How to heal from PTSD from trip 7 months ago

[stratg8]

Hi, I'm new to bluelight so I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum or format for this kind of thing. I had a bad acid trip about 7 months ago on acid and shrooms. I took about 75-100ug of acid and anywhere in between .5-1 grams of shrooms. I use approximate values because we didn't measure it very carefully and the shrooms were in a tea. Also I am a very sensitive person so even though these are fairly low doses, but to me this is enough to be very very strong.

What happened was we went into the forest to trip and the trip started off ok. However, during the peak there was one moment where I closed my eyes and I started to feel like I was falling into a black hole and that this black hole represented all the pain in the world and that I was gonna be stuck there forever. Then when I opened my eyes I felt like I had come back to normal reality and I was extremely shocked. But I didn't freak out at that moment. During the comedown I started to feel completely sober and then as it was getting dark and as we were just about to get out of the forest, I instantly felt like I was tripping really hard again and I started full on panicking. I felt like I was gonna be schizophrenic for the rest of my life and I started seeing images of myself in a mental institution. Eventually I calmed down when we got back home but for the rest of the night I had a weird tingling/buzzing sensation in my body and a terrible pressure in my head. For the next 1-2 months time also passed much faster. 20 minutes felt like 5 minutes and just thinking about time made me extremely anxious.

Ever since that night I've been suffering from extreme anxiety and depression. I feel like I can't relax anymore and it's really hard to enjoy myself. I also feel like there's a part of me missing like I'm disconnected to who I used to be. And it seems like nothing really makes sense anymore. I just moved away from home for school and I'm still adjusting to the whole transition and this is making it a lot harder. Sometimes I get scared of my own existence and I start to feel like life is just a meaningless grind. I also have been suffering from some weird body sensations, a pressure in my head, and my vision feels different (not in the sense that I have floaters or anything it just looks "different" almost as if I focus on things differently). Sometimes I have repetitive thoughts, like imagining people laughing or conversations with people and that used to make me really anxious but it still bothers me occasionally. I just want to feel like myself again.

Recently in the past couple weeks I've been trying to monitor and change my thoughts and that has helped quite a bit with decreasing negative/anxious thoughts, but the actual feelings of anxiety and depression are still there. I've also been meditating every night for 4 months and that helps a lot to keep me relaxed and mindful. I went to a therapist and I was told I diagnosed for PTSD so I have been undergoing exposure therapy. It's been a long road and progress has been really slow.

But tonight I had an intense flashback and I'm honestly really scared of how things are gonna go for the next week or so. I feel really lost and scared and I don't know how to heal from this experience. I've made a lot of progress, but I assumed that by now I would be free from this stress but I'm still having panic attacks and flashbacks. I guess maybe I need a change in perspective and direction.

Does anyone have any advice or personal stories of overcoming PTSD from a bad trip? How do I learn to accept this experience? Is it even possible to get over this completely?

Thank you to those who stuck around and read this really long post.

 

[Xorkoth]

Hey there, sorry you're suffering... this sort of thing is very common in this forum. The first thing I want to say is, you'll be fine. Anxiety is such a powerful modulator of experience and even physical perception, and you're suffering anxiety as a result of obsessing about whether you are okay. I fully understand the fear involved in the moment in the type of experience you had. However, you're past it and there's no reason to fear it anymore. Psychedelics are powerful tools... I have been to a similar place that you describe so many times I can't even recall them all. It's terrifying in the moment, but once you're past, it can be an opportunity for learning about yourself. I'll tell you, my first trip was glorious and life-changing, but in some subsequent trips, I encountered some material that took me a long time to integrate. For years I wished I could go back to how I was before, and just effortlessly glide through life without questioning much. But in time, I came to find the questioning prompted by psychedelics has led me to a beautiful place. Life, IMO, is inherently meaningless in that we are condensed matter created by random occurrences. However, the fact that we are able to self-reflect, to experience emotion, to love, to laugh... THAT is profoundly meaningful to me. The fact that order condensed from such chaos brings me so much wonder and excitement. So what if it's meaningless? If it is, isn't that liberating? because instead of having to align to some external's force's idea of meaning, you get to create your own meaning.

My suggestions, short-term, are to involve yourself in the world in things you enjoy, whatever those may be. Make connections, don't think about it too hard. Also, exercise is really important for feeling better in general. It does wonders to balance a mind and body out. I think you just need a little time, and try to reframe your experience, in not such a negative light. Consider this: I've had the same experience, even one before where I nearly chose to kill myself because I believed I was undoing the universe with my trip... yet I came out of each one a stronger person and I view those experiences as among my best ever. It's not because you're weaker than me or anything... it's because I chose to frame my experiences in a positive light, although they were terrifying.

 

[Werewolvesatnight]

Hello!

I just wanted to chime in and say that I have experienced nearly the same thing as you at nearly seven months ago as well and have even had the same visions as you during my trip (seeing myself in an institution, diagnosed with schizophrenia). Anyways, the first few months were awful...waking up in panic, nearly nightly night terrors, panic attacks, crying spells, etc. Seven months later I am still experiencing symptoms, but not nearly as severe or debilitating as a few months ago. Like Strat8g, I contemplated suicide and even drove to a bridge an hour away where I planned on jumping. Luckily, I didn't. I just wanted to give you reassurance that you are not alone and your situation will improve with time.

 

[Wubb]

Stratg8 - Listen to Shadowmeister that's the best advise!! for someone who's been through it before let me say that it will end, was there any positive experiences you took from the trip??, if so focus on those and try to let go of your anxiety. Also (I'm not a health freak I might add) but I found that eating right, exercise, meditation and plenty of rest helped a lot, stay away from drugs for a while even something as benign as cannabis can be detrimental to ones mind.
Hang in there mate

 

[Xorkoth]

I gotta also agree to the not doing any other drugs, even marijuana (especially marijuana), at least until you feel better. Weed is well-known to make it much harder to recover from anxiety and other mental disturbances, and can even make them worse.

 

[pupnik]

As Ambassadors of our own personalities, we all sometimes feel like we want to get back home, back to the way it used to be perhaps, but we are out in the world and everything is constantly changing.

Very little will turn out exactly as predicted by anyone.

Having had your eyes opened so widely on lsd and later the same day mushrooms (with a delayed reaction due to stomach contents or lack of fluids), you have had some shock about the kinds of thoughts you can think and how all consuming they may be; and since you thought you had already come down (mistaken concept - easy for a novice to be mistaken), you thought you broke your sanity shell (we are not humpty dumpty), and since you were really stoned, the thought repeated a lot.

Thoughts that repeat are remembered more than those that are ephemerally passing. It's all natural. To learn more study the mind. learn about associative memory.

all the best.