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bad trip and panic attacks

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Ms. Munki

Ms. Munki

Rising Star
I’m writing this because I feel like I need help. I have these thoughts still trapped in my head after a bad trip and I can’t get them out. I had a frightening experience on mushrooms yesterday. It was more than a bad trip. It felt like a near death experience. And although I made it out alive, my mind still feels trapped by the experience.

I was having a great day yesterday with a dear friend of mine at the beach, enjoying the sun and sand and the ocean. We had such a great time we thought the only thing that could make it better and even more beautiful would be some mushrooms. So we headed home from the beach and got some fresh mushies and mixed them with Fanta. The sun was about to set and bottoms up, we drank our mush concoctions.

Everything was great for a while. Funny, laughing, beautiful geometric visions. When I closed my eyes, it actually reminded me of a couple of nice DMT trips I’ve taken. But then somehow I took a turn.

Every moment felt like an eternity. And I felt like I was trapped in this eternity. Wherever I was. I was in a different dimension, and I couldn’t get out. It was nice a few times, but then I started shaking and I couldn’t find reality. My body was moving without me controlling it. I was trembling and convulsing. I couldn't grasp what was happening or where I was. My friend got scared for me and was trying to talk to me. I heard what he was saying but for some reason I couldn’t respond to him. I could hear him, but the words in my head that I wanted to say were stuck in the other dimension. I was stuck between both worlds and it felt like I would be trapped there forever. I started to cry because my mind felt trapped. I heard of stories of people taking too much LSD and going crazy, and I felt like it was happening to me. I thought tomorrow would never come… or that tomorrow would come but that my mind would be trapped in this moment forever.

Meanwhile, my friend was also tripping balls but trying to figure out how to take care of me. He took me downstairs to the shower and tried to help me come back just a little bit with some water running over me. It sort of worked, but as soon as he turned the shower off, I fell to the floor and was back in the other dimension. I still couldn’t respond to him even though I heard him and understood him. He carried me out to the balcony to get some air and look at the sunset but I fell over on my side and began to go deeper again. I cried again.

I tried to lay down on the couch inside but I felt like I couldn’t breathe. There was so much pressure on my chest. I began to hyperventilate. And this is when the feeling that I was going to die came over me. I could not breathe, as hard as I tried to take a deep breath, it was never enough. I got so scared. I knew in my head that I needed to breath to live and that if I couldn’t I would die. So I somehow forced the words out of me, and told my friend that I was scared. He was scared too.

The feeling of death wouldn’t leave me. I felt my mind had turned on me. I felt sick and I couldn’t breath and I had this terrible feeling. I thought I was going to die but that I couldn’t die and I was trapped in this almost-death moment. The scariest part was that for some time, I wanted to quiet the terror in my head by killing myself. I thought if I die now, I’ll be at peace. And that’s all I wanted was peace. I thought of jumping off the balcony to my death, and that finally it would be over. The only thing that kept me from jumping was the feeling that if I jumped, my soul might be trapped in this horrific moment forever. I wondered if this is what happens to those people you always hear stories about on PCP or whatever they take and they kill themselves somehow because they were going through some sort of psychotic episode. I wondered if that was happening to me.

Then I lost all hope. I thought I would just surrender to it and let it kill me by itself. I thought of my family. I thought I would never see them again. I thought about a friend of mine back home who is very experienced in these things. I wanted to call him but there was no way I could being halfway around the world. I would be just another story of an American abroad who took drugs and OD’ed and died from it. The feeling of killing myself would come and go, and it really scared me. Because after I thought about my family, I knew I didn’t want to die. I forced those words out of me and told my friend that I didn’t want to die.

I was scared I was gonna slip away to the other dimension and unknowingly do something to hurt myself or kill myself. I kept thinking of jumping off the balcony. I was so terrified that I was going to do it. I wanted to lay on the ground and make sure I didn’t move. So I lay there. Terrified. Trying desperately to catch my breath and cling to this dimension, but I kept slipping in and out.

My friend was also freaking the fuck out and didn’t know what to do. I kept going in and out of each dimension and each time I would try to say "hey" to him just to make sure I was still alive. He was really scared and was trying desperately to call someone to come help us. I have no idea how he was coherent enough to speak in complete sentences and dial the phone and text people. But he did, and no one could help us. Finally after some time he was able to reach another friend of ours who said she would come over.

