2 Christmases ago, I took LSD as a means to escape. I was a somewhat regular user up until then, but my psyche did a 180 degrees turn after that day.
It was half a tab of LSD that I had taken, and was more potent than I had expected. I developed an anxiety disorder as a result of the trip, of which at peak point I had completely lost the ability to sense my breathing - the sensitivity of perceiving breathing was downregulated, whereas the sensitivity of perception of heartbeat was wayyyy upregulated.
At the peak, I was trying to get to sleep (We all know how that works out on stims...) and I was in such a panicked state - the first ever panic attack I had ever experienced - that I just wished for myself to be alive after it. I felt as if I was about to die. I had lost ALL sensation of breathing, and the only way I could tell was because I put my finger under my nose and felt the air being expunged from my lungs.
LSD completely rewired my interoceptive sensitivity.
On one hand, I was crying for weeks after it and developed a mad enthusiasm for music, an enthusiasm that still persists. I was dancing in my room, taking breaks to cry, for days after the traumatic experience. I had a short-term psychosis before I had entered the bed to try and sleep in which I entered the bath to calm down and had a glimpse of what I assume schizophrenics are like all the time; since then, I have gained the ability to empathise with the mad and the crazy. It surely is worse than death. My enthusiasm for music was to block out the all-encompassing noise of the pounding heart.
About a year and a bit on, I've regained my balance slightly - you have to in these sort of situations, it's either coping with it or topping yourself. I have regained my sense of breath and the perception of my heartbeat has lessened, albeit the fact they are both still very much present and cause constant anxiety. I attribute this to my mind knowing it doesn't need to perceive these in that way anymore because the initial panic was over. I have had recurring phobic panic attacks though, over time it has linearly lessened in severity and frequency over time.
I have had heart problems before this. Before the bad trip, I had no idea of what anxiety was like, despite having another anxiety disorder - Tourette's Syndrome, which I never considered to be 'anxiety' but more a massively fundamental pain in the ass.
I feel as if it unearthed a phobia of my own heart.
When out clubbing, for example, I still feel it and dance furiously to evade it. I experience massive anxiety in the toilets of clubs where I'm alone and the noise is at its quietest... you can't distract yourself all of the time.
I have found two things that work for me - lorazepam, and low doses of magic mushrooms (sub-psychedelic, about half a gram dried) combined with meditation. Shrooms work much better than lorazepam, but lorazepam being obviously a very potent anxiety reliever works to a great extent too.
I am in the UK, and benzos are hard to acquire here because of the stigma although I am still prescribed them in limited amounts regularly and I am currently not a grower of shrooms.
I have zero interest in tripping recreationally ever again, but I swear I have the perfect analogy for psychedelics.
Psychedelics are like overclocking a computer, if you do it too much you'll fry the CPU but if you do it just a tiny bit, in tiny doses, and with great care, you can improve performance considerably.
I attribute the alteration of interoception to LSD's neuroplasticity-provoking effect. I believe that, having my first ever panic attack being acid-accelerated, and realising my own mortality made me focus in on my heart. A perceived threat to myself because my heart is damaged (I have multiple heart problems, developmental and structural), my brain in a neuroplastic mode formed or altered pathways to sense the threat. A subconscious hypervigilance brought to the forefront of the consciousness whenever I think of it - and it's always present, so I need to distract it.
I have gotten more at peace with the heartbeat but the perception of breathing is what bothers me the most... when I meditate, I can't feel my breath at all. When I take a sharp inhalation, I do not feel satisfied like I once was.
Furthermore, I have one lung. It could be decreased perception of breath, or it could be increased perception of the non-satisfaction of breathing due to me having one lung.
This condition is unique within myself because of the brew of health conditions that precipitated it. I frequently search up literature to no avail in treatment methods, and health 'professionals' just can't believe me and I know they can't, because there's no emprical evidence for subjective interoception. I have not been issued any sort of heartbeat interoception test formally using an ECG, but I've gotten to the point where I can measure my BP and pulse using a blood pressure monitor and very, very accurately interpret the BPM of my pulse before the results come up on screen.
