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What's up with all these psychedelic blackout threads?

A

AA357

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 19, 2014
Messages
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Lately there have been quite a few threads and posts on here about blacking out on psychedelics.

I can't help but wonder what the hell is causing this... I've been in some unholy states but if anything I find these drugs enhance my memory.

I am no stranger to the amnetic effects of cannabis, valium, booze, dissociatives or codeine. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I have a hard time remembering what I did the night before.

One interesting thing I notice with psychedelics is that no matter how fucked up I get on them, they leave my memory intact. Sometimes I get confused or forgetful DURING the trip (even to the point where I forget who and where I am) but once I've sobered up I can always remember everything clearly. There have been times where I was sat there tripping balls thinking to myself "I'm not going to remember any of this tomorrow", only to wake up with crystal clear recollection of what happened.

Through what mechanism can the classic psychedelics cause anterograde amnesia? There doesn't seem to be a feasible scientific explanation for this... 5-HT receptor agonists are not associated with impaired memory (unlike GABA-agonists and NMDA-antagonists).

The only explanation I can think of for someone blacking out on the likes of LSD, psilocybin, DPT etc. is if they were also indulging in one of the other substances I mentioned.
 
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It happens when you experience an overly intense trip. Black outs are not really something that you can avoid or prevent and when they happen there is no magical exit other then time. You dont get to "think" during it, it is basically like being asleep in that sense. I've seen it happen a handful of times and I find people fall in 2 categories either catatonic or paranoid and aggressive. Personally I like the catatonic people as they just lye there often in uncomfortable or deformed looking positions and will sometimes grunt. The other ones are the ones that get tazed naked in the streets.

All you can do is tackle them and restrain them if they are the crazy paranoid kind. It can happen to anyone at any time, there is no difference between you and the naked guy getting tazed other then it was his turn. If you play with fire sometimes you get burned.
 
+1 for the above where it says nothing can help but time and we are no different it was just that person's 'time', setting can play a huge role in this as well, as it can for any psychedelic
 
Thing is, I've had no end of overwhelming trips.
I once had a bad panic attack (my first and only) while tripping balls on LSD, but I knew exactly what was happening to me and had the sense to break out my valium. I took 40mg that night (the most I have ever taken to this date), and I still remember everything that happened that night. Normally 15-20mg valium gets me nicely faded and fucks with my memory somewhat; ordinarily 40mg would wipe me out. It mellowed me out nicely and allowed me to enjoy the last few hours of the trip, but the LSD seemed to counteract the sedation and amnesia. I woke up the next day feeling fresh, with a clear memory of what I'd been up to the previous evening (even after I'd taken the 40mg valium).

I remember one time I snorted 100mg DPT at the peak of a 30mg 2C-E trip. The euphoria was so damn intense I couldn't move. It felt like a prolonged full-body orgasm and I pretty much went catatonic. For most of the trip I couldn't even tell whether my eyes were open or closed. I was literally going places in my head, totally forgetting I was crashed out on my couch at home. When I came to I was covered in saliva... I'd been laying there for hours drooling like a cretin.

It's impossible to keep track of every single thought and hallucination you experience while tripping, since your brain is overloaded with sensory input. Psychedelics can definitely fuck up your thought processes and increase your propensity for stupid/bizarre behaviour, but unless you've been binging on other substances or have some kind of mental illness; you shouldn't wake up the next morning wondering WTF you did last night. Serotonin receptor agonism is not associated with anterograde amnesia... it's just not a problem with this class of drugs.

I feel a big problem is that a lot of people on here consider dissociative anesthetics such as DXM, K, MXE and PCP to be psychedelic drugs. These are the kinds of drugs that'll cause you to run naked in the streets and start fights/get tazed - NOT classic psychs like LSD, shrooms etc. These drugs work primarily as NMDA-antagonists (which DO impair memory).
 
^ So you may be one of the people that doesnt move if they have a psychotic break. Its not that you "lose your memory" like someone who is drunk but rather you go into a state of psychosis. It sounds like all of your trips were grounded in reality, even a panic attack as you had is grounded in reality as you were delusional thinking everyone was trying to kill you. I promise you this issue isnt due to RCs being passed as acid or a confusion of drug classes people have had breaks on classic psychedelics since their discovery this is why we have the story of someone who now thinks they are an orange.
 
This happened to me in 2012 off just two blotters around 90ug each at electric forest the last day. I was having a blast at sci weaving in between everyone and peoples faces looked bent so I was tripin a little bit but the music stopped so I went to one of the vendors my friends agreed to meet at. I was sitting their waiting and there was a group of cops standing behind me and I must have dropped some drugs on the ground or something.

this is where I pretty much blacked out.
I remember being chased and kept being cornered by cops and security, I remember ditching all of mine and my friends drugs in the middle of the crowd of people.
then I remember being far away from there and people where walking twords me twords the main stage and I was running the opposite way screaming at them that they where all where going to die and they need to drink water when it was really me who was dehydrated. Then I was being chased again and I somehow lost them as I bumped into my friend and realized I had a huge gash all the way around my arm and two needle injection points which im afraid of needles.


In short. Setting, mindset, dehydration and the music stopping quickly led to panic and paranoia which my mind and body could not keep up with.
 