At that point things started to calm down for me. The feeling of death was slowly fading away and I was starting to set my feet in this dimension. But also at that point my friend was going crazy… probably experiencing what I had experienced just some time before him. So I knew I had to take care of him now. I tried to calm him down. Also I knew that our friend was coming soon and we’d both be fine.

He calmed down, and we were both alright when she got there. It had been about 4 or 5 hours since we first drank our mushie drinks. They went downstairs for a swim, and I felt tired, so I went up to the bed to fall asleep. But somehow, I started getting scared again. I was scared of being alone in my head. I was scared those feelings would come back. I was scared that my mind would at any moment be trapped again. I started panicking. I didn’t understand how I could be back in this dimension but yet I was still panicking. I thought it was over, but I was scared that maybe it was coming back.

My friends came back to the room after maybe an hour, and by that time I had already had already gone through a terrifying experience thinking I was gonna slip away again. My friend gave me a valium to help me calm my nerves, but I was still really scared. I’m not even sure at that point why I was so scared.

After another hour or so, they saw that I was still scared, so they gave me a sleeping pill and one of them stayed with me and slept beside me to make sure I was ok. I fell asleep finally and was sleeping just fine.

But then in the morning I woke up from a nightmare thinking I jumped off the balcony. I sat up feeling awful and began crying. I was scared again and began panicking. My friend was still there and was trying to comfort me which kind of helped for the time being. But now I’m worried I’ll never be able to shake this feeling. I don’t know what to do. I cant get those thoughts out of my head. I can’t get the thoughts of death out of my head. It’s terrifying and I don’t know how to make it stop. I just wanna forget those thoughts and be normal again. I don’t know how to cope with this. I don’t wanna keep having nightmares and panic attacks.

Will this just go away on its own or should I do something?
 
This same thing happened to me on mushrooms. I had multiple panic attacks and was stuck in an anxiety ridden dimension with no time or logic. Just like you I was so scared I thought of killing myself. That thought scared me and just escalated the feelings. The way that I got over this sensation was during my first dmt trip. I inhaled and shot right back to my mushroom dreadful panic. I realized that what I was afraid of, was not a sane thing to fear. The key is, I was scared of my thoughts themselves. I had to focus on me. My surroundings. My body and that I know I am safe physically. When I was coming down from the dmt I started laughing seconds after being terrified, because I had realized I was scared of thinking. Just having the thought that I was scared, terrified me. The mere psychological labeling of being a little scared elevated to anxiety and then escalated to panic and terror. It is normal to be a little scared, things are very different. You must not lose sight of what is sane, and what is insane.

The delusions I had were irrational, yet terrifying. I was sitting in my bed trying to breath, trying not to puke from overwhelming anxiety. I was focused on becoming ok. That is a problem. If you are focuses on becoming ok, or stable, then you automatically have defined your current state as unsafe. But if I had instead looked at my blankets on me, seen the warm protection of my room, as a sane mind could see there is truly, nothing to be fearful of. "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself"

Now that being said, when your stuck in a loop like that it is not very easy to break the insanity, and return. You should maybe write yourself a note detailing that there really is nothing to fear. Focus on your surroundings. Ask the question, Why am I scared? When I began laughing after the dmt I said aloud, why was I so scared, it's not like there is a tiger near me, but I feel like I'm surrounded by tigers. In reality, there is no actual life threatening occurrence so you must remember to see things right.

Also as for your current mental state. This happened to me as well. I remember waking up the next day as if I had just survived the apocalypse or something. Like I was shattered and almost dead. But I promise you in a few days you will return to your normal self. You will be completely restored to ordinary sanity with time. Unless you have triggered an underlying schizophrenia, which I doubt you have, then trust me that you will feel better again it just takes a few days time. Your memory of the exact content of your fear will be completely forgotten, this is because it was an insane delusion. You were scared of killing yourself, like me. But how can you be scared of doing something that you know you would never do, I know that to the core of who I am, I will not kill myself. And I think you know that too.
 
