social anxiety and tripping

[white55]

Hi,I have pretty bad social anxiety and am up for trying anything that myight cure it. I've heard good things a bout psychedelics so am interested in that. I can get 4-aco-dmt, 4-aco-met, lsd, 1p-lsd and al lad and 2c-e. Anyone have any experience on this. My anxiety is that I can't open up to people, especially strangers. Is it better to go all out with high doses (have done high doses before and they helped for at least a few months). Or stick to normal ones. My thinking is that a strong dose would give me a better reset, but I'm open to ideas. Personally I was thinking some 4-aco-dmt, al-lad and 1p-lsd. I plan to have a sober sitter to talk me throught any issues. Andy suggestions/personal experiences/anything else? Thanks.Oh, right now I take lyrica for the anxiety (makes me want to talk about the anxiety). Is it fine to take on the day of the trip?

 

[neurotic]

hi man. i just wanna say that in my experience, it's not exactly a good mindset to go in a trip with this type of expectations ("fix me"). psychedelics are too unpredictable. you're better off going with an open-mind and go with the flow.

once i tripped expecting - wanting, requiring - to have my mind blown, to get over a few emotional issues and was severely disappointed. angry, i sat at the sofa feeling like "fuck this!'. i was barely getting visuals, and my thought process felt unchanged. three hours of frustration and bore into the trip i said "fuck it... this ain't working" and forgot about it and went on like i wasn't tripping anymore. then i was caught off guard. holy shit, as cliché as that sounds, as i was drawing and writing during that trip, i came up with a few insights that i still remember and still make sense to everyday life. deeply affected.

so, if i were you, i wouldn't put all your chips on "psychedelic treatment". for what it's worth, there are lots of other stuff to get out of tripping. i'd try to deal with your social anxiety with more straight forward, less mystical (less lazy?) techniques like cognitive behavioural therapy, finding out what are your limitating beliefs, changing your behavior etc... and then, as an adjunct, may be trip, when you're free, no strings attached... who knows, you might get your mind blown and feel amazing for a month after, with some long lasting insight... or not

 

[TheAppleCore]

I feel qualified to talk about social anxiety and psychedelics, because I've had a lot of experience with both.

My recommendation is to take a low-to-moderate dose of a psychedelic in a setting with strangers. If you can't tolerate the idea of tripping around strangers, then trip with a group of friends. It's important to do it in a setting that challenges your anxiety. The ONLY way to overcome social anxiety is to confront it. Psychedelics can help you with this, but again, you won't get very far by simply contemplating or talking about your anxiety while tripping balls -- you have to experience it.

I can attest to this. I met my best friend at college on a low dose of 4-AcO-DMT.

 

[DarkStarCrashes]

I find that taking phenibut on a day that I trip helps eliminate both social anxiety and anxiety in general.

 

[HackYourMind]

I can't trip in public. Roll? Hell yeah. Trip, no. It makes me so self consciously and anxious, worse than I am naturally. Rolling makes me the most social person ever, despite being awkward without it.

 

[TheAppleCore]

I can't trip in public. Roll? Hell yeah. Trip, no. It makes me so self consciously and anxious, worse than I am naturally.

Yeah, that's exactly why tripping in public is such a good therapy for social anxiety. Your toxic self-conscious thinking is exacerbated to the point of absurdity, which helps you to identify and correct the problem.

That's why many people have reported that psychedelics are, contrary to what you might expect, sometimes more anxious and generally uncomfortable when taken at LOWER doses. Once a certain dosage is achieved, people claim to "break through", and reach a state of calm and bliss.

This is because, at lower doses, the exaggeration of your negative thinking hasn't reached the point of a breakthrough insight; it's only serving to discombobulate your head. However, once the discombobulation becomes extreme enough, sanity will naturally "click" into place, as you become self-aware of the insanity. Makes sense?

I should add that I do NOT condone taking large, "breakthrough" doses of a psychedelic in public as a strategy for social anxiety. Again, I recommend a low to moderate dose for this purpose.

 

[Kl519]

Social anxiety is all in the mind. Not everyone is going to like you, so it's best to just be humble, and listen to others and respond back. It's really simple, even kindergarteners can do that, so that's how I look at it. I think everyone just worries too much, unnecessarily I might add.

Edit: So basically, just do whatever you feel like. No need to worry about that (social anxiety) if it doesn't bother you.

And I know what it's like too. So ya, it's easy if you feel like it. If not...fuck it.

 

[Mr Crowley]

candy flipping couldn't go wrong either.

 

[Kl519]

Yeah, basically what I mean is that it's whether you feel like it or not. People don't forget how to talk, they just either do it or some don't. It's a waste of anxiety on social anxiety.

