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

[BodhiSvaha33]

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("

LOL! Bodily functions + psychedelics = hilarity.

I have spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out if I need to go to the bathroom or not, if I'm hungry or not, etc. This is the kind of thing that makes non-psychedelic users think we are crazy. %)

 

[itsALLfake]

Bad trips to me are just being overwhelmed, and I just say "WOW!%)." You have to stay positive. When I first started using psychedelics I would waste a lot of energy fighting the effects because i was scared of being overwhelmed, and that itself would create a bad trip.

Take a deep breath and then continue breathing full breaths. Then, close your eyes and face everything that appeared bad and see the beauty and meaning.

 

[Newmoonrecord]

I define a bad trip as fear of loss of control, fear of physical death, or simply existential anxiety (ie what has happened to me?). I havent experienced any of these too much to handle yet, but when one of them rears its head, i think the best solution is to just embrace whatever it is that's bugging you. Sort of beat it at its own game. If i ever think (im going to lose control) i say to myself (yes, i am going to lose control. which means i'm going to be free.. and then i imagine how cool it will be to float free from all boundaries). If i ever think (oh no im going to die! (an ego death), i just say to myself (im going to leave behind a whole bunch of bullshit, and i didnt need that anyway, and experience something purer)

Most commonly, i am confronted with the fact that I cannot remember what i've done to myself, and i am being smacked in the head with a powerful drug that i somehow never expect (damn psychs are always more powerful than i remember, even after doing them so many times). And then i am confronted with the threat: how do i remember who i was, and or "nothing is important from my old life" or "who the hell am i". When confronted with these questions, i find it is best to just focus on the experience and remember - the only thing that matters is the moment, and who you are doesnt really matter in the world of the infinite expanse. The experience of the moment is why you're here, and represents everything you have to gain.


If all else fails, attempt to do something cool as hell! Listen to a really awesome track that comforts you and smoke some bud, it usually distracts you.

In a true emergency (if you feel like you're caught in a terrible never ending psychosis), xanax is king.

 

[Xorkoth]

^^ 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.

I think his point was that what you're describing is a fairly drastic shift in perspective, but true ego death is when you lose your sense of self entirely, are no longer "you". If you had truly experienced ego death, there would be no "you" around anymore to determine whether or not things you did were making you happy. The process leading up to ego death (ego suppression) is more like what you describe, but if it fully happens, it will necessitate letting go entirely and no longer being concerned by worldly things, beyond fear, beyond sadness, beyond billionaire ideations.

 

[Solipsis]

Merged two threads about the same thing. No timeline issue - inserted thread was during 06-2007.

 

[jamaica0535]

There are no "bad" trips. Each one is a learning experience, no matter how difficult it is. Well if my dick got cut off while tripping, that may be bad. I stand corrected.

MGS

i stepped into a camp fire bare foot on salvia....

in that reguard it was bad trip....

the actual trip, although it was experiencing my own death and judgement in the form of a talk show, was not considered bad.... I accepted the fact that i had died and moved on with it....

MAPS put out an educational video on how to be a good trip sitter if things get bad.....

Drawing is interesting, it can be an escape, just lose yourself in it....

change your setting, go outside for some fresh air and a smoke....

a friend to talk to.

Writting, it can add a small amount of order the the apparent chaos your experiencing.....

Before the trip take a sheet of paper and write on it "Everything i am feeling is because i took "insert psychedelic", everything will be back to normal by the time the sun comes up/goes down" (depends on when you dosed) everything is going to be alright.... or something to that affect....

^^that one is good for a couple of reasons, anyone can tell you that its all the drugs making you feel how you are feeling, but seeing it in your own handwritting and knowing that you wrote it in a sober state of mind can be very much believable. I like using the sun rise or set because when your tripping time takes on less and less meaning, but the sun comming up and going down are 2 things that happen without exception every day, its going to happen eventually... and if you used a time you might just be tempted to watch the minutes tick by like hours.... its a good prevention method....

another one i have heard of but never tried relies on the idea that a tripping mind is very much scatter brained, and the idea is to work yourself into a different thought pattern that is more neutral than dark.... hold your thumb and index finger apart and ask yourself "how much distance seperates the tips of these fingers?" it is a seemingly simple question but you might say 6 inches, but what connotates an inch? the metric system is based on an actual system that is far more logical so maybe metric would be better. I dont know how many centimeters are in 6 inches... *looks around house for a ruler*.... *finds ruler and measures*....and generally the idea is that if you can focus your attention enough on comming to an answer your happy with or you just forget the original question altogether, your probably long past whatever was bothering you....

i imagine basic logic trick questions would probably be a good one for getting one of these thought patterns going....

