Still dont feel like myself 3 months after doing acid for the first time

[jackhunter24]

Ok, so about 3 months ago, during the first few days of 2015, I did acid for the first time. I had previously done shrooms twice and had a great time both times, so I thought I was ready. I was wrong. The trip was awful, I had a textbook bad trip, but I wont go into detail about that. What I want to focus on is the fact that I have not felt myself since the awful experience. Ever since the bad trip, I have had this awful feeling in my head. I have just started to call it "the feeling." Describing "the feeling" is incredibly difficult for me. It is not the same every day, but it is always there. Sometimes it is much more intense that other times, sometimes it is barely noticable. I will do my best to describe it now. It is this uncomfortable feeling in my head, that almost makes me feel high, but every aspect of the high is negative. Because I have this feeling all the time now, I barely ever smoke or drink anymore, two things that I used to love to do. I feel lost in life, things that always made sense just do not make sense anymore. My brain feels broken, I feel stupid. I feel more awkward talking to people. I get this intense brain fog and mess up words often while talking to people. However, despite this, I am doing much better in school than last semester (im a freshman in college). Sometimes my brain feels empty, im just sitting there and it feels like there is nothing in my brain, just emptiness. This feeling is making my life a living hell. Even though this semester is going a lot smoother that last: I have a lot more friends, im doing better in school, etc. i would kill to go back to last semester when I did not have this feeling.

I recently visited the counseling center at my college and tried explaining all of this to a counselor. He is just as confused by it all as I am. He suggested talking to an expert on medication (I take prozac for anxiety) and seeing if they have any ideas. However, I could tell the counselor was very confused, and has no idea what I am dealing with.

I feel like I have learned a lesson. If this feeling ever goes away, I will appriciate life so much more than I did before. I have a great life besides this. I have a great family who is very financially stable. I really am a lucky person. I will appriciate my life every day if this feeling will just go away.

Any ideas or thoughts would be appriciated, thanks.

 

[psykoman]

Go see a doctor

 

[Kl519]

Seems like he already did. Just try to remember how your life was before that bad trip, and understand the mindset you had back then. Then try to imitate that, or something to that effect.

Try to not stress over what happened in that bad trip, and try to get over it like a bad dream. Good luck.

 

[Listening]

I would suggest this as an opportunity to start seeing a good psychologist weekly.

In all likelihood "the feeling" will go away by itself, but how you deal in the mean time could still have a big impact on your life. It sounds like you're doing the best you can and getting by. Good. However, maybe you're also missing the opportunity to explore your discomfort fully: What is this feeling of emptiness and why does it disturb you so much?

I think that once you get past this phase in your life, you will be better for it (as you say), but for the moment, you may need to let go of the wish for it all to just "go away," since you have no idea when that might actually happen. Instead, your job now is to accept your current reality and learn as much about yourself as you can while you have the chance in this difficult space.

Good luck to you.

 

[CosmicG]

This feeling you speak of will pass in time. Listening had a lot of great advice, but I will try to add a little bit of my own experiences and thoughts for support if nothing else. I have been exactly where you are and so have countless others. The most profound, life changing trips I have ever had have been bad trips on LSD. There are many lessons that can be learned from this molecule, and sometimes it can show us things about ourselves that we are just not ready to accept/be aware of.

The point is you will get better in time. With myself the hardest part was accepting the things LSD had shown me, and recognizing the changes necessary to become the person I want to be. This is something I am still going through. You will adapt, and in the end become stronger through this struggle.

 

[Foreigner]

That head feeling could be physiological too. LSD dings a lot of different receptors, and you're a student on top of it. Sounds like your neurochemistry hasn't had a true rest since your experience.

I think you should search Blue light for previous threads about brain nutrition and restoration. Aside from food you could consider nootropics, and various supplements.

I've had horrible LSD trips and aside from their psychological impact they are a lot more physically depleting because of how stressful they are. The mind can only take so much.

I think you'll be fine with time, but some kind of neurological nutrition will be needed.

 

[Kl519]

Hmm, once you get used to the effects, there comes a point when the mental head fuck becomes normal, and easier to navigate away from bad trips. But when you get used to it, the novelty of lsd wears off once you're able to tell reality apart from just hallucinating. It's not as convincing as before. Well, at normal 100ug-200ug. Higher doses should be reserved for occasions, eg above 300ug, which will definitely take you to at least a +3, given tolerance isn't too much of a factor.