It will go away trust me..but first are you sure your mushrooms were not dosed with some other RC? To wake up in the morning after even a really difficult mushroom trip still feeling like that is not really normal, but it is still possible. I have never experienced that with mushrooms but I have experienced feelings of anxiety for a few days after a really really heavy and horrifying ayahuasca experience. Eating dense nutritious grounding food like healthy meats etc, relaxing and doing something enjoyable to take your mind off of everything is what seems to help me if I feel sort of shaky after an experience.

I dont know where you got your mushrooms but I have heard of the rare occasion of mushrooms being laced with other psychedelic RC's that are active at microgram levels of a few mg's..I guess thats really rare but concidering you still felt weird when you woke up it is a possibility..in that case time will fix everything.

If nothing else you probly just got some really strong mushrooms..it happens and I am sure most people here have similar stories to tell. After nights like that I think any sane person ends up being very cautious about dosing..especially with mushrooms and they can tend to produce those kind of death experiences.

Try to relax and find something comforting to occupy your mind..

...and trust me..you WILL come down and feel normal again. That feeling where you think your going insane, it's normal on heavy doses. I cant count how many times I have thought I finally did it.
 
I thought that when one comes out of these near death trips, they're supposed to feel amazing and reborn. And for a second I did, but then I became really anxious, depressed, and paranoid that something was going to happen again. My friend feels fine now and "reborn." And I'm not sure why I'm stuck. I guess I should just wait it out and it'll go away on its own.
 
It was obviously a very stressful trip. I'm sure you will be fine after a few more sleeps. Mushrooms are a hardcore entheogen.
 
It seems that you took a very big dose, or the mushrooms where very potent.

Do you know how much you take?

When I grow mushrooms I will ALWAYS take a small dose to test their potency.

A small dose is enough to enhance a beautiful day on the beach. IMHO higher doses should be taken at home and should be planned. But everyone's different and other members will have other ways...

What you need know is integration time. I advise you to post here everyday and you will get the support you need. Just go on with your daily business and be active, run, swim, eat healthy and you will be able to let go of those scary thoughts.

The truth is, you never know what will happen during and after the experience. It's not always 'going through hell to feel reborn afterwards'. That's a cliché... Psychedelics can shake you up, in a good, but also in a bad way.
 
I have had similar experiences..

One time I got the idea my whole family knew I was tripping (they were nowehere around for miles) and if I had access to a gun I would have blown my brains out. When we got to my gfs place she put something in the way by nirvana on repeat and we just sat there looping thoughts murmuring things like, did we die? Are we in the papers? We're in the headlines right? Front page? Stuff like that.

Other time I was with my friend on 3.2 g dried, (he always said things like - yeah, christianity, why believe in something that's gonna send you to hell? We're all sinners) and I started convulsing heavily on his bed, my eyes rolling back etc and not much visuals, I could see although I can't tell you what exactly I was looking at. I thought I was dying, and even asked him am I gonna die, he has a huge jesus altar with a wooden cross, dunno why, but it added to the blasphemy of the trip and made me certain I would peg over and die.

Extremely insane, although also, my entire trip only lasted around 2 hours 45 minutes.. So that was weird for me.

I was fine after I came down.

You'll be fine.
You just gotta take it with a grain of salt.

(Ps in no way do I look down upon religious folk - I'm just spiritual and don't really see the point in that other stuff)

Pps: You're alive :)
 
So far today I've been trying to go on with daily life. You know, the structured way that we have to do sometimes... emails, phone calls, working, blah blah blah. I took it upon myself to treat myself with some sweets that I don't usually have everyday... 3 big hearty healthy meals and some ice cream for dessert. And I tried to distract myself by keeping my mind occupied.

I'm still having anxiety (obviously). Those awful thoughts of dying or killing myself pop in my head and then I suddenly think "OMG I'm going to die... alone." And then I try to shake it off.

It sounds like everyone's had a similar experience on something. So it is a bit comforting in a way.

It seems that you took a very big dose, or the mushrooms where very potent.

Do you know how much you take?
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I had 2 little sandwich bags of fresh mushrooms... they don't really measure it here where I am (in Asia currently). So I really have no idea how much that would equate to. But I've taken a bag and a half before and I pretty much blasted off into space for a couple hours - in a great, amazing, funny, and beautiful way. Not even close to feeling sick or scared or anything. Not to mention, that time I had smoked a little bit before and had some wine as well.

