Psychedelic heartburn

[Flickering]

On my last LSD trip, I was worried that I was about to die, slowly and painfully. The problem arose when I decided to check my pulse, and found it was jackhammering at what felt like four beats per second. Alarmed, I attempted to time the pulse rate objectively, but found that I could not - my sense of time was so dreamily distorted that everything was more or less without reference. I tried to ignore it, yet couldn't help but imagine how it would feel if my heart just stopped working. Acid is an imagination enhancer and I knew just what it would be like - the irrepressible pressure, the squeezing and crushing of my own internal organ, the inability to breathe, the tremendous pain and terror...

Not wanting to alarm my friends, nor wanting to end up at hospital and terminate a good trip over what was probably nothing, I asked the only one of them who wasn't on acid himself to come check my pulse. He refused, and berated me for being dumb enough to think LSD could kill me. "Is this your first time or something? The only people who've ever died on acid are the ones who jumped off balconies and that shit. Just chill the fuck out." So I couldn't get him off his stoned ass to just put a finger to my jugular and tell me it was at a mere 120 a minute or something, and I had to resist the insistent thought that I was about to die.

It was like trying not to think of a pink elephant. For me, acid is a presence felt right down to the bone, distorting and making more sensitive every electrical signal throughout the body. Well, whenever I thought about my heart, this body load centred on it, like an electrical cage closing around it. It was kind of like heartburn. I was afraid to breathe too deeply lest I provoke it. At one point - this was the worst part of the trip by far - I once again imagined how it would be if I died of a heart attack. Suddenly the room around me blackened, to a tone paler than mere darkness; it took on the colour of death itself. I sensed a prismatic blade of the universe's intent forming directly over my chest and pressing right into my heart, horrifically sharp, piercing it and stopping it from beating. The deeper it went, the blacker the room got, and the darkness permeated my consciousness and began to suffocate it irrevocably into nothing. I was being stabbed in the heart from another dimension; this was how I would die.

And it felt so familiar. Like it had actually happened before.

I sat up quickly and left the room at once for a change of scene to prevent this turning into a nightmare trip. I have a meager number of experiences under my belt, and two bad trips, enough to know to change the game when things are going south. Sure enough I resumed a pretty good, though overly intense trip, and I obviously didn't drop dead at any point. However, throughout the trip and even as it was finishing, I kept checking my pulse out of sheer paranoia, and every time I thought about it, I could feel the psychedelic heartburn.

I write tihs topic to ask if this is a common body experience, and if there's anything I can do to get around it the next time I take LSD, because I'm concerned I'll be preoccupied with it again and unable to enjoy myself fully. One thing I plan to do is visit a doctor and get an EKG and whatever else, to reassure myself and to see if I'm eligable for iboga treatment later down the line. I have an irregular heartbeat but I'm told that's harmless. It also occurred to me that I may have developed a heart condition, and that LSD didn't exacerbate it (a highly unlikely possibility; the tabs were very clean), but simply made me aware of it for the first time.

 

[TangerinO]

The only thing I can equate to this is when a friend of mine started on Concerta in college, and whenever he smoked weed he would describe similar symptoms of heartburn and when he eventually tried acid this flipped him out a few times as it just made the problem heaps worse and he had similar worries about his heart giving out. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong for months which made him worry even more.
Had you smoked weed earlier in the night? Because his problem actually ended up being heart inflammation and acid just magnified it, and weed seemed to bring it out. He got some anti-inflammatory cream: All good.

Sounds like a pretty intense trip though, what kind of dose were you on? Kudos on bringing it back from what sounds like a pretty scary experience.
Also have you had any previous issue with your heart, without the adding of acid. I would say if anything the acid just made the problem seem worse than it was but I can't say for sure.

 

[swilow]

^I gotta say, I'm baffled as to what sort of anti-inflammatory cream you would use on your heart.

A few things:
-If you do have an irregular heartbeat, do get it checked out. You probably don't need to get an EKG, just get a doctor to have a close listen. If the DR advises you to get further testing, don't take any drugs until (and IF) you know your in the clear...
-LSD does often cause a slightly elevated heart rate, though you wouldn't call that a typical effect. Anything that cause one to hallucinate might cause heart rate increase simply due to anxiety. You just need to use your intellect and reasoning skills (yeah I know, kinda hard when your on acid) to assuage your worries. For one, LSD is not known for causing heart problems. LSD is very very safe (physically at least). There have been no deaths from normal doses of LSD. The slight increase of heart rate is insignificat; your heart is designed to deal with fluctuating pulse. You would get a higher pulse rate from relatively mild exercise then LSD, itself, could ever cause.