For that reason, I know it's not in my head. I can feel it. I know I can feel it. It scares the shit out of me.
On the other hand, I have the fascinating ability to detect my own heartbeat at will despite the conditions whether it be clubs, outside, inside, or anywhere. What benefits could this incur? I have no idea. It just goes to show the limits of which perception can be pushed.
Could we use psychedelics and combine meditation to direct a focus of which to rewire the brain for the better?
I know for a fact my LSD-induced superpower of hearing my heartbeat is genuine and not an insane delusion. It's neurological, one might even say.
My first-hand experience of being rewired so to speak enables me to know the true power of psychedelics. My reckless use of them led to a hellish anxiety disorder that induced an actual phobia.
For all of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's an analogy to help you understand:
Imagine you were scared of spiders, like, phobia scared. Imagine you were stuck in a room with it. Initially, you'd be frightened out of your god damn mind and you would focus right in on it.
After a year or so of being locked in there with your worst fear, you adapt and start to become more okay with it... but you can never quite develop a trust of it. There's a tolerance, but not a trust.
That's what I live with. A phobia on par with agoraphobia - a condition which lorazepam is used to treat, the only pharmaceutical drug which coincidentally works for me. A constant phobia, inside of me.
It's fucking hellish brothers, but I have a good outlook. I believe there's hope.
I've felt free of it on low doses of shrooms. I cannot stress how amazing that is - a drug which subjectively reduces anxiety MORE than a short-acting benzodiazepine, and a drug which has a greater subjective anti depressive effect than any antidepressant I've ever taken, including MDMA (yes, I was stupid as a teen and took it a few times despite my heart condition)
Up until recently I was a very heavy drinker and blacked out frequently but I want to stop that and am now using less and less. I used to smoke weed very heavily, but recently I've quit because while it's fun it makes you okay with being bored and doesn't allow you to focus on what's really hurting you.
I did give up on acting on my hope for shrooms because of the perceived difficulties of growing it or obtaining it... I've only taken shrooms 2 times in very low doses and the fucking sheer ability to kill my symptoms is amazing. I soon hope to grow.
I need to stress something - I am not looking at shrooms like I did LSD in the past, taking it to escape.
I now firmly hold a belief that low doses of shrooms are the way to go - ones that don't make you hallucinate unless you meditate on it. I can control these doses with almost zero risk and believe it to be a medicine, having replicated the anti-anxiety and anti-depressive effects with great success twice.
If anyone has any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask or tell.
Oh, also, on my third shroom experience (I've only actually tripped on shrooms once, before the LSD trip, and used them 2 times after the bad trip as a meditation supplement) I actually, the next day, couldn't bring myself to drink alcohol or smoke weed. I smelt weed like everyone else without bustling dopaminergic responses smells it - overly stinky and planty. The same for alcohol. To my poor knowledge in the area of neuroscience, dopaminergic pathways in the amygdalae were essentially 'reset'.
However, I chose to fall back into the trap of addiction after that due to apathy... this just goes to show the anti-addiction promise of shrooms... in doses that you can't even trip on!!! ZERO risk, ALL the benefit.
TL;DR don't abuse psychedelics, although the promise they show in the right mindset is beyond amazing. True power can only be safely wielded by the wise, and abuse more often than not is not intentional but a side effect of ignorance. I also use basically no drugs except alcohol and medically lorazepam, the former being one of the worst unfortunately.
BTW, before you ask, yes, I did have Tourette's, and I actually have virtually no symptoms except minor physical tics while under stress. I used to be on the heavy end as a child and experienced coprolalia, the stereotypical swearing, and debilitating tics. I think me ridding myself of it was a mere stroke of luck.