But my friend said that these must have been extremely potent because he's taken 2 bags before and never has had that kind of experience we had.
 
First of all I'd like to offer you a cyber hug<3. The majority of us have visited the hellishness of an experience so you are not alone. We've all come back and found ways back home as well. This post will be wordy but I really think it's worth reading the entire thing. Having used mushrooms for several years now, on and off, I have come to find several patterns in them that feel appropriate to share here. I guess I'll call it mushrooms 542.

Mushroom panic attacks happen. It can happen on low dose DMT as well. It's generally when the substance is very strong(medium to high dosages), but the rational mind is still ticking. The rational mind, "who am I, where am I, what is happening to me, when am I, when will ___ be, etc". Often times people say "Surrender to the experience" or "don't fight it", this isn't always applicable. There are dosage ranges and certain times in a persons life where that part of the mind is very active even while being knee-deep in a psychedelic experience.

To point out a few things. High dose DMT smoked rapidly, one can still 'fight' or question the experience of dissolving into the seemingly infinite to a certain extent. The high-dose smoked DMT experience though is so rapid and powerful it will often launch one out without much more than a moment for second guessing or doubts. Then on coming down there is immense bliss and a lot of the discomfort is forgotten. At least until one picks the pipe up again later, while forgetting the magnitude of the experience and is focused on the rational.

Now with mushrooms the experience comes on more slowly. There's a good 30 minutes after initial effects(if eaten) before one can begin to approach a similar DMT state. With tea it can be more like 5 minutes or 2 hours depending on how fast the tea was dranken(advice on this later). This hang time of "coming up" plays a pivotal role in the experience in my experience. If one isn't focused on themselves and are willfully becoming a participant in their environment the experiences tend to go more smoothly. This takes practice and isn't something I have down and don't believe many people living modern lives actually do(like myself), it really comes down to knowing the self and knowing the experience. Is now an appropriate time to take mushrooms?

McKenna advocates to use them in the dark alone without sound. In my opinion it depends on the person. A little distraction can help one to focus less and less on themselves(which is about to disappear) and more and more on the experience or surroundings at hand. This can increase the ease of 'surrender'.

Let's talk bad trip 'stuff' and what they are really saying to us.(opinion starts here). Desire to call ambulances "I need help", deep thoughts of suicide just to end the experience "I want to die", you get the picture... If we think about what the idea of suicide in that context may really mean, it's not as dark as it is sober. Context it important. What the rational mind may be really saying is, "I need to die for this experience", but the rational mind cannot un-think itself unfortunately and this is part of the birth of 'thought-loops'(a 'failed' defense mechanism) and similar uncomfortable tripping plagues. To be perfectly clear what I am saying is while tripping should the idea of suicide come up and spin around your cognitive space, it probably is a metaphor for how the subconscious would like to lose the rational mind to experience the psychedelic state. If you cannot find a way to let go still, then try and think about why you enjoy your life and why suicide isn't a viable path for yourself :). That usually does the trick for me and I can come back very greatful for my existence even with my flaws. It can be the deepest life review imaginable, love for the self goes a long way here. There are ways to avoid these things although it's important we at least have one of these experiences in my opinion. Even though they hurt so much and can scar us.

My work around is mushroom tea. I highly advocate mushroom tea as a means of ingestion for several reasons. With mushroom tea, there is less nausea, which helps ease the negativity in a powerful experience where the senses are heightened. Also if you're like me, getting slammed into the unknown too far too fast with the rational mind still present, there tends to be incredible discomfort. If you're into that you can slam your dosage, but I do NOT recommend this as even experienced trippers have had nightmares from this. The key with mushroom tea is how fast we drink it. I drink it very slowly, taking sips over the course of an hour or more(depending on how long I want to journey and how deep I want it to go).

With many slow peaking adventures we can learn how our mind comfortably and easily unfolds to become ready for an experience. As well as examine where we hiccup. Then ultimately getting to where we need to be. With enough practice we can learn how to turn a low-medium dose into a life changing experience that has as much or more perceived value then a high dosage.

Set, setting, and context, play a massive role for the experience as well. If one person is freaking out it can spread like a bad computer virus amongst a group. That is if the group cannot hold their own float and emit it back out. Be selective on whom you journey with and where you choose to do so. After-all, we become our surroundings under such experiences.

