LSD and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

[PapaRosario]

Let me preface this post by saying that I realize I was a huge idiot in a lot of the things I did that night. I was a complete newbie to hallucinogens and I didn't realize what I was getting myself into.

So anyway, one night a few months ago I decided to try LSD. I had never done any hallucinogen up to that point in my life, so it was something that I really wanted to try. Hallucinogens always seemed like the most exciting kind of drug to me. So I took two tabs of acid with 5 of my friends. We started making pot brownies (or rather, K2 brownies) in the meantime. I ate 3 of those. I sauteed about 15 grams of K2 into the butter and we split the brownies up into 15 pieces, so that was about 3 grams worth of K2 brownies. I then also smoked a few bowls of K2 with my friends. They all started tripping after about an hour, but nothing was happening for me. I'm a fairly large guy (6'2" 220 lbs.) so I tend to need larger quantities of alcohol and drugs than my friends. So I thought okay, I just need more drugs. My friend had about an eighth of shrooms which I then took. About half an hour later, things just kicked into overdrive. Very stupidly, I decided to go out for a nature walk with 2 of my friends rather than staying in and watching a visualizer and listening to music with the other 3. I got extremely paranoid during this walk. I constantly thought people were staring at us, calling the cops, and I think I even hallucinated about 4 people walking with us and laughing at us, because my 2 friends later told me that never happened. I was 100% sure we were going to get busted before we could make it back.

At some point during this walk, I got caught in some sort of a thought or time loop or something like that. I kept thinking the same thing was happening over and over again. I was aware that LSD had very rare cases of driving people insane, and I thought I was one of those unlucky few. I don't know if any of you have ever been caught in a thought loop, but it is absolutely terrifying. It is the definition of fear to me. The thought of being trapped in my own mind is just very scary.

So we get back to our other friends eventually, and I'm just really terrified by that point. We started watching this movie called Waking Life, and it was strange because it seemed like the movie was playing in my mind or something. I don't think I was actually watching it. By the way, I had no idea we were watching a movie called Waking Life. I was just sitting there trying to get myself back together and I had no idea what was going on. So at some points during the movie, I could clearly hear my mind saying to me "Waking Life". I thought this was the beginning of another thought loop each time it happened. Like that was the trigger that restarted the loop or something. Again, I had no idea we were watching that movie, so I thought I was the only one hearing that being said. Then at some point during the night, we started watching Alice in Wonderland. That is by far the most terrifying movie I have ever seen in my life. I thought I was Alice in the movie and I was falling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of my mind. Things started to get much worse at this point, and I was sitting right next to a 6th floor window. I remember thinking that I would be stuck in this state forever, and the only way to end it would be jumping out the window. Luckily, I never made that choice. I think one of my friends would have stopped me if I even tried anyway.

The one thing that finally pulled me through that night was looking at the time on my phone. I kept checking it every once in a while to see that time was moving forward. When I realized that time was still moving forward no matter what else I was going through, I think it grounded my mind in reality a little bit. Eventually I just passed out at some point (I guess blacked out since I don't remember) and I woke up the next morning feeling completely normal. This was probably the happiest moment in my life. Going from near suicidal insane to coming back to reality felt really good. After that, life went on as normal.

Fast forward about 2 months later, I was playing video games. All of a sudden, I had this very, very intense deja vu and I think that triggered the experience of the thought loop. It made me think that the same thing was happening again and my life was just one big loop. My whole perception on reality just went out the window. I'm not sure what happened there, but everything just slowed down, my heart started beating like crazy, and I think I felt the insanity come back for just a minute. For the following week, I was in a constant state of paranoia. I kept having moments of deja vu, I could think of nothing but LSD, and I began to wonder if this would ever go away. Suddenly the following weekend after it started, it just kind of went away.

I haven't had any similar week-long ordeals like this since then. Actually, no similar ordeals at all luckily. But there are sometimes where I get very nervous for what seems like no reason. Whenever I hear any sort of Disney music (I think because of Alice), I start getting very nervous. Whenever I think about anything that has to do with infinity, I get very nervous. I looked at a Mandelbrot Zoom fractal video the other day, and that made me VERY nervous.