In reading some other stuff you've written, Flickering, I think you are setting yourself up to be slightly paranoid. You've had a few difficult trips, so either psychedelics aren't for you at the moment, or you need to learn how to talk to yourself better when tripping. As Tangerino mentioned, its excellent that you were able to pull yourself out of this or at least cope with the experience, so you must have some ability to reason with your tripping self. Try and practise that sort of technique when your sober...it can have a flow on effect to your tripping state.

By the way- if you do or don't get an EKG, you will still find yourself with 'psychedelic heartburn' next time you trip. Remember, its nothing physical actually happening to you, but its a fear of what may happen. Your EKG could indicate that you are as blissed out as a 250 nine-times reincarnated tibetan monk, but after you've done that and get back to tripping, you'll be back to worrying about this. Its not your heart that is the issue...

Hope that didn't sound too blunt, I'm sleepy and lost all my nice words

 

[malakaix]

Haha, i don't mean to laugh but reading this was like looking in the mirror.

I had almost exactly the same situation arise years ago except mine was focused on the blood-flow of my arteries becoming blocked through vasoconstriction that was brought on by the psychedelic; this has been reported as a side-effect of high dose's of bromo-dFLY; so of course not knowing with certainty what was on the tab and with this knowledge at my disposal i jumped to the worst possible conclusion which i would say only exacerbated the situation. My entire attention focused to my left arm, which was strangely in a lot of physical pain.. in retrospect i believe this was due to the midnight cold in winter outside, which you would usually acknowledge but pay little attention.. and as you know the less your aware of the pain the less severe it is, unfortunately all my attention was focused on the feeling so it 'seemed' like a medical emergency to me, i was either going to die or lose my arm.

Fortunately one of the DJ's that was doing a set was also a doctor-in-training and had almost finished medical school. So of course i interrupted his set with my 'crisis' and he checked my pulse and arm and said i was fine, in the end i suppose that reassurance was all i needed to shift my focus back to center balance as all concern and fear simply slipped away.

I've had my fair share of experiences with these sorts of situations relating to the body and psychedelics, in my own experience LSD is notorious for incurring these sorts of thought patterns due to its analytical nature.. it's very easy to analyze with accuracy the nature of the process that's unfolding, even if it's holds no substantial evidence that something is physical wrong. This was also a major issue with me and LSD.. that often lead me into scenario's where i believed i had damaged my brain, heart problems, blood clots.. you name it, the common theme here is it's all related to the concept of death and letting go.. what better way to avoid confrontation then to focus on the tangible in a manner that demands serious attention, which virtually anchors you back into reality.

I actually went and had an EKG done because i became so convinced that there was an underlying problem that psychedelics perhaps allowed me to become aware of, it cost quite a bit to get done and the result came back fine.. i also had a CT scan done for similar reasons, of which also came back fine. The peace of mind for me was worth it, but perhaps this may put your situation into perspective..

 

[Flickering]

I'd only taken 1.25 tabs. They were pretty strong tabs though and it was a definite +3, with consistent visuals the most powerful I've had so far. No I didn't smoke any weed, because I find that even a small amount puts me in a strong state of depersonalisation - quite unpleasant, and it has had after-effects lasting for weeks in the past. I've never had any trouble with my heart before and I'm young (21). The only thing is the irregular heartbeat. Based on doctor's advice from an EKG I got a couple of years back, it's not even worth operating on. But I will get another one for iboga treatment, and I'll also outright ask if psychedelics are for any reason not advisable.

Psychedelics are definitely for me at the moment. They're 90% of what's getting me through the day - the prospect that I'll be tripping again in a few patient weeks. I started taking them for self-developmental reasons and I've been so determined that even after those two bad trips, even after thinking my brain simply didn't function properly with hallucinogens, I kept trying anyway and I was very relieved when it not only worked, but started getting me where I needed to go spiritually. Ibogaine is my ultimate goal. I'll be very disappointed if I'm not eligable to take it (a high proportion of the people who die on it have heart conditions).

I was able to cope, partly because death itself simply doesn't scare me anymore, just makes me feel like I wanted to do more with my life whenever I'm confronted with it. High levels of enduring pain, however, is another matter. I have no problem with blood, I just can't stand pain (except when accompanied by adrenaline, such as in a fight), and I can't stand not being in control. Having this threat of agony hovering over my chest for the whole trip was really hard to get my mind off, especially because there was nothing I could do about it - if I was really going to be the first person to die from LSD alone, it could strike at any moment. In the end, I opted to either distract myself because not thinking about the 'heartburn' made it go away, or make my anxiety part of the trip; analyse it, detached, and use it to better understand myself.

