How do you defend against bad trips?

[paradox4213]

Hi there, I am a fairly experienced traveler, but this question is just not something I can figure out on my own.

Background: I want to say a good 50% of my experiences in travel are "negative" and a good 15% of my experiences don't seem to have anything to really teach me (they are just experiences). Sometimes this happens with the best of intentions and most of preparations. It seems the longer I take a break from the experience, the less defenses I have to these experiences. The catch 22 here is that the less defenses I have, the longer it takes me to integrate. Furthermore, the more reticent I am to take a larger dose.

I feel VERY confident in my abilities to integrate my experiences (I am a psychology major afterall). I do not, however, feel very confident to protect myself in the moment. Essentially I have a hard time letting go or detaching from my experiences. I used to be better, but since a long break, I these muscles are kind of weak. So help me flex them! How do you alter the mood in the moment? How do you prepare? The after part is easy for me, it's the before and during that seem rough around the edges.

Further reading is into the trips I had that lead to this question. If you are interested, read ahead, but it is just more background info into my question. At the very least, putting it down here is very cathartic.

Also, I should mention that I am not the most spiritual person. Protecting myself against evil entities by invoking positive ones, or taking protective precautions of herbal "spirits" or however you say it just won't work for me. It'd be like trying to ward a ghost with a cross when the wielder just doesn't believe! Thanks for your help!

The trips: my second to last experience was bizarre to say the least! I felt like I was in a two dimensional way of existence where gnomes and I were dancing in a straight line. I was observing myself in the third person on some sort of wall, like watching hieroglyphics dance from right to left. I had no sense of self physically, but the first thing I thought while in the trip was "what the hell is the point of this?! What is there to learn from this?" after a minute, I returned home with a sense of otherness about the world. I felt like I was being observed (which the discomfort of the feeling made me associate it with a negative feeling). Everything in this mode of existence felt fairly foreign that night. A couple nights later, I delved into my travels again. This time, I decided to delve deep. After a couple huge strides, I found my self in familiar territory. Though, this time, I encountered myself projected (that is how I feel about entities even while traveling). I knew it was a self destructive aspect of myself trying to attack me psychologically. It projected: you are unprepared. You are lost, little guppy and in MY realm! I felt that it (I) wanted to bring to light my depressions, anxieties, and fears to try and break myself. Needless to say, everything about it felt wrong. I tried to smile and tell myself everything was alright. It seemed to project: HAHA! feeble creature, I am beyond the 4th dimension, such transient expressions hold no value here. Indeed, I felt all of my current moods brought to the forefront of my consciousness. My life seemed like an instant and my emotions seemed to surpass my current state to everything I was and will be. The smile felt weak and the slight comfort it brought was quickly overwhelmed by the experience itself. [break. Now I know I have a small battle with depression. DMT usually provides me with profound realizations of my current state and exactly what I should be doing to maintain a healthy and happy lifestyle. I feel this way about this experience as well. I appreciate the bad trips, I do!] Then the come down felt like an overwhelming rush of thoughts, images, and neuronal activations. I felt like my mind was firing a million random thoughts a second. As I rushed back, I could see images of everyday images (forefront are hamburgers) and I felt like the entity was throwing them at me. The thought crossed me that this experience just fires random neurons in my brain to provide a purely trivial drug hallucination and nothing more. Now I know that these experiences are my own brain and thus valuable, but my fear of a trivial trip manifested here as well. Strangely, when I came out I felt rejuvenated. No sense of otherness or fear. Maybe a little annoyance at the bad trip, but it inspired me to look into the different dimensions possible in this world and really try to understand where my mind goes when I feel like it surpasses the fourth dimension on my travels.

 

[anrchy]

Predose anxiety is common. Really the best way to deal with them is the same methods for any anxiety. Although the best way I have found is to go into autopilot mode. I concentrate on the task that I am performing and rid my mind of thoughts of past or future happenings. Focus, breathe, load, light, inhale, lay down, close eyes.