Believe me, I've already met a few peers who can't stop talking, pretty much the opposite of what's here in this thread. They just talk without thinking, almost, because basically they don't give af. But sometimes even those people will be quiet here and there, cuz ya they didn't feel like talking that day (lol). Anyway, if it makes you happy, neither choice is bad. Just go with it. To each their own (here too).

 

[CNSninja]

Social anxiety is all in the mind. [...]It's really simple, even kindergarteners can do that[...] I think everyone just worries too much, unnecessarily[...] just do whatever you feel like. No need to worry about [...] social anxiety[...] I know what it's like too. So ya, it's easy if you feel like it.

There's a huge difference between everyday 'worry' which is what it sounds like you've experienced, and actual anxiety. Yes, anxiety is "all in the mind", but that's kind of disingenuous because so is literally all of reality itself. Perception literally IS reality, and to say that something is "all in your head" as a way to try to decrease the effects of the thing is a massive misunderstanding of the power and the role of perception in life. Anxiety is a serious problem for people who experience it, and it is not something you can just decide your way out of, and that's basically a different way to say "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," and that's something only people who haven't experienced or don't actually understand these things will ever say. If you can just choose not to feel it, then it's simple worry, not the kind of problematic and truly crippling anxiety people are almost always referring to in this context. It's an actual chemical imbalance, not an internal misunderstanding of when to "talk or not talk."

•

As for responding to OP's question for the sake of all who read this in the future and not necessarily just to respond to OP...
It's a complex issue. Psychedelics are a great tool, but they're not medicine in the way that western culture thinks of "medicine." We think of medicine as something like Tylanol- something you can take for an ailment that will go to work automatically to cure you of the ailment. There is no work involved with the kinds of medicine we consider to be 'medicine.' Psychedelics are largely a different sort of medicine. Psychedelics aren't a "cure" in that same sense, they're more tools that can help you to find the "cure," so to speak, within yourself, and to understand what you may alctally already know about how to overcome your problems though. Taking a psychedelic won't just cure your anxiety automatically, but the psychedelic experience may lead you to understandings that you may not have otherwise found, understandings that might allow you to work through the underlying cause of your anxiety or understandings that allow you to see reality in a way that no longer makes you as anxious. It's important to understand that all anxiety is a manifestation of an internal fear that has been embedded in your subconscious because of a traumatic event, often, though not always, during childhood. Some very common ones are fear of failure, fear of success (which is ultimately a fear of failure,) fear of death or grave physical injury, fear of loss, abandonment, etc. Most other fears stem from these more basic fears. Social anxiety is often a manifestation of social fears like the fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, or another fear that was instilled early on in life, and to overcome the social anxiety you need to figure out the root fear behind it is, and then understand why you're afraid of it, and then to negate it by proving to yourself that you don't need to fear that underlying cause (e.g. "I'm leaning to genuinely love myself, and I no longer need others to make me feel valuable, so I no longer need to fear abandonment.")
Psychedelics are a great tool for finding out what the root cause is, which will provide you with a target to focus on. You can then work through it during your integration period after the trip and moving forward in life, but a psychedelic alone isn't going to just automatically remove the fear and chemically block you from feeling anxiety anymore the way Tylanol can chemically block you from feeling the pain of a headache.

On another noteworthy point, psychologists have long agreed that the number-one best and most effectuation method for overcoming fears including phobias and social anxiety is immersion therapy. You immerse yourself in situations that cause the fear, but you begin very slowly, gradually, starting perhaps with something as simple as sitting alone and merely contemplating or imagining being in social situations. It's very important not to dive head-on into the thing that causes the fear because this can re-traumatize the person experiencing the fear and/or anxiety, and that's obviously the most counterproductive thing that could happen, so I strongly disagree with the people suggesting you do something like eat a bag of shrooms and go to the mall or something. As anyone with acute and recurring anxiety or panic who also takes psychedelics probably knows, they can and usually do strongly magnify any emotions you're feeling, so in my educated opinion, trying to treat social anxiety by taking a heavy tryptamine psychedelic and diving head-on into a social situation is potentially a real recipe for disaster. Begin slowly and progress gradually. You want to experience being outside your comfort zone to learn that you can handle it, but you don't want to drown while learning how to swim, as it were. This is the working concept behind immersion therapy, but there is a definite balance to this sort of therapy. It's not like throwing a kid into a pond to teach the kid to swim- (which I think is a stupid idea anyway, but the comparison works well for the sake of this conversation,) immersion therapy is more like walking step by step into deeper and deeper water so as to be able to check and see that "Okay, I'm still not drowning, I got this. Moving forward my next step will be..." so as to gradually build a tolerance to the thing you fear, and thereby gaining confidence and actually defeating the fear.