My friend told me that this might have something to do with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of the immensely bad experience I had with LSD. I was wondering if anyone else has had something similar like this happen, and if so, does it just go away after some time? Or will this nervousness with certain things just always be there?

 

[Shady Kaity]

i have noooo idea what that time loop shit is but ive experienced it and you are correct, it is the definition of fear. that happened to me years ago and its still so fresh in my memory... ive never done lsd so i cant exactly tell you whether or not itll last or go away. ive done a lot i mean A LOT of dxm and i still get 'flashbacks' of being high off of it. what your describing does sound like PTSD...do you have any other symptoms other than nervousness? is the nervousness persistent or does it come with certain things that trigger it?

 

[PapaRosario]

The nervousness is not persistent. There are just certain things that trigger it. Thinking about infinity or anything that has to do with infinity triggers it. Music that sounds like Disney music triggers it. Then I also get deja vu sometimes that makes me extra nervous. For a minute I get the feeling that my life is actually repeating itself. But then I just kind of talk myself through it and realize that it's just in my mind.

 

[Tech Kinetics]

At some point during this walk, I got caught in some sort of a thought or time loop or something like that. I kept thinking the same thing was happening over and over again. I was aware that LSD had very rare cases of driving people insane, and I thought I was one of those unlucky few. I don't know if any of you have ever been caught in a thought loop, but it is absolutely terrifying. It is the definition of fear to me. The thought of being trapped in my own mind is just very scary.

So we get back to our other friends eventually, and I'm just really terrified by that point. We started watching this movie called Waking Life, and it was strange because it seemed like the movie was playing in my mind or something. I don't think I was actually watching it. By the way, I had no idea we were watching a movie called Waking Life. I was just sitting there trying to get myself back together and I had no idea what was going on. So at some points during the movie, I could clearly hear my mind saying to me "Waking Life". I thought this was the beginning of another thought loop each time it happened. Like that was the trigger that restarted the loop or something. Again, I had no idea we were watching that movie, so I thought I was the only one hearing that being said.

What you described in your post is what made me completely quit trippin.
These are all signs of a bad trip, and tends to carry over into your next trip subconsciously.
People that have tripped often on LSD will tell you that it's a brain spiral occurring which eventually goes away.
My last experience tripping completely drowned me in mental pattern overload.
I literally felt like I was sinking in a octahedron sand dune.

 

[PapaRosario]

People that have tripped often on LSD will tell you that it's a brain spiral occurring which eventually goes away.

Ah, so you think that it might be something that will go away with time the further away I get from that experience?

 

[ColtDan]

this happened to me last year

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/526581-DMT-stuck-in-a-loop?highlight=loop

fucked me up for awhile, was getting intense flashbacks and feelings of losing my mind, feel depersonalized for a short time after, anxious, etc. it goes away eventually, but it takes awhile. im fine now. avoid all drugs in the mean time, especially trippy ones. cannabis triggered the "panic" feeling off again months after, thought i was gonna lose my mind

 

[smashmcnasty]

you obviously over did things, but it will definitly calm down if you cut back on drugs. This happened to me about a year ago when I was taking a lot of LSD on a weekly basis for weeks on end. After about two months I had a horrible terrible unexplainably aweful trip and decided to give things a rest for a while. Since stopping roughly a year ago I occasionally have what could be called flashbacks I suppose, where I feel as though I am back in the worst part of the worst trip I've had, usually lasts about 5 minutes and is very similar to a panic attack from what friends have told me who have panic disorders. For me I usually have a very sudden realization that I am NOT OK and that I'm about to have one of these attacks, my vision gets very distorted and eventually tunnels, if its a really bad one my vision will go all the way out and I feel as though I am going to pass out. After a few minutes it starts to slowly go away. Ive found any kind of benzo eliminates the anxiety that causes these attacks, but you have to make sure you never use it regularly or youll be in much worse trouble. I still dont eat acid and rarly trip on other things and these episodes occur less and less so just ride it out youll be ok and try not to smoke weed as much as possible cause it can cause a lot of anxiety and has definitly brought on attacks for me at times

 

[DiZzyBonne]

Just try to remember that everything that happened that night was due to a drug, nothing more. That should start to clear your mind of any fear you may have.

