Mushrooms-Worst Trip EVER-What Does it Mean?

[sparkle77]

So a friend of mine convinced me to try mushrooms (3.5 grams). I'm not that into doing drugs so I didn't want to but I did it anyway. It turned out to be the worst experience of my life.

I felt like I was falling into myself, trapped I my own body like I was paralyzed. Reality came to me in snatches but I couldn't hold onto it. The world was constantly shifting and I felt like I was drowning while desperately trying to get my head above water.

I was also in terrible pain. It was like nothing I had ever felt before with the pain coming from multiple sources at once. It was like staring directly into a blinding light, while someone is banging a pot right next to your ear and scraping a knife along all of your nerves.

I could see multiple dimensions at once and was trying to focus on the one in which I still existed. I felt like my body was breaking apart and the different pieces were sliding into different dimensions before coming back together. This happened over and over again. It was like the world kept coming to an end and being recreated. I felt like I was in hell tumbling through an abyss with no gravity or solid ground.

I was just writhing in pain and crying for hours feeling like it was never going to end.

Does anyone know what this means? I thought doing mushrooms was supposed to be a spiritual experience, but instead it was agony!

 

[Fridolin]

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience but I can somewhat relate to what you are saying. Do you have any idea how much did you eat? Seems like you probably overdosed for the first time experience - it's best to start low.

When I first tried shrooms it was supposed to be a low dose but it was enough for me to realise that I was not ready to have the concept of time, understanding of reality being ripped out from me. My friends kept telling me to let go but at that time I did not know how to achieve it and I ended up trapped in this mass confusion about what is and what isn't. It seems as if you weren't ready to have your understanding of reality challenged.

As for the pain, it could have been the 'fight or flight' response. When you feel threat but there isn't anything physical then your mind can make up that something must be wrong with your body. Alexander Shulgin saw this happen to a person who collapsed in pain and thought she had stomach cancer even though she didn't but it was rather a memory of her mother dying of it that was causing such a response on a psychedelic.

As someone on this forum some years ago said:

[...] Your brain will automatically go into this response state when it encounters something which appears to be a threat to your survival. It can't initiate the "flight" response because you know it's in your head and you can't run away from that too easily.

So the "fight" response kicks in and you get a seemingly irresistable urge to cling to reality because you fear that if you don't, you'll never wake up, you'll be locked in this nightmare forever. If not physically dead, at best you'll be insane and holed up in a mental institution for the rest of your days, the shame of your family, ruined your potential and your mind by messing around with drugs. A stark warning to others not to ever take psychedelics, this is how they fuck you up and the reason they're illegal.

So, don't attempt to fly and don't attempt to fight. Even when it gets scary as hell and your convinced you've killed yourself. Don't even attempt to turn the trip round into something "nice" because even that qualifies as fighting it. Let it all just happen, no matter how bad, I'll bet a dollar to a dime you DO wake up and you DO come down [...]

Hope you can integrate your experience and next time you'll probably have a positive trip.

 

[crOOk]

The world was constantly shifting and I felt like I was drowning while desperately trying to get my head above water.

Oh, the beauty of mushrooms. :D

This is precisely how I described my bad mushroom trip. The really bad one. The once in a lifetime nightmarish trip that one can barely believe to have survived. Whenever you manage to catch your breathe, to push your head atop the surface another waves comes crashing down on you and drags you even deeper, until you drown inside the raging forces of your mind.

That being said, I feel for you, I really do. I think you are doing the exact right thing by consulting the internet for some stimulating ideas.

Usually the solution comes towards the tail end of the trip. Talking to a friend helps. You could find out one simple fact about your biography, about your emotional needs, about a loved ones emotional needs, about the wrongness of your actions, about aspects of life you neglected, just something about your life, possibly many things at once. Things that will possibly make you break down in tears, things that will infuse you with energy and enable you to make a change for the better, things that fill you with joy over being able to finally pin them down. You could find out how the pain you felt was a reflection of those inner demons that you fail so hard to recognize when sober. Those demons that we lock out from out hearts because meeting them may mean pain we cannot compensate.

Ask yourself what you felt! What pictures came to mind? Who did you think of? What feeling did these people, scenes, memories cause in you? Guilt? Shame? Fear? Hatred? Self-hatred? Alienation?

I suggest you think about all this now, think long and hard. There is a chance whatever demons lie beneath cannot be revealed now that it's all over. Maybe they shouldn't be. Just rest assured that bad mushroom trips happen for a reason, they do not just happen. Experienced psychedelic users can minimize the chance of bad trips, many will tell you they can eat all the acid you give to them, but we are never immune to what you experienced.

As inconsiderate and unempathetic it may sound: Try to appreciate the experience for what it was. Look at it as a chance for profound insights. Laughing your ass off for 3 hours straight will not allow you to work things out. This can. I sincerely hope you can gather something from this, anything.

We cannot tell you what made you cry, but you might.

Oh and welcome to bluelight!