It took the trip to dark places. Most of the imagery I saw was of the underworld, monsters, wraiths and corpses, all of which was actually pretty cool and helped get my mind off my heart.

Fortunately one of the DJ's that was doing a set was also a doctor-in-training and had almost finished medical school. So of course i interrupted his set with my 'crisis' and he checked my pulse and arm and said i was fine, in the end i suppose that reassurance was all i needed to shift my focus back to center balance as all concern and fear simply slipped away.

Yeah exactly, all I wanted was reassurance, but this guy wasn't bothered with it, felt like patronising me instead. I didn't know him too well and I ended up thinking he was an asshole. It was his arrival that turned an already weird trip in a nastier direction. He knocked on the door at 2:30a.m. and when we asked who it was, he said, "Police", then came barging in, turned on the light and started talking about fucking freemasons. I can think of a few less appropriate topic to choose around three guys tripping acid (my friends were on 2 and 2.5 tabs) but you'd have to really be trying. Completely ruined the mood and threw me. It was immediately after that I started worrying about my heartrate.

 

[Solipsis]

Your description is pretty specific in a way, regarding physical complications in the chest area and sensations that are hard to verify. Part of me wants to say this sounds similar to a panic attack, if that wasn't precisely it. A panic attack is not a way of whining, something to dismiss an experience with; I know first-hand how far it can go. In my case it was worrying about not being able to breathe, not automatically/involuntarily and then it even seemed like I could not even breathe intentionally. But the truth of the matter was that I hyperventilated, making things progressively worse. I ended up going to the ER and my hyperventilation actually threw my blood gases out of whack, which is problematic. I won't go into it further but that is just an example of how extreme sensations can be hallucinated when psychedelic effects combine with real panic.
All I am saying is that looking at my own case, it seems like a real possibility that there never really were medical complications for you. Heart rate is something else that can seem bizarre when panicking in a trip, in your case seemingly dangerously high and in my case the opposite. (In the ER I heard slow beeps and got confused and scared, and I could not get a grip on time).

But then again, it is also possible that you have an underlying heart condition but if there was something like an arrhythmia aren't you supposed to become aware of that when for example you just ran as fast as you can for a while. Getting your heart racing simulates a racing heart from strong anxiety or panic, right? So if you never felt anything from the strain of physical exercise then I simply don't see how LSD could create a serious situation from heavy cardio load. I'm not sure panic can spiral so hard out of control that it can bring out predisposition of a weak heart, but I guess that it would start to come close to a funky phenomenon like being scared to death. Yes terror can trigger a heart attack.

Maybe you could try to find out some easy tells if you have heart troubles like heavy strain from exercise, I'm not sure what else.
I'm saying this because getting that clarified could take away part of your worries and of course also because you might not want to tempt fate.

If you decide to try acid again just take a much lower dose and take the time and put in the effort to learn how to work with the amplified awareness of body energy. When channeled directly it can feel blissful like a purified soul or heart, but when channeled incorrectly it can definitely feel a bit like having lockjaw in the involved body part. And the chest area is a very central point for the whole body load thing so if fear starts to manifest as a clenched feeling in the chest it can turn into a vicious circle. Learn how to relax yourself with meditation and step out of such vicious circles. The best way to let your body load flow is to create minimal resistance. At least that's a bit of a Taoist way of putting it.

 

[Aether]

Your friend is either an asshole or ignorant of what he was doing. Either way, I'd recommend talking to him about what he did, and how badly it affected you. Make sure that, in the future, he will more properly handle tripping people.

 

[porkstock]

i've had some of these same "symptoms" on LSD (or psychedelics in general)

thinking i would forget how to breathe if i fell asleep

thinking i might be having a heart attack because my left armpit was tingling

i'm pretty sure they were both imagined / exaggerated due to tripping

 

[TangerinO]

^I gotta say, I'm baffled as to what sort of anti-inflammatory cream you would use on your heart.

Well that's the point, he thought it was his heart as that's where the pain was, however it was just inflammation in chest muscles in and around the heart, not the actual heart itself which is why the doctors couldn't figure anything out.

Your friend is either an asshole or ignorant of what he was doing. Either way, I'd recommend talking to him about what he did, and how badly it affected you. Make sure that, in the future, he will more properly handle tripping people.

Yeah I was also going to say, doesn't sound like your lazy stoned friend was much help. It's a bit hard to get me to do shit when I'm stoned and vegging, but if a friend on acid says "Hey man I need help somethings gone/going wrong" whatever that may entail, you don't have to get me up, I'm already there.