The rough trips all play into your emotions, IME. so just in the same way that smiling can induce a flood of dopamine and therefore positive change in your attitude, this rings true for the experience as well. Now if it doesn't work right away you will notice the awkward and uncomfortable sensation you feel. Just push through that and force feelings of awesomeness and comfort and extreme happiness.

 

[Shadowman-x]

As i'm being kicked out of my body it's nice to have a mantra sometimes..it's just a self-psychological focus point and protector. some people also like to sing at the bad entities.

"this is not how i have always felt and it is not how i will always feel"

 

[Bassic]

Calming meditation, following your breath, and concentration on the present moment for about 15-20 minutes prior to dosing keeps my trips very positive. Read up on some Buddhist meditation practice. "The miracle of mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh is a personal favorite of mine. Hope this helps

Bassic

 

[adam]

I think a large part is the dose you chose. Ime you can still have profound experiences at lower doses. Whenever I dose on the higher side it always intense, so its natural to be anxious before something intense.

To defend against a bad trip, dont take a trip you arent prepared for is really the only advice.

To prepare for a trip set and setting need to be carefully chosen imo. Find somewhere you are comfortable and people you are comfortable with, start low and work your way up. Being hasty with dmt is usually a bad idea ime.

Patience and taking the time to feel everything out and allow yourself to be as comfortable as you can achieve before you attempt a breakthrough sized dose.

Also there is alot of emphasis on breaking through, but as time goes on im realizing there is more the just breaking through to the other side, sometimes its nice to stay in this reality and get familiar with the things that come through to this side sort of speak, before you journey to the other side.

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

The sun is absolutely key, for me. I have found that, if I am out in nature, on a sunny day, no matter what is happening in my soul, if I just look up at the branches, the clouds and the sky, the universe will gently remind me that everything is going to be alright.

Now, if you were on a full-tilt, blind-from-visuals kind of breakthrough, that might not work, however, I never dose that high.

Blessings
~ND

 

[expandaneum]

dear paradox,

Maybe you should ask yourself if dmt is something for you. 50% of negative experiences seems like a good reason to quit (there is more in life then dmt). Also are you happy in life in general? (and not pretending for yourself you are.)

I feel VERY confident in my abilities to integrate my experiences (I am a psychology major afterall).

I don't see how a major in psychology makes you competent in integrating?

Also from reading your post you really seem to have the feeling you should learn something from the experience. What do you want to learn? Usually Dmt does not give me any answers just more questions.

take care

 

[Global]

Also, I should mention that I am not the most spiritual person. Protecting myself against evil entities by invoking positive ones, or taking protective precautions of herbal "spirits" or however you say it just won't work for me. It'd be like trying to ward a ghost with a cross when the wielder just doesn't believe! Thanks for your help!

There are four basic ways I can think of right now in how my bad trips have been resolved in the past. One is I'm lucky enough for positive entities to take care of them. Sometimes they're already there, and sometimes they show up, but their inconsistency doesn't make them reliable. It's chance. Another method is giving in. This has its ups and downs too. For one, some of them seem to be hoping you'll let your guard down to do what they do "best". If effective, it can transform the situation pretty positively.

For the third and fourth options which I'm more fond of nowadays, they are throat singing and attention manipulation, and I talk about them respectively in these two threads.

Unraveling Negative Entities (scroll down to post #9 for color illustration)

DMT and Attention (negative entity mitigation)

Now the one other thing I'm thinking of as I'm writing this (and note that I have not actually done this little experiment for myself) is that hyperspace and its entities are extremely frequency-based in my experience. If you affect one part of their frequency with other frequencies, it can modulate their actions and appearance. As I go into in the above thread, I typically use the audio and tactile frequencies of my voice to try and reach these ends, but it also occurs to me that maybe something even like a flash light, a laser beam, or as silly as it might sound - a toy lightsaber - may be effective means for interfering with their frequency patterns via the intense light frequencies that these things can emit. In fact with some of those more expensive lightsabers, you get audio and visual interference in one swipe. I've found a lot of parallels with DMT and Star Wars, and so I would find it highly ironic if the lightsaber some how becomes a bunch of Nexian's chosen and most effective tool for dealing with darkly aligned aliens.

