• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ
  • PD Moderators: Esperighanto | JackARoe |

Preparing yourself for psychedelics after bad experiences

J

jess046

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 14, 2012
Messages
217
I'm really interested in moving away from a lot of the stimulants I've taken in the past and exploring what psychedelic drugs have to offer in the way of mind expansion.

However, I am afraid to try anything again as I suffer from moderate anxiety issues related to drug use in the past (mainly stimulant abuse).

I have it under control and can use small doses of stimulants with no ill affect and only moderate residual anxiety for a week or so, but psychedelics are an entirely different animal.

I have experience with LSD, AMT and 2cb. Now, my worries stem from the fact a) I have had a number of panic attacks on all kinds of drugs and b) some of these have been on psychedelics

After a very bad experience with meth I decided I wasn't stable enough to use psychedelics again and the opportunity wasn't around.

But it is now and for the most part I have my anxiety under control.

But I feel like I need to prepare myself for the experience better as I'm not as stable as I was when I first took psychedelics (in which I had freakouts, but didn't have bad trips, apart from a freakish experience with 2cb where I accidentally took about triple the recommended amount.)

Mostly, what irks me is the body high of psychedelics. I find it way too intense and that's what makes me panic- not the visual side or the scrambled thoughts, but just the weird sensations I get in my body. I am very sensitive to body changes, having suffered from anxiety and being a hypochondriac. Last time I took a big dose of acid the body high was extremely uncomfortable at the peak, but I did enjoy the trip and I have to say it was one of the best experiences of my life. But I didn't have anxiety issues back then.
 
If you do chose to proceed, be very cautious. Start with low doses and make sure you have good set and setting. Generally, 2c-b isn't to bad with regards to anxiety but if you can handle the bodily component of psychs that well, it would be one to avoid. For me, lsd actually doesn't produce that strong of a physical sensation compared to most other psychedelics but I have never taken a psychedelic that didn't feature some body component. The nbome's are very body-neutral for some people, but I couldn't recommend them at this point. They are very new and there appear to be some possible safety concerns.

While it is not usually recommended because it blunts the effects of the trip, have you ever tried taking a small dose of a mild benzo like clonazepam before a trip? That might help counter some of the negative effects you experience. Avoiding stimulant abuse will help as well.
 
jess046 said:
Mostly, what irks me is the body high of psychedelics. I find it way too intense and that's what makes me panic- not the visual side or the scrambled thoughts, but just the weird sensations I get in my body. I am very sensitive to body changes, having suffered from anxiety and being a hypochondriac. Last time I took a big dose of acid the body high was extremely uncomfortable at the peak, but I did enjoy the trip and I have to say it was one of the best experiences of my life. But I didn't have anxiety issues back then.
Click to expand...

In general I would advise taking up meditation or yoga practice. Especially abdominal breathing. Do yoga asanas high !

ANyway about the last part: In "The Psychedelic Experience: A manual based on the Tibetan book of the Dead" it is said that all bodily distractions under the influence is just your Ego trying *not* to go to the place you want to be. The Ego doesn't want change, and that's why it makes you think there's something "wrong" with your body, when under the influence. So you stay in your body instead of leaving it.
This is written in a time when RC's were not yet integrated (or even developed) so it talks mainly about LSD and mushrooms. I do believe 2C-B is rather mild on the body ? I'm not sure, as I've not tried it myself, alas.
 
Last edited:
Agree with Achten's thoughts on meditation and deep abdominal breathing. Of all the things I have tried to help treat my anxiety issues, this has been the most effective. Far more effective than any benzo, to be honest. On your next trip, when you feel something in your body that is uncomfortable, focus on that feeling, and take long, measured breaths - it often helps to count. The common verbage in meditation is to "breath into the feeling" - picture the feeling in your body and literally picture breathing into it. You have to learn to not be afraid of these feelings. It is just your body talking to you, and if you concentrate, you may actually be delivered a message.