 

[spaceyourbass]

Could it possibly be that you weren't breathing enough? I've had trips when I had to force myself to breathe at certain points. Breathing was previously thought to be purely involuntary (like the heart beat), but it is now said to be something like semi-voluntary...If I didn't force myself to breathe and took very few breaths, my heart beat faster and the trip evolved into thoughts about death, or what would actually happen if I stopped breathing. In reality I would have passed out or just become extremely light-headed.

Could it be that your physiological and "tripiological" effects were from oxygen deprivation?

 

[swilow]

Well that's the point, he thought it was his heart as that's where the pain was, however it was just inflammation in chest muscles in and around the heart, not the actual heart itself which is why the doctors couldn't figure anything out.

Ah, gotcha. I just read this bit and got confused:

Because his problem actually ended up being heart inflammation and acid just magnified it, and weed seemed to bring it out. He got some anti-inflammatory cream: All good.

 

[Flickering]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I'll go over the various ideas quickly: I don't think I wasn't breathing enough, pretty sure it wasn't anything like a panic attack, my heart copes fine under rigorous exercise, and it may indeed have been chest muscle inflammation. After all, it's hard to tell whether what you're feeling is the heart or the muscles around it. On the other hand, I'm pretty thin and don't have much muscle in that area to speak of. But it would make sense.

I have felt some minor aches in the heart region ever since the trip.

I'm fairly sure it's nothing, and my main concern is just that it will become a source of stress in my next trip. The wise thing, as you say Solipsis, would be to trip lighter next time and focus on making the physical sensations more harmonious and beneficial, so I can learn how to wield LSD better. I am planning to do it again in about a month's time, and I was planning on going slightly stronger than last time, but perhaps that's not for the best. I also think seeing a doctor over the next week or so will help put my fears to rest, and in the best case, anti-inflammation cream to the chest would make the sensation go away altogether.

Yeah, the guy was a bit of a dick, and for that reason I wouldn't really count him as a friend and don't intend on seeing him again. Ignorance wasn't the problem, because he used to trip a great deal himself. I think he just didn't care, and kind of looked down on me for it as well. Before I mentioned my heart rate to the group, one of them had said I was a lot mentally weaker than he was, and seemed to be under the impression that I was completely in another world from only a moderate dose of LSD. I wanted to say I'm stronger than he thinks (but that just sounds petulant) and I was in fact quite in touch with reality, just withdrawn and unused to reconciling LSD with social situations. He and the first guy seem to have an attitude about mental strength that I neither share nor care for. Their approach was, don't be a weak-willed moron and think you're in any kind of trouble, just get over it and be strong like us, you baby. I was annoyed, and it later steered the trip in an antagonistic direction towards them that seemed totally reasonable at the time, but when I'd come down it felt like I'd been over-reacting. Just goes to show, pick the people you trip with carefully.

 

[Solipsis]

Appearing strong or not is such an ego game. It has no place with LSD experiences. But enough about the guy I guess, if you don't consider him a friend seems like a conclusion to that discussion (if you don't mind me saying so - just my opinion).

Yeah inflammation of the chest muscle seems plausible. Not sure how clearly it is felt whether you have an aching muscle or if it is really an inner organ. Do you have 2C-B at your disposal? The trip is quite light from that and it has some potential to be used to feel everything thats going on in your body. Like for self-diagnosis. Though not too much should be expected from that quality either.

Anti-inflammation topical cream, interesting. I am immediately reminded of topical cream containing ketamine. Would be funny to me if that would be used during a trip. I recently posted in another topic about 5-MeO tryptamines that I think ketamine is good for changing a body load. Because it dissociates and numbs it, but not entirely - it is also enhanced. But I wouldn't recommend it as a solution to anyone anytime - just off the bat.

 

[Flickering]

That's exactly how I felt. The whole ego thing was really off-putting.

I'm not sure about the nature of the muscle in question either. I don't have 2C-B, but that's worth considering - I did want to try it a while back, but got put off by reports that it has a high rate of HPPD. Still, it's a good idea, I'll have a look around.

As for ketamine in topical cream - drugs are everywhere.

Thanks for your help!

 

[spaceyourbass]

\
Yeah, the guy was a bit of a dick, and for that reason I wouldn't really count him as a friend and don't intend on seeing him again. Ignorance wasn't the problem, because he used to trip a great deal himself. I think he just didn't care, and kind of looked down on me for it as well. Before I mentioned my heart rate to the group, one of them had said I was a lot mentally weaker than he was, and seemed to be under the impression that I was completely in another world from only a moderate dose of LSD. I wanted to say I'm stronger than he thinks (but that just sounds petulant) and I was in fact quite in touch with reality, just withdrawn and unused to reconciling LSD with social situations. He and the first guy seem to have an attitude about mental strength that I neither share nor care for. Their approach was, don't be a weak-willed moron and think you're in any kind of trouble, just get over it and be strong like us, you baby. I was annoyed, and it later steered the trip in an antagonistic direction towards them that seemed totally reasonable at the time, but when I'd come down it felt like I'd been over-reacting. Just goes to show, pick the people you trip with carefully.

