Psychedlics and Phobias ophidiophobia

[SharedHalucination]

I have ophidiophobia.

From the beginning of my memories I've always been terrified of snakes. Reptiles dont bother me just snakes. There is actually a picture of me with a big yellow snake around my neck but I wasnt alone, and didnt want others to know of my fear. Pranks and all that. I live in an area where snakes arent common and no snakes that can actually kill me.

In my life I've ran into two snakes that I can remember. I was playing in my grandpas backyard and for some reason I opened up a dresser drawer that was in the backyard and behold there was a snake inside. My uncle ended up chasing me with it. Never ran faster in my life, jumping fences and all that lol.

Later in my years I have grown fond of psychedlics. My first LSD trip I took 200mcg and I visually hallucinated snakes crawling all over the ground, crawling around in my clothes, and falling from the sky. At the moment I knew none of it was actually happening but I started running anyways. That would be my only "bad" trip.

After I came down from that trip I felt soooo good. I spent the next morning just walking around outside, feeling very content and happy even tho I experienced the phobia hours prior.

The other day I took 400mcg of LSD and I was watching a video of how a some chinese people will take a live snake cut it open and drink the blood as right of passage type deal. Anyways, I had to take my shirt off and change what I was watching. I didnt hallucinate snakes at all but I had this eerie feeling. This phobia is the only reason I havent experimented with that deeper substances like DMT.

Any trippers with phobias before experimenting with psychedelic drugs here. Any advise? I am thinking of taking a phobia treatment system. Like you slowly get closer and closer to a snake up to the point of actually touching one. Then maybe I can dig deeper in my mind. IDK can take high amounts of LSD and 4 aco dmt and I dont have the phobia come up in the trip unless Im literally watching snakes or someone starts talking about snakes. Idk if I feel like I had an encounter in my youth with a snake that I completely dont remember or Its a hereditary type thing. My mother doesnt like snakes either but she doesnt have the "phobia" I have with them.

Edit: Like her phobia is heights like ive seen here have a panic attack taking the elevator up into the St. Louis Arch, me on the other hand have skydived multiple times. Its just weird to me lol.

 

[tokezu]

Sometimes images of spiders come up in my trips, but I am not sure how much this relates to your situation, because while spiders do make me feel uncomfortable in ways that no other animals can, it's not so extreme that I would call it arachnophobia.

Thinking about spiders on a trip is most of the time related to come up anxiety for me. I remember vividly the first time it happened to me on a rather strong dose of mushrooms, but that theme has repeated numerous times on different occasions. It went like this: I would see a pretty nasty looking spider before my minds eye and my immediate reaction is "I don't want to think about that!" and so I push this thought to the side. Some time later a similar image appears in my mind, again I push the thought away and try to think about something different. This cycle keeps on repeating, only it takes less and less time before the spider pops back up again, because the more I keep telling myself "Don't think about the spider!" the more I am reminded of the spider.

So eventually I am just too frustrated and give up. "Ok, brain. So you really want me to look at this creepy spider right now, huh? I guess I can't stop you." So I look at the spider and just try to accept that this is my situation right now and I can't change it. "My God, what a dreadful thing. Look at those eyes, eight of them no less!" I remind myself that it's important to think positive and that you can actually trick yourself into thinking more positive and feeling better through acting as if. It has been shown that if you force yourself to smile you can "trick" your brain into feeling happier. So that's what I do, I force myself to smile, smiling at the spider in a way I guess. And then after some time something very interesting happened.

The spider started looking less scary, less creepy, less threatening. The spider started to look... friendly, actually. Almost like it was smiling back at me, though the image itself didn't change at all. It wasn't like the spider suddenly had a big fat grin like in a cartoon or anything, it was just that I was now getting a different vibe from the image that had made me so uncomfortable just seconds before. And then I realised what had happened, that that which I had assumed to be an innate quality of the image of the spider - the creepiness - was actually nothing but a reflection of my own state of mind. That I had projected the feeling of being creeped out onto the image of the spider and now that I was feeling more open and friendly I projected this friendliness onto the image of the spider. That it was not the spider that smiled back at me, but it was I who was smiling back at myself.

I don't know if that makes sense to you, but this theme has repeatedly come up in my trips.

Also this:

Infants reacted with increased pupillary dilation indicating arousal to spiders and snakes compared with flowers and fish. Results support the notion of an evolved preparedness for developing fear of these ancestral threats.

Link

 

[SharedHalucination]

That makes total sense tokezu. Thanks for your response. The only difference is that I never have visual hallucinations of snakes or the image in my brain during the trip. Ive never seen a snake on a trip since the first trip. I have to see snakes on the TV or someone has to start talking about snakes, other wise the word snake doesnt even happen in my trips. Its weird, idk if that makes sense to you lol. Shits crazy.