 

[phatass]

setting, good friends, atmosphere, benzos, and neuroleptics

 

[SWIMdidit]

work yourself into a different thought pattern [...] or you just forget the original question altogether, your probably long past whatever was bothering you....

Good idea -- thinking about it, I've done this sub-consciously (most people probably have) and it definitely works.

 

[g1zzl3]

Bad Trips on LSD

On my third Acid experience I had a really Bad Trip in my mates house with 4 of us it was complete chaos, lots of paranoid thoughts and crazyness.

Now I was wondering, when you have a bad trip on that does it stick with you for a while because I was getting the same paranoid crazy head thoughts for up to 2 months after, it was so horrible that Ive quit cannabis which I was smoking nearly everyday for 5 years and I swore not to do LSD for a very long time.. I still get some of these pickleing paranoid crazy thoughts now.

If I were to take LSD again which I am thinking of soon in a good set/setting at a reasonable dosage and had an amazing experience would that make the thoughts/crazyness come on more or do you reckon it would quell them abit? also wondering if anyone else has been in this same position before?

Any comments or thoughts please people

 

[Bella Figura]

I've had "bad" trips on a load of different psyches, it generally always comes down to set & setting.

A suggestion would be to stop feeding seagulls piperazines, that might make you feel better about yourself.

 

[g1zzl3]

Lmao I only did that once as a pisstake dont even want to see let alone handle piperazines again, fucking horrible stuff

 

[Newbierock]

The 2nd post span me out so much, until I read the 3rd one. -.-

Don't read BL stoned!

but yeah as for me, i've had a few bad ones in my time, you just gotta put it out your mind that your gonna have a bad one and it should be okay. My 2nd bad trip was caused by thinking about the 1st one whilst the mushrooms were hitting me (not LSD i know but ehhh)

 

[sadbot]

The only cure for a bad trip is experience

 

[g1zzl3]

My question wasn't so much about the bad trip, it was more about the paranoid thoughts & crazy head fuck I was left with for a month or so after, I wanted to know whether anyone else had this after a bad trip or if when I do it again, which im considering soon and had a really good amazing experience in a good set/setting would this still add to the paranoid crazyness or would it lessen it slightly.

 

[tylerwashere]

g1zzl3, I know what you're saying. I've only had a real "bad trip" one time (on a dosage higher than i was really used to), during the trip i had this horrible feeling, and it really stayed with me for 2 or 3 weeks. I just had this nagging feeling all the time and i layed off of acid for 2 weeks. Eventually the feeling went away. I didn't really do anything special to make it go away though. Just make sure you're going to be in the right setting, with good people for the next one, and maybe don't do as much. Ease back into it, you should be fine.

 

[Choronzon333]

My tripping paranoia is most often metaphysical in nature.
Things like:
Time is ending.
Time is looping.
The universe is ending.
I am ending.
Nothing exists because nothing may be definined without being related to something else.
Ebola
np: Front Line Assembly

me 2 weird shit. Or thinking your self awy.

 

[Verblose]

i'veonly had one bad trip, and it was on seven or eight grams of very powerful shrooms. all was good until I couldnt distinguish wheather my eyes were opened or closed. meaning my closed eye visuals became open eye visuals. i got up and tried to walk out of the room and i passed out. which is what really scared me because ive never heard of anybody passing out from shrooms or acid. so then i thought i was dying, and believed i had found the meaning of life so that living wasnt neccesary any more. Well i was lucky enough to have my sober girlfriend with me who sat with me for two hours and tried to talk me out of my funk. I found that the best thing for me was her telling me good things about my life and just keeping my mind off the terrible thoughts.
I tripped again about a week later, and it just wasnt the same my thoughts were still all fucked up and it was hard to enjoy it.
oh yeah, has anybody else heard of people passing out from large doses of shrooms/acid

I did pass out once on only 2 grams of mushrooms. I was 15 years old, sitting at school while the trip was starting, and the teacher said: OK, something special today, we'll work in team. And when I started sitting with two other guys, it became way too much to handle and I passed out. When I came back to myself, maybe like 1 minute later, there were no more mushrooms effects, except for some mental confusion which lasted until later into the night. 10 years later, I know this was the only way my mind/body structure found, back then, to save me from such a frightening experience. Better to pass out than to say to these 2 guys that I was high on mushrooms.