EDIT: I also experienced cessation of some symptoms to an extent on kratom having used it in Amsterdam, but being in the UK I have had trouble finding sources for it because of the Draconian laws we have... plus I'm a lazy bastard with more issues to face so I guess finding kratom wasn't exactly on top of my priorities lol
It was half a tab of LSD that I had taken, and was more potent than I had expected. I developed an anxiety disorder as a result of the trip, of which at peak point I had completely lost the ability to sense my breathing - the sensitivity of perceiving breathing was downregulated, whereas the sensitivity of perception of heartbeat was wayyyy upregulated.
At the peak, I was trying to get to sleep (We all know how that works out on stims...) and I was in such a panicked state - the first ever panic attack I had ever experienced - that I just wished for myself to be alive after it. I felt as if I was about to die. I had lost ALL sensation of breathing, and the only way I could tell was because I put my finger under my nose and felt the air being expunged from my lungs.
LSD completely rewired my interoceptive sensitivity.
On one hand, I was crying for weeks after it and developed a mad enthusiasm for music, an enthusiasm that still persists. I was dancing in my room, taking breaks to cry, for days after the traumatic experience. I had a short-term psychosis before I had entered the bed to try and sleep in which I entered the bath to calm down and had a glimpse of what I assume schizophrenics are like all the time; since then, I have gained the ability to empathise with the mad and the crazy. It surely is worse than death. My enthusiasm for music was to block out the all-encompassing noise of the pounding heart.
About a year and a bit on, I've regained my balance slightly - you have to in these sort of situations, it's either coping with it or topping yourself. I have regained my sense of breath and the perception of my heartbeat has lessened, albeit the fact they are both still very much present and cause constant anxiety. I attribute this to my mind knowing it doesn't need to perceive these in that way anymore because the initial panic was over. I have had recurring phobic panic attacks though, over time it has linearly lessened in severity and frequency over time.
I have had heart problems before this. Before the bad trip, I had no idea of what anxiety was like, despite having another anxiety disorder - Tourette's Syndrome, which I never considered to be 'anxiety' but more a massively fundamental pain in the ass.
I feel as if it unearthed a phobia of my own heart.
When out clubbing, for example, I still feel it and dance furiously to evade it. I experience massive anxiety in the toilets of clubs where I'm alone and the noise is at its quietest... you can't distract yourself all of the time.
I have found two things that work for me - lorazepam, and low doses of magic mushrooms (sub-psychedelic, about half a gram dried) combined with meditation. Shrooms work much better than lorazepam, but lorazepam being obviously a very potent anxiety reliever works to a great extent too.
I am in the UK, and benzos are hard to acquire here because of the stigma although I am still prescribed them in limited amounts regularly and I am currently not a grower of shrooms.
I have zero interest in tripping recreationally ever again, but I swear I have the perfect analogy for psychedelics.
Psychedelics are like overclocking a computer, if you do it too much you'll fry the CPU but if you do it just a tiny bit, in tiny doses, and with great care, you can improve performance considerably.
I attribute the alteration of interoception to LSD's neuroplasticity-provoking effect. I believe that, having my first ever panic attack being acid-accelerated, and realising my own mortality made me focus in on my heart. A perceived threat to myself because my heart is damaged (I have multiple heart problems, developmental and structural), my brain in a neuroplastic mode formed or altered pathways to sense the threat. A subconscious hypervigilance brought to the forefront of the consciousness whenever I think of it - and it's always present, so I need to distract it.
I have gotten more at peace with the heartbeat but the perception of breathing is what bothers me the most... when I meditate, I can't feel my breath at all. When I take a sharp inhalation, I do not feel satisfied like I once was.
Furthermore, I have one lung. It could be decreased perception of breath, or it could be increased perception of the non-satisfaction of breathing due to me having one lung.
This condition is unique within myself because of the brew of health conditions that precipitated it. I frequently search up literature to no avail in treatment methods, and health 'professionals' just can't believe me and I know they can't, because there's no emprical evidence for subjective interoception. I have not been issued any sort of heartbeat interoception test formally using an ECG, but I've gotten to the point where I can measure my BP and pulse using a blood pressure monitor and very, very accurately interpret the BPM of my pulse before the results come up on screen.
