Dealing with Difficult/Bad trips

[VibeTribez]

Hello, I'm new to bluelight and joined to ask a very specific question. I know there are a number of threads on bad trips and difficult or intense experiences but couldn't find an answer to my specific question.
I noticed that when people begin to have negative thoughts or begin to feel a bad trip coming on they tend to try and distract themselves with certain
things to get their mind off the bad thought loops. This works to a degree, meaning that it works for a short time, then the bad or negative thoughts return. Now, for my question. Is it mentally healthy to face the bad or negative thoughts head on without panicking or fighting them off. Does just laying there and letting the trip take you on a ride better than fighting it? Is this a good idea for spiritual growth or an inspection of one's own psyche?
I'd like to know everyone's thoughts on this.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Yes, many people recommend this technique. It is extremely common among people who use psychedelics for healing purposes or mental growth. Many people report that this technique works much better than trying to "fight" the bad feelings or ignore them. There have been a lot of reports of this not only allowing a "bad trip" to turn into something positive but being helpful with one's mental health in general.

There is a lot of interesting info on this among people who take entheogens such as ayahuasca, cactus, iboga, etc with spiritual or therapeutic goals in mind.

 

[Fieldy]

I used Lsd for healing purposes. During my first 2 trips i had nothing but bliss and euphoria but during my 3rd trip i experienced loops and a difficult time. I dont think you should try fight the visions you may encounter rather than trying to except them and learn from them. A change of scenery and another person/close friend or partner to re-assure you everything is going to be okay is the best way. Once you find out the underlining cause for the negative thoughts you will feel much better and your trip will drastically change in direction once acceptance is given. I hope this makes sense.

 

[VibeTribez]

I expected as much. Personally i have never tried to embrace the bad trip to try and turn it around. The fear is just too much sometimes. Thank you though, this gives me the balls to try and just take the shit the trip throws at me. Lol.

 

[ectolysergic]

i've found when i've experienced difficulty the trip becomes so much more rewarding in the end. how can one not feel accomplishment by making it back from the depths of hell? the more you traverse these difficult paths the more familiar you become with ways in which to navigate them. (all of which are different from person to person and substance to substance)

 

[DwayneHoover]

The euphoric effect of "making it back from hell" can indeed be powerful, and cathartic.

But to avoid the "badness" coming on, one technique is "mindfulness meditation" or "watching the watcher" if you are not too confused to do it. You essentially try to perceive ALL thoughts and experiences as "passing clouds" and identify with your TRUE higher self as a timeless observer who is viewing your "normal" self undergo various experiences.

Here's an article that describes it more simply than other articles I've seen: http://taoism.about.com/od/meditation/ht/witness.htm

It's really very basic, kind of like looking at your own eyeball in a mirror. Instead of viewing any fearsome visions that you may be seeing, imaging in your mind that that you turn away from them, turn around 180 degrees and instead of perceiving frightening visions or feeling scary feelings, you turn and instead look directly at the "inner eye" that is doing the viewing, thus you break the strong link between the source of the negativity and understand those elements are mere illusions being generated by your own mind and not real, and then the fear will just evaporate. I have done this in the midst of a vicious maelstrom of horrible thoughts feelings & visuals and just made a deliberate effort instead to "turn around" and focus instead on WATCHING MYSELF WATCHING THEM, and their power over me was eliminated and they went away soon thereafter.

 

[OTGee]

I'd say it depends on the seriousness and realness of the thought, if it is something that is indeed horrible and very much 100% real (homeless, drug problems, finnancial problems etc) if your not ready to go through all the emotions and deep thought then distract yourself. Sometimes distracting yourself is worse as it becomes a sub-conscious thought that is always at the back of your head and can influence the atmosphere a lot. If it is more of a non-serious problem (getting healthy, cutting down on drugs, stopping smoking, being a nicer person in general etc etc). I find it is pointless to distract these thoughts as long as you try to actually think how you could change, not why its bad.

Its a hit and miss for me, sometimes i follow the thoughts, sometimes i distract them and they go away, or sometimes they get stuck there. At this point in my life there is a lot of reasons I could be unhappy so I find I get a lot of self improvement thoughts while tripping. Once my life is actually properly sorted out I will feel so much better while tripping. None of these thoughts are serious, i mean my life is great and I love it, but theres things I could definatley work on.

 

[Bi0hazardOpeth]

Great post DwayneHoover. Thanks for the link!

 

[SONN]

I typically just try to ignore it or work my way out of it. In instances where it is really bumming me out I will try to call someone I really love or something like that and it usually doesn't end badly. The only times trips have gotten 'bad' for me is in isolation and after a certain amount of stressful things happening.

 

[Fieldy]

The fear felt in an acid trip is the scariest thing i have every encountered and i have bungy jumped 3 times. Nothing will ever come close to the fear/ego loss. Once you overcome that emotion or flood of emotions you are truly in a state of euphoria described by others which honestly feels like you have just come back from the brink of death or have run a marathon. Embrace the trip, never try to fight it! Let it take you where it wants to take you. Take the ticket and enjoy the ride

 

[webbykevin]

I have found LSD to be a lot more forgiving than say mushrooms, and lsd trip going bad is quite manageable compared to being totally disconbobulated by a mushroom trip that takes a left turn.

Have some benzo's handy, even a couple of mild Valiums can help smooth out the anxiety quite a lot while not knocking you right out or standing on the trip completely.

Or you can try singing, I know it sounds silly but it does injects a new energy into the space and gets your blood circulating.

