Have You Ever Been Bored On A Psychedelic?

[Nathanial.Dread]

Simple enough question - I'm interested primarily for research reasons. I know you can be happy, afraid, confused, and even sad, while under the influence, but how about boredom?

Is such a thing even possible? I certainly never recall feeling anything like boredom ever on my trips.

Blessings
~ND

 

[AcaciaConfusedYah]

I'd imagine it is possible. Sure. It's as possible as experiencing any other emotion.

Likely? Probably not an overly common thing.

I think some people classify it as "understimulating" or "underwelming" or "dissappointed with the intensity of the trip" more often than boring.

My wife has said that mescaline bored her. But maybe she didn't take enough.

 

[Psybin]

Yes. At least in my opinion, psychedelics at low doses is like smoking: something fun to do while doing actual activities. I've had my fair share of boring poorly planned trips back in the day.

 

[No Knowing]

I remember having a handful of boring K-holes when I had a short damaging addiction to Ketamine a few years ago. [Pro-tip, be VERY wary of Ketamine]

They had a very "locked in a box" quality and I always would try, try, try to escape with every psychic and mental move I knew, but to no avail. These K-boxes only began moving when I completely and utterly gave-in to the understimulation and boredom. Once I accepted it [which took EONS of subjective time] they would begin to morph into another reality, eventually carrying me back to this one.

I had another K-hole that had me encased in a box but, this one had small drips of consciousness from the ceiling. I was completely and utterly alone and unstimulated except for these "drips" of consciousness that would drip onto myself every Eon or so. The drip would bring awareness/pleasure that was fleeting and quickly gave way to more boredom and feelings of being trapped. But part of me just wanted to wait for the next drip. This trip really affected me creatively and philosophically.

As I integrated the experience I came to think that It was kind of a metaphor for drug addiction and how one could be living in such an unfulfilling, empty, and "boxed in" reality while still being kept pacified/distracted by just a small trickle of conscious experience.

I did feel like I learned something from "giving in" to the boredom of these experiences.

Haven't been bored on Tryptamines or Phenethylamines as I can recall.

BUT definitely have had similar trapped feelings on salvia d. but not trapped in an empty box. Just trapped in some kind of loop.

Good topic, friend.

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

Yes. At least in my opinion, psychedelics at low doses is like smoking: something fun to do while doing actual activities. I've had my fair share of boring poorly planned trips back in the day.

What doses were you playing with? I'm wondering if there is a dose at which boredom becomes effectively impossible, or if you could draw a curve with dose on the x-axis, and probability of boredom if you were tripping in a white box alone on the y-axis.

I have an intuitive feeling that, at a certain point probability of boredom would go to zero, although it might change depending on how many times you'd had the experience before.

Blessings
~ND

 

[concombres]

I`ve felt very bored a few times during lsd trips.
Usually when there's not much going on in my life & i`m just sitting on the couch.
Sometimes a single hit is enough to really trip, others it`s just enough to feel it mildly & there's not much else going on.
Usually if the trip lacks a certain level of intensity I become bored with it & begin looking for other things to do, as compared to a full fledged trip where EVERYTHING is something to do & regardless of what you choose it is exciting & immersive as kf you were a child.

I can`t say i`'ve ever been dissappointed by LSD, just a little more challenging to keep things interesting when dosage is not quite right or your mind does not have much to trip about.

 

[RAM]

I'd say so, but more in a critical way. I have done a lot of psychedelics just sitting on couches in a house, and I got this feeling that it was like we were "waiting around for something to happen" and it never did. Sometimes I would question what we were even doing. Eating mushrooms or small pieces of paper to sit on a couch and watch some crap television for 5 hours? Why would you keep doing that to yourself?

Looking back this was definitely a problem with setting. I have discovered that tripping in nature is much more rewarding, and my energy is more free to bounce around. Once I mentioned to my sister how I did shrooms, and she gave me an inquisitive look and immediately said, "but you've never been camping?!" I didn't really understand what she meant until I took shrooms in the forest and noticed how much better it is.

The first couple times we ever tripped inside were ok but then it just got painful and anxious. I think that's where a lot of my personal criticisms during psychedelic trips arose. The lesson, for me at least, is to have something of a plan (though not too detailed because then it just won't work out) or at least stuff to do or play with. It can get weird to just be trapped in your head but not meditating.

 

[Psybin]

Yes. At least in my opinion, psychedelics at low doses is like smoking: something fun to do while doing actual activities. I've had my fair share of boring poorly planned trips back in the day.

What doses were you playing with? I'm wondering if there is a dose at which boredom becomes effectively impossible, or if you could draw a curve with dose on the x-axis, and probability of boredom if you were tripping in a white box alone on the y-axis.

I have an intuitive feeling that, at a certain point probability of boredom would go to zero, although it might change depending on how many times you'd had the experience before.

Blessings
~ND

Up to 200ug LSD or 3.5g shrooms. More than 400ug and I can't ignore what's going on, same for more than 4g of shrooms.

