piku_playground
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2009
- Messages
- 79
Since this weekend I have been having periodic increases in anxiety levels in a very strange manner. So far they have lasted for 1-2 hours and come on pretty quickly. I'm sure I have a general anxiety disorder and depression already, but I'm quite used to those symptoms and know how to understand them as they are pretty regular but mild.
These are very different. They are extremely reminiscent of when I had a bad mushroom trip when I was 18 (I'm almost 21 now). I had taken 3.5g of mushrooms or so and had a terrible trip that was really hard for me to handle. It was my first psychedelic experience and did not know how to handle them. After the trip, I had persistent feelings of high anxiety with stomach discomfort. I though I could have been schizophrenic or something. I would sit in class and felt like I wasn't going to make it through the next ten minutes before going crazy or having to run outside. I had to keep ignoring the symptoms and pretending they weren't there, but that was extremely difficult as my stomach reminded me of the feeling. The anxiety and body pains were directly correlated, and it seemed one would cause the other.
I was on an SSRI during the time (welbutrin) and changed to effexor during htis time with doctor's advice. Effexor seemed to help, and eventually the anxiety left. Although, I do think that the mushroom trip opened me up to a very different type of anxiety that continues to influence me til today. An analogy would be in Lars Von Triers "Antichrist" in how the woman describes fear through images and objects- things that embody fear without giving a reason why.
Anyways, I'm making this all sound worse than it really is. The past few years I have found ways to deal with my anxiety. Since the mushroom trip I have taken LSD once, mescaline once, 2c-i three times, and many MDMA trips. LSD is the only drug that reminded me of the mushroom trip in the last 1/3 of the experience. It was very edgy and I couldn't bring myself down to reality very easily. But I dealt with it much easier than when I was 18 with mushrooms.
2c-i and mescaline have been great. No anxiety, all good times. MDMA is beautiful.
So, back to what I started this thread about. These panic attacks start with a slight distortion in vision. I don't hallucinate, but it feels more like I have trouble focusing on things. My eyes move out of focus and I have to refocus through looking somewhere else. It makes me think of what it would be like to be crossed eyed, although I'm not. After that, my stomach starts to turn. I feel half normal and half very confused. I can't formulate thoughts as coherently, or at least they don't seem to make as much sense. Things seem to lose their ground and familiar things feel unfamiliar. I have an increase in auditory awareness and music feels like comforting and silence, or noises from the house become more bothersome.
It feels like I have to keep focusing on something other than what is going on around me. I have tried laying down, or drinking some beer, and both seem to help.
A curious thing I noticed, is that the very first time I experienced one of these episodes, my girlfriend was laying down next to me. I looked at her face and saw an image of what I say on a 2c-i trip. It looks like a perfect, symmetrical image of how would look if half of someones face was mirrored in some water, and you took that image and inverted it or something. It's really odd. When I was on 2c-i the image wouldn't go away until the drug wore off. I didn't see it again until I was rolling, and I saw it on everyones face again. It scared the shit out of me, because I kept worrying that it would not go away and I would never look at peoples faces the same way. I feel like it was caused by not being able to focus on a given part of a persons face. The eyes always seemed more prominent, and extremely symmetrical. I guess this is just caused by spacial distortion from being on a drug.
So I saw this image, vaguely, in my gf's face. It scared me enough to have to stop looking at her because I was afraid it would morph entirely. But it didn't get any worse. Eventually, after resting and drinking some beer, I lost the anxiety and visual distortions and felt fine.
Sunday night, very similar thing happened off and on from afternoon until late night. Tonight, it feels less strong and it doesn't bother me as much.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense, and I don't really know how to describe it. I think the distortion I saw in my girlfriends face may have triggered an association with psychedelics, but I wasn't tripping so it scared me as I was sober. Maybe I've just had a lot of anxiety lately, and the distortion made it stronger because it became less understandable.
I have had a lot of anxiety the past week for real reasons. A- i have to move out to a new place by November 1st. B- I just got an std screening and I'm afraid of having HIV, even though I highly doubt I do. I have HIV phobias every time I get screened. C- Financial issues. D- Cramming in too much school work.
