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100% Good trip possible after bad one(s)?

Q

Quantum Perception

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 22, 2009
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Hudson County, NJ
I was reading an essay by Sam Harris about psychedelics and the meaning of life:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/#foot_1
He admits to using them but says once he had bad trips it was hard for him to ever have completely good trips afterward.

"But however methodically one prepares for the voyage, one can still be hurled into states of mind so painful and confusing as to be indistinguishable from psychosis."
"I cannot account for why my adventures with psychedelics were uniformly pleasant until they weren’t—but when the doors to hell finally opened, they appear to have been left permanently ajar."
-Sam Harris

So my question to BL->PD is do you think the above is true; that being, is it impossible, no matter how much one prepares their set and setting, to avoid bad trips?

Discuss....
 
I'm a firm believer in thinking that you are generally a product of your environment at any one given time, so it is difficult to believe that once you have a bad trip you could never have a good one, as it depends so much on set and setting.

That said, aspects of a bad trip may surface themselves in subsequent trips, I had a bad trip on LSD once, and was hallucinating jibberish, and now when I trip, there is often an aspect of that revisited, but I find it amusing now. I've never had a truly bad trip since then, and i've tripped many times since, on a range of substances.
 
doesn't sound right to me. I have had one bad trip in my life, and since then I had trips ranging from the absolutely blissful to difficult and dark ones. I never got any subsequent bad trips after that first one.

So my conclusion would be, Bullshit. Perhaps the author you mentioned suffers from PTSD stemming from that one bad trip, and each time he revisits the 'battlefield' he suffers from instinctive fear hardwired into his system. Tripping is definitely not for everyone.
 
Wise_Owl said:
anything is possible
Click to expand...

This! A thousand times, this. Everything is really up in the air when it comes to psychedelics.

The issue is that having a traumatizing trip can stay with you, just like any other traumatizing event... I suppose acceptance is the best option, but some people don't let go and can fixate on their bas trips, causing more in the future. On the other hand I have hard of people having wonderful, mind blowing trips after bad ones.
 
It may be true for Harris but it's bullshit for him to generalise - it's like saying "I couldn't get a hard on with my girlfriend once so none of you will be able to enjoy sex again". It's a personal thing - that's the whole point of psychedelics. What Sam Harris or any other silly fucker says is completely irrelevant to you and your experience with the psychedelic.

And all the shit about the "doors of hell". Please nigga.

And "methodically preparing for trips" sounds like a load - just enjoy it. Grimly sitting there "methodically preparing" for a trip is probably the reason why he can't enjoy trips anymore.
 
Ismene said:
It may be true for Harris but it's bullshit for him to generalise - it's like saying "I couldn't get a hard on with my girlfriend once so none of you will be able to enjoy sex again". It's a personal thing - that's the whole point of psychedelics. What Sam Harris or any other silly fucker says is completely irrelevant to you and your experience with the psychedelic.

And all the shit about the "doors of hell". Please nigga.

And "methodically preparing for trips" sounds like a load - just enjoy it. Grimly sitting there "methodically preparing" for a trip is probably the reason why he can't enjoy trips anymore.
Click to expand...

Wow, amazing, I agree with this 100%, Ismene ;)

Well said, spot on, especially about "grimly sitting there 'methodically preparing' for a trip" being the cause of his issue. I too always found that the more weighty the preconceptions I had about "what I am going to accomplish on this trip" the more it would go awry. Its as if the drug resents you trying to tell it what to do and bitchslaps you for being such a control freak.
 
I actually found this intruiging, and I never knew Sam Harris used psychadelics.

What he says about there being not much difference between a bad trip and psychosis, I can relate to that. I believe the trips bring out a part of your psyche in full force, and if you have bad shit hidden in there, you're going to experience it without holding back. This in itself can be traumatising.

I met a long-experienced psychonaut yesterday and, when he offered me top-quality acid, I had to sadly decline and tell him about my recent bad mushroom trip. "Ah well, that's wise," he said. "Leave it a year and come back to it."