 

[PapaRosario]

try not to smoke weed as much as possible cause it can cause a lot of anxiety and has definitly brought on attacks for me at times

Yeah one time a couple weeks after that episode, my friend was smoking weed and started acting kind of funny. He told me the next day that he was getting really paranoid from that, so I've been scared to smoke since then. Don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon.

 

[PapaRosario]

Just try to remember that everything that happened that night was due to a drug, nothing more. That should start to clear your mind of any fear you may have.

The problem with this though is that when I start to get really paranoid, the thoughts that go through my mind are that there is this truth that has been staring at me my entire life, but only with LSD was I able to actually sense it and realize it.

 

[Flickering]

Weed can induce powerful flashbacks, so I recommend staying away from it. It sounds like you've experienced some kind of derealisation disorder, too, in what you describe with the PTSD of your life being just one big loop. Now, did I read you right that you took 2 tabs of LSD, 3g of K2 and... how much shrooms? That's why things went so bad, that's way, way too much for a beginner. But I think you realise that... One cardinal rule of tripping is, if you're not feeling it, don't double your dose. Far better to undershoot than to overshoot with this stuff.

Also, if you find yourself worrying you'll go insane during a trip, you won't. People who lose their minds on this stuff don't even consider that. I find keeping that in mind helps during anxiety periods of trips.

 

[TangerinO]

Read this whole thread thinking oh he just had two tabs, this seems but extreme and unusual. But combining two tabs of LSD with that much marijuana or synthetics or whatever, I'm not surprised you lost your mind man.
I don't recommend never taking LSD again, just take less of it and don't mix it with unbelievable amounts of K2 until you're familiar with it. Weed almost derailed my first trip as well, smoked so much over the week and just one too many, I started coughing so much I couldn't stop and I thought I was going to throw up it was hurting my lungs so much. I went off from the group in a ditch, telling myself how doomed I was. With time it passed, sounds like you're just in a situation where it will take a while to pass.

I don't want to purely advocate more LSD use as this is a HR, I'll just say don't forever close your mind to it. I had a very bad trip on LSD and the next five or six trips I had were all very centered around putting that experience into context which was interesting to say the least. I will say if you ever do choose to do it again just be more thoughtful about it.

 

[Flickering]

I've also had the experience of revisiting a bad trip in a new light with the trips that followed. A big part of my first two LSD trips were about analysing what went so wrong on the psilocybin mushrooms I'd taken before. It gives incredible insight into your mind and into the process of tripping.

 

[F1n1shed]

Yea dude you went way over board on the psyches. Im not saying LSD alone wouldn't do that, but with all of that Pot and shrooms you were bound to go insane for that period of time. I'v had some pretty bad times with too much pot and pot brownies alone, couldn't imagine mixing it with those.

 

[The Smoking Man]

I'd suspect the K2 was a huge factor in having an insanely bad trip like that. Heard plenty of stories about people getting "the fear" from just K2/JWH-018 alone; that shit's the last thing I would want to touch while tripping.

Regardless, that does sound like PTSD, though in your case it seems like it's only being triggered as a direct or indirect result of external stimuli leading to recall of the traumatizing memories. You were able to talk about this, so deliberate recall of said memories doesn't seem to be triggering it - actually, how were you feeling during and immediately after typing this?

The problem with this though is that when I start to get really paranoid, the thoughts that go through my mind are that there is this truth that has been staring at me my entire life, but only with LSD was I able to actually sense it and realize it.

Maybe. Question is, was it that "truth" causing the terror, or was it that there was simply just some "truth" with a backdrop of insanity/etc.? Correlation does not prove causation.

 

[juicioso]

PapaRosario, I see this thread is over a year old, but I'm interested in commenting on my own similar experience. Are you still "out there" ?