Has anyone experienced shit like this before? I'm sure I sound crazy in this thread, but I needed to get it out so it seems less strange. 8(
A way to sum this nonsense up, is that I feel as if I'm tripping on a very low dosage of mushrooms, but I'm not on any drugs. I haven't even smoked pot in a couple months.
These are very different. They are extremely reminiscent of when I had a bad mushroom trip when I was 18 (I'm almost 21 now). I had taken 3.5g of mushrooms or so and had a terrible trip that was really hard for me to handle. It was my first psychedelic experience and did not know how to handle them. After the trip, I had persistent feelings of high anxiety with stomach discomfort. I though I could have been schizophrenic or something. I would sit in class and felt like I wasn't going to make it through the next ten minutes before going crazy or having to run outside. I had to keep ignoring the symptoms and pretending they weren't there, but that was extremely difficult as my stomach reminded me of the feeling. The anxiety and body pains were directly correlated, and it seemed one would cause the other.
I was on an SSRI during the time (welbutrin) and changed to effexor during htis time with doctor's advice. Effexor seemed to help, and eventually the anxiety left. Although, I do think that the mushroom trip opened me up to a very different type of anxiety that continues to influence me til today. An analogy would be in Lars Von Triers "Antichrist" in how the woman describes fear through images and objects- things that embody fear without giving a reason why.
Anyways, I'm making this all sound worse than it really is. The past few years I have found ways to deal with my anxiety. Since the mushroom trip I have taken LSD once, mescaline once, 2c-i three times, and many MDMA trips. LSD is the only drug that reminded me of the mushroom trip in the last 1/3 of the experience. It was very edgy and I couldn't bring myself down to reality very easily. But I dealt with it much easier than when I was 18 with mushrooms.
2c-i and mescaline have been great. No anxiety, all good times. MDMA is beautiful.
So, back to what I started this thread about. These panic attacks start with a slight distortion in vision. I don't hallucinate, but it feels more like I have trouble focusing on things. My eyes move out of focus and I have to refocus through looking somewhere else. It makes me think of what it would be like to be crossed eyed, although I'm not. After that, my stomach starts to turn. I feel half normal and half very confused. I can't formulate thoughts as coherently, or at least they don't seem to make as much sense. Things seem to lose their ground and familiar things feel unfamiliar. I have an increase in auditory awareness and music feels like comforting and silence, or noises from the house become more bothersome.
It feels like I have to keep focusing on something other than what is going on around me. I have tried laying down, or drinking some beer, and both seem to help.
A curious thing I noticed, is that the very first time I experienced one of these episodes, my girlfriend was laying down next to me. I looked at her face and saw an image of what I say on a 2c-i trip. It looks like a perfect, symmetrical image of how would look if half of someones face was mirrored in some water, and you took that image and inverted it or something. It's really odd. When I was on 2c-i the image wouldn't go away until the drug wore off. I didn't see it again until I was rolling, and I saw it on everyones face again. It scared the shit out of me, because I kept worrying that it would not go away and I would never look at peoples faces the same way. I feel like it was caused by not being able to focus on a given part of a persons face. The eyes always seemed more prominent, and extremely symmetrical. I guess this is just caused by spacial distortion from being on a drug.
So I saw this image, vaguely, in my gf's face. It scared me enough to have to stop looking at her because I was afraid it would morph entirely. But it didn't get any worse. Eventually, after resting and drinking some beer, I lost the anxiety and visual distortions and felt fine.
Sunday night, very similar thing happened off and on from afternoon until late night. Tonight, it feels less strong and it doesn't bother me as much.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense, and I don't really know how to describe it. I think the distortion I saw in my girlfriends face may have triggered an association with psychedelics, but I wasn't tripping so it scared me as I was sober. Maybe I've just had a lot of anxiety lately, and the distortion made it stronger because it became less understandable.
I have had a lot of anxiety the past week for real reasons. A- i have to move out to a new place by November 1st. B- I just got an std screening and I'm afraid of having HIV, even though I highly doubt I do. I have HIV phobias every time I get screened. C- Financial issues. D- Cramming in too much school work.
Has anyone experienced shit like this before? I'm sure I sound crazy in this thread, but I needed to get it out so it seems less strange. 8(
A way to sum this nonsense up, is that I feel as if I'm tripping on a very low dosage of mushrooms, but I'm not on any drugs. I haven't even smoked pot in a couple months.