Now, what I would recommend for shaking these feelings is a few things.
First a few questions:
Process the feelings, why are you so afraid of death that you should cry and be terrified still from a night-mare? Have you had nightmares where you died before? If so, what inside of you has changed? Do you feel as if you could do better by those around you and for yourself? Can you see the beauty in that you have been opened up to these kinds of personal investigations about your life and personality?Essentially try and follow these thoughts to explore yourself and what you want in your life and what you don't want.
(personal aside)
I struggle with mortality as well and heck I've been dealing with murderous delusions for years(nothing to do with psychedelics though), so I don't have the answers but they do exist inside of yourself just as they do inside of me. It can be a tricky beast.
(back on topic)
My recommendation would be once you have processed a bit longer and had some time to think and heal, I recommend a LOW dose of mushrooms. Go back in with your friend and put on some happy music share some good laughs, just dip your feet. Drink the tea slowly. Enjoy the buzz and mild visual distortions, you aren't going to leave your body(likely) or be completely consumed by the experience unless you allow yourself too under these circumstances. If you choose too and you still can, you can explore softly and gently. Remember that you can still be on Earth while on mushrooms and that life is beautiful and easy! Also probably best to avoid cannabis on this adventure unless its on the comedown as cannabis can increase anxiety.

Well I know this is ridiculously long but I hope you can find some value in this.
 
Thank you, everyone, for the advice and comforting. I'm definitely taking everyone's advice to heart. I know I'll be fine probably within a couple or few days. But the fact that my friend keeps saying he feels great and "reborn" was almost making me feel even more alone in the experience because no one understood me... that is, until I posted here and talked to you guys.

The past two nights in a row I've had the same dream of jumping off the balcony. AND last night I dreamt I couldn't breathe. I suppose it's my subconscious playing tricks on me still.


InMotion said:
My recommendation would be once you have processed a bit longer and had some time to think and heal, I recommend a LOW dose of mushrooms. Go back in with your friend and put on some happy music share some good laughs, just dip your feet. Drink the tea slowly. Enjoy the buzz and mild visual distortions, you aren't going to leave your body(likely) or be completely consumed by the experience unless you allow yourself too under these circumstances. If you choose too and you still can, you can explore softly and gently. Remember that you can still be on Earth while on mushrooms and that life is beautiful and easy! Also probably best to avoid cannabis on this adventure unless its on the comedown as cannabis can increase anxiety.
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I feel that when I'm ready, I'd like to try it again. And yes, perhaps a much lower dosage this time :)

And somewhat off topic (but not too far off) if anyone can give me some advice on this, I'd like to hear what you know about micro-dosing on mushies. I hear it's a good anti-depressant/anti-anxiety. Could the thing that I thought would kill me actually bring me out of my own funk?
 
Hey Ms. Munki,

I feel for you! Mushrooms can be so amazing, but when the experience goes south, sometimes it REALLY goes south. I'll relate to you my experience with bad mushroom trips. In short, the message is: you will be fine, but it might take some time.

I had two very scary experiences in a row about two years ago. The first one wasn't even a very high dose but upon the come down I started feeling nausea and trouble breathing. I entered a similar thought loop as you did being afraid that I was going to die and really not wanting to, not being able to get enough air into my chest no matter how hard I tried plus quite a bit of nausea. I ended up on the floor for about two hours trying to relax my breathing and telling myself that there was no way I could have any physiological problem. Needless to say, being rational about it didn't help the panic.

After this experience It took me many weeks to be able to breathe normal again. It was like the experience had destroyed my regular breathin pattern and I had entered a permanent state of stress.

I took a mix of LSD and mushrooms a bit after this initial bad experience and as soon as the mushrooms kicked in I started spiraling down into negativity again. In this second experience I was threatened by a formless entity that wanted to kill me. And the way it would do it was entering into my body and taking control of my actions, making me accidentally kill myself.

Now I knew I didn't want to die but suddenly I felt this entity put thoughts of suicide into my head.

After this experience it took me quite a while to mentally recover from it (weeks). The foreign thoughts of suicide kept entering my mind and I didn't know how to fight it. So I started to consciously observe these thoughts and instead of paniking every time they would come up I percieved them and then let them go. This helped make them go away.