 

[Krenshaw]

I second the call for PapaRosario. Someone dropped LSD on me as a child as a "joke" and I have been jacked ever since. Juicioso, you still out there?

 

[caden665]

Progress?

Hey I had the exact thing you experienced. I hope you get this, have you had any success with getting better and reducing the anxiety? Let me know, thanks!!!
-Caden

 

[Phbbbt]

I'm not sure PapaRosario is coming back at this point, but I figure I'll chime in and share my experiences. I'm glad I'm not the only one this has happened to. Actually scratch that, I'm glad to have others to talk to about it but I'd rather that no one ever had to experience that.

I've had exactly the same time loop effect. It's been an issue for me for the last 3 years or so. I'm still working on ways to cope with it, but I'm not out of it yet.

Before I go into details about my experience, I want to say that I'm convinced that the mechanism of the effect is basically a very intense form of déjà vu - some type of faulty pattern matching during memory retrieval. If anyone knows of any actual research into the topic, let me know - I'd love to check it out.

My bad time started after I was introduced to nitrous oxide. I enjoyed it, but that lasted only a couple of weeks into me having my own supply. I'd get into a sort of fractal mode, where everything would start organizing into repeating patterns at different scales, both visually and conceptually. It was enough to make me put it down and walk away for a bit a few times, but not scarring, until I mixed it with weed.

That got me to my first 'singularity'. Being the entirety of the universe and all that. The idea behind the many-minds theory of quantum mechanics has haunted me since I was a teenager (look it up if you're not familiar) and the singularity convinced me that I was just a fragment of consciousness that represented the minimum consciousness capable of collapsing its own wave function and thus exist by virtue of existing... or something like that. Cogito ergo sum doesn't guarantee anything more, just that you have enough existence to recognize your existence.

That's mostly to give you an idea of where my mind goes in moments like that. That incident shook me up for days and made me put away nitrous for good. Hearing other people use it still sets my teeth on edge, 6 or 7 years later.

Things were mostly OK until Burning Man 2013. I made some of my poorer choices that burn night. By this point I'd had plenty of experience with psychedelics but kept things pretty cautious. I decided to candy flip and took one tab of acid and maybe 100 mg of MDMA. It'd been too short a time since my last roll, though, and I mostly got uncomfortable. I knew that going back to camp and laying in the dark trying to fall asleep wasn't going to make my night any better, so I did my best to tough it out and kept moving for a few hours. I'm pretty sure that at some point I did wander through camp and probably smoked a bit of weed.

Later in the night I met up with friends in my camp's lounge - two of the more adventurous substance aficionados in the group. They saw that I was uncomfortable and offered me a bump of Ketamine, saying it'd smooth things out. K was normally on my list of things I didn't feel like I needed to try, but my judgement was impaired and I was ready to try anything to ease the discomfort of my trip.

Things went fine for the first 20 or 30 seconds, and the next infinity was hell. It came on feeling just like the nitrous singularity and I'm sure my mind went right back there. I think I was out of it for maybe 20 minutes of real time, but I don't know. It's mostly a jumble. For most of the time my friends didn't realize I was in major distress; I was basically paralyzed and immobile in a chair.

It was the déjà vu effect that got me then. That fragment of consciousness wasn't just sitting at the center of the universe. The fragment that was stuck on a cyclic path that allowed no free will. Everything was predetermined and had played out the same way forever, without beginning or end, and I was doomed to ride along that loop aware but unable to act. The aspect that amplified the horror was the (imaged) realization that I didn't reach this point just now; I'd always reached it and always thought there must be a way out and then saw that I'd always thought that and I'd always reacted the same way and it always played out exactly the same.

Early in the loops the friend who had given me the K came over to check on me and saw the fear in my eyes. He nodded and said "it is what it is", which just reinforced my thought that he was the same consciousness as my further along the hoop (this I know to be a common thread of other acid trip experiences) and it was just me reassuring myself that yes, we were stuck and nothing could change, but that's just how existence was.

