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PTSD & Shrooms

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Elpatron69

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Joined
Nov 6, 2013
Messages
21
So around six months ago, I had a bad trip on mushrooms. I had consumed about 3.5 grams at the time. Before I get into the bad trip itself and the aftermath, I want to provide some of the details of my drug history so you guys can help determine if it has all played a factor in the cause of my bad trip or maybe adjust how I can recover.

When I was 15, I had my first sip of alcohol. I never drank much in high school, just a few times a month, and never to the point of being truly wasted. Throughout college and up til the age of 20 (I'm 20 now), I drank heavily, and often to the point of blacking out.. Usually twice a week or so, sometimes even up to 5. When I was 16 I tried pot for the first time and only smoked a few times a month which gradually increased to multiple times a day in college. By the time I was 19 I had a slight addiction to adderall (popping generally 3 times a week, with dosages increasing as well as frequency) which had lasted about a year, and then stopped. I had tried cocaine a few times and also benzos. I had also shroomed twice before my bad trip.. But both those times were enjoyable and enlightening.

When I took mushrooms for the third time, I feel like my life had changed for the worse afterwards. I couldn't imagine any other drugs aside from psychadelics that could provoke such an immediate change in perspective.

Now here's the bad trip:
Before my bad trip on shrooms, my ego was through the roof based on drug use. I was mentally capable of taking any drug I felt like, and felt like I could take shrooms in any environment and under any circumstances. So me and my friend split a quarter of shrooms and enter this park at night. The trip is going well, and I experience intense visuals, especially after smoking weed. Then my friend starts having a bad trip it seems like. The look on his face seems frightened, and he tells me he wants to go home. I didn't understand why and didnt really care either. As soon as he drops me off about a block away from my house, I felt like I was gonna be okay. I felt like I could handle the trip alone for a while, and started calling friends. I didn't want to go home right away because I was tripping too hard. when I realize that nobody answered my calls, and after a few minutes of walking alone in the dark, things start to go bad. I didn't experience any visuals, I was just caught up in my own head and driving myself insane. I had paranoid and anxious thoughts. I thought I was going to be stuck in this insane world for the rest of my life. Once I accepted that the trip was going to end, i still questioned if I was ever going to be the same again. I even questioned if my dealer had purposely soaked the shrooms in acid just to purposely turn me psychotic. I tried thinking at some point in the trip, and couldn't think of anything. I felt like an invalid. Like every experience I had up to this point in my life was meaningless now. I forgot who I was and felt like Id never go back to who I was. I determined this to be ego death. I walked back home after about 30 minutes to an hour of walking in the dark by myself, and felt a little more sane when I laid in bed, more traumatized if anything. Then my friend picked me up and as we smoked some weed and I talked about what happened, I felt a little better. I went back home that night and couldn't really fall asleep. I woke up in the morning with my hands shaking. The ego deducing effects still lingered on to me quite a bit. I felt so stuck in my head that conversation was difficult with others and just having any sort of connection with someone else was too hard. These effects lingered on for about two weeks and got better as soon as I went to Europe over the summer. I had a good time in Europe and drank my ass off and felt like I was recovering from the experience. When I came back, I still didn't feel completely the same, but I was content with how things were going. It wasn't until I smoked some high grade marijuana that things began to go back to square one. As soon as I smoked, I felt paranoid, confused, and just plain retarded (I'm at a loss for better words to describe how I felt). It was like a little bad trip all over again. I felt like it was never going to end. I even tried cocaine after, and just experienced a panic attack. I feel like any drug aside from opiates and alcohol and benzos just make me crazy and paranoid. Now I've quit all drugs and turned to lifting weights and cardio every day. I feel lost again since I've come back from Europe. I'm constantly depressed and anxious and just don't feel like myself. Finding words to communicate with others is difficult, as I feel like I've lost touch with my ego and personality. This makes me avoid social situations more often, and I feel disconnected with everyone. I get derealization throughout the day. I want things to get better, is there any hope..? I am in constant fear that I've fried my brain permanently, which I feel is causing all of this trauma. These effects almost feel like something of PTSD. When I wake up in the morning, I dread getting out of bed and going throughout my day having to feel the way I'm feeling now
 
The best thing for you to do would be to see someone. I can say from experience weed definitely can bring back bad trips. It's good that you are laying off the drugs and exercise is even better. Just keep your head up and keep working at it but IMO you should see somebody about it

My girlfriend who had pre existing mental issues (aware she did, not aware of what they were) and after a 4 week honeymoon with LSD she became extremely unwell, admitted herself to hospital after having suicidal thoughts, and started experiencing a lot of derealisation throughout her days (though this is something that had come up in the past). Since her hospitalisation she has sworn off drugs. Her psych has her on risperidone since the hospitalisation and she feels like she's getting better. Psychs aren't for everyone and can be very rough on some people - could have brought out some latent mental issue that you had (you're at that kind of age)
 
Sounds like ego death brought out the death of some gate neurons. Not a big deal.
 