After these experiences I had to do a lot of thinking and analysing as to where this negativity had come from. I found several reasons, some internal, some external that lead to them, and in the end, though they were harsh and had very long lasting mental effects, I feel they were the catalysts to one of the best changes in my life I have made.

Perhaps you did not come out of the experience feeling reborn, but that does not mean that you cannot learn a great deal from it. Understand it thoroughly and you will transform it and you into something greater. Good luck!
 
Enoon said:
Perhaps you did not come out of the experience feeling reborn, but that does not mean that you cannot learn a great deal from it. Understand it thoroughly and you will transform it and you into something greater. Good luck!
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Yup... I'm now trying to understand where these feelings are coming from. Many of the responses here have said to look inside myself and figure out where the anxiety and fear is coming from and learn from it. I don't yet know exactly why I'm feeling all this anxiety, but I'm sure it may have something to do with this fear that keeps popping up in my head about being alone. I mean, I'm fine being by myself, in fact I quite like it. But I keep fearing that no one can save me if something happens to me... leaving me to fend for myself. Maybe it's just me dealing with that whole "growing up" thing??? :?: :?
 
There is so much to be learned from these types of experiences as others have pointed out.
Sometimes it takes conscious focus and effort in order to revert certain mental states.
You want to catch them when they start and metaprogram. Or just ride them out and see where they take you- but take a passive perspective. Like you're in a theater rather than in the film. You are being tested. You created this fear as a test and you must learn to conquer it because that's all that it is.

Do everything you can before hand during the prep stages of a trip/ceremony to make sure there are no triggers.
Use your best experiences as a template and ask yourself how you can perfect them.
Some things aren't predictable. Even with all the preparations strange things can happen from time to time.
That's usually when you know you dosed yourself good.
Practice makes better.
What may not make sense now may reveal itself with time.
Trust your intuition in regards to how to process this.
Try letting go- but it may need 'confrontation.'

Was this your first taste of death?
Get familiar with it because it's one of your best friends whether you realize it now or not.
You can interpret that any way you want to.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows.
The time we spend in the shadows makes us stronger
even if it may feel like we are never coming back.
Use this to empower you.

Are your roots planted deeply in the soil?
If not you can't expect yourself to flower yet.

There's nothing like picking up a djembe when a trip goes sour.
Something about playing a drum (and other instruments) has brought me out of the shadows many times.
 
۩ said:
Was this your first taste of death?
Get familiar with it because it's one of your best friends whether you realize it now or not.
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Never thought of it that way. I'll have to sit with that for a minute.

For the past couple days I look at everything SO MUCH differently now. I'm waiting for things to return to "normal." Waiting to really figure out what I'm supposed to take from this whole experience.
 
To Ms. Munki:
Here's another hopelessly long-winded essay from another once-casualty. I can't NOT blabber and blabber it seems.

Firstly, you are okay and will be okay! On some level you already know this, but you're still shaking a bit from the experience. This rings a familiar bell for myself, particularly your description of nightmares and feeling frightened by a sense of new "alone-ness". I had a particularly harrowing mushroom trip some years back, and I had anxiety and nightmares for DAYS, I don't think I really started to stabilize for about a week. It was like I was a little kid again, scared of the dark, the boogieman hiding in every shadow. Lying down at night I just wanted to be comfortable but felt a menace in my own house and room. The nightmares were as bad as the bad trip itself, it was an ongoing torture. Here I am years later and not only do I feel utterly cozy in this very same room that was in those days haunted by devils, but I feel more "at home" everywhere I go in the world. I'd like to share with you a way I see things which has helped integrate every difficult trip I've ever had, perhaps this can help you too.

We spend nearly our whole lives in the realms of fear and desire, or attachment and aversion. In psychedelic country, these things become very vivid, clear, as if the very symbols that underly them come to us viscerally, as if we find ourselves utterly vulnerable to the most extreme states of mind. Aldous Huxley called psychedelics "Heaven and Hell" drugs for this reason. We enter a symbol world in which the symbols become our emotional states, and this can be hard to manage to say the least.