Tryptamines also may not be the best for beginning work on this sort of thing, and in fact, the best thing to do would be to start off stone sober, and maybe even do all the work sober, using psychedelics only as a tool for contemplating the steps you've taken and the steps you plan on taking later, and only when it's honestly gonna help. Phenethylamines like MDMA would probably be more along the lines of the kind of drug that would be conducive to diving straight into chaotic and potentially panic-inducing social situations, but I definitely wouldn't recommend that sort of step with tryptamines, and especially not as a beginner to this kind of work--until you're well into working on being able to be comfortable (or at least confident in yourself) while in social situations AND sober.

I also disagree with the person above who seemed to be implying that using psychedelics to find relief is "lazy," but I think I understand what was meant by that. I do believe there are more effective ways to do this kind if work if you already have a good working understanding of yourself and the issues you face. So long as you don't know damn near every proverbial inch of your own psyche (don't believe anyone really does) then psychedelics can always be useful for gaining a more accurate working understanding of your 'self' and your fears and beliefs, and what work you need to start doing to improve all of the above when you come down.

.

Psychology and pharmacology are my two specialties and I have almost thirty years of firsthand experience with literally crippling social phobia- in fact panic disorder with agoraphobia and social phobia--and how they're treated and most often overcome. I've spent the past sixteen years studying these conditions closely in an effort to overcome them myself, and I've stayed up to date with the newest, and the most effective, treatments, for these sorts of things.

 

[1and1areOne]

We think of medicine as something like Tylenol- something you can take for an ailment that will go to work automatically to cure you of the ailment. There is no work involved with the kinds of medicine we consider to be 'medicine.' Psychedelics are largely a different sort of medicine. Psychedelics aren't a "cure" in that same sense, they're more tools that can help you to find the "cure," so to speak, within yourself, and to understand what you may actually already know about how to overcome your problems though. Taking a psychedelic won't just cure your anxiety automatically, but the psychedelic experience may lead you to understandings that you may not have otherwise found, understandings that might allow you to work through the underlying cause of your anxiety or understandings that allow you to see reality in a way that no longer makes you as anxious.

It's important to understand that all anxiety is a manifestation of an internal fear that has been embedded in your subconscious because of a traumatic event, often, though not always, during childhood. Some very common ones are fear of failure, fear of success (which is ultimately a fear of failure,) fear of death or grave physical injury, fear of loss, abandonment, etc. Most other fears stem from these more basic fears. Social anxiety is often a manifestation of social fears like the fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, or another fear that was instilled early on in life, and to overcome the social anxiety you need to figure out the root fear behind it is, and then understand why you're afraid of it, and then to negate it by proving to yourself that you don't need to fear that underlying cause (e.g. "I'm leaning to genuinely love myself, and I no longer need others to make me feel valuable, so I no longer need to fear abandonment.")

Psychedelics are a great tool for finding out what the root cause is, which will provide you with a target to focus on. You can then work through it during your integration period after the trip and moving forward in life, but a psychedelic alone isn't going to just automatically remove the fear and chemically block you from feeling anxiety anymore the way Tylanol can chemically block you from feeling the pain of a headache.

I'd like to personally thank you for your post, it touched me. You've explained in great detail how psychedelics can/should be used to get to the root of the issue at hand. They have the potential to grant to us a greater capability to understand 'why' we are the way we are. I've long wondered why I am so very anxious when I am around people. I think it is a fear stemming from a traumatic event in the past. A fear of not knowing what I am expected to say, or how I am expected to behave. A fear of rejection.

When I am deeply moved by a psychedelic experience, I find the social anxiety becomes so very irrelevant - but I cannot jump into a social situation in that state of being. Mainly because when I look back on how I acted (or what I posted on some internet forum) it all seems so.... overly loving? Overly emotional?

It's like I'm trying to push out all these emotions that I hide inside all in one go. It certainly isn't my usual demeanor which is reserved and quiet. But when I am in the tryptamine 'zone' that reservation, that quiet shell I keep around me is completely obliterated. Almost too much, in fact. But I can't decide if that side of me is truly who I am, or if it's something imparted by the psychedelic, temporarily. I lean towards it being truth, but a truth that I can't face when I'm not tripping.

I look back at my words and actions, and they seem 'silly' and 'not like me' - so I feel shameful. But when I was saying or writing them, they were the most truthful and clear representation of my feelings towards another. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that psychedelics can give me an ability to shed free from my anxious fear of 'what will people think' -- but later on I revert back, I delete what I wrote, I go back into hiding after the trip is over.