I've also observed from your posts that you seem to have an issue with controlling your doses. If you have anxiety, you are no longer the superhuman force you used to be that could take high doses. I recommend the "tip-toe" method when first reintroducing yourself to psychs, that is, start small and ramp up. Of course, with a lack of self control this could lead to trouble, so weigh out the total amount you plan to use before hand. Notice I said weigh: make sure you use a scale.
 
It's critical to be able to talk yourself out of nasty headspaces if you plan on doing psychedelics with any frequency, in my opinion at least. I find that the only times I have gotten the fear, or experienced physical distress on psychs it has been a product of negative mindset. By this I mean that psychologically I was feeling troubled, and my mind while altered experienced that mental disquiet as physical disquiet, making mental issues somatic.

Correspondingly, I have found it helps to be able to talk your way through such issues, mentally or verbally, and thus the problem will be resolved or reduced, with a corresponding reduction in somatic issues, and once the mind is quieted in regards to such problems it is easier to change your mental focus to whatever activity you have planned, so that even if you can't 100% talk through a problem tripping you can at least reduce the issue to a point where it can be discarded through mindful effort.

Besides that though, it's simply the case the psychedelics do give you body energy that ca be hard to channel and properly use. This is simply the nature of the experience, and with practice you can learn to simply enjoy the feeling once you understand at the most base level that it is not going to hurt you. Case in point: the first time I smoked DMT, I wasn't sure I enjoyed the extremely intense body buzz. But even tripping, I thought about it, recalled how it was similar to previous tryptamines body feelings, and soon found that I enjoyed that feeling very much. It was simply the abrupt intensity of the feeling that was unfamiliar, and once that was ruminated upon I was able to find it pleasant within the duration of that first experience.

Keep in mind: not everybody is going to enjoy psychedelics. I would wager that perhaps the increase in body energy while tripping may remind you of the stimulation from meth. I was a massive cocaine addict at one time, and I was worried going into my first trip after that period. But I consciously chose a friendly chemical, 4-HO-MiPT, and made myself analyze the issue when it kicked in, as I mentioned above. I made myself focus on my addiction, and in the psychedelic state I found I could turn it over in my mind and not be upset by it.

I guess in summary, it's just something you have to find your own path through, whether meditation, conscious examination, or beforehand preparation. Or likely some combination of all three. And I expect if you take it slow, *ensure* set and setting are properly addressed, and most of all bring a close friend to trip with you that has experience and is confident in their abilities to help you through any anxiety, you will learn to work through it too.
 
You might not be ready to hop back into psychedelic use just yet, don't try to force yourself. Consider exploring other avenues for fun and self-improvement for the time being. Residual anxiety for a week after a stimulant experience, and still feeling the need to have stimulant experiences in spite of this, tells me your life (mind/body/spirit) is still off-balance.

For the time being (the rest of summer, perhaps) I recommend cutting off the "real" drugs and sticking with their milder cousins (see: teas and tisanes), and dabbling in alternative practices such as meditation or yoga (or even gardening). I know you're eager for that psychedelia, and you've come a long way in gettin' your issues under control, but becoming more grounded may be the medicine you need. A little practice Being Here Now, and some awareness of the unity between yourself and your environment, and you'll be in a better place to handle the psychedelic mind/body-space with equanamity.
 
Apart from the actual trip, do you guys think there is a chance of residual anxiety? I have benzos on hand if something goes wrong, but what I fear is that it could be more long-term damaging.

I am pretty much determined to trip again within the next 3 months. I just want to build myself up to the point where I am most ready- maybe in the way that shamans prepare people to take DMT although I don't really know much about these processes. I had a very positive experience with MDA last week after a good break from serotonin drugs and had no anxiety after the first hour of come up (where there was quite a bit). No residual anxiety either. The only time I started to get a little worried was when I started to see eye floaters (a trigger for me because of my meth panic attack where I saw eye floaters and thought I was dying). But I was okay and enjoyed the rest of the night.