If it might help you (IDK?) I don't interpret your experience as one involving "ego death." That may be a small matter, though, considering the very real distress that you're still under. I get that you had a really unpleasant experience with a psychedelic. And I agree with the advice above -- that abstinence from drugs and alcohol along with a commitment to healthy living is probably the most positive thing to pursue right now. See how you feel after a longer period of good diet and exercise.
 
I think you definitely had an uncomfortable trip, but I doubt you are permanently damaged. Sounds to me like you've maybe partied a bit much at a young age and are now dealing with effects from that. Don't forget that you're 20. That can be a tough age and growing up brings out a lot of uncomfortable emotions. Sounds to me like you are growing up and becoming alot more aware. Continue abstaining from drinking and smoking, and keep up your exercise routine. You'll be fine buddy!
 
definitely grown up. I have a much more mature perspective on priorities in life. I know exactly how I need to apply myself and reach my potential in life. The fucked up part is that all the depression and anxiety i'm experiencing is demotivating me and refraining me from doing so. For the last two years I've never gone through more than a couple of days of being completely sober. I'm planning on staying sober for at least 6 months, and i'm hopeful that i'll recover. I think a lot of people have experienced what i'm going through right now and struggle to recover because they are so convinced that their unpleasant trip has permanently fucked their heads. Getting that thought out of your mind is the first step to recovery IMO. but then again i'm still stuck so we'll see if my theory works out
 
hmm weed and high dose shrooms= bad trip? who would have thought8)

for one thing- you can get better but you have to see that it is a possibility.

how much adderal did you do and for how long? because speed caused the biggest and longest depression of my life BUT eventually it got better.

maybe now you are just dealing with underlying issues that you burried with your heavy drink/weed/speed intake. nobody takes all those drugs all the time without there being some trigger underneath.

go see a counsellor.

do you like where you are? job wise? how are your social support networks?
 
Well I'm confused as to why you're convinced that my recovery is only a possibility. Others are very lighthearted about the situation and say I will recover through sobriety and working on myself in general.

I did adderall for about a year. I'd do it about 3 times a week generally and the doses in the beginning were about 20-40 mg each time i did it. This increased in the last 6 months or so to about 60 mg throughout the whole day and on a few occasions would reach 100 mg. During this time I did vyvanse more often than adderall though. And I would pop 1-2 of those 40 mg pills around 3 days out of the week. When I quit adderall, I'd say I was depressed for about a few weeks or so, but that uplifted very quickly. I loved feeling sober and happy again, and hated the feeling of the depression that adderall induced.

This shitty experience on shrooms definitely made me realize one thing however; During high school I could be labeled as introverted and a very methodical person. Once college came around, I wanted to completely change who I was. Taking all those drugs made me more social and just a crazier person overall. I made a ton of new friends, although my grades began to progressively slip. I felt like I was almost trying to take on a character that I wasn't, but it worked for a while.

And as far as a counselor goes, I feel like a most therapists would not be very sympathetic towards my psyhadelic experience... hence I ask the question here and tell my story here.

I should be liking where I'm at right now.. I have two jobs and I'm going to school full time. However, I can't seem to find any happiness in the things I used to love, as they are being masked my depression and anxiety. My family loves me very much, and I am close with my friends. I don't constantly bombard them with my internal problems, because I'm too worried that they would get annoyed by my venting and not want to be around me anymore.
 
