Why do high doses of Psychedelics most likely cause a bad trip?

[lemonman]

Why do high doses of Psychedelics cause a bad trip?

What's the Neuroscience behind it?

 

[sekio]

Generally speaking, psychedelics intensify and distort all sensory input. So people who OD on them effectively induce a pseudo-autistic state where they can be incredibly uncomfortable.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Here's an analogy for one reason why normal/higher doses (compared to small/micro doses) can lead to an increased rate of bad trips/difficult parts -

Going to the next town over might not give you much anxiety but traveling halfway around the world could cause much more anxiety. The higher a psychedelic dose is, the further you are taken away from your normal conscious experience, which tends to cause anxiety which tends to lead to bad trips/negative thought loops, et cetera

 

[mb-909]

High doses of psychedelics are able to cause difficult trips, but don't have to.

Speaking out of personal experience difficult trips happen to me being totally stressed out, going through rough changes (like relationsships) or being really emotional before the trip.

It seems that your personality (openness vs. neuroticism) plays a vital role how you experience the trip. For example (Lazarus), if you cope with stress well and rather see stressful events as a challenge than a burden you are going to enjoy it more and won't fall into thinking loops.

"Neuroticism may contribute to the strength of challenging experiences with psychedelics in uncontrolled settings."

Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917303926

 

[Tranced]

The mind is usually a small comfortable homely room where everything is vetted and placed to suit you.

Psychedelics open you up to a multiworld reality of infinite potential where the thing that is vetted is yourself and everything you thought was real and placed in that room. If it doesn't suit you, then tough. The more you take, the more true this is.

 

[Neithman]

i find its insane how much activation of a slingle serotonin receptor subtype can have this extreme effect on perception of reality,whereas most other receptors dont nearly have such an impact on perception(besides kappa agonism anticholinergic,antimuscarinics)
Also i find it funny how people overinterprete the effects of psychedelics,kinda explains how religion stems from and reminds the of the rick morty episode where the giant heads appear and start a religion(SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOOOOOT!!!!!)

 

[Solipsis]

^ That would be "pigeon superstition", right?

Yeah it is pretty extreme how extreme the effect can be on sensory perception, thought etc, it's just very critical for many higher brain functions. I don't think that the effects of psychedelics in particular are overinterpreted, this is just apparently an aspect of psychological analysis when applied left and right and our need to try and explain everything.
Plus, if you've tried psychedelics the experiences can be so impressive and feel so full of meaning that it can be easy to forget that big parts of this may be artificial and in a way produced by triggers in the brain that attach meaning / see patterns where there aren't necessarily significant or relevant or intentional ones... just like it seems there is a 'button' for the feeling of novelty which can help make things feel as if you are doing them for the first time again which makes you feel like a child I think.

It's funny but they are also quite honest mistakes and none of us should think we are all that immune to this, you can hardly resist when buttons are pushed (think of the visual example of this: randomly pushed visual buttons apparently makes you see shapes, faces and recognize all sorts of stuff that is not physically there.

Your mind is manifested much more than normally, compared to vision being manifested. There is no such thing anyway as objective vision, but in a trip a much bigger component is 'projected', like last time I thought i saw a lot of spider mites everywhere in my growhouse because I automatically look for them. I was already aware that it may not be real, but this did not really help me stop seeing them. I also deeply regretted this when I forgot for a moment when some erotic urges were ahem.. addressed. Yeah was immediately turned off again lol.

The reason sekio gave about amplification is a major part of this, and what I describe is a form of this too in a way... but I think there are a bunch of these mechanisms that can freak people out, not limited to:

- Overstimulation indeed
- The confusion / not being able to distinguish fantasy from reality so to speak and the fear caused by feeling a loss of control
- Projection of difficult / scary mental content is obviously a major factor in making a trip spiral into 'badness', at higher dosages the difference is the relentlessness and your relative inability to fight it. The confusion and intensity in general can give you the feeling or idea that fighting is an actual option
- Loss of perspective: at high dosages the intensity and overwhelmingness can make you forget not only the unrealness but also the relativity of your experiences making it much more difficult. It's hard to keep anything in your brain that helps keep perspective and without that, your experience and the hallucinations feel like all there is.