I wanna try DMT SO BAD, but the thought of snakes crawling all over me or being in like a snake pit freaks me out lmao. Its total irrational its not like snakes are plotting to get me and shit. AHHH lol seriously thank you for the response most people just say "dont be pussy".

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

My advice: just do the DMT. You can't control it anyway.

I have a massive phobia of snakes. I even had to deal with one post-peak during a trip (see my frist 25e trip report). I rarely if ever think about snakes on substances including DMT. On DMT I'm usually too stunned by the show to even give much thought to my fears/phobias.

As for getting over the phobia itself: exposure to it is the only way I've found. See if a local zoo will let you pet a snake or if anyone local you know keeps them as pets.

 

[Xorkoth]

I used to be so afraid of spiders that I remember one time I saw a tiny one on me and I literally blacked out for a second and came to screaming and running and slapping myself on the shoulder. As an adult I moved to the temperate rainforest into a house that had been unoccupied for a year. There were HUGE spiders all over the place, and at first it was horrifying, but over time I got used to it and these days little spiders don't bother me at all, and I think even the big ones are beautiful in a repulsive sort of way. I mean I don't want them on me, but I no longer have arachnophobia. So yeah, exposure therapy.

I wouldn't let the fear of snakes stop you from doing DMT. Anyway DMT is so overwhelming and fast and otherworldly I can't imagine there even being time for the content of your own conscious mind to come up. I think you'd be the LEAST likely to encounter that sort of fear on DMT of any psychedelic I can think of.

 

[Cudi]

This is so weird to me. I LOVE snakes. I think they have some sort of spiritual representation for me because I've had some spiritual dreams in which snakes are present. In one, a cobra bit my leg and killed me, but I think it was more of a "me being reborn" type of thing. Cobras are also very important in Hinduism

 

[justme6263]

Personally I have a quite bad phobia of birds which stops me going into city centres often, always had this phobia. The first time I used LSD I spent some time outside and found myself drawn to a group of birds, I just sat and watched them for ages and then when they took to the sky I watched how graceful they were in flight. I thought at the time "wow, I must have got over this fear" and to an extent it did lessen my phobia, I don't freak out when they are a distance from me any more only when they are in close proximity. So I guess in a way LSD did help me reduce this fear but not eliminate it, maybe I need to do more work with birds and LSD to do that.

 

[Xorkoth]

Whoa birds, really? You don't hear about that one too often.

I have a friend who is absolutely terrified of moths and butterflies. There was a moth in the house when she was visiting once and all of a sudden she started screaming ear-piercingly in a constant manner, and jumped up and got up on a chair (like that would make a difference) and was literally crying with tears down her face "KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT OH MY GOD AHHHHHHHHHHHH".

 

[justme6263]

Whoa birds, really? You don't hear about that one too often.

I have a friend who is absolutely terrified of moths and butterflies. There was a moth in the house when she was visiting once and all of a sudden she started screaming ear-piercingly in a constant manner, and jumped up and got up on a chair (like that would make a difference) and was literally crying with tears down her face "KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT OH MY GOD AHHHHHHHHHHHH".

Yeah it is a strange one, funnily enough my Mom is the only other person I know with it. I know where is stemmed from too, when I was a toddler I have this clear memory of my older cousin throwing a circle of bread around me when I was at the park about 3 years old. A load of swans, geese, ducks, etc surrounded me and pecked at my feet and generally scared the shit out of me.

When I think about how bad the phobia was before that first LSD trip and where I am with it now I really am amazed, I couldn't be around birds at all and struggled being outside quite regularly. Then that trip I saw how they socialised, their gracefulness in the sky and was kind of taken aback by their beauty. Now like I say I can be outside without any issues as long as I'm not close to them and God forbid I should be indoors with one....

Never had an issue with moths or butterflies though, quite the fan of both of those actually.

 

[Xorkoth]

That's awesome that LSD helped you so much... I'd probably be freaked out of birds if that happened to me as a young kid too! I got bit in the hand by a shitty neighbor dog when I was like 2 I think. I don't actually remember it, but I was terrified of dogs to the point of crying and running anytime I saw a dog. Until our neighbor's dog started coming around a lot and gradually I realized most dogs are awesome and you have nothing to fear from them. I guess there's not the same equivalence in birds. But exposure therapy worked for dogs and spiders for me.

 

[trogere]

There is a lot of symbolic around snakes. I Wonder if you are familiar with Kundalini. After my first Kundalini arousal from MDMA, I had a hard trip when smoking weed in which I was seeing snakes in my CEVs.