 

[Enoon]

Dear paradox,

To be honest the experiences you've described don't sound terribly bad to me. They sound like a process of working through stuff you are carrying around with you, and that's usally a good thing.

It also sounds like you have expectations about the experiences and how you should be learning something from them. To me this seems like a difficult position. DMT is not a spiritual vending machine - put a dollar in and get an insight out. Just because you have an experience you don't understand or apparently is only random gibberish, doesn't mean that something is wrong - with you, with your integration or with your use. Insights come when the mind is ready to receive them; we can prepare ourselves, and use all kinds of tools, practices, substances on our way, helping us, but we cannot force it. If you get disappointed by your experience, during the experience or get frustrated wondering what the point of it is, this is an indication of that your expectations are interfering with the actual experience. What is it that really frustrates you in this? Wasting of time? Wasting of DMT? Wasting of a chance to...? Don't worry about these things. The realm of DMT is not really about accomplishing things.

DMT or pyschedelics also aren't always the best way to get to a certain point. Sometimes they end up being detours rather than shortcuts. You might also want to consider longer lasting versions - oral ingestion, using RIMA and then smoking or trying a different psychedelic that works better with your current state of mind. IME Aya-/Pharmahuasca is much clearer in manifesting a decipherable experience, while vaporized dmt is like a riddle without a solution - nice to get your mind wondering, but not translatable to every day life.

be well

 

[Tehbearz]

I've never smoked (vaporized?) DMT, is it anything like a high dose mushroom trip? Or do you just plain feel like you're no doubt in a whole other dimension/time-space?

 

[Spiritofspice]

Swim has been left a torn to pieces from a bad trip.
But the experience has made me more resilient each time it has happened.
I don't think any trip is bad. sometimes we need a hard pull on the chain to help us learn.

 

[Entheogenerator]

I've never smoked (vaporized?) DMT, is it anything like a high dose mushroom trip? Or do you just plain feel like you're no doubt in a whole other dimension/time-space?

There are some similarities, especially on low doses of DMT. But even low doses of DMT have typically provided me with more clear, vivid, open and closed-eye visions than I have ever experienced from high doses of psilocybin.

High doses are often more of a full-on immersion in a completely new dimensional realm than I would imagine possible with orally administered psilocybin.

 

[paradox4213]

Thank you all for your wonderful and varied replies.

anrchy, I don't know if I can ever get past the pre-dose anxiety!!! Haha, no matter how I look at it, the classical conditioning is there; it is such an intense experience that I just get literal jitters before every time.

I liked the many suggestions for mantras, meditation, and yes, even singing! They all have as much power as you put in them, so in my case (sometimes I just can't put anything into them), set and setting are indeed important.

Expandaneum, I respectfully disagree that negative experiences are grounds to quit. I feel that the negative experiences in the moment have only lead to positive changes after the fact. Yes, it is unfortunate, like I said, that all my work is retroactive (hence the topic), but there is still a lot to be said for what these experiences have brought to my life. As for being a psychology major, I could explain how I feel my major was personally beneficial in this regard if you'd like. If you are implying that it may not be generally beneficial, well, that is just a matter of opinions either way on both of our ends and doesn't seem like a really useful debate to anyone but maybe you and I . Maybe I was missing your intent there? Finally, you hit on something Enoon really hammered home which was expecting things from these experiences, but the fact is, 85% of the time I do feel like I have gained a lot from my experiences in this regard! Maybe it is just me, but there are a lot of answers in those questions I feel! Anyway, a provocative set of responses by you indeed, thank you.

Global, thank you for the links and food for thought! There is definitely an interesting theme of vibrations to the experience, I'd agree!

