary success.

But more importantly, the functional equivalence between carbon and silicon is not tenable. There are mathematically precise ways to prove that the mind can't be a mere Turing machine, but put succinctly, consider that our minds don't fundamentally suffer from the halting problem. They do in some instances, in the form of compulsions and addictions and the like. But the fact these turn out "curable diseases" means that these can't be true halting problems, but rather an insistence on refraining to halt by a supra-computational system for reasons temporarily hidden to itself. The trouble is that if one believes one is a mere machine, the consequent behaviour will be rather machine-like, and it becomes rather obvious mind is a mere computer from simply observing one's own actions. Through some contemporary academic philosophers this generates this whole body of rationalization for a 19th century worldview in the 21th century where the overinflation of the inherent excitement over computer science is profitable intellectual commodity. I think we're all better off disabusing ourselves of this notion both for reasons of mental health and for avoiding accelerated self-destruction as we're weaving so-called AI into the nuclear stalemate, where of course a blue screen of death will imply a blue planet of death.

At least it's on the topic of nightmares I suppose.

 

[TripSitterNZ]

i mastered lucid dreaming as a teen so i don't really get nightmares anymore but every time i do trip i get intense dreams of all the unresolved emotions of childhood it kind of helps me process them all and forgive.


But i totally conquered nightmares in a lucid dream. It invovled the same nightmares i always got of this demonic beast chasing me murdering me til i became lucid turned around and gave it a hug and absorbed it into my being never seen it again after that. but for 15 years it would show up in my dreams 3-5 times a week.

Nightmares are usually a shadow aspect of your self you are supressing and i highly recommend learning lucid dreaming and then hugging your nightmare it will totally change the content of your dreams from that moment.

 

[December Flower]

i mastered lucid dreaming as a teen so i don't really get nightmares anymore but every time i do trip i get intense dreams of all the unresolved emotions of childhood it kind of helps me process them all and forgive.


But i totally conquered nightmares in a lucid dream. It invovled the same nightmares i always got of this demonic beast chasing me murdering me til i became lucid turned around and gave it a hug and absorbed it into my being never seen it again after that. but for 15 years it would show up in my dreams 3-5 times a week.

Nightmares are usually a shadow aspect of your self you are supressing and i highly recommend learning lucid dreaming and then hugging your nightmare it will totally change the content of your dreams from that moment.

The only thing becoming lucid ever does is wake me up.

 

[Juniper Bruhmomentius]

Bad trips can make you barely be able to function aka you find it fucking hard to act like a normal person

 

[thegreenhand]

yeah i used to be in the "no bad trips just difficult ones" camp for a while. but i've changed my mind

as @TripSitterNZ was saying, there is a point of no return where your mind leaves this earth and enters the hellvoid. you can experience repeated death for what may as well be an eternity and have no idea that you're even on drugs. you just think that you have died and gone to hell. but the worst part is coming back from that death and not realizing that it was all in your mind. so you think that you've been reborn into heaven and that your actions have no consequences. so you start screaming at 3 am. or you try to run through the street naked. or you try to open the door of a moving car that your trip sitter is driving to take you home.

obv that got a little personal in my recount. but the point is, there is a point of no return at which point one is no longer just "working through challenges and repressed feelings" but is completely separated from any sense of reality and enters full blown psychosis. and at that point one can harm themselves or others and there is NOTHING that can be of benefit from that.

and do note. i'm not saying that psychosis is inherent to violence, not at all. but when you're that far detached from reality you may have no idea what your actions are actually leading to

 

[Juniper Bruhmomentius]

Those kinda bad trips take a lot of time to heal. You completely neglect all and any responsibilities and you need to start focusing on yourself and find new hobbies, basic life and stuff to get back to "normalcy".

Just like how I think Im addicted to amphetamines...? Naa, Im addicted to the stimulant psychosis it brings.