The loops got tighter and anything repetitive in the environment must have fed that feeling. Someone was setting off explosions nearby, and each boom was the universe restarting. Every loop I'd spiral outward and think I was getting further from the start and maybe I wasn't stuck in a loop after all, and then I'd fall right back in with that horrible realization that I'd felt that hope of escape every time and every time had wound up right here.

Worse, each of those memories is overlaid into one composite memory that's now not a single place. I can't say that I'm safe because the start of the loop was in a darkened shade structure and I'm not in a place like that. The memories are so merged that any place can somehow feel like where I was and always had been at the start of the loop. Even now, every major flashback I have adds another layer to that memory of the loop.

I finally spiraled far enough out of that one to start actively working to help myself. I remember walking around to the back of a white board hanging in kitchen area just because I didn't know what was on it and that spot didn't seem to be part of a loop.

I was more cautious with psychedelics after that. The next incident that would add to the trauma came a year and a half later, at a New Year's Eve party. At this party, there was a tradition among about 1/3 of the group that they'd take psychedelics, and the rest would generally stick to alcohol.

I decided to take one tab of acid, marked 110 ug - about a third of what I'd taken before and had a pretty good time on. I stuck to my flight plan and didn't mix it with anything else, didn't take any more, and only had water to drink.

Normally acid hits me in an hour or more. This time I was feeling it in half that time. By 45 minutes in I had to apologize to the friend I was talking to because I was losing my ability to carry on a conversation. It couldn't have been more than an hour in when things got bad. No idea if I just reacted atypically or if maybe I got the corner of the sheet with a few hundred extra ug in there.

I think the first trigger was a wall decoration. It was an old LED sign board that one of the residents had programmed to run Conway's game of life. It's a cellular automaton that I spent a lot of time studying and playing with as a teen, and it took me right back to thoughts of determinism.

It's another jumble after that. The strongest memory is of the clockwise flow of people around the house became a major part of that loop memory. When I go into a flashback now, hallways merge together and I expect to walk through whatever door is nearest and come out in that front bedroom, and in some corner of some room there's a papasan chair that's one of the starting points of the loop. Thinking "it's just a drug trip", "it makes no sense that the universe would take this form", and so forth is part of the loop. That's a really insidious one; all the normal things I think of to talk myself out of it are now memory triggers and play right into the loop.

There are other memories in there. A good friend saying "hey buddy, you've gotta trust me - I'm going to put this in your mouth and you need to swallow it." The word Xanax. Repeatedly. "How much did you give him? And he's still like this?" Being tended by friends in a quiet room. Smashing into a mirror but not knowing I'd cut my foot. Tackling someone. Ripping down Christmas lights. Throwing a kick at a friend's stomach. A female friend singing to me. Looking at her tattoo - a USAF roundel. Her asking "you were in the Air Force, weren't you?" I have no idea if I was able to answer or if my words were only in my head.

When I wasn't trapped in that horror loop, I think I was acting on random impulse because everything was pre-determined anyway, nothing mattered, nothing would last. There was no malice in anything I did, but I was out of control, totally checked out. At some point the singing friend was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I apparently blindly kneed her in the face. I think I remember the sound of her reacting. I didn't know until later that she'd lost a facial piercing because of it and nearly ended up in the ER.

Thankfully all of my friends know this was totally atypical behavior from me and none showed anything but concern. Some friends-of-friends, not so much. I don't know how, but I ended up with a woman I didn't know pinning me down with a knee on my chest and a hand at my throat. I endured without resistance because I knew that that's just what the universe had slated for me at that moment and everything would continue as it must. I don't know who got her off of me or where she went, but my throat was sore for days.

Later in the trip, maybe when the Xanax finally kicked in, there was actually a good part. The loop had proved itself to be a widening spiral and I could endure the passes back to the center because I knew I would spiral further out each time and that things would get better, even if it was to take a million years. There's more to that part of the trip that I think I'll have to put down another time. Part of its relevance is that it's one of the thoughts I can develop as a counter to the loop idea. Rationalizing my way out of the loop doesn't work. I need to have an alternate theory that incorporates the experience of the loop as part of it. Because that pattern matching that tells me I'm back in the tight part of the loop again is so overwhelmingly persuasive I can't block it out entirely but have to gently subvert it and believe that the widening spiral is the true explanation.

