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[Bad Trip Subthread] How to handle or prevent a bad trip

I think Panic and Fear of something unknown is what defines a bad trip.
Good trips are defined by joy and fun.
Bad ones, at least for me, by fear. Its irrational, but its there sometimes and there's fuck all that I can do about it.
 
I haven't had a bad trip in a long time, but I remember what happened when i did. in my experience, bad trips can vary greatly epending on what substances you take.

mushrooms: my "bad" trips on these involved taking large doses ,then thinking i was for some reason going to die or remain tripping for the rest of my life. these types of trips only happened early in my tripping, eventually i learned that the key to avoiding them is 1) set & settin (of course) and 2), importantly, to remember that no matter what, in a couple hours the effects of the drug will subside and you WILL return to normal. now whenever i take a high dose of fungus and the come on gets a little uncomfortable, i just sit down, relax, and remind myself that in 30 mins to an hour my trip will be sensational, b/c many times the best trips start out uncomfortable

LSD: i have only had 2 "bad" trips on lsd, one of them purely because i was in a shitty setting with no way of leaving (downside to driving a standard transmission car, my friends couldnt drive it home). The only other negative effect i've had from lsd also involved taking too much, and experienceing a very intense, uncomfortable rushing as the doses came on. i had eaten 3 hits and was tripping well, then my friend gave me 4 more, intending for it to be 2 but accidentally squirting out 4. they came on really strong and i could feel my soul? ego? slipping away from me and i was becoming part of the stars and universe. however, the rushing caused me anxiety, which made it hard for me to "let go" and led to worries about me being crazy after the trip ended. eventually the rushing subsided and the trip was nice, but still a little uncomforatble, and the next day my emotions were all out of wack (crying for no reason, etc).

for me, the only negative worry i get sometimes about lsd is that i'm going to be crazy afterwards. I think this is partially to blame on lsd's crazy cosmic nature, and also on how long lsd lasts and the slow gradual way that the trip ends. like the first poster said, i would *highly* reccomend making it a policy of keeping benzos or sleeping pills on hand when you take lsd. benzos are really helpful if you get some anxiety during your trip, and benzos or ambien are crucial to have as "landing gear" so you can sleep after lsd.

i havent had any bad experience from any other substances. salvia was terrifying, but thats salvia
 
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"Bad trips" tend to happen for one of two reasons. One is when the setting turns bad and things begin happening out of control, such as someone going psychotic, or the police interrupting, or something like that. This kind of bad trip can be prevented by planning your trip, or making sure you don't have the possibility of that kind of situation coming up.

The other kind is what you're probably thinking of. it happens when there is a repressed (or unrepressed) issue that comes up from your subconsciousness while on a psychedelic and you have to confront it. To me, this is the essence of what tripping is about, especially your early trips where you have not yet faced your demons. People will sometimes run away from the personal issue they come face-to-face with and try to re-repress it with other drugs or with denial, or both. This is dangerous. The issue has not gone away and you have only made it worse. In my opinion the only way to truly have a lasting bad trip is if you fail to face the issues brought forth by thye psychedelic. However, if you face the issues and do not try to abort the trip, then what you have is a difficult trip. It will probably not be fun, or at least parts of it will be really hard to get through, but by the end you will have made some progress with the issue and hopefully resolved it and gotten to know yourself better. Then you emerge from the difficult trip a better person and the issue is gone from you beyond the end of the trip.

This is why psychedelics can be very useful tools for psychotherapy.

My early trips were fraught with anxiety and fear. Then once I worked through my issues it got much lighter and easier to be removed from myself.

Incidentally, the process of ego death (which is where powerful psychedelics are going to take you as you move up in dosage) is usually very difficult and frightening the first time, and tends to bring up these kinds of issues. But there is so much to learn in that place.

Mushrooms have provided me with my most difficult and my most valuable trips, for what it's worth. In my opinion mushrooms are the most difficult psychedelic when you get into higher doses.
 
bad trip?