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Agreed, it seems to be a form of memory suppression / psychotic episode rather than a blackout mediated pharmacologically.

Sub-blackout doses of amnestic drugs can apparently cause an induced psychotic reaction from psychedelics more quickly. And the behavior / personality exhibited is usually atypical for the individual and often inconsistent or incoherent. I think the reasons why you can't directly remember what happened might be the same as why one 'personality' from a person with multiple personality disorder does not remember what the other did... even if it is still buried there somewhere in the subconscious.
As the memory is not neurologically impaired to be formed like it is say with GABAergic involvement, it seems more conceivable that the memories can someday be retrieved using the right method.

Unfortunately I have personal experience with this sort of blackout, at least the once in my life... afaik ( ;) ), but I have yet to retrieve those three days (!) I lost.
 
Psychedelic blackouts are very real and are different than an intense trip, at least for me.
I have blacked out on psychedelics twice last year on AL-LAD, the first time on 300 ug and the second time on 225 ug.
I remember the trips until approximately 3 hours into the experience and from the rest of the trip i have only a few memories.
They started with a very fast come-up for me and it was indeed very intense.
The second time on 225 ug i did not have a tripsitter and i ended up in the hospital.
Around the 3 hour mark i started hearing voices, at first it didn't bother me too much, but later i started getting overwhelmed and the voices started panicking as well.
Then i ran out of my house into the park where the neighbors saw me and called an ambulance, I have very little memory of what happened on the street other than that i had so much energy that i had to run and that it looked like a dream.
Even when i was in the back of the ambulance I thought that the ambulance staff were my friends and that i was just chilling with them.
I did not have any clue that i was being admitted to the hospital.
When i think about the trip and the bits of memory i have left from it i don't remember any visuals after i had blacked out, just that i believed that everyone on the planet would die except me and my brother, because we would float in space for eternity.
Apparently the knocked me out in the ambulance with some Oxazepam and the next thing i remember is that i am in the hospital tied to the bed with restraints.
they let me stay the night because they were worried about my heartrate of 150 BPM while resting and i had a slight fever of 38.5°C.
At this time i was lucid again and i felt fine again, maybe a little happy and euphoric even, I was still very stimulated though.
The doctors told me that it was a psychotic break and that it was not triggered by any underlying mental illness.
The day after i was allowed to go home but while i was running i must have done something weird, because i could not walk properly for the next month.
I am fine now, but it did give me a wakeup call that psychedelics can also be dangerous if you're being reckless.

I think that the theory of memory suppression is correct, because before i blacked out i could not handle the trip properly and i got overwhelmed.
 
The only psychedelic I have blacked out on is DMT (multiple times). I seem to either reach a point too low for breakthrough or I black out. It's a bummer since I really want to break through on DMT.

Anyway, different people react to stimuli differently. I am surprised at the number of accounts of blacking out too but I guess that's how some people respond to overly intense stimuli from psychedelics.
 
Xorkoth said:
Anyway, different people react to stimuli differently. I am surprised at the number of accounts of blacking out too but I guess that's how some people respond to overly intense stimuli from psychedelics.
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Yeah, after reading these posts it seems that everybody's mind reacts differently to being overwhelmed by sensory input. The cause is obviously psychological rather than neurological.
It's interesting how the effects of these drugs vary so much from person to person.
 
Coming up on hefty doses of psilocybin, especially in public places like a concert will cause amnesia for me. The only blackout I've had on psychedelics was on the third day of a hippie festival lol! I was probably just really tired, but my friends were unable to pull me out of this state even when slapping my face I was told lol! I love music festivals btw...
 
AA357 said:
Lately there have been quite a few threads and posts on here about blacking out on psychedelics.
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because people are irresponsible and take far too much.

and that being said, psychedelics are also just inherently unpredictable. sometimes people have idiosyncratic reactions to reasonable dosages that they've handled without issue before.

there are no casual experiments when it comes to psychedelics. they need to be treated with a great deal of respect and caution every single time you use them, no matter the dose.
 
I had a friend who went to a buddies' college and did acid and pissed his pants and he had no idea. They told him, "yo, change your pants" and he said "why". He had no idea where he was for some reason.

I also know of a friend who pissed his pants on 10 mg of 2CE at a festi.

Both people just i guess zoned out and didnt realize.
 
I think when you are covered in saliva
or piss
it is at least a partial blackout.
Losing any time at all is a blackout, even if you did not hit the ground and smash your face.
you may have a delirious experience during the blackout.

even on weed I have had periods when there were a series of short blackouts, coming to several times to piece together what is going on and then gone again. I don't like being that intensely affected.

Deliriants (scopolamine, Datura etc.) keep you "awake" or at least somewhat active during the blackout.

the blackout occurs when the layering of persisting signals is too heavy to make any sense.

I think the deliriant manages to keep you awake by preventing layering in some motor areas and some sensory areas otherwise it is also doing what blackout does.

Otherwise on any drug it is dosage related, or if you combine psychedelics it is aggregate dose related.
Usually setting in with a series of mini blackouts, and then longer ones.
I admit it can be interesting when coming back from a blackout, like waking from a dream, those can be the most interesting and intense, yet "rememberable" parts of strong trips.
 
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