Oh jeez give me a break! People like that really piss me off along with douche bags who intentionally try to confuse you, scare you, or fuck with you in general while you're tripping. Both types of people are extremely immature. Well these guys will soon figure out that despite how "weak" you are, you are strong enough to separate yourself from them and their unnecessary and idiotic, not to mention completely asshole-ish philosophies. Sorry just had to get that rant off my chest!

Best of luck with your situation. Perhaps you should keep a dose of a benzo on-hand when you trip...just in case you have a really bad reaction or your trip does get too stressful...or if you run into those D-bags and need something to calm you down before shit gets real.

 

[Flickering]

There was D, S and J. D was a really cool guy who I met for the first time that day, a Japanese psychonaut who left his home country due to their strict anti-drug laws. I'd like to trip with him again on mescaline in the desert, haven't asked if he's up for it yet. S was the guy who came in at 2:30 and I thought he was all right until he didn't do me the basic courtesy of confirming my pulse was not, as it felt, 240bpm. J I've known for quite a while, and he originally got me into psychedelics. He's had a very different upbringing to me and has much of the Australian attitude of 'toughness', so I understand it even though I can't relate. He was tripped out on two tabs when he said it, so while it caused tension and made the entire trip uncomfortable, I can understand. Next day he said he was sorry for being 'hard on me' but affirmed that I need to chill out and stop falling for tricks like that; i.e., harden my mind. Personally I think I handled it all well. I didn't freak out. Others might have. Physical irregularities are something to look out for when tripping and shouldn't be ignored when spotted, and I did think it might just be the drug screwing with my sense of time, but it would have been so much easier if I'd had an objective gauge of that, that's all I was asking for. All in all it made for the roughest non-bad trip I've had so far.

 

[Jesusgreen]

Sorry for not replying here before, this is just my own little theory from my experience, but I think you were undergoing a panic attack. I've experienced way too many panic attacks and you check all the boxes - chest tightness, increased heart rate, trouble breathing - and of course, the fear that you're having a heart attack, going to die, or that something else incredibly awful is about to happen.

One of the problems with panic attacks is you tend to start hyperventilating - breathing in too much oxygen, leading to worsening of your symptoms. A good trick I've found is to cup your hands over your mouth and breathe into them, or breathe into a paper bag.

I've had a couple of panic attacks when taking higher doses of psychedelics before, I don't think it is likely you had anything to worry about - however I'd consider getting someone who will be happy to check your pulse to be there with you next time, just so you can put your mind at ease - panic attacks tend to repeat themselves if you're not 100% sure it was just a panic attack in the first place.

 

[Flickering]

Both of you seem pretty sure it was a panic attack or something similar, and given that you've had those before, perhaps I should consider it. It's just that for a panic attack, there seemed to be a lack of, well, panic involved. True that some of the symptoms matched, but I've seen panic attacks before and compared to that, my own state of mind was... agitated, anxious, but definitely not overloading into desperation or hysteria.

Actually, I stood outside at one point and thought about how strange it was that I wasn't feeling actual fear at the prospect of dying horribly. Just anxiety. A kind of 'intellectual' fear I guess. My thoughts had the same drifting style as ever, annoyingly calm.

I went to see the doctor. According to the EKG, my heart is perfectly healthy and not even arrhythmic. The latter can't be true, so we've decided to do a 24-hour EKG later on. Also took a blood test. The doctor was very cool about the LSD thing, agreed that it's physically much safer than many other substances, and the only thing he asked was how frequently I used it. He also mentioned that it's unlikely my heart was beating at more than 160 beats per minute or I probably would have passed out. I'm now looking for some tiger balm because I'm pretty sure, as TangerinO suggested, it's just muscle inflammation.

 

[MattPsy]

By a heartrate monitor if you're concerned. I did, it was a great investment, now I can confront the effects of placeboamine with objective evidence to the contrary.

 

[swilow]

If you didn't feel panicky, it probably wasn't a panic attack. But, that said, anxiety (be it mild or getting to sub-panic levels) can cause all the same physical symptoms as you've described.

I don't think a cream will make any difference to you as I think the issue is fear tapping into a suggestible psychedelified mind.