I think bad trips are a part of the (lsd) experience. My friends have all bad tripped at least once from acid, but they still like it. -_- well, it's not so bad once it's over anyway.

But the mind really needs the rest sometimes.

 

[Dresden]

^--Yes, but not recovering 3 months after LSD is not the same thing as an LSD bad trip. It took me 6 months to recover fully after my first LSD trip, and even then, I emerged from my existential angst, anxiety, and depression with pretty much full blown mania requiring hospitalization.

Give it a little more time. I have a feeling that you'll be feeling as good or better than new once you persevere through this tough spot.

 

[Kl519]

Ya, time heals a lot of things. It's better to stay sober if you want to, or at least off of the hard stuff.

 

[Dawglaw]

This too shall pass. I have been there and made it out the other side. Its not a fun ride but it goes away and I actually appreciate the lessons I learned.


While MDMA didn't do this to you, there is a ton of great advice for dealing with drug induced anxiety/mental changes in the mdma recovery thread in the mdma forum.

Hang in there, you will be ok.

 

[Cade457]

Hey jackhunter24,
I am suffering from something similar to what you're describing and was wondering what ever happened to you. I know this thread is years old but I am desperate and trying to seek help anywhere I can. If you see this, please respond and if anyone now has some more helpful information, it would be heavily appreciated. Thank you.

 

[pupnik]

when you put your attention onto something, and then observe your (mental and physical) self, then you come away with an imprint or impression of that special essence of that experience.

it is the mind tasting the mind.

just because a person pre-lsd, does not remember doing this, does not mean it is a new mental experience, however after lsd, this tasting of the mind by the mind, is likely to become more common.

there is nothing wrong, it is just slightly unfamiliar feeling, but that is actually a very good and awakening process.
trying to turn it off is like trying to squeeze your eyes shut and crawl back into the womb.

assessing the mind that is assessing the mind while assessing the mind is when it gets really goofy.

 

[TheAppleCore]

There are a LOT of threads like this posted here on Bluelight, and in each one of them I say the same thing: psychedelics can affect you for a surprisingly long time. For me, it takes about 1 month after taking most psychedelics before I can't distinguish any lingering effects. So, if you had a particularly intense and negative experience with LSD, I don't find it hard to believe that you're still affected 3 months later. Just relax, take care of yourself, and wait it out. You'll be fine.

 

[Pfafffed]

Does is feel like your brain is operating in a fog? Is it most noticeable when you're trying to talk to other people, where you're afraid you won't be able to finish the sentence you started or find the words you need? Is it worse around people that your are unfamiliar with as opposed to people that you know intimately well? Do you feel overwhelmed by stimuli, and can't discriminate or decide what to give attention to? Has your multitasking gone to hell, Multitasking gone to hell, like you just don't have enough working memory anymore? Are you suddenly struggling with speaking extemporaneously? Can you cold call people in the phone, or do you struggle with that now?

If this sounds familiar, I might have an inkling as to what you're going through. Let me know.

Also, as an aside, want changes in your memory in general? Your impulse control? Your motivation?

If you're suffering from something like what I had, then with luck and time, there's a good chance your symptoms will subside, as others have pointed out. They typically do.

Your symptoms sound very similar to something I experienced for years, which then led to depression (compounding the issue.) My experience didn't come from psychedelics, but actually led me to try them to get some relief after I became exasperated with other approaches.

Interestingly enough, some psychedelics (usually tryptamines) made my symptoms worse. Others (typically lighter phenethylamines) often reduced the deficits that the others had caused. Better not to go down that road until other options have been exhausted, though, in my view.

 

[Solipsis]

Yeah I've been through something like this but it will always be terribly hard to actually try and compare these things that can happen to people from acid or other psychedelics. I agree with TAC that best we can say such accounts have in common is how long effects can persist although they can change or fade.

Something nobody else can answer for you either is whether it is possible for you to actually make more contact with this feeling or sensation to try and get a perspective on it. Often it can indeed be difficult IMO because it can be affecting a person in their development of identity and sense of reality yet it can be quite integral making it incredibly hard to pinpoint it better until you get more distance from it or some perspective. Time and further development can help with that or paradoxically by trying to connect with it more.

