queenscarlet88
Bluelighter
(Edible Cannabis / 2 Grams) - Low Tolerance - Horrible Weed-Induced Psychosis
Hi all,
This experience happened about a month ago. I had been completely sober for three years due to drug-related anxiety issues, and life was good. But I had recently moved to a new city and was lonely. Smoking weed was always an easy way to meet people. So I decided to find some weed.
Met a few 420-friendly folks and got some bud. Smoked a few bowls with these new friends and had a great time. My tolerance has always been abnormally low, and I got completely stoned from just a hit or two. But it was very pleasant. I figured that, after three years, I had moved beyond the anxious stage of my life. It seemed safe to enjoy weed again.
At the same time, smoking was problematic because it interfered with my running, which I loved (and still do). The solution? Edibles. I decided to make cookies using cannabutter. On the day of my baking, I started by breaking up an eighth of bud and simmering it in butter. Usually shitty bud is used to bake, which helps to compensate for the fact that edibles are more intense and last longer than smoking does. But the bud I used was very high quality. I think this probably became a major factor in the nightmare that ensured.
Back to the baking. I stirred the butter into my cookie batter and then, impatient, ate some of the dough. An hour passed and nothing happened, so I ate some more. My total consumption was probably the oral equivalent of about two grams of high-quality "chronic" bud. Waaaay too much, in hindsight, especially considering my three-year hiatus and newbie-level tolerance.
For a while the trip unfurled nicely. I could interact normally with others. Had some good sex with my boyfriend, let's call him G, who tolerates when I get high but doesn't do so himself. But about three hours after redosing (such a slow come-up!), things started to go wrong.
G and I were playing an online game and, suddenly, it occurred to me that this game was an allegory for the apocalypse. Different play styles represented different ways in which the world might end. I started to feel scared and looked around the apartment. Ethernet cables snaked across the floor. I realized that these cables were dividing the apartment into zones. Every time I crossed from one zone into another, some authority would be notified.
"Maybe we should nail these cords up along the wall," I said. "So they're not in the middle of the floor."
"I don't think you want to do that," G replied, only half-listening, paying attention mainly to the game. I realized that invisible spiders could dangle from the suspended cables and that would not be good. It would disrupt the apartment's invisible ecosystem (more on that in a moment). Meanwhile, G was still talking. "It looks tacky." Right, I thought to myself. I suspected that he was part of the scheme to destroy me. At the very least he was an unwitting pawn. Possibly he was involved at a much higher level.
Time was passing very slowly. I no longer wanted to watch him play the apocalyptic game, so I stood and crossed the apartment, careful not to stumble over the ethernet tripwires. Time to iron clothes, a task I had been putting off. Looking at my clothing, each clothes-hanger, I realized, had a furry animal hanging from it, which was represented visually by the clothing that I thought I saw. Every visible object in the room was actually a representation of some ravenous, malicious creature. The iron was a snake with a hot mouth. When I ironed I fed the snake. Now it made sense.
Not only that, but there were creatures present that didn't have any visual representation at all. The room was thick with large, invisible insects pressing against me. Each area in the apartment had different sorts of insects in it. I didn't actually hallucinate these entities--I didn't "see" them through my eyes--but I could "sense" them, and I felt totally certain about their existence and their malevolent nature. The kitchen insects and the living room insects each dwelled in their respective zones, an invisible ecosystem that was, in some hideous way which was becoming ever-clearer in my mind, oriented toward my torture and destruction.
The panic was mounting. I went into the bathroom to be alone and try to calm down. While in the bathroom I contemplated the infinite repercussions of my every action. Let me explain. For instance, when I decided whether to wash the dishes right away or let them fester in the sink, I was actually deciding the fate of a microscopic ecosystem. Scrubbing a food-encrusted bowl was tantamount to dissolving entire microbial civilizations that might be thriving within the bowl. I was a cosmic mother figure, making hundreds of small decisions each day on whether living entities--most of these entities well beneath the level of my attention--would continue to exist or would be wiped out.
When I emerged from the bathroom G had gone to the bedroom. This felt very wrong. He was a lizard like the rest. He had some kind of nonhuman sex creature in the bed with him. I thrust the door open and he was lying in the dark. I saw the blanket shifting furiously as if some kind of creature writhed underneath. There was talking but I didn't understand it. I turned on the light. "You're about to kill me," I said. I started screaming so our neighbors downstairs would hear. "He's about to kill me! He is going to kill me right now!"