If I take a tab with a couple of valiums will that keep my anxiety at bay? Or will it just make me sleepy and dull the trip? -_-
 
I think it's most important to pinpoint exactly what it was that caused the original bad experience. Mind you psychedelics can be difficult at times and that is, IMO, all part of the experience, that doesn't necessarily mean a hellish trip is part of it, just maybe some difficult thought processes or presoinal barriers you yourself need to face.

Anything in the back of your mind, anything thats been bothering you, anything you've been putting off, etc. is going to be right there in front of you. Confronting it is probably the best route as I notice bad trips stem from running away from things.

If you don't pinpoint these things, you're in for a repeat of what happened before.

After an awful mushroom trip, I took them again weeks later only have a complete deja vu of the last trip and it went just as terribly. It was those initial words as the trip began "oh fuck, I remember now, this is exactly the place I was going last time I don't want to go here again", mild panic ensued, causing a pretty awful experience.

Be honest with yourself and the psychs will be too.
 
Cheers for the thread link.

Well like I said I am a hypochondriac because I had anorexia when I was a teenager and know a little too much about the dangers of not taking care of your body...plus screwing around with my neurons with too much mdma and speed has made my anxiety reservoir a bit lower than normal. I guess I always had this fear that I was incredibly fragile and could die at any moment and drugs increase that fear because their effects are volatile. And I have a phobia of hospitals so it would be very hard for me to go to one if something went horribly wrong (although it is almost always not necessary if you have benzos).

I think I know in my gut I will be okay now to trip, it is about summoning the courage to do it and face whatever comes (including my fears of dying/losing control).
 
Yeah pretrip anxiety is common, i always get it when i take a break from psychs for a few months or a year. However, all it takes is one nice trip and i know i can handle it. After a few nasty 4-aco-dmt trips i generally won't go near a psychedelic unless i have benzos or etizolam to take with them. They dull the trip a bit but not by much, though it depends on the doses and the psychedelic.

I think you just need to embrace the experience, when you feel something is wrong, examine it, let those feelings go through you, don't try to direct your trip, just go wherever it takes you, even if it's on an introspective trip to hell, you'll gain insight into what is really bothering you underneath.

I'm coming off a good week or so of taking 60+mg of dexedrine/day and am probably going to trip today but also have a bit of anxiety about doing so. There's definitely something bothering me and i can't quite pinpoint what it is as my life is going well, so i think it's time for some psychedelic self therapy, hopefully it'll get me back on track.

I think d-amp is responsible for many of the negative feelings i have so if i can stop using it for a day or two and hopefully just go back to taking 20mg/day or better yet only use as needed. After being stimmed everyday for almost 6 weeks i started to get suicidual ideation and i think the big reason is that i just finished school and taking amphetamines when you have nothing important to do really creates a shitty experience.

You won't die, you will lose control, that is the point, you have to let go, let go of the fears/anxieties, bath in the universal warmth you can find with psychedelics, let it heal you, don't try to fight it or stop it, if you get anxious start asking questions about why? if it gets too intense stimulation wise then take some valium. I find psychedelics even stimulating ones calm me down and i don't have to take as much etizolam/benzos as usual, until the come down anyway. The fact that you want to be in control is the primary issue here, let go of all control and it will be a much more interesting and likely worthwhile experience.

anyway good luck, i've had my fair share of bad experiences on psychedelics but also learned a lot through them, even on my worst 4-aco-dmt trip i learned a lot about myself and the dose was absurdly high, 60mg, didn't have a panic attack or anything but it really hit me over the head about my life, direction, lack of focus, family, drug addiction and all sorts of issues i was having.

also depending on the drug, the come up is always the worst for anxiety, so yeah taking something with a few valium to start isn't a bad idea. I'm dependent on etizolam anyway and i don't really notice that it dulls my trips compared to before and i can certainly push the doses into very high territories because i don't have the anxiety to deal with. Even so without the anxiety, you'll still encounter things that bother you and in my case, having less anxiety when doing so is more therapeutic.
 