Here's the rub: Every sense or mode on the scale of fear and desire only exists as it relates to its opposite. If Heaven were all there were, it would be meaningless, likewise Hell. If Hell were the only thing that existed, it wouldn't be Hell, it would be beyond value. By coming into the realms of joy, we pay the price with dismay, or at least its potential. You spent your trip in an endlessly agonizing struggle - A great deal of energy runs through you on shrooms, and there's a peculiar cosmic perspective, beyond value, which merely sees it as "energy" - neither positive nor negative. Feedback loops like spirals can send you deeply into one or the other, and as someone mentioned earlier, by struggling in a particular mindset: "I DON'T want this, this is not good, I want out, I want to make this better - Think Good, think Good, think Good!" - your subconscious knows, it KNOWS that this definition, this desire, is fundamentally meaningful in relation to its opposite. All you really end up saying is "There is a Hell and I'm there! Oh shit!" And deeper you go, swimming with the frequency of vibration at the bottom of the trench.

If followed to its furthest points, psychedelics seem to reach for a dissociated realm of universal connectedness beyond attachment and aversion, and this is a reality quite different from "ordinary" rational human thinking. The zones just at its borders are where agony and ecstasy are at their purest highs and lows, the "Mount Everest" and "Mariana Trench" of the psychedelic experience.

Psychedelics want to teach us that there is no real death as we tend to fear, it is itself another transformation. But many of us are not used to this kind of approach, we're used to fearing death because it's a scary unknown in the field of time, it tears our loved ones from us and threatens us with a "here be dragons" at the edge of the map. But this all comes from the ego, and the ego self can really fight the psychedelic deaths these molecules can bring so close to us. I like to describe the ego in these terms:

Each of us has a particular pattern - like the perfectly-unique snowflake our teachers told us we are - that is our very-very own, generated of our body and brain. Try thinking of this pattern as acting as a prism in the universe. Your prism is very particularly shaped - a groove here where your heart was once broken, a bulbous column here where your humor is shaped, a flower-like pattern which covers most of your tastes and proclivities. The shape of the prism changes over your life's course. It is not what it once was. It will someday be quite different than it is today. There is no "right" prism and there is no "wrong", no "good prism" or "rotten prism". They all refract light the way they do, each in its own shape, and there'd be no point whatsoever to living if there weren't grand variety in all the shapes of being - Otherwise you'd have a white dot staring at a white dot forever, and while it may sound very peaceful, there's no spice or color in it. And dammit, we love our prisms! We tend to think we ARE our prisms. I've got mine, and I've shaped it all my life, and it makes the bored-white-light universe spicy and colorful, and it's me, dammit, IT'S ME!

But this isn't true - or at least, it isn't our truest, deepest self. We aren't the shape of the prism's pattern, we aren't the shifting particle itself - we are the light that moves THROUGH it! The vibrating energy of the cosmos which moves through all of us - it turns out it IS us, and we are ALL IT. From this viewpoint, we share the same single consciousness that is merely now seeing itself from many varied and peculiar perspectives. Psychedelics tend to push you toward this embodiment of becoming, inhabiting, being no longer the single lonely sense of ego-prism self, but of everything, of the environment around you, the realization that there's no SEPARATION between the observer and what is actually being observed.

However, the very visceral experience of this ON PSYCHEDELICS is potent, it feels sometimes too-real, and if you were taking shrooms for a x5 to beauty on the beach and loving feels, it's no wonder that when things went sour they stayed sour - you were only buckled up for the small trip, not the big one! And when you're pushed up against the wall of ego death, your prism-self can very much freak the shit out as it's slammed hard against the membrane. That realm of fear, measured by its flipside of joy-potential, seemingly becomes your cage amid the sense of dissolution coming upon your unique-snowflake-ego-self. I think most bad trips come from that attachment to the prism, the desire to continue living in the familiar pattern, when the natural flow of the experience is essentially the prism being turned inside-out and the mind remembering that it ain't no single lonely thing at all whatsoever in any kind of menacing outside universe - but that the universe itself, all music and vibration, is the real body of you and all other beings.

I think this is why many shamans in situations like this say "have more, have more." Another peyote button. Another. Another mushroom. Another. I'm NOT recommending this! But I think this is the reason - As mentioned earlier, there may be awkward dose sizes for some people which are juuuust at the threshold. At the same time though, you could have a dose of the exact same amount and experience an entire trip of bliss and connection, dipping your head into some sublime fountain instead of crashing it into a concrete wall.

