Has 4aco-dmt ruined my brain?

[Paran0iz]

Hi there, I'm new to this whole forum malarkey but I feel desperately in need of some advice or support at the moment. I'll try and keep this brief but I want to thank you first of all for even reading this far. So here goes...

Late November last year me and my girlfriend did a dose of 4aco, and had a couple lines of k too. We had done this before and I had probably one of the greatest trips ever, no anxiety, no weirdness. Just pretty colours and hysterical laughter. However this time was different. After feeling a bit uncomfortable for most of it, all of a sudden I was in a state of panic. It felt like my brain cells were dying at an alarming rate and I was convinced that I was going insane and that I would never return to normal. Worst experience of my life, no doubt.

So the next morning I was fine and I felt like my old self again for about a month after. However, I had a 'flashback' at work mid December and ever since I have been in pieces everyday. Feelings of panic and depersonalisation and depression haunt me everyday and I'm currently living in fear that I will never return to my old self again. Since this bad experience I have been exercising more, I meditate everyday, eat healthy and generally try and pretend to be ok, but I'm really not. I've stopped using all drugs too, even caffeine.

Does this story resonate with anyone? It's been 3 months like this and I feel a bit better since but not completely back to normal. I am starting cognitive behavioural therapy next week but I was wondering if anyone else has been through something like this with this drug.

Finally I want to give you a big heartfelt thank you for taking the time to read this. Any feedback and support would be greatly appreciated.

Much love x

 

[Solipsis]

I bet the K had quite a big hand in this personally...

Can't really comment on the depersonalization type things but more in general I know this type of thing can sometimes happen and act like a trauma, can take time or therapy or further tripping to change anything about that - more tripping is of course sort of 'risky'. I think similar things happened to my best friend, mostly with LSD + K, he eventually learned to deal with it and while he cut back on everything and eventually quit these types of drugs entirely, he did revisit them. Less crazy, less combo's etc and I think he said he found fragments after a long time from using K on it's own. I couldn't recomment something like that, though personally I have tried tripping to attempt fixing problems I got from tripping.

Is it possible a fair part of the panic is reinforcement from being scared you won't recover which then makes it all that much worse? Maybe it needs to be dealt with like an anxiety disorder, though that is not easy to treat.

Just give it time and trust that it will be alright, I have gone through a huge existential crisis which I guess is quite similar to depersonalization and also other crises.... the mind is resilient and I especially don't think you have to worry about actual organic damage at all. It would be psychological, and over time that should get better.

 

[Paran0iz]

Hey thanks for your reply!

Yeah I totally agree with you, the intense terror didn't start until I had the second line of k, and seeing as k is a dissociative then it makes sense that it induced the depersonalisation. I also agree that the panic is an almost self oscillating problem so hopefully therapy will help with this.

I've heard from numberous people that tripping again can reverse these problems. I don't want to do 4aco again, but as this is the drug that caused it then do you think this could be the only drug to reverse it? I think the only drug I would consider doing again would be acid, though not for a very long time.

You said that you attempted to solve trip-induced problems from tripping again... may I ask how that worked out for you?

Thanks again, the support honestly means a lot!

 

[red22]

Makes me curious because on the one hand I've heard that K is an addictive mood lifter but on the other hand I've heard that it can produce bad trips. Never used it in greater than low doses myself. I would think that traditional psychedelics have a much greater chance of producing bad trips than does K.

 

[Paran0iz]

Yeh I think the bad trip was going to happen whether or not I had taken the k, but the k just added an extra layer of confusion and fear. Plus any bad time on k is fairly easy to brush off as it doesn't last too long, whereas if you have a bad time on more traditional psychedelics then you are in hell for a lot longer. All depends on the person I think, and apparently I'm rubbish at k!

 

[Solipsis]

Maybe that's true for K on it's own (I've had very disorienting trips on K but never really bad trips like some people report on rare occasions)... but K with a psychedelic can be so disturbing that it can really affect you in my opinion.
K is addictive, it's a mood lifter when taken in very light doses but a combination of anaesthetic and psychedelic when taken in moderate to large doses. I don't particularly think it is likely to produce bad trips but the disjointed nature of how dissociatives can 'mess you up' isn't tolerated as well by everyone. Anyway light doses of K will tell you almost nothing about what happens in larger doses, but if you find out you are okay with dissociative tripping in general and how much it disconnects you, it shouldn't produce too many bad trips. But again: combined with a psychedelic it's the odds of difficulties at least multiplied.

Probably not true at all that you'd have to take the same psychedelic or dissociative to recover after a difficult trip has chronic effects, I would say it is all about the therapeutic process that breaks your mind in pieces like a house of mirrors and then should make an entirely fresh one out of this. Different psychedelics and dissociatives just have different potentials for that. If anything, perhaps dissociatives could have something of a knack for hiding fragments or retrieving them but something tells me that psychedelics should also be able to help with retrieval.

Sometimes things go wrong in that therapeutic / psycholytic process: coherences break down but aren't fixed properly... my experience with going back is that it can work because of the potential I described but is also unreliable and could complicate matters even if you make progress. Just like answering some questions but raising a few others. I would say I went very deep in this process and eventually got to an end, meaning that less questions kept getting raised, or they got much less important or relevant and I got used to reforging myself over and over. I think my best friend struggled more with this and found limitations to what he could even fix about himself.
Right now I wonder if I am so changed that I am slightly dependent on tripping now and then and getting that healing effect (I haven't really had things go wrong in a long time). I have known years without tripping and it is not like other drug dependencies like an addiction: I am okay without it... but it makes more sense with tripping and it adds to my happiness.

I find 4-AcO-DMT awesome in some ways, but also insidious in how deep you can go with it without even realizing it, and while it is more relaxed, less frantically mindfucking than mushrooms I find this effect mindfucking in its own way. I like mindfucks but much less harmful ones than that. So I can see how you'd want to choose LSD when you ready for it some day. With acid, especially if the dose isn't very high, I don't go 'secretly' deep so it shouldn't be too surprising when used therapeutically to try and mend something.

However, it's worth taking the time to figure out what's even going on with you: if it's irrational fears and anxieties that come over you, if there is some subconscious confusion about something, what is the matter that is begging for attention and resolution? Knowing the question makes it much easier to find an answer.

 

[Paran0iz]

Solipsis, thanks for your replies. I guess I am so up and down at the moment so when I am up I feel confident that I will get better soon. When I am down though it's hard to see how I can recover from such a traumatic experience. On reflection I don't think I was in the best state of mind when I tripped so was thoroughly unprepared to deal with what followed. I have always had mild issues around anxiety and depression so I'm trying to see this trip as a way of forcing me to deal with these issues, albeit in a very fierce and unforgiving way.

I seem to have very much a love/hate relationship with K too. Sometimes it's amazing, othertimes it is very uncomfortable but usually I have my worst experiences on K when I do it on it's own, so I was surprised that the K went wrong while tripping this time.

I didn't realise that psychedelics could leave someone this fucked up for months after, and seeing as it has already been 3 months I'm getting to a point where I am wondering how much longer will it be. I've heard that these things take time, but how much time exactly? It's very unsettling and I'm getting impatient, especially as I am doing the best I can to make good progress and to confront my inner demons and issues.

Anyways, sorry for the rant... I heard from someone else that it's good to reach out to a support network in these situations so I guess that's what I'm attempting here. I appreciate your feedback buddy.