Ah I understand you mean the overinterpretation of the tripper, not of people analyzing a trip afterwards. Yeah: because of the projection / mind-manifestation there is no distance anymore between what you think and what you experience, it becomes one so there is direct feedback. Inability to separate anything like that will lead you to take what happens at face value; plus, like I said, it's extremely convincing... so much so that it is hard to convince anyone later that it might have been illusory / artificial etc. Not everything is artificial and illusory of course during a trip... plenty of mental content has a real basis like a memory, although we heavily edit memories especially when they are influenced by emotion.

The reason for bad trips is not a matter of neuroscience, it's psychology. That is also why it is highly personal (variable) and dependent on mindset and setting/circumstances.

It's interesting though to learn about the neuro effects of LSD in general, look into it: fMRI suggests that it causes reduction in compartmentalization of mental faculties / processes. There is more crosschatter sustained, unusual connections are made, and it is harder to keep things orderly with boundaries.

 

[Weltmeister]

Correct me if im wrong but i think at least the overstimulation has to do with deactivation of the Default mode network that normally filters input.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Correct me if im wrong but i think at least the overstimulation has to do with deactivation of the Default mode network that normally filters input.

RE: filtering input - there is a decent expression level of 5-HT2A receptors on the thalamic reticular nucleus - which is sort of a thin sheet that covers that thalamus (our normal relay/filter). It seems to modulate sensory information processing by the thalamus.

 

[LandsUnknown]

While I personally agree with this statement for the most part, and as a result, I tend to take moderate doses, not all high dose trips are bad. I actually had a very euphoric trip once on 300 micrograms of L. Another very euphoric trip on a highish dose of a research chemical according to my friend who I bought it from. The substance was 2C B if I remember right. It was a highly euphoric experience as well with zero negativity.

In my experience, I agree that high dosages are more likely to be frightening or difficult experiences. However, I have friends who feel that lower doses are more likely to give them a difficult experience because higher doses simply force them to let go...... whereas lower doses cause them to unconsciously fight the effects of the drug and become paranoid and suffer all the ill effects of a bad trip.

 

[Neithman]

While I personally agree with this statement for the most part, and as a result, I tend to take moderate doses, not all high dose trips are bad. I actually had a very euphoric trip once on 300 micrograms of L. Another very euphoric trip on a highish dose of a research chemical according to my friend who I bought it from. The substance was 2C B if I remember right. It was a highly euphoric experience as well with zero negativity.

In my experience, I agree that high dosages are more likely to be frightening or difficult experiences. However, I have friends who feel that lower doses are more likely to give them a difficult experience because higher doses simply force them to let go...... whereas lower doses cause them to unconsciously fight the effects of the drug and become paranoid and suffer all the ill effects of a bad trip.

yeah with psychedelics its a fine line between being underwhelmed and then being between those two states of mind,which makes it difficult to accept the effects or being overwhelmend and loosing the control over the trip,which can make mentally unstable persons(,or a bad setting) having a bad trip.

Havent tripped for a long time because i think its too much of a gamble and in my opinion many insights you get are not that great in retrospective as you perceive them to be during the trip or the weeks after the trip.

When i used to trip i always had benzos on hand so i could bring me down if the trip is going in a wrong direction or if friends having problems
Nothing is better than when u have a hard time on a trip and then taking 10 mg nitrazepam along with 2 mg of clonazepam(works very good for anxiety)with no tolerance(i take benzos very rarely,im afraid of them,all those withrawal horror stories,seizures,years of anxiety,potentially permanent damage to gaba receptors,10 days no sleep,and all that for not very recreational effects,they are a tool for some situations but not more)