I've taken LSD several times, and I've had wonderful self ritcheous experiences. Except one time, a couple months ago me and my best friend and our boyfriends got some LSD and decided to go camping. The day of our trip it was pouring rain, the first rain we'd seen in AZ in months. Silly girls we are, we talked them into still going and me and my friend set up our tent at 9 at night in the pouring rain RIGHT next to the creek, thinking it would stop. Our plan was to take the blotter in the morning. When the morning came, the rain has stopped, but the creek was a discusting brown color and all the shit from upstream has caused a big pile of foam. [later, while tripping it looked like hot chocolate with whipped cream!]

anyways, we all took 2 hits each, and started walking around the "jungle". not even ten minutes later, we started to feel the effects. Ive never come up the way I did. We were actually coming up. our breathing began to speed up, and my friends hand got stuck in this certain position. we tried meditation to make that annoying anxiety go away, but once we started trippping we were just taken by everything around us. It was incredibile. Every heartbeat, it seemed like the trip became more and more intense. Everything was going fine, until we became fascinated with trying to built a bridge over the creek to make it to the other side. trippin balls, I for some reason thought I could just walk acroos, and ended up falling into the brown creek. I didnt really have many clothes to change into but I mananged to find some in my car parked at the trail head. But from there, things were a little shitty. It wasn't like I was freaking out or anything, but this constant nagging of getting clean was all I could think about, while trippng balls. I kept feeling and thinking there were slugs on me or some kind of nasty swamp creature. than I would center myself, and be okay.

all in all we ended up packing our shit up somehow, and going back to my boyfriends house. It was beautiful day in SEDONA AZ, [check it out online and you'll see why I like trippin in my hometown! ITS A TRIP IN ITSELF!] we all took showers and laid on his porch and looked up at the sky, and could see the molecules of the deepest parts making constelations. I felt new and clean, much like I was rolling.

So all in all, what I learned from this experience:
1. go camping and bring extra clothes
2.dont hurry a trip; we should have waited til the next day to take it
3.dont go camping after a rain storm
4.listen to the beatles, it was what kept us sane.

AND TRIP THE FUCK OUT!!!!!!!!!!!
happy journeys~
 
Xorkoth said:
"Bad trips" tend to happen for one of two reasons.
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^^ I don't think those are the *real* causes. IMO a bad trip is caused by the attempt to fight/flee your own reactions, not by the stimuli themselves.
Of course the unpleasant stimuli increase the chance of that happening.
 
Good point.

Geegee's post
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That is a good example of how to not have a bad trip. Some difficult things happened, but you rode it out and went with it.
 
I'm with the OP. I have tripped many, many times, sometimes on heroic doses, have experienced ego death, have believed I was going to physically die, been in difficult and unpleasant situations, had cops show up & needed to interact with them, had to "maintain" in front of immediate family members during the comedown... but I have never had a bad trip. To me, a bad trip is a really traumatic experience, the kind of thing that makes you cringe inside to remember it. I have memories like that, but none of them involve drugs.
 
geegee123 said:
4.listen to the beatles, it was what kept us sane.
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Heh, you're not the first person I've heard say this. Although I've never tried it for myself or anyone else during a bad trip, I've heard some anecdotes saying it was extremely helpful. Granted, this probably only applies to those of us for whom Beatles music was a big (and comforting part) of our earlier/formative years, which happens to be many millions of people, so...
 
BodhiSvaha33 said:
I'm with the OP. I have tripped many, many times, sometimes on heroic doses, have experienced ego death, have believed I was going to physically die, been in difficult and unpleasant situations, had cops show up & needed to interact with them, had to "maintain" in front of immediate family members during the comedown... but I have never had a bad trip. To me, a bad trip is a really traumatic experience, the kind of thing that makes you cringe inside to remember it. I have memories like that, but none of them involve drugs.
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Agreed. Some of my most difficult experiences in life have been on psychedelics, and yet I remember each fondly in retrospect as it taught me something. It's all about how you handle it internally. The key is to not repress or deny. Accept, and move forward.
 
Bad trip= negative mental state induced by ingestion of psychedelic drug; not neccesarily corresponding to anything in the sensual realm; psychotic anxiety; violent break from reality.

OR-

Conistentent fear/anxiety/panic spiralling out of control...

BUT- the first; a psychptic flipout is what I would call a 'bad trip'- a difficult trip is one riddled with anxiety, but, by god, there is ALWAYS a reason for that which is worth finding out.

It also must be remembered somebody's good is another persons bad....

:):):):):):)
 
I've never actually had a "bad" trip myself. I've had mediocre trips, and poor responses with DXM due to being enzyme deficient, but I've never feared for my life.
 