 

[thegreenhand]

Those kinda bad trips take a lot of time to heal. You completely neglect all and any responsibilities and you need to start focusing on yourself and find new hobbies, basic life and stuff to get back to "normalcy".

indeed they do. that trip was last march and over that summer i did 3 months of (sober) soul searching. i still think about that night a lot but i've accepted what happened. at first i had a lot of trouble with even trying to conceptualize what i had experienced.

i did a lot of running and cycling that summer which really helped me find some semblance of peace. and recently this winter i've been going on running "trips" where i go to some 15-25 mile backpacking trail and run the whole thing in one day. the feeling of conquering the wilderness like that, all alone, is eerily similar to the psychedelic headspace

Just like how I think Im addicted to amphetamines...? Naa, Im addicted to the stimulant psychosis it brings.

lol that is some brutal self honesty my friend

i've never experienced amphetamine psychosis personally. after the inital dose starts to wear off my body starts crashing and shutting down, i can't even imagine taking enough to stay up for days on end. can i ask how does stimulant psychosis differ in experience from psychedelic psychosis?

 

[Nightraver]

My bad trips have been anxious and demanding, but far from that feeling I have when waking up to a dark house and it feels like I'm the lead in a horror movie

Hey man look at it like this if you’re the main character and not a supporting role then you have to survive
Kind of like wearing a red shirt on an away mission on the Enterprise you just know those dudes are walking dead

 

[Juniper Bruhmomentius]

Stimulant psychosis is hella anxiety inducing but you stay somewhat sane. + paranoia. Im usually just mildly psychotic unless Im fully in psychosis and then its the same old trauma delusions and hallucinations

Psychedelic is way more wild and all over the place

 

[thegreenhand]

Yeah with psychedelic it definitely started with paranoia but it didn’t take long for it it to spiral into something that I completely lack the words to describe lmao

it almost seems like a spectrum of Anxiety —> paranoia —> Delusions —> full blown psychosis

 

[justme6263]

I've never had the classic 'bad trip' although there was one before where somehow I believed I was in a coma or something and the friends I could hear were visiting me, I wouldn't see them for my whole vision was taken up by shifting black and white geometric patterns, music sounded like it had all the air sucked out of it and had a menacing quality. It lasted for around an hour and a half all in all but at the time I had no clue how long it had been, after that it went quite well and I had fun again. Thinking back it was quite horrible but it doesn't quite seem like the text book definition of a bad trip to me.

Still though, it was fucking horrible while it lasted. Much worse than a nightmare.

 

[pupnik]

lots of people who never did drugs do have lingering effects from their nightmares - in both cases the life up to the trip or up to the nightmare influences the nature of the dream/trip.

 

[quaalMan]

I think that bad trips are a lot more dangerous than nightmares because you can act them out

Exactly, for bad dreams (including sleep paralysis) you will wake up and be fine. A bad psych trip can leave you with lots of consequences.

I've had sleep paralysis and cold sweat level nightmares but they mentally pale in comparison to my bad 15g+ mushroom + 30x salvia trip that wrecked me mentally for over a year. And unfortunately that was outdone by DOC + JWH + NO2 (Being irresponsible I know) that ended in the ER after suffering massive blood loss. Although that did pretty much force me to kick many bad habits, so some silver lining.

 

[emkee_reinvented]

Would I have to choose give me a bad trip rather then a nightmare.

But i read bad trips can have persisting effects. Nightmares as afaik don't so seem safer.

Maybe I never had a bad, bad trip. My nightmares are something I try to avoid they suck big time. And are so realistic it makes me sick for the day after, mentally sick.

 

[20PrivacyIsOurRight21]

Once you realize youre creating it, the "bad" trips can be the most enjoyable from my experience.

 

[December Flower]

Exactly, for bad dreams (including sleep paralysis) you will wake up and be fine. A bad psych trip can leave you with lots of consequences.

I've had sleep paralysis and cold sweat level nightmares but they mentally pale in comparison to my bad 15g+ mushroom + 30x salvia trip that wrecked me mentally for over a year. And unfortunately that was outdone by DOC + JWH + NO2 (Being irresponsible I know) that ended in the ER after suffering massive blood loss. Although that did pretty much force me to kick many bad habits, so some silver lining.

rly depends on: 15g+ of what mushroom?
I just wanna know how much of a crazy dude you are :D

any of the shit that's available here, and 15g: you're whacked out of your mind forever.

Well I'm glad you kicked those habits, sounds like very bad habits.