I don't like believing that sort of thing the rest of the time - I consider myself too rational and scientific to go in for something so metaphysical - but I work on building it up so that I only need to see it as a defense mechanism, not a real worldview, while keeping the idea at hand so if I do come back in through another loop (either a spontaneous flashback, usually while sleeping, or from smoking a bit too much weed) it fits the feeling of the loop and becomes real again for the time that I need it.

That might be a lot to digest, and it probably doesn't mean anything to someone who hasn't been through the loop, but so far it's been my best defense, or at least the fastest way to claw myself back out of an episode.

As PapaRosario said, the idea of infinity or anything relating to infinity really sets me off. I was still reeling from the first nitrous singularity when I saw Inception, and that was uncomfortable. Last Christmas, I watched the White Christmas episode of Black Mirror and had by far my worst flashback ever. I staggered out of my bedroom fully expecting to walk right back into that New Year's Eve party, or the camp lounge.

Anyway, writing this has taken me a milligram of Xanax to get through. Thinking so much about the loop gets a self-reinforcing panic response going. Like I said, I'm getting better at avoiding it and coping when it does hit, but it's definitely not over. I woke up to a flashback early this morning and I'm sure there will be more.

Maybe some of this will help with strategies for other people enduring the same thing. If anyone has any of their own coping advance to share, please do so.

 

[ptlsd]

Phbbbt, your experience sounds eerily similar to my own. In August of 2016, I also experienced the 'singularity' moment, where I thought I WAS the universe and everything and everyone in it was a figment of my imagination (prior to this I thought I was in hell). The whole experience actually disturbed me to such a degree that I dove into a bonfire and suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my arm. No shitting.


I am a small-average size guy and that was only 2 drops, albeit apparently rather strong drops. I tried it again a few months later - less than 1 drop - and the loop came back, but luckily, I was able to force myself out of it by simply moving and engaging with someone. I did not have this physical control over myself with 2 drops, and I didn't know what was happening to me (thought loops) the first time. The hindsight certainly helped.


I have PTSD from this event and it was made pretty clear to me when I lost my job. I didn't lose my job for any reason related to this, but I was fired and had a couple weeks in between jobs. I was really looking forward to the break, but it turned into a major existential crisis instead. I couldn't stop thinking about the trip and what I thought it 'meant' and was experiencing intense anxiety and derealization. It sucked hard.


I am starting therapy soon in hopes that I can equip myself to deal with this better and eventually get past it. I want to thank you for sharing your story with us because, although it was hard to read (and for you to write), in its similarity to my own experience, I think it diminishes the credibility of the idea that I - or you - are the universe, if you know what I mean. I mean, I can spend all day obsessing and rationalizing it the other way, but what good is that going to do me? It's just another small nail in the coffin that I hope will help me get past it, and maybe you after reading this. In any case, if I AM - or you, or anyone - is stuck in some life loop, if you will, what the fuck can we do about it anyway and how would we know for sure? I don't think there's answers to these questions, and that's where I'm at. I think that what we experienced, in all likelihood, was sheer panic in the face of an LSD-induced memory glitch combined with catastrophizing in our sheer terror and incomprehension. From what I can gather talking to my friend and other trippers, it's not uncommon to experience something like this while tripping, but most people seem to deal with it better and let it pass.


I'm curious, did you have any mental health issues prior to experiencing this? I have always been far too in my own head most of the time (introvert), and was familiar with the concepts of solipsism and Eternal Return and all that, and I've also always been prone to depression, anxiety, and perhaps most poignantly as for this experience, obsessiveness (arguably full OCD). Interestingly, as an atheist, I've felt a strangely strong pull to religion in the last few months. I suppose trauma can do that to a person. I'm not entirely sure where it comes from. Thinking I was in hell?


Have you noticed that you feel a stronger pull to religion at all?


Hope to hear back from you.