 

[Verblose]

I've had 3 big bad trips in my life. Two were on mushrooms, one on san pedro (mescaline). When I say "big" bad trip, I mean that they lasted for more than one hour, and more than one hour in such a state is for me a big bad trip. In my case I wasn't afraid to die, but I was convinced that I was becoming clinically insane, and that I would never come back out of that state of mind. Then you tell yourself: it's only a drug man, relax, it will soon go away, just try to enjoy it. But evil voices in my head put forth huge and intricate arguments to convince me that I had taken "too much", that my personality was "too weak" for psychedelics and that it had been fucked up by it, that soon I would never be able again to just feel relaxed and have fun because I would always be in a state of panick and terror, etc. Visual parts of the badtrips were also about lot's of menacing entities, faces, mouths, monster eyes, etc., all circling around me and repetitively saying things such as "You are dying", "You are loosing it", "You will never be the same", "Look at you, how pathetic, you wanted to use drugs to expand your mind and instead you have killed it", "Ha ha ha ha" echoing, etc. In the 3 cases, I consciously went to the bathroom and made myself puke, and in the 3 cases, it didn't change anything at all.

Retrospectively I know this has happened because I was too afraid to let it go and to simply go with the flow. In the 3 cases I was home-alone so it was impossible for a friend to calm me down or to bring me outside to take a walk and change my setting.

I have read the 7 pages here and I don't think there's much to do when this kind of experience happens. Whether you lay down and "try to go with the flow" or "try hard to stop it, making it worse", the bad trip, once it's full on, is I think quite impossible to re-direct. You just have to wait until you regain enough self-confidence to be yourself again.

How did it change me? Well, it did change something fundamental, that is to make me very humble and very respectful regarding these experiences. I feel I have discovered and experienced the basic fragility of our systems. For me it was a glimpse into what everyday insanity can be for some people: not funny at all. Also, it has given me the right attitude to help someone else who is going into a bad trip, something I wouldn't have if I didn't go through 3 experiences as crazy as that. And finally, it showed me that I was on the wrong path in my life, that I wasn't doing much to realize myself and my dreams, that I was mostly projecting a false image of myself both to others and to my own self. So yes, it does teach you a few things about who you are and what is wrong about your attitude.

If it ever happens again, I don't know what I will do. Probably go out and have a walk, or try to be with a friend I trust. But I now know that a bad trip is STRONGER than yourself. It's impossible to stop it completely once it owns you. It's like your fear feeds it, and the more it feeds it, the more in return the bad trip makes you afraid, and you have the whole feedbacking circle there, which makes this kind of experience out of control. You suddenly realize that you are nothing compared to what's happening to you. And that's fucking scary to say the least hehe.

 

[Verblose]

Ok I forgot to say something more positive hehe. Well I would say whenever a bad trip happens to you, one thought you can entertain, which will not make it worse, is to remind yourself that having a bad trip is perfectly legitimate and logical. "Sometimes it happens, now its my turn, lets see how far it can get, but one thing I know is I will be alright once its finished, because it will finish even if I don't know when". That kind of thinking doesn't try to block the bad trip, yet it also doesn't try to give it too much of an ill-intentioned meaning. Don't let your "me, I, ego" try to explain what is happening, it will always drag you further down. In other words, consciously accept the pain and the anxiety as "another" part of who you are. I think like most people here: trying to block the badtrip, something I have tried, makes it worse.

 

[littlechino]

If I ever start getting uncomfortable or freaking out, I am usually able to take a step back. I ask myself what I am doing and what would a friend think if they saw me. Then, I start laughing at myself at how ridiculous I am about letting myself freak out. Or I also start thinking about the things or people in my life I love.