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What produces the lsd uncomfortable come up

Daisylover

Greenlighter
Joined
Jul 24, 2017
Messages
14
I have read a lot about lsd come up and some uncomfortable feelings it can produce. Nausea, neck tension, a weird hungry feeling in the stomach, some anxiety, a but of chest tightness, increased heart rate which are temporary and usually end in about an hour after ingestion.

I have not really found specific tips on how to deal with them, and usually waiting them out resolves it, but it would be great to avoid them... But what produces these feelings?
Anyone with biology /physiology background can explain what happens in the body to produce these effects?
 
Yeah I think the above explanation is a good one. When I was early on in my psychedelic use I would get terrible come-ups, I'd feel physically ill even, some drugs more than others. The transition from sober to tripping was so intense for me because I was new to tripping, it was disorienting. Nowadays, I basically never have any discomfort at any point from most psychedelics, because I've tripped so much that it's not disorienting coming up.

LSD has one of the lightest bodyloads/come-ups of any psychedelic in my experience. These days when I take it I never have even the slightest hint of discomfort, I just start feeling it, it feels euphoric and nice, and it builds seamlessly and eventually peaks. Same feeling the whole time, totally comfortable the whole time.
 
Whatever the ways are we get attuned during an LSD trip, it's quite a difference from sobriety that is true so I guess getting used to that takes some work.

I am not sure it explains all of the discomfort and anxiety though, because it happens even when you are pretty used to it and have a welcoming disposition.

I think also involved are other pharmacological effects, perhaps some direct and/or others downstream that initially produce anxiety (think adrenaline)... not all psychedelics cause this to the same extent and it is not necessarily consistent with psychedelic intensity which is another argument for something else going on.
On DOC it can take like 2 hours or more to transition and it does seem to have unusual side-effects which I don't think should all be considered typical for stim type amphetamines. On mushrooms I remember getting more lethargic, yawny and jelly-legged, but these days I get a super intense energetic feeling taking 4-sub tryptamines which doesn't go away.

I don't see what dystonia has anything to do with all this, sorry. Dystonia falls more in a range of extrapyramidal effects, very often associated as side-effect with neuroleptics. What evidence is there that the extrapyramidal system is relevant here? It is a motoric circuit whereas the origin here is not involuntary movement disorders but anxiety symptoms. Any overlap between the two is coincidental, I'm sure.

Meditation is great advice though, but it can can easily get overly intense especially when ramping up to a peak, so IMO it is better saved for a little later. On the other hand, yogic practices in general are great for channeling energies - I don't mean objective and measurable energy but perceived through experience - and I would define this broadly here to include not only martial arts type movement but also dancing. What these share is that they are options of expressing your sensations - meditation involves an open podium for them to be expressed in whatever spontaneous way and the other practices while not all free-style necessarily do stay very close to direct experience of bodily sensations.

These sensation I think are in some way caused by intensified sensation, activation of something pretty complex but still very likely involving neurological and endocrine systems which is where the adrenaline etc I mentioned earlier ties in, even if I can't be more specific.

Removing yourself from these psychosomatic experiences, for example by running away from them getting lost in thought etc or simply ignoring them can have them pent up and can add to a mounting bodyload, whereas channeling them even outside of any traditional practice can help you to at least vent the biggest parts.
I'm sure there are a lot of practices useful for this that rely on wisdom that comes from years of experience with working with these sensations rather than understanding scientifically how it works.

Yogic practices or more casual expressing though things like dancing tend to be less threatening during a come-up than meditation since meditation involves more boundlessness.
 
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I am not sure it explains all of the discomfort and anxiety though, because it happens even when you are pretty used to it and have a welcoming disposition.

I'm mostly in agreement with Solipsis, although I've never been able to escape the discomfort through expression/activity.

I don't think it's as simple as getting used to it, because my psych comeups, acid in particular is a good barometer, have gotten worse since I started tripping. Proabbly the first dozen or so times I did acid I had little to no nausea, but pretty much every time I dose nowadays I will puke on the comeup.

It's gotten to the point that I'm reducing my doses to mitigate the nausea, but that doesn't produce as satisfying a trip after the peak.