Curling up in a ball and wishing it would all stop and go away is the worse thing you can do in my opinion, sit up, (or stand up if you can manage that lol) and be present, be aware, watch everything that is happening from the position of the observer, everything that is happening is happening on a screen, like a movie being played out, you are not the screen, it cant touch you, just sit still, shut up and watch.

everything passes, nothing lasts, it requires no effort from you to just observe.

 

[eye_wide_open]

I've had a few bad trips lately indulging in various substances.

MXE was a "doable" bad trip when it happened. 99% of the time everything is perfect though on that substance. Just more like overwhelming but I Was able to calm myself if I kept trying. Normally I do really good things on that stuff. I co-DJ'd a new years eve party on MXE just fine.

I had a hefty bad trip on shrooms last night though. World fell apart on just 2 grams of the best shrooms I ever had. I guess it was ego death. I don't guess I know. I have heard about it all over, been warned about ego death and even evaded my own ego deaths before mixing mxe and mushrooms, but I found ego death hard last night. Nobody in the world can prepare you for that feeling. 8(
I guess I kinda deserved it too. Whew it hurt like hell though and I needed my sitter yet again..

Mushrooms is another substance that usually goes over well with me 99% of the time but I don't know what happened last night those must have been super good and I had no MXE to mix with them to calm me down. lol

Sheesh ego death is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you.
I never thought that could happen off just 2 grams. I've eaten eighths of shrooms before with nothing but some walls breathing and some colors and I've had lots of shroom tea but nothing like that.

I could feel the shrooms alive in my body making my muscles shake as my world fell apart on me. Trying to explain how horrible it was would be pointless because you just can't! Crazy faces and negative feelings and stuff you see like when you are on DMT with your eyes wide open. Everything was turning into drippy eyeballs and faces. Claustrophobia and hot and cold and sweaty and shakey you name it. I curled up into a ball in the fetal position and held my head in my hands. I wanted to die and I worshiped sanity like never before.

I was unable to control it.
I have about 15 years experience with this type of thing too. Never had that happen 'till last night.

I knew it would all be over soon though. That was my only hope.. and it was the truth.

I've had friends walk up to me and straight give me a half ounce of mushrooms before and say "I give up". lol. Mushrooms can be very powerful things.

I'd love to see some of the stuck up people I know in my life experience true ego death/loss. Although that's pretty much the most terrible thing you can wish on somebody.
It's like wishing somebody lose their sanity to their worst nightmare.

Let's just be clear, I still love and value mushrooms very much!
They are a powerful and useful tool just like any other drug you could probably get from your psychiatrist.

Different batches and ROA's do all kinds of different things too so test them out cautiously and get a big enough bag to feel them out for what you're looking for.

 

[folding_space]

I'd love to see some of the stuck up people I know in my life experience true ego death/loss. Although that's pretty much the most terrible thing you can wish on somebody.
It's like wishing somebody lose their sanity to their worst nightmare.

A bit off-topic, but I want to emphasize that ego death isn't always like this. It can be a beautiful, rewarding, and joyous experience.

Which is not to say that I'm belittling your trip in any way. I've had something incredibly similar happen to me on a low dose of mushrooms at Burning Man this year, and it was without a doubt the most frightening experience of my entire life. I collapsed on the side of the road, and for hours I could barely stand and could not understand what was going on around me because the hallucinations were so intense and myriad: objects morphing into other objects, multiple layers of fractal patterns overlaying my vision, skulls and grotesque body parts everywhere, tons of incomprehensible noises, etc. At the peak, it was almost completely dissociative, in a distinctly DMT-like way, and my girlfriend's body, whom I was holding in my arms, became almost completely transparent as the DMT visuals rolled in. It was a powerful lesson about many things, including not taking any dose of psychedelics lightly.

 

[Cyanoide]

Before I ran and wanted the experience to stop if I experienced fear.

Now I've found psychedelics to be a tool to analyze and inspect feelings like fear. If I encounter fear on a trip, I turn towards the feeling and start searching for the source of it. But I do this as soon as I feel fear, before it becomes overwhelming. You can learn a great deal about fear and especially handling fear with psychedelics. I don't know if I'd be able to do this without having starting meditating though, since on meditation sessions I always turn to the source of a certain feeling if I feel somethings disturbing me. This way I learned to accept feelings and turn towards them, not run away from them.

But each to his own. Some prefer to take benzos, some like to switch place/music, many things can work.

 

[Jesusgreen]

I think the key is not just to embrace those negative feelings during the trip but to consciously know you're going to act and make a change. The psychedelics can lead you to water but they can't make you drink, if you go to them for help, and they kick your ass, show you your problems, but you come back again, unchanged, they'll just kick your ass again, and again, and again. If you consciously start fixing the causes of those negative feelings during your trips, they won't surface again

 

[DwayneHoover]

Before I ran and wanted the experience to stop if I experienced fear.... If I encounter fear on a trip, I turn towards the feeling and start searching for the source of it. But I do this as soon as I feel fear, before it becomes overwhelming.

Very well put... "turn toward the feelings" can definitely work... it's like confronting an animal that is trying to frighten you, once "it sees" that you are not afraid and that YOU are going after IT, these things often turn and run away, tail between their legs!

Also, as I describe above, I like to TURN ALL THE WAY AROUND and look instead of at the fear, look DIRECTLY INTO MY OWN EYEBALL (in my mind) that is viewing the fear... Watching The Watcher... this shows you that you are only a consciousness viewing a picture-play that has no actual power over you, and the fear dissolves!