For that reason, I know it's not in my head. I can feel it. I know I can feel it. It scares the shit out of me.
On the other hand, I have the fascinating ability to detect my own heartbeat at will despite the conditions whether it be clubs, outside, inside, or anywhere. What benefits could this incur? I have no idea. It just goes to show the limits of which perception can be pushed.
Could we use psychedelics and combine meditation to direct a focus of which to rewire the brain for the better?
I know for a fact my LSD-induced superpower of hearing my heartbeat is genuine and not an insane delusion. It's neurological, one might even say.
My first-hand experience of being rewired so to speak enables me to know the true power of psychedelics. My reckless use of them led to a hellish anxiety disorder that induced an actual phobia.
For all of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's an analogy to help you understand:
Imagine you were scared of spiders, like, phobia scared. Imagine you were stuck in a room with it. Initially, you'd be frightened out of your god damn mind and you would focus right in on it.
After a year or so of being locked in there with your worst fear, you adapt and start to become more okay with it... but you can never quite develop a trust of it. There's a tolerance, but not a trust.
That's what I live with. A phobia on par with agoraphobia - a condition which lorazepam is used to treat, the only pharmaceutical drug which coincidentally works for me. A constant phobia, inside of me.
It's fucking hellish brothers, but I have a good outlook. I believe there's hope.
I've felt free of it on low doses of shrooms. I cannot stress how amazing that is - a drug which subjectively reduces anxiety MORE than a short-acting benzodiazepine, and a drug which has a greater subjective anti depressive effect than any antidepressant I've ever taken, including MDMA (yes, I was stupid as a teen and took it a few times despite my heart condition)
Up until recently I was a very heavy drinker and blacked out frequently but I want to stop that and am now using less and less. I used to smoke weed very heavily, but recently I've quit because while it's fun it makes you okay with being bored and doesn't allow you to focus on what's really hurting you.
I did give up on acting on my hope for shrooms because of the perceived difficulties of growing it or obtaining it... I've only taken shrooms 2 times in very low doses and the fucking sheer ability to kill my symptoms is amazing. I soon hope to grow.
I need to stress something - I am not looking at shrooms like I did LSD in the past, taking it to escape.
I now firmly hold a belief that low doses of shrooms are the way to go - ones that don't make you hallucinate unless you meditate on it. I can control these doses with almost zero risk and believe it to be a medicine, having replicated the anti-anxiety and anti-depressive effects with great success twice.
If anyone has any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask or tell.
Oh, also, on my third shroom experience (I've only actually tripped on shrooms once, before the LSD trip, and used them 2 times after the bad trip as a meditation supplement) I actually, the next day, couldn't bring myself to drink alcohol or smoke weed. I smelt weed like everyone else without bustling dopaminergic responses smells it - overly stinky and planty. The same for alcohol. To my poor knowledge in the area of neuroscience, dopaminergic pathways in the amygdalae were essentially 'reset'.
However, I chose to fall back into the trap of addiction after that due to apathy... this just goes to show the anti-addiction promise of shrooms... in doses that you can't even trip on!!! ZERO risk, ALL the benefit.
TL;DR don't abuse psychedelics, although the promise they show in the right mindset is beyond amazing. True power can only be safely wielded by the wise, and abuse more often than not is not intentional but a side effect of ignorance. I also use basically no drugs except alcohol and medically lorazepam, the former being one of the worst unfortunately.
BTW, before you ask, yes, I did have Tourette's, and I actually have virtually no symptoms except minor physical tics while under stress. I used to be on the heavy end as a child and experienced coprolalia, the stereotypical swearing, and debilitating tics. I think me ridding myself of it was a mere stroke of luck.
EDIT: I also experienced cessation of some symptoms to an extent on kratom having used it in Amsterdam, but being in the UK I have had trouble finding sources for it because of the Draconian laws we have... plus I'm a lazy bastard with more issues to face so I guess finding kratom wasn't exactly on top of my priorities lol
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
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