For the next hour G sat with me on the bed and tried to talk me down. I thought that everything he said was some kind of coded message about how and when I would die. I thought we were negotiating the terms of my imminent death. For instance, at one point he mentioned law school, and said, "You have to pay out the ass for law school." To my mind, this meant that "law school" was a form of death in which I would be allowed to live for a while longer, but would then have to "pay out my ass," i.e., my intestines would be ripped from my asshole while I remained conscious. Basically, everything that either of us said for the next hours took on these sorts of meanings in my mind. This is what elevated the bad trip beyond a typical panic attack--not only did I believe I was about to die, but I believed that I would remain conscious after dying, and would be eternally subjected to some kind of machinery of torture. I was convinced that Earth was a giant farm for the purpose of raising human cattle, who were tortured and eaten alive, and who remained conscious the entire time.
And, as mentioned, very object in the apartment was actually something else in disguise. My phone was a gun. If I turned on the screen to check my phone, I would be pulling a trigger. I would thereby kill myself and save G and the conspiracy the trouble of killing me themselves. If I leaned too long against the wall behind me then a serrated blade would pop out to sever my spine. Etc.
There was more, but at this point, you have the "feel" of the experience. At this point you may believe that underlying mental illness or some other factor was responsible for this trip. It might seem absurd that weed alone could cause something like this to happen. In response, let me say the following:
What's my point? Clearly, there's something in my brain chemistry that makes me more susceptible than most to this kind of nightmarish trip. But it's not fair to say that this predisposition is equivalent to a serious mental illness. I think there's a tendency on Bluelight and other pro-drug communities to blame bad trips on the user. "Oh, the drug just triggered a mental illness that was already there." Or, "Well, weed never did that to me, so something must be wrong with you."
I want to challenge this kind of victim-blaming perspective. And I want to fight against the notion that a drug-induced experience necessarily results in permanent mental illness. My goal in writing this trip report is to reach out to others like me: People who might suffer from garden-variety anxiety or depression but who find that weed causes frightening and disturbing experiences. If you have suffered something like this, then please know that it is NOT permanent, it does NOT mean you have a condition like schizophrenia, and if you stop smoking, your perceptions can return to the way they were.
Hi all,
This experience happened about a month ago. I had been completely sober for three years due to drug-related anxiety issues, and life was good. But I had recently moved to a new city and was lonely. Smoking weed was always an easy way to meet people. So I decided to find some weed.
Met a few 420-friendly folks and got some bud. Smoked a few bowls with these new friends and had a great time. My tolerance has always been abnormally low, and I got completely stoned from just a hit or two. But it was very pleasant. I figured that, after three years, I had moved beyond the anxious stage of my life. It seemed safe to enjoy weed again.
At the same time, smoking was problematic because it interfered with my running, which I loved (and still do). The solution? Edibles. I decided to make cookies using cannabutter. On the day of my baking, I started by breaking up an eighth of bud and simmering it in butter. Usually shitty bud is used to bake, which helps to compensate for the fact that edibles are more intense and last longer than smoking does. But the bud I used was very high quality. I think this probably became a major factor in the nightmare that ensured.
Back to the baking. I stirred the butter into my cookie batter and then, impatient, ate some of the dough. An hour passed and nothing happened, so I ate some more. My total consumption was probably the oral equivalent of about two grams of high-quality "chronic" bud. Waaaay too much, in hindsight, especially considering my three-year hiatus and newbie-level tolerance.
For a while the trip unfurled nicely. I could interact normally with others. Had some good sex with my boyfriend, let's call him G, who tolerates when I get high but doesn't do so himself. But about three hours after redosing (such a slow come-up!), things started to go wrong.
G and I were playing an online game and, suddenly, it occurred to me that this game was an allegory for the apocalypse. Different play styles represented different ways in which the world might end. I started to feel scared and looked around the apartment. Ethernet cables snaked across the floor. I realized that these cables were dividing the apartment into zones. Every time I crossed from one zone into another, some authority would be notified.
"Maybe we should nail these cords up along the wall," I said. "So they're not in the middle of the floor."
"I don't think you want to do that," G replied, only half-listening, paying attention mainly to the game. I realized that invisible spiders could dangle from the suspended cables and that would not be good. It would disrupt the apartment's invisible ecosystem (more on that in a moment). Meanwhile, G was still talking. "It looks tacky." Right, I thought to myself. I suspected that he was part of the scheme to destroy me. At the very least he was an unwitting pawn. Possibly he was involved at a much higher level.
