Tips for acid hangovers

[Flickering]

The trip is one of the craziest, most mind-blowingly intense, creative, incredible experiences of your life. You can't remember ever having had so much fun or feeling so good. Unbelievable euphoria, and you feel like your head will be this clear for the rest of your life and then - it's the next day, and it feels like none of it was worth this. Fuck, the day after acid is BORING. It's like the trip used up all the fun from the second day as well. There's nothing to do and you feel like a fucking robot. Nothing engages you, you don't get what the big deal was last night, and any epiphanies you had seem like drug-induced insanity. No matter how you fill your time, you spend the whole day waiting and waiting and, agonisingly, waiting some more, for the day after when your dopamine levels have returned to normal. And you don't feel like ever doing acid again.

How do you handle that? What are your strategies for making the next day bearable?

I always make sure I have nothing pressing on, definitely no working, no commitments. I try to get as much sleep as possible because lack of sleep after a trip seems to be half the problem. I keep myself occupied with fun tasks and go easy on myself, no pushing to write stories or get any shit done. Once, I took valium to end a trip, and found the next day quite pleasant until the benzos wore off and the hangover was twice as bad and lasted twice as long, featuring some fairly intense derealisation that thankfully did go away.

Would coffee help? Exercise, perhaps?

 

[laugh]

Exercise. Time with loved ones. Gin.

 

[Foreigner]

I just find the sheer catabolic nature of LSD makes my brain incapable of super complex activity the day after, but at the same time it might still be hyper-stimulated and not want to sleep. I make sure I have movies I can watch that are easy to follow and not too involved. I snack while tripping but I save my big meal for when I'm in relaxation mode.

With the food I make sure to cover all the basic food groups. Warm soup or stew that is well salted seems to be my go-to.

I don't let myself go to sleep until I've eaten otherwise I'll sleep like crap; but if I eat, then I'll enter a deep restorative sleep that lasts for upwards of 12-14 hours. When I wake up I feel like brand new.

 

[RobotRipping]

i have the same issue with every psychedelic that i enjoy. I end up getting really depressed the day after, everything is insanely boring and uninteresting. This is part of the reason i don't really trip anymore. I used to avoid this by getting my fill of psychedelics by binging on them until tolerance was too high then i'd knock myself out with whatever i had. I'd still feel drained the next day but satisfied that i'd experienced the psychedelic state long enough to refresh myself for a while.

the only thing that actually helped me was to space my trips out several months apart. Then i'd usually feel good the next day because i had so much fun the night before.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

I have never felt like that after an acid trip. I usually have an amazing, positive after glow.

Are you sure you're getting legit LSD?

The hangover type experience you are describing, sounds to me, more like a 2c-_ or DO_ type compound - which do have comedowns / after effects.

LSD has only provided me pleasurable afterglow next days. %)

 

[Foreigner]

^ I think it varies from person to person. My best friend who does LSD can go to sleep immediately after the high ends. With me, my brain spirals and spirals and even though it's exhausted it can't sleep. It's stuck in a loop or something. Food helps but not completely. Some people get depressed instead. I don't think that it's merely an RC thing.

Then again, I have a history of MDMA abuse and that has changed my neuro-physiology permanently. Anything that relates to the 5HT2A or serotonin sometimes has paradoxical effects on me.

 

[Clocktower]

Day trip or night trip? How much did you take?

 

[Okami]

I have never felt like that after an acid trip. I usually have an amazing, positive after glow.

The day after LSD I too normally just have a pleasant afterglow, life seems simpler and I'm almost benzo chilled for the rest of the following day.

 

[TheAppleCore]

The trip is one of the craziest, most mind-blowingly intense, creative, incredible experiences of your life. You can't remember ever having had so much fun or feeling so good. Unbelievable euphoria, and you feel like your head will be this clear for the rest of your life and then - it's the next day, and it feels like none of it was worth this. Fuck, the day after acid is BORING. It's like the trip used up all the fun from the second day as well. There's nothing to do and you feel like a fucking robot. Nothing engages you, you don't get what the big deal was last night, and any epiphanies you had seem like drug-induced insanity. No matter how you fill your time, you spend the whole day waiting and waiting and, agonisingly, waiting some more, for the day after when your dopamine levels have returned to normal. And you don't feel like ever doing acid again.

How do you handle that? What are your strategies for making the next day bearable?

I always make sure I have nothing pressing on, definitely no working, no commitments. I try to get as much sleep as possible because lack of sleep after a trip seems to be half the problem. I keep myself occupied with fun tasks and go easy on myself, no pushing to write stories or get any shit done. Once, I took valium to end a trip, and found the next day quite pleasant until the benzos wore off and the hangover was twice as bad and lasted twice as long, featuring some fairly intense derealisation that thankfully did go away.

Would coffee help? Exercise, perhaps?

I can totally relate. Luckily, this hangover only lasts for a day, after which I feel cleansed and energized by the LSD, and grateful for the trip once again.

A couple observations:

* Tripping during the day, and sleeping at night, as opposed to tripping all night, is very helpful. This one makes sense - sleep deprivation doesn't do good for a person's psychological health, drugs or no.

* The best I've ever felt post-LSD was the morning after a trip in which I combined alcohol and LSD. I'm no expert in pharmacodynamics, but my crude analysis of the situation is that alchohol's GABA-ergic effects might slow down the frenetic pace of neurological activity on LSD, so the trip winds up being less exhausting in some way. Following this line of reasoning, maybe using benzos during the comedown of LSD could help?


Another observation: LSD comedowns and after-effects are consistently paranoid for me, causing me to doubt almost everything, and in some cases causing me to exhibit mild symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. You mention that often, the day after, your epiphanies seem like drug-induced insanity - I find that the paranoid flavor of the comedown encourages me to make the same conclusions, and doubt the validity of my trip. Of course, it's also possible to come to flawed conclusions while tripping.

 

[Flickering]

It might not be legit LSD, sure. But the blotter paper is tasteless, and the supplier is a trustworthy, long-time tripper and knows his stuff. On the other hand, I do tend to trip for longer than 12 hours, depending on the dose. At one tab, it lasts about 8 hours. At two, it lasts maybe 18. This might indicate it's some other compound, however, my friends have taken these tabs and had norrmal-length trips at any dose, so I'm more inclined to think it's just a personal reaction. Some people do trip for longer - one friend of mine trips on acid for 30 hours no matter how much he takes. For both of us, the trip lasts until we go to sleep, and it's more of a trailing effect beyond about the six-hour mark than an actual trip.

Certainly some people get hangovers, and others get afterglows. I experience mere lethargy the day after mescaline, whereas from mushrooms I experience elation and clear-headedness.

Yes, AppleCore, alcohol might indeed work, perhaps the otherwise disgusting substance has some use after all. I did drink a small amount of wine after one trip, and it helped me sleep and I didn't quite feel so bad the next day.

The epiphanies seeming absurd the next day seems to me to be a simple matter: during the trip, you were inspired and elevated. After, all sense of awe is gone, leaving you with a state of mind that's completely disinterested, whether you're looking at a car crash or the meaning of life. We're emotional creatures. We feel things before we think it. I tend to let any doubts about what I experienced wash over me, and leave thinking about it to the next day, when my head's back to normal.