There was a time though that the only thing that could make me puke was DXM, so I'm not sure why it's gotten to this point. I was messing around with ondansetron a little, dunno if that might have screwed something up with my 5ht2c sensitivity or something
 
Huh, strange. I have read of others on here who get rougher comeups with more experience too. It's been the exact opposite for me. I remember the first time I took 2C-I, for example, bac in 2005, I threw up ~10 times and felt poisoned, like I had the flu, and was swearing I'd never trip again if only I could come down because I felt like I was going crazy, until I hit the peak and then it was smooth and nice. The last time I took 2C-I, I didn't have the slightest twinge of nausea or anxiety or discomfort at any point. I guess that just shows I can't extrapolate rules based on my own experiences...

LSD is one where I have never had a bodyload or nausea though, even back in the day. The only weird body thing that ever happens on LSD is that occasionally I get a gut full of gas that won't come out and it hurts quite a bit, but that's rare.
 
For me it's usually just anxiety from the fact that I know I'll be tripping.

The stomach also has this really bizarre feeling on LSD that I can't really explain. It's like if your stomach is completely emptied of contents and is just twisting around in your body. Happens to me every time I take acid.
 
Not sure what the Op means. Good LSD never produces discomfort unless you are wigging the fuck out!
 
I always get a difficult come up with lysergamides, not so with tryptamines.

I agree that meditation at this time is good but it can be very intense on the come up and as Solipis says better saved and use yoga instead - the focus on the movements distracts from the mind and stretch releases the build up of energy. I have found that in the early days of trippping I was fine on come up but that was only LSD and there would have been 4/5 pints to ease the transition, when rediscovering psychedelics with the RC explosion I found the come-ups more arduous and now they are not too bad, (although the nausea can be bad with some - bucket at the ready!).

I find dancing helps. I normally stick on some tunes on my headphones, (I prefer to trip at night and don't think the wife and kids would like Shpongle or Nirvana blasting out at midnight. I am not a dancer as such but a bit of pogoing and bopping about helps discharge the energy and raise my mood leaving the trip pointed in the right direction after about 10 minutes.
 
yoga and dancing are great alternatives for come up integration through body sense - while the mind grows stranger...
meditation is better at peak or after when mental integration is part of the flow of things anyway.
 
LSD can have a heavy body load depending on the dose, but I feel that the anxiety aspect is mostly psychological. LSD, by design, challenges established neural structures. It introduces a high level of novelty and plasticity to your human level experience. If you're someone who likes to be in control and know what's what, the LSD come up can be difficult.

There is a physiological aspect at the higher doses. It feels like all the qi rushes upward toward the head. When I first did LSD I was in school studying Chinese medicine. The stomach and the lungs have physiological qi that goes downward. When there is an upward rush of qi from any source, the stomach and lungs get dysregulated. I don't know the biomedicine explanation for this, but when LSD is first coming on, I feel slightly nauseous and short of breath. It's like so much energy is going up that all grounding goes away.... which would also explain why I have a hard time moving my legs.
 
ETH-LAD has a difficult come up for me, nausea, confusion

LSD is usually smooth unless set and setting aren't optimal. (The key here)

ALD-52 is very smooth for me

AL-LAD strangely I get some mild confusion but smooth here.
 
I think most of the discomfort of the come up is adjusting to being on LSD. I know that sounds kinda silly lol, but I think the body's natural reaction to such a change is like "wooooooah whats goin on here", and then it passes.

I've taken LSD 3 days in a row a couple times now, and the one thing I notice is the complete lack of a comeup on the 2nd and 3rd day, since you still feel sort of trippy from the day before, afterglow, and it makes the transition pretty seamless.
 
My very uninformed guess is it's largely due to adrenaline. I get very twitchy and fidgety on the come up and a bit anxious even in the best set & setting. It passes. Being able to put that energy into something helps, like walking, stretching, or dancing as others have suggested.

ALD-52 seems to lack this uncomfortable come up, but for me at least it remains much more mentally grounded than LSD and even when the visuals ramp up it hardly feels like much of a mental trip. YMMV.
 
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