Last edited:
Don't take valium when tripping. It is counter productive. Why enhance the senses and mind with a psychedelic only to then dull them with valium? Makes no sense.

Embrace the fear. Trying to 'conquer' fear by ridding yourself of it is the wrong approach. Embrace the fear, embrace the weirdness, realize fear and excitement are the same electrical-chemical process in the body, the only difference is how the mind perceives it.

Once you practice embracing the fear, excepting your fear...hell....LOVING the fear...then fear will never hold you back again....and that is not just regarding psychedelics.

This approach is tried, tested, true...other approaches may work but this one works better
 
Last edited:
^fear/anxiety/excitement are exactly the same feeling just interpreted differently. That was a HUGE realization i came to while on psychedelics, i figured out i was interpreting the same feeling just in a negative way. This came about mostly after vaping 5-meo-dalt where there's a massive psychedelic rush but instead of feeling anxiety, it felt great.

that approach is pretty much the only thing that has ever helped my anxiety.
 
In general I would advise taking up meditation or yoga practice. Especially abdominal breathing. Do yoga asanas high !
Click to expand...

I agree completely

Another technique I've found useful, particularly on psychedelics with strong body-loads, is to prepare a tub lukewarm water. You can measure the temperature with a thermometer to be sure is no hotter than 100˚F. Warmer than that will likely result in a different experience. On the first hint that the psychedelic is coming on, get in the tub. It seems to reduce significantly the electricity associated with psychedelics. I also add a hefty amount of epsom salts. It'll make you slightly more bouyant and your skin will feel softer. Lighting a candle and keeping it in a safe place and turning out the light adds to the effect in my opinion. Once you get out of the tub (edit: most of the body load will be gone).

If you don't like that idea, a brisk walk right around the time the psychedelic is coming helps as well.

The other advice would be to use a psychedelic with a lower body load. Mescaline (you can order San Pedro online) or 2C-C come to mind. These are typically a lot softer on the come up. Tryptamines I associate with higher body loads, with the possible exception of DMT and DPT. Hope that helps
 
morninggloryseed said:
Don't take valium when tripping. It is counter productive. Why enhance the senses and mind with a psychedelic only to then dull them with valium? Makes no sense.
Click to expand...

have you tried tripping really hard along with benzos? It sucks that i am benzo depdendent and also love psychedelics but i don't think it makes as much of a difference as people think. I can certainly trip much harder when on my regular dose of etizolam compared to when i was just an anxiety bag without benzos. Plus diazepam would be particularly useful for muscle tension and stimulation that can occur when really pushing your dose.

i guess it's different if you aren't dependent because benzos are certainly more effective without a monster tolerance. Still, on long psychedelic journeys, it's good to have benzos on hand and/or seroquel, especially with things like 2c-p or DOx, mescaline and its analogues, the trips go well over 12 hours at high doses. Just knowing it's there will help with the anxiety because you know you'll be fine. When i accidentally took 15mg of 25i-nbome it wasn't a matter of embracing the fear, my heart was racing and i was concerned with seizures so benzod myself pretty good and the trip was still the most intense i've ever had. If i had not calmed down i probably would have lost my shit.
 
Yes, I was dependent on benzodiazapines for the better part of the past 10 years....gave them up when I took iboga. I know some of my trip reports remind me I'd finish off the evening with a valium and/or a percocet....but for my own practices I never used benzos to start off a trip. I took the same dosage every night, and tripping did not influence the dose.

When I would take night trips (and have to take my normal dose of ativan, or valium, or whatever I was using at the time)...they DID dull the experience...tremendously. That is why I strongly recommend people avoid them...but that's just me.
 
yeah i guess dependence is the key word. I stick to my usual doses of etizolam while tripping and still trip hard. Even now, 6mg of etizolam along with 85mg of escaline but if a non-dependent user were to take 6mg of etizolam and trip, it'd be a much different experience. Still i don't get that same effect as you if i'm tripping at night, i always have a pretty stable amount of etizolam in my body and even if i were to go and take 10mg at once, it wouldn't make a difference really. I'd have no anxiety but would still be tripping hard. that's just me as well though.

anxiety/excitement/energy is part of the tripping process and are part of what makes it therapeutic, some cases it may be easier to probe deeper without the anxiety and/or risk of panic attacks and in others it may be better to embrace it. It's likely a very individual thing and there are a variety of factors to consider.
 