I said I was thinking more like a couple of weeks. He said "Shit, really? Okay then, leave it for three months. But you don't want to fuck with psychadelics." I realised he was right. If I think about it, the trauma from that trip is still glowing in my mind. I need to give it a lot more time before I travel again. If I do it too early, part of me will be pleading, please don't do this to me again. I can't take another one of these. And that in itself can be enough to cause a bad trip.

Perhaps Sam Harris would have had better experiences if he downgraded to something lighter, like a low dose of mescaline.
 
I read the Sam Harris essay, he should use some DMT since he says how it supposedly provides one with a religious/spiritual experience and he's never used it before.

I do find it odd how in 1987 he somehow knew the ug/mics of the LSD he took in Nepal but he probably had a bad trip because of taking a high dose like that in an unfamiliar environment.
 
I reccomend reading about COEXes (in Stanislav Grof's books). You will be disturbed by your unresolved cause, so best way is not to avoid it, but embrace it.

I had retrospection of my eyes operation, and instead of act like a scaredy cat, next morning I redosed and integrated that traumatic experience (the substance was 2C-D), when it happend, rest of trip was pure bliss.
 
Ismene said:
Grimly sitting there "methodically preparing" for a trip is probably the reason why he can't enjoy trips anymore.
Click to expand...


You could decide to cheerfully prepare for a trip if you chose to, couldn't you ? =D

I mean I wouldn't prepare as such - I might buy some bread & milk to make tea & toast with but that probably doesn't count ;)
 
herbata_yanga said:
I reccomend reading about COEXes (in Stanislav Grof's books). You will be disturbed by your unresolved cause, so best way is not to avoid it, but embrace it.

I had retrospection of my eyes operation, and instead of act like a scaredy cat, next morning I redosed and integrated that traumatic experience (the substance was 2C-D), when it happend, rest of trip was pure bliss.
Click to expand...

Was this for me?

You've got balls to go straight from a bad trip to another one overnight. I suppose I could jump straight back in, but I don't feel it's wise.

I've read one of Grof's books but don't recall COEXs, what are those?
 
I mean I wouldn't prepare as such - I might buy some bread & milk to make tea & toast with but that probably doesn't count

True, I "methodically prepare" for a trip by making sure I've got some nice bread in for a bit of toast and a few oranges and grapes!
 
Grof gets very tiresome after a while - just stick to LSD psychotherapy. Realms of the unconscious is a very dull read full of Grofs psychobabble and low quality trip reports.
 
Harris's contention is really nothing more than his own experience and should not be taken to apply to others. It certainly isn't some sort of law of nature or something.

Also, what exactly is "retrospection of my eyes operation"? Seems like it would be interesting to hear elaboration on such an experience.
 
Interesting article, I didnt know Harris had used psychedelics either.

Taking a huge dose of LSD alone in a foreign country in a boat on a freezing lake after only having tripped 10 times... that just seems incredibly overconfident and stupid to me and I'm not at all surprised he got his ass kicked.
 
I had a trip the other day that i didn't enjoy what so ever, and tripped a few days later and had a great time. I wouldn't call the first one of the two a "bad" trip, I've never considered a trip bad because i always come out of the experience with insight - but that doesn't mean it wasn't filled with anxiety and fear and a relatively bad experience for the most part.

Either way, whatever you want to call a negative trip, it's definitely possible to have great experiences afterwards.


The exception may be with naive users - especially first time trippers. If you have a "bad" trip before you ever have a really good one, you may be too afraid or anxious to ever allow yourself to have a good experience. I know a couple people who had such bad first experiences that they never even tried it again, which is pretty sad actually. :\

However if the bad experience comes after repeated good experiences, chances are you will recover and continue having good experiences.


Please note that the above are my opinions based on my experiences and the experiences of those around me, and not to be supposed as fact.
 
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