It's very hard to say whether what happened here is a neutral thing and what makes it so hard on you may have more to do with the inability to integrate and some natural responses to the whole thing which categorize this feeling as something not-you or something bad.

I don't buy that it is physiological by being mediated through ways other than psychedelic 5-HT2A mechanisms. However it should still have that physiological aspect just by altering function of 5-HT2A and what this may represent. The brain/mind is about many things but also about coherence between its parts. I believe that psychedelics can mediate changes in this coherence which can meld together some of the coherence but also possibly alienate some parts of oneself through unsuccessful coherence and decoherence. What parts these could be may be incredibly complex and comprise a lot of different functions making up different parts of yourself.
All in all it can mean a huge change, often too big and fast to be able to manage.

IMO it does mean a few things, whatever the details of your particular conversion: you will want to reunite your psyche again (I am not saying through use of psychedelics! although this could explain why using psychedelics can be a relief to people who have already gone through a lot of changes using psychedelics), and this does mean recognizing that even parts of your experience that feel weird to you are all still part of you and just need to connect and realign and harmonize better again. It seems best to for the time being try to cope with whatever parts feel like they are empty or missing for now and to do whatever you can to harmonize with whatever you can contact - day by day.

I am not saying at all that I know better than all psychiatry (also I employ some psychiatric treatment, gratefully) but some of the strategies psychiatry uses are more aimed at disconnecting you from your feelings lest you do something really desperate. Realize that SSRI's or neuroleptics etc can disconnect you even more with mostly the benefit being that you also care less and functionally this may be better. These methods are best reserved for when you really get into a tough or desperate spot just like antipsychotics are a rescue to a person whose thoughts are so delusional that harm is near while a solution is not.

Unless you are desperate or exhausted etc, reserve medications which just slow everything down and disconnect you from your feelings and other parts for a later time... they are a solution if what you really need is to just change up and activate your life again.
From what I know about these topics, as far as a case applies I would think that it is a mistake to focus too much on what has apparently been lost (primarily from a conservative stance) and this could fuel depersonalization/derealization. If it's true that you're going through a change, being in a sense in denial about it and resisting a change that is happening whether you want it to or not could contribute to a big part of problems but not necessarily if you try to stay as dynamic as you can.

As for myself: I felt like I had to figure a lot of things out again for myself, like I had actually woken up but partially forgot who I was before. If something similar is true for you I would not get too caught up in what you apparently lost but focus on the transformational process and what you could gain or if not "gain" at least how you could use it to reinvent yourself. I've found it to be a privilege of sorts but since people don't really choose for this to happen consciously it can be devastating.
Unfortunately at this point I can't really conclude that most other cases that pass here on PD definitely follow this same pattern with certainty as it leaves most people in a very confused state initially. I think though that trying to change the way you look at what happened from a disaster to an opportunity and to make yourself as dynamic and open to this as you can be gives a person the maximum flexibility they can muster and that seems like a great attitude as far as there are a few precautions: just to be sure that there aren't different things going on like some triggered thought disorder like schizophrenia etc have people around you and failsafes to help you alert when you may instead be losing the plot and starting to be a threat to yourself or others when you may not be aware of it.

P.S. "Bad trips" - I am not doubting they exist, just whether they are always classified right initially, - like the one you apparently had don't seem to be an actual theme from your descriptions as you are not hung up on details of what actually happened during the trip. This leads me to suspect that what you felt was bad about it was mostly too intense rather than traumatic in content - and overly intense experiences seem more conductive to having these big changes going on in your mind rather than more PTSD like issues which have more to do with particular things that haunt you but which actually have little to do with you as a person.

And yes saying that you have a good life apart from these issues and that you are so ready to be grateful mostly tell me that you are going through a huge process which can have positive sides in the end. I'm not gonna lie: it could take quite some time and be arduous but speaking for myself: I've reinvented myself after something like that (and some major problems trailing)... Personally I did start using psychedelics again after 6 months which sped up the process but also made things more difficult and hardcore first. I can see how not everyone could handle that level of self-inquiry through tripping to try and figure things out again. Reintegration is incredibly important... and it can take a long time even after 1 single trip. Tripping even more in the meanwhile will mostly just raise the stakes so I don't recommend that. More questions are raised than answered and there is no telling when this turns around.