Time was passing very slowly. I no longer wanted to watch him play the apocalyptic game, so I stood and crossed the apartment, careful not to stumble over the ethernet tripwires. Time to iron clothes, a task I had been putting off. Looking at my clothing, each clothes-hanger, I realized, had a furry animal hanging from it, which was represented visually by the clothing that I thought I saw. Every visible object in the room was actually a representation of some ravenous, malicious creature. The iron was a snake with a hot mouth. When I ironed I fed the snake. Now it made sense.
Not only that, but there were creatures present that didn't have any visual representation at all. The room was thick with large, invisible insects pressing against me. Each area in the apartment had different sorts of insects in it. I didn't actually hallucinate these entities--I didn't "see" them through my eyes--but I could "sense" them, and I felt totally certain about their existence and their malevolent nature. The kitchen insects and the living room insects each dwelled in their respective zones, an invisible ecosystem that was, in some hideous way which was becoming ever-clearer in my mind, oriented toward my torture and destruction.
The panic was mounting. I went into the bathroom to be alone and try to calm down. While in the bathroom I contemplated the infinite repercussions of my every action. Let me explain. For instance, when I decided whether to wash the dishes right away or let them fester in the sink, I was actually deciding the fate of a microscopic ecosystem. Scrubbing a food-encrusted bowl was tantamount to dissolving entire microbial civilizations that might be thriving within the bowl. I was a cosmic mother figure, making hundreds of small decisions each day on whether living entities--most of these entities well beneath the level of my attention--would continue to exist or would be wiped out.
When I emerged from the bathroom G had gone to the bedroom. This felt very wrong. He was a lizard like the rest. He had some kind of nonhuman sex creature in the bed with him. I thrust the door open and he was lying in the dark. I saw the blanket shifting furiously as if some kind of creature writhed underneath. There was talking but I didn't understand it. I turned on the light. "You're about to kill me," I said. I started screaming so our neighbors downstairs would hear. "He's about to kill me! He is going to kill me right now!"
For the next hour G sat with me on the bed and tried to talk me down. I thought that everything he said was some kind of coded message about how and when I would die. I thought we were negotiating the terms of my imminent death. For instance, at one point he mentioned law school, and said, "You have to pay out the ass for law school." To my mind, this meant that "law school" was a form of death in which I would be allowed to live for a while longer, but would then have to "pay out my ass," i.e., my intestines would be ripped from my asshole while I remained conscious. Basically, everything that either of us said for the next hours took on these sorts of meanings in my mind. This is what elevated the bad trip beyond a typical panic attack--not only did I believe I was about to die, but I believed that I would remain conscious after dying, and would be eternally subjected to some kind of machinery of torture. I was convinced that Earth was a giant farm for the purpose of raising human cattle, who were tortured and eaten alive, and who remained conscious the entire time.
And, as mentioned, very object in the apartment was actually something else in disguise. My phone was a gun. If I turned on the screen to check my phone, I would be pulling a trigger. I would thereby kill myself and save G and the conspiracy the trouble of killing me themselves. If I leaned too long against the wall behind me then a serrated blade would pop out to sever my spine. Etc.
There was more, but at this point, you have the "feel" of the experience. At this point you may believe that underlying mental illness or some other factor was responsible for this trip. It might seem absurd that weed alone could cause something like this to happen. In response, let me say the following:
- I have had "bad trips" before, though never one this bad.
- These trips have usually involved some kind of psychedelic along with weed. But weed is the common element. When taking mushrooms or acid by itself, I have always had positive experiences.
- Prior to smoking weed, I never suffered from thoughts or experiences of this sort, and when I stay sober, they go away.
What's my point? Clearly, there's something in my brain chemistry that makes me more susceptible than most to this kind of nightmarish trip. But it's not fair to say that this predisposition is equivalent to a serious mental illness. I think there's a tendency on Bluelight and other pro-drug communities to blame bad trips on the user. "Oh, the drug just triggered a mental illness that was already there." Or, "Well, weed never did that to me, so something must be wrong with you."
I want to challenge this kind of victim-blaming perspective. And I want to fight against the notion that a drug-induced experience necessarily results in permanent mental illness. My goal in writing this trip report is to reach out to others like me: People who might suffer from garden-variety anxiety or depression but who find that weed causes frightening and disturbing experiences. If you have suffered something like this, then please know that it is NOT permanent, it does NOT mean you have a condition like schizophrenia, and if you stop smoking, your perceptions can return to the way they were.
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