You are a being which is, like every other being in the universe, totally inter-dependent upon every other facet of existence. We need you here with us in this cosmos, we need the moon to do what it does, we need the tides to do what they do, we need the sun, the sun needs its neighbors and its galaxy to be what it is, and our galaxy needs its cluster of galaxies, and so on. We don't understand the details as there are far too many, but zoom out enough and quite simply, everything-needs-everything and vice versa. Likewise when you turn inward to your own consciousness, you find the very same interdependence among values. A single emotion floating in a void is no emotion at all - it only comes into being when its opposite is in motion with it, and so to be defined at all they depend upon each other. No matter how far out or in you go, there is a universal connection and interdependence. It turns out they are all part of the same single vibration of one amazing IS-ness.

If you can approach an understanding of this stuff and apply it to the psychedelic experience, you find a fertile ground for integration of any experience no matter how harrowing.

Good practice: Do some "witness observation" meditation - in which you relax deeply and become merely the witness of everything moving through you. Like what House said about sitting in the theater rather than being in the film. Consider this twist: It might even be worth it to summon up your worst demons going into a meditation like this - recalling that they are only demons if their dark sides are angels - and then sitting back and safely observing from your witness seat that same terrifying spiral that keeps haunting you. Don't place a value on it, understanding that it's a required part of a single whole. Just receive. You'll be cool as a cucumber.

Alan Watts is much better than I am at explaining all of this stuff, he's a star amongst psychedelics-users because of his admirable articulation of this trickiest-of-stuff.

Check this for some good feels by the good Doctor Watts:

Prickles and Goo
 
bemeda said:
However, the very visceral experience of this ON PSYCHEDELICS is potent, it feels sometimes too-real, and if you were taking shrooms for a x5 to beauty on the beach and loving feels, it's no wonder that when things went sour they stayed sour - you were only buckled up for the small trip, not the big one! And when you're pushed up against the wall of ego death, your prism-self can very much freak the shit out as it's slammed hard against the membrane. That realm of fear, measured by its flipside of joy-potential, seemingly becomes your cage amid the sense of dissolution coming upon your unique-snowflake-ego-self. I think most bad trips come from that attachment to the prism, the desire to continue living in the familiar pattern, when the natural flow of the experience is essentially the prism being turned inside-out and the mind remembering that it ain't no single lonely thing at all whatsoever in any kind of menacing outside universe - but that the universe itself, all music and vibration, is the real body of you and all other beings.
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I definitely was not buckled up for the big one!

Interesting what you say about opposites. I guess I had never seen this side of psychedelics before, and from what most here have pointed out, it's almost a necessary thing to experience in order to understand yourself AND the universe better. So, maybe it was my time to "die" and to see the opposite side of things.

I'm now at least trying to look at this from a viewing perspective as opposed to a feeling or emotional perspective. Not totally there yet. But it's only been a couple days since it happened, so I know it will take some time.
 
Ms. Munki

Everyone who takes entheogens experiences difficult journeys so you aren't alone. I have had my fair share of difficult experiences over the past few years and I have discovered that I end up learning the most from my most challenging entheogen journeys. They are the experiences that I cherish the most and the ones that I am most grateful for as they challenged me and make me grow in the ways that I need to grow and be challenged.

Facing your fears is all part of the journey and for me personally to truly face my fears and the concept of impermanence is one of the most monumental concepts to make peace with. I can see a strength in you... please don't worry you will be fine it just takes a little time to reintegrate what you have experienced. Try and take things really slowly and be gentle with yourself. I have found Caapi tea to be one of the most profound entheogens and it might aid you, in helping you deal with your anxiety.

I truly wish you the best of luck and stay strong.


Much Peace and Compassion
 
Thanks :)

I'm definitely learning a lot from this.

I had another nightmare last night that I was stuck inside this bizarre groundhog day-esque time warp. I'm on the 5th floor of a building and I go down the escalator 4 or 5 floors only to end up on the exact same floor I started on. Not only that, but it's the same moment I started at too. Over and over again. It's the same thing I was afraid of happening when I was having my bad trip... getting stuck forever in that awful state.

But as time is passing, it's becoming easier. And thanks to everyone who's posted here, it has helped me a lot to cope with all of it.
 
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