What do you mean a therapist would be unsympathetic towards your experience? They would regularly deal with people in worse straits than you and people with more serious drug problems
 
I get what you mean. What I really meant to say is that psychedelics are a really vague subject and the effects are unknown and vary from person to person. So I feel like different therapists wouldn't have the same consistency in how to treat patients struggling to cope with post-use of psychedelics. I feel like everyone needs to be tailored to a specific remedy for an answer to return to normality
 
man i actually had something insanely similar happen. like I actually though the same thing with the PTSD getting out of bed ect.., when you had the bad trip did it feel like you were dying almost. It seems like you almost perfectly described a lot of my experiences that I couldnt describe/remeber myself, and the new identity in college thing, wow too freaky. anyways, to me, it sounds like you made it out. my life really hasn't been the same since, not even close. my GPA is destroyed, work references burned, bridges burned, potential blown, money blown, and worst of all the real friends gone. Therapists perhaps fake sympathy doesn't really help.

it's really messed up, just be glad you can still run, and work out. I have so many injuries from skateboarding (when i was high and couldn't really feel pain) that if I run even a bit like for 5 minutes my shins will be extremely sore for weeks, my elbows/shoulder are really fucked too so working out is very frustrating.

Whatever you do, don't smoke weed or do anything like that again man, that was the mistake i made, (kept making the same mistakes over and over). Anyways I didn't want to make this about me but I was just so freaked out at how similar your story was, (it's actually unbelievably similar) and I just wanted to let you know that I think you should just try and go back to that same person you were before all this shit and stay away from drugs and mostly wanted to let you know that it could have ended a lot worse.
 
WalkOnThruTheRain said:
man i actually had something insanely similar happen. like I actually though the same thing with the PTSD getting out of bed ect.., when you had the bad trip did it feel like you were dying almost. It seems like you almost perfectly described a lot of my experiences that I couldnt describe/remeber myself, and the new identity in college thing, wow too freaky. anyways, to me, it sounds like you made it out. my life really hasn't been the same since, not even close. my GPA is destroyed, work references burned, bridges burned, potential blown, money blown, and worst of all the real friends gone. Therapists perhaps fake sympathy doesn't really help.

it's really messed up, just be glad you can still run, and work out. I have so many injuries from skateboarding (when i was high and couldn't really feel pain) that if I run even a bit like for 5 minutes my shins will be extremely sore for weeks, my elbows/shoulder are really fucked too so working out is very frustrating.

Whatever you do, don't smoke weed or do anything like that again man, that was the mistake i made, (kept making the same mistakes over and over). Anyways I didn't want to make this about me but I was just so freaked out at how similar your story was, (it's actually unbelievably similar) and I just wanted to let you know that I think you should just try and go back to that same person you were before all this shit and stay away from drugs and mostly wanted to let you know that it could have ended a lot worse.
Click to expand...

Sounds brutal man... When did this all begin for you? And it sounds like you were on some other hard drugs?
 
I suffered some shit in my younger years (pre-20) that brought many years of PTSD, which I have battled all my life. In my case marijuana & psychedelic help me. Weed is just a daily staple for me, but tripping helps me think differently about everything & just seeing things differently for awhile makes all the difference. Naturally, because psychedelics can ease PTSD, they can precipitate it too! Sounds to me as if the unpleasant trip has frightened you into a state of PTSD.

All the advice about diet, excercise & sobriety is valid. You WILL get better, I'm serious! Keep a positive outlook & the progress will be quicker. Talk to a friend or family member about this too if you can, it might help. Or you could go the therapy route if you'd prefer family didn't know about it.

Best wishes to ya! <3
 
PTSD is caused by a traumatic event, naturally. A very bad experience in an inexperienced user who was not responsible or knowledgeable enough to have the proper set, setting, and dynamic of a trip can be an extremely emotionally traumatic event causing post traumatic stress.


I'm sorry you're having a hard time! I don't have any experience with PTSD myself, so I'll let others chime in with advice instead of trying to make up my own. :\
 
Si Ingwe said:
I suffered some shit in my younger years (pre-20) that brought many years of PTSD, which I have battled all my life. In my case marijuana & psychedelic help me. Weed is just a daily staple for me, but tripping helps me think differently about everything & just seeing things differently for awhile makes all the difference. Naturally, because psychedelics can ease PTSD, they can precipitate it too! Sounds to me as if the unpleasant trip has frightened you into a state of PTSD.

All the advice about diet, excercise & sobriety is valid. You WILL get better, I'm serious! Keep a positive outlook & the progress will be quicker. Talk to a friend or family member about this too if you can, it might help. Or you could go the therapy route if you'd prefer family didn't know about it.

Best wishes to ya! <3
Click to expand...