The first two times I tripped, I learnt to deal with the panic and fear that could potentially cause 'bad' trips. Like Xorkoth and others have said, its all about planning and being in a comfortable environment. Nowadays, I don't get fearful on acid anymore - I tell myself that my experience is only about 12hrs and to enjoy it while it lasts.

I do get physical discomfort from high doses and that could be purely physiological - maybe my mind trying to fight the ego dissolution process? My legs tense up and start shaking uncontrollably. I imagine Magnesium might help.

I have never run away or try to escape any difficult issues that come up. I embrace it and fully explore it because I want to know what is it that is shaping my fears and sadness that I feel in my day to day life. For example, yesterday when I tripped, for a good few hours I was plunged into a terrible state of sorrow and remorse when I thought about how arrogant and foolish I used to be - how I treated others so badly and wishing that I could go back and make it all right again. Then I came around to the conclusion that even though there is nothing in the past that I could change, I can make changes as of today and be a better person, and had a specific plan on how to go about doing that. Even though the trip had me in the deepest despair for about half the time I was tripping (the other half was quite euphoric - I experienced music with what I can only describe as Synesthesia), I emerged from it with what I believe to be a greater understanding of myself (albeit still abit sad thinking about the things that I have done because it remains so vivid).

It depends on your perspective on psychedelics, really.. Trying to get as 'fucked up' as possible more often than not yields quite a nasty surprise. Approach it with respect and be ready to go where it leads you and deal with any issues with total honesty, then acid can be a very rewarding and powerful tool.
 
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It's kind of a bluelight hallucinogen cliché, but: I've never had a bad trip that I didn't feel better for afterward. As Xorkoth mentioned earlier, I had some repressed issues that came up, and I got stuck in an analytical thought loop until I'd dealt with it. At the time it was like my own personal vision of hell, but once I got it all over with I felt a lot better.

This is why I typically recommend that people be psychologically stable when they ask me about doing hallucinogens. It's not that you can't have issues, but you should be capable and prepared to deal with them.
 
My worst trip was on mushrooms.

It wasn't bad in the sense of having like big spiders crawling over me and me wanting to jump out the window or seeing gobblins running at me with knives.

It was when I watched Bowling for Columbine on a very high dose of mushrooms and I just felt a sense of...nothingness. Like nothing mattered. Everything was a waste of time. What you'd call Ego death I suppose. At the the time it felt like NOTHING I could do would make me feel good. I remember trying to make myself feel better by imagining I was a billionaire and had all these amazing ferrari's etc.....it did nothing. Nothing I could do would make me feel happy or remotely happy. I just felt pointless and small.

THAT was my worst trip.
 
The first and only time I did mushrooms, I had not a second of fear or panic or anything bad. I would've thought due to my constant anxiety and anxiousness for years to try mushrooms I would have had a bad trip, but it was all smooth sailing. And I took the full 1/8th. You never know... you just have to accept the trip and not fight it, and you will be ok.
 
Yeah it was probably because I decided to watch Bowling for Columbine. Stupid fucking idea and I dunno why I did it.
 
a bad trip for me is acknowledging reality most of the time.
realizing things that are not to your liking at the moment in time and frame of "mind"

e.g. "oh, we are humans... and humans need to poo.... that means, i'm a human, and i'll need to poo!! 8( oh my god what am i going to do when that time comes... hang on... time relates to poo!!!... 8("
 
Deathrow558 said:
It was when I watched Bowling for Columbine on a very high dose of mushrooms and I just felt a sense of...nothingness. Like nothing mattered. Everything was a waste of time. What you'd call Ego death I suppose. At the the time it felt like NOTHING I could do would make me feel good. I remember trying to make myself feel better by imagining I was a billionaire and had all these amazing ferrari's etc.....it did nothing. Nothing I could do would make me feel happy or remotely happy. I just felt pointless and small.

THAT was my worst trip.
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I wouldn't call that ego-death. Ego-death is when the perception of self disappears; the concept of "me" literally stops making sense.

The experience you had sounds like it could potentially be very valuable in terms of shattering illusions, though.
 
^^ Oh believe me, I've experiences ego death on Ket.

This wasn't the same. It was a different kind of ego death. It didn't come rushing up to me saying "what's the point, life doesn't exist, it's all fake, aaah" etc

It was like this creeping realisation that nomatter what I did or where I went I would never be happy and I'd never be...anything. I'd just be this ball of mass that had no personality, no feelings. It was genuinely scarey.
 
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