EDIT: Crying is not unusual on tryptamines, regardless of whether it's due to pain or joy. I cry every time I'm on, a lot. I cry my eyes out. Shit, I reliably cry just thinking about tryptamines, like now. They are among the last things that make me feel like life has meaning. Whether that's a good thing or not I cannot tell. I keep their use to a minimum. I hope you can make something of your experience, it is way too valuable to write it off as a bad reaction to a psychoactive chemical.

 

[sparkle77]

Thanks so much for everyone's thoughts. I will definitely NOT being trying it again so I am trying to gather any useful info I can from that trip. I'm writing a book right now so it will actually be very helpful for one of the scenes.

That's interesting that the physical pain could be a reflection of psychic pain. I have been going through a hard time lately. I have a chronic illness and was badly injured three months ago and have hardly been able to get out of bed since. Ironically, my friend suggested I try mushrooms to have some fun and cheer me up.

I tried speaking to my friend while I was on my trip but it was very difficult. I didn't have much control over my body and I felt like he was getting farther and farther away from me and we would never see each other again.

I don't think it really taught me anything about my life. I think it just intensified my feelings of distress about my illness.

 

[sparkle77]

Oh, I had 3.5 grams BTW.

 

[Fridolin]

Oh, I had 3.5 grams BTW.

Yeah I'd recommend 1.5g but nothing more than 2g. Your dose was way too much in my opinion. Hope the experience helps your writing

 

[crOOk]

Call me irresponsible, but I recommend as much as possible. Biggest mistake one can make is eating too little. I've never really seen the dose increasing the chance of a bad trip. It just doesn't seem that way to me. I know this forum is about harm reduction, but I really don't see the mushroom dosage increasing the risks. Who keeps you company, soft factors like set & setting and hard factors like susceptability to psychosis seems to be infinitely more important to secure a pleasant experience. I ate what I estimate to be a shitload of acid when I first tripped and while it rendered me unable to communicate for the first 3 hours, it was one of the best trips I've ever had. My worst trips, my psychotic breaks and my friends' psychotic breaks all happened on low dose psychedelics, more often than not in combination with alcohol.

But I digress, this is about sparkle77's experience. You didn't have any other substances btw, did you? I am sorry to hear you are relatively certain not to have gained any insights from this other than being reminded of your somatic suffering or decay. Speaking of, I don't know what chronic illness you suffer, but depending on which it is illness can lead a person straight into a spiritual crisis he is not prepared for. To me the experience of tryptamines usually boiled down to how I deal with my own inevitable demise. I apologize if this is too personal an issue to tackle on a public forum, but without knowing the nature of your dis.ease... Maybe you need to start thinking about life as such and the fact that it seems to have an end to it?

I'm not saying mushrooms will always teach you something, but you can turn just about any experience into a stepping stone towards personal growth or at least revealing more of your self to you. You can always externalize experiences and the causal linkage leading up to them, but you can just as well try to make it about you. All I'm saying is, this experience might have just been a bad trip caused by too many mushrooms under the wrong circumstances, but maybe you can manage to turn this pile of shit around and still turn it into a doorway. I've always sucked at doing that. :D

 

[sparkle77]

I did have a couple glasses of wine earlier in the night and an couple hours or so after I took the mushrooms and my friend saw that I was getting stressed out he gave me a small hit from a bong.

I was in a comfortable environment. I was in my apartment and it was completely quiet. Also I am very close with my friend so I was totally relaxed before I got started. Also nothing happened to me as I was getting high that would have triggered any anxiety either.

The chronic illness that I have is rheumatoid arthritis. I also might have thoracic outlet syndrome which is compressing some of the nerves that go to my neck and causing awful migraines. As a result I can't work and have to wear a neck brace all the time. None of it is life threatening, just annoying.

 

[Xorkoth]

Ah, smoking weed on psychedelics before the peak is over is a good recipe for panic, it will make it much stronger.

 

[crOOk]

Well well well, booze AND pot? Booze seems to increase the chance for psychotic breaks like thousandfold in my experience, pot can just massively intensify the disorientation and anxiety, like Xorkoth has already said.

Probably still not what I would attribute the experience to (see above post about externalization), but it's definitely worth knowing that neither is a good idea at all on mushrooms. Judging by what you've told us, your buddy really meant well with you in giving you the mushrooms, I hope there aren't any hard feelings between you two.

EDIT: Coincidentally I am suffering from thoracic outlet (and a shitload of other joint issues) and it seems it played a large role in the occurrence of a deep vein thrombosis of my upper extremety. This is very unusual, so nothing you should worry about. I'm just saying... I feel you there.

I actually tried to combat my pain with psychedelics for quite some time, since I thought it was my mental state causing the somatic symptoms. I don't know how long you've been suffering symptoms, but rest assured that while the symptoms tend to get a lot worse, your ability to cope with them will (hopefully) increase overproportionally. Pain is no joke, try to keep your spirits up!