I will say I had no idea the amount of 'dulling' I was experiencing until I was off the benzos. I have a feeling you don't either. Psychedelics literally became a new thing/experience post ibogaine/post removal of benzos from my diet.....I can say for sure that I was never able to make the most of the psychedelic experience while I was on benzos...in hindsight.

Re: anxiety...all of the anxiety is set and setting. Watch the "50s LSD housewife" for details on tripping without 'knowledge' of what the experience is supposed to be. Whether speaking of psychedelics in the context of ayahuasca, mushrooms, yopo, peyote, iboga...or 50s research with LSD, psilocybin, DMT....nobody uses/used benzos, nobody needs/needed them. There are not in any way useful or essential to 'probe' and make the most out of a session.
 
I was a heavy psychedelic user before ever becoming a benzo junkie and even in the times i was recovering from benzos, i could still handle huge trips, and i really do not find a difference compared to being on a stable dose of etizolam, i'll still get anxiety from psychs and stims but can also kill it whenever i want to as well.

I've taken flood doses of iboga extract 3 times but it was just for the sake of seeing what it would do, afterwards i continued my regular drug use. iboga was profound but not in the sense that it gave me a realization that i should stop using drugs.

I get where you are coming from but have had different experiences both with therapy and psychedelics. i still see benzos (well not so much benzos but etizolam in particular) as having a use for probing the deep dark waters of your consciousness with psychedelics. I've had this argument plenty of times and it's not that i'm closed minded or thick headed :) i've certainly tried things both ways and this is just the conclusion that i have come to and what works for me.
 
Everybody's responses have all been really helpful, I really appreciate it.

It's interesting what you guys said about fear/excitement been the same emotion. Because I find my anxiety feels like that butterflies in your stomach excitement feeling, except not in a good way. Sometimes I thrive off that energy, other times it terrifies me. Maybe tripping could help me work this notion of fear/excitement a little better, I certainly am reaching out to psychedelics for its therapeutic potential.

I think benzos could be a good idea. Whenever I'm sick I take benzos because they help me deal with the pain better without resorting to illogical conclusions (such as that I am dying or have some horrible disease). They don't take the pain away, but they certainly make me feel 'okay' about it. In the last few months I have resisted benzos and managed to deal with illness/general anxiety a little better, but I still have huge prescriptions in my medicine cabinet for emergencies. Maybe they would have the same effect on the body load of psychedelics. I drink when I'm on stimulants because they make me feel more comfortable with the negative side effects, so maybe it's the same kind of thing.

I'm thinking of starting off with some AMT to get used to psychedelics again. The mdma type stimulation should help make me more relaxed before I start back on acid. My dealer has also offered me 25-hi, would this be a good starting point/alternative as well? I don't know much about it, but he described it as 'giggly acid.' Acid already makes me very giggly, so I don't know about that, I don't want to be hysterical.

I've thought about it a bit and one of my favorite trips was with a group of friends (the only time I've tripped with other people). It was much more euphoric and there was no anxiety until around the peak when I had a minor freak out and wanted to be alone. Maybe it would be a good idea to trip with my partner? He has always been my 'sitter' for every single trip and I have always trusted him on psychedelics no matter (whereas I usually get a little anxious around other people). I have thought about asking him, but I know he is weary about psychedelics after a very bad acid trip when he was a teenager (although that was 15 years ago and he has since had a very comprehensive drug education from me as an adult on most common drugs except opiates and major psychedelics like acid). It could be a disaster though if he had another bad trip... :/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top