Hell yeah. I just think sobriety is key. It's just the thought of people going into permanent psychosis that frightens me, but I don't think I'm that deep into the water. When I came back from Europe, I would smoke weed and get super paranoid every time. Now I've learned to cope with the paranoia that comes along with smoking.. Although it's still not nearly as enjoyable, since I get the feelings of being lost again and also have noticed that smoking weed at all correlates directly with my depressing mood. So while I can handle smoking weed again, I figured it's just better to stop it all. It's the stimulants that really bother me. Whenever I tried cocaine after the bad trip I would freak out and think that I'm about to die. Even some coffee would get me feeling antsy and uncomfortable, cigarettes too. Now I can drink coffee like a motherfucker (just spent 12 hours straight finishing a huge research paper that I procrastinated on.. Which I'm proud of doing even through the anxiety and depression) and I can smoke cigarettes just fine, but I quit them anyways. I just want to be able to connect to people again. I used to understand people so well, but I feel like it's just the anxiety and depression that is making me feel detached from others. Hopefully if the depression and anxiety pass, the connection will be there again. Even though I might not sound super depressed in the context of my writing, this is just a display of the optimistic attitude that I'm attempting to transition into. I still feel plagued with derealization, especially when sober. Whenever I do drugs I feel more attached to people for some reason, most likely because the anxiety is at ease. I'm 20 years old, I want to live my life to it's fullest potential and get over this shitty slump of my life.
 
Elpatron69 said:
Hopefully if the depression and anxiety pass, the connection will be there again.
Click to expand...

That's very very likely. Depression and anxiety play such a big role in making you feel detached from everyone and even from yourself, what you describe well. I had been experiencing that detachment for years. I don't know if it was exactly depression, since I was never really diagnosed with it (although I did see a therapist and, by the way, it helped big time, but it's extremely important how good they are - if they're good, they would be capable of tailoring a solution for you), and it was not that strongly related to the use of anything (that was a secondary issue that developed much later), however getting better immensely improved my relations with other people and I found myself able to connect with them again.

You have a very conscious approach to yourself and to your problems, and honestly, a very healthy one, so I believe your effort will matter. Keep exercising, if nothing else, it'll definitely make you feel much more connected to your body, and with your body being an an integral part of yourself, it'll definitely improve the bigger picture.
 
Creating duplicate threads is against forum guidelines. I've merged 5 of your threads into 1. Kindly refrain from cross-posting again.

Thanks.
 
"Failure is always the best way to learn,
retracing your steps until you know.
have no fear your wounds will heal"

I've found a lot of my answers in music. It's kept me company through it all. Random thought for you, elpatrony - what are you listening to now? What were you listening to then? Have you tried something new? No need to post it at all, just internalize that, and maybe you can find yourself some peace while you figure your shit out. Last little slump I went through, you couldn't catch me without my sennheisers on, just trying to find something new that could "click" and help to focus my thoughts. I've been digging through the music threads here for years as a lurker.

For what it's worth, the only trip I could loosely classify as "bad" was from when I was about your age (~18yrs) - ditto the drug use, alcohol intake, and "I can take any drug in any amount in any scenario" mentality. Funnily enough, this was a shroom trip in the park during dusk, right when a thunderstorm was starting. It was beautiful. Eventually I started seeing "foreboding faces" coming out of the sky, and all the while knowing it was an illusion, and that was probably the first time I experienced true terror. All while "knowing" what was going on. Of course, there's nothing like feeling that you are being attacked from the inside - fighting that feeling is not something many can master without some time. Anyway, I beckoned to my people it was time to head back to the fort, where a bunch of truly bizzarre experiences permeated the night. I'll spare you the rest, but yeah, that night had sure shook me up. Not exactly like your ego death experience, but I couldn't help but notice the similarities. But again, for what it's worth, I've had many beautiful experiences since then - After I got the whole "bad trip" thing out of the way, I had nothing to fear. You have nothing to fear. I know this is an HR website, and this is my first post, so I don't want to set the wrong tone or anything... personally, after my experience, the only thing left for me to do was to go trip again. Facing it, so to speak. Psychs are a powerful tool - they can go either way. Also, I was lucky enough to eventually meet a "guide" so to speak - He helped point me in the right direction. That could help. Solid relationships help. You gotta let go, lose your fear of rejection or not having the right things to say, and jump right in. You'll build up your own self respect. Be who you can be at the moment. You'll run into somebody you can relate to. There's seven fucking billion of us here.

Sorry to ramble. Point being, keep your mind open.. you'll fall into something. I don't think the answers you need right now lie within. Go and start searching. Cheers.


EDIT - oh yeah, first post, so hi guys. /creep I've been lurking here for years so I already know who some of you are.. //creep ...I've just never gotten around to posting. Thanks for having me.
 
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