I'd say so, but more in a critical way. I have done a lot of psychedelics just sitting on couches in a house, and I got this feeling that it was like we were "waiting around for something to happen" and it never did. Sometimes I would question what we were even doing. Eating mushrooms or small pieces of paper to sit on a couch and watch some crap television for 5 hours? Why would you keep doing that to yourself?

Looking back this was definitely a problem with setting. I have discovered that tripping in nature is much more rewarding, and my energy is more free to bounce around. Once I mentioned to my sister how I did shrooms, and she gave me an inquisitive look and immediately said, "but you've never been camping?!" I didn't really understand what she meant until I took shrooms in the forest and noticed how much better it is.

The first couple times we ever tripped inside were ok but then it just got painful and anxious. I think that's where a lot of my personal criticisms during psychedelic trips arose. The lesson, for me at least, is to have something of a plan (though not too detailed because then it just won't work out) or at least stuff to do or play with. It can get weird to just be trapped in your head but not meditating.

This effectively sums up my thoughts on the matter.

 

[jamie]

3g of mushrooms I am crawling on the floor through hyperspace..can't say I have ever been bored on that dose.

..turn off the lights, perhaps?

 

[Metanoia]

Only when I was younger and I abused them. Tolerance would develop and I had plenty of those kinds of trips RAM's talking about where you sit around waiting for something to happen that never does. But like was also said it was always when my friends and I were sitting in a living room somewhere, not outside. We had plenty of trips that started outside and we would end up inside somewhere during the comedown, but the ones where we just sat in front of a TV were always pretty lame. I used to chain smoke cigarettes back then and I remember sitting in rooms that were so full of smoke you could visibly see it swirling like fog. I had all these colored flood lights in my room and we would hot box it with joints and cigarette smoke for hours on end. Some of those trips were fun But the best were out in nature, definitely.

I've always said boredom is something self-imposed. All it would take to bring you out of that state of mind would be to introduce slight changes, especially while on a psychedelic.

 

[SpartanII]

Yep. A boring mind-set and setting can lead to a boring trip. Usually only with relatively low dosage though, IME with acid and shrooms.

 

[Bonné]

20-30mg's of 4-AcO-DMT genuinely feels boring to me.
It's just a very mild sedation, barely a noticeable trippy headspace, and the fact that my body appears to be excreting so much fluid through my eyes and sweat glands that I literally begin to wish that I had never taken the substance in the first place.

All in all just a very low-tone Tryptamine buzz that doesn't seem to produce much of anything, except for water excretion.

 

[soulfood]

I found 6APB to be extremely boring.

No will to do anything and no interesting introspection whatsoever.

 

[Swarupa]

I've had low doses where it was underwhelming, although there's ways to spice things up a bit, like meditation, yoga, music, changing the setting, or even the good old spice itself.

I've also had strong doses where i was just covering old ground so there was nothing groundbreaking about it, at times even a stiff dose of cubensis can feel like it's coming & going in waves too sporadically to really sink my teeth into the trip.

I've also noticed some LSD crystals to me are enjoyable but have a certain dullness to it lacking real depth, which can be a bit more easy going but also a bit same same, whereas other crystals are a deep LSD experience even at threshold doses, although maybe it's just dosage dependent rather than the purity of the crystal.

 

[DoingKermit]

I guess I can say I have been bored on LSD before, but only because I was done with the trip way before it was done with me. That was when I was a lot younger though... I don't mind really long journeys these days.

 

[Psilosopher?]

Yeah, I've only had low dose experiences, but they were far from boring. Even the slightest push to psychedelia is fun for me. But I never have a problem with boredom, even when I'm sober. If I'm on the train with no books or music, I can easily get lost in my own thoughts. I refine these thoughts, and I write them down. Boredom is a choice, not a state of existence.

 

[Praxis.]

Yeah I've been bored on low doses of LSD a small handful of times but I tend to use my time tripping more productively nowadays, so it rarely gets boring.

 

[○]

Bored hahah. Nope, can't say I have. :twisted:

 

[DoingKermit]

Bored hahah. Nope, can't say I have. :twisted:

 

[Flower Witch]

Many psychedelics are honestly rather boring if you're not new to them and your trip doesn't quite reach the intensity you were hoping for. Not every trip can be a home run in terms of therapeutic realizations, creative ideas, or what have you or show you something far more amazing than anything you've seen before, sometimes you are just left in a familiar altered state with not much going on.

In my experience synthetic phenethylamines are particularly vulnerable to this, because their visuals may be very unique and flashy compared to other classes of psychedelics, but with such a clear head, once you get used to them it's really up to you to make the trip interesting. A full dose of a tryptamine or LSD I think I would be much less likely to get bored on due to their immersive psychological and emotional effects, however, I have definitely been less than thrilled when my dose was just barely too weak to hit that level, enough to leave you with a taunting trip for a while but not enough to really guide it anywhere. If you're new to tripping then really any amount of psychedelic effect is good, but after knowing what the deeper levels can do these lower doses really do not do much for me unless I specifically planned to take them for purposes such as meditation.

Honestly, I think I would wager that most psychedelics are probably boring if the person taking them is boring. Very rarely do I take any substance that seems like its significance holds more weight than the way the user treats it.