Now Enoon, you have really resonated with me through your words. I agree that it is helping me work out something within me and that it likely lies in expectations. You make many great points which I found personally beneficial to reflect on. You have a point that insights come when they come. I tend to want it all right now, heh heh. I hadn't really thought of this before now, but you are right. My expectations are rapid insights and my frustrations are the intellectual version of a kid who doesn't get a treat whenever he has the inclination towards one. Sigh... I suppose this is a different version of acceptance that I need to learn. One of the toughest lessons yet since my exposure (because of my personality). Enoon, thank you sincerely for your words; There is always so much to learn, but it definitely makes work quicker when wisdom points you in a decent direction.

Tehbearz, I have never done mushrooms, so I couldn't respond to that. Often times there is a sense that all of our linear time is but an instant. The different dimension always seems like the 5th to me: that is, holding the perception that everything I had and will experience is but one possibility and that every single moment is an opportunity to discover each possibility within our timeline (realization of freewill)... Then again, the negative experiences are that every moment is merely part of this causal chain and thus we have no free will. Quite the conundrum! There is always the possibility of blasting off somewhere completely foreign and what can only be explained as innately dreamt. In that case, like you said, there is no doubt. As Entheogenerator suggests, how far you delve is what determines just how strange things are!

 

[paradox4213]

DMT or pyschedelics also aren't always the best way to get to a certain point. Sometimes they end up being detours rather than shortcuts. You might also want to consider longer lasting versions - oral ingestion, using RIMA and then smoking or trying a different psychedelic that works better with your current state of mind. IME Aya-/Pharmahuasca is much clearer in manifesting a decipherable experience, while vaporized dmt is like a riddle without a solution - nice to get your mind wondering, but not translatable to every day life.

be well

Oh and Enoon, in regards to this, given the "negative" experiences I have had, I am terrified of the prospect of being hunted by my own ego for 10 times the duration as what I am familiar with! During the bad trips, I always have a sense that it never lasts long, no matter how intense. Personally, most of my experiences are translatable to real life. I would imagine that what you speak of would be more translatable, but the risk in my eyes seems so great! Sure I would learn so much through 2 hours of agony (there is always so much to learn from "failure" ) , but would the whooping be worth the lesson?

 

[Joshua2112]

I've been lucky I guess, thus far no bad trips. I definately have exceptional pre flight anxiety absolutely every time I blast off and have decided not to go on numerous occasions because the anxiety or timing wasn't right.
When I do properly launch The sound, the vibration the fractal/geometric insanity and the speeding up sensation as those three elements coalesce in the seconds before "I'm there" is definately unnerving and overwhelming but it's also so amazing I never think I'm dying or did too much, it's more of a OH...MY...GOD.....and the sound, the vibration and the cev fractals/geometry freezes and blink "I'm there".
Never experienced ego death on the spice thank god. My 1 and only salvia experience was an ego death experience and it was horrible and terrifying. I hope I never have that kind of trip with spice, I treasure it too much but that one salvia trip and I threw the rest away and would never ever touch it again. It was truly a bitch slap in the face, your disintegrating and being erased and so is reality and there is nothing at the end.

 

[○]

Just

Give

In

&

Drop

Every

Notion

.

much love,
tat

 

[Enoon]

I obviously can't predict how your experiences will turn out, but from my personal experiences the longer trips give me time to work out and through the negativity that I might be bringing with me, which is beneficial both for the trip itself and for myself as a whole. This isn't always the case and yes 4 hours of agony can be terrifying and even traumatizing in a real sense. I would bet, however, that statistically most "bad trips" are actually catalytic to positive change within us given proper integration and in my experience a lot of the very hard experiences - when they are long enough - end up in a grand cataclysmic resolution and I feel relief in a very profound sense. Were the experiences shorter I could not reach this resolution and thus would call them "bad trips".

I rarely see a bad trip as a failure or as an explicitly negative experience. Frightening and uncomfortable, yes - but so is the truth in many cases. In some cases I've sought out this type of experience knowing that I had to face these things inside me, and usually I was greatful for having done so. It's the times you get confronted with stuff you really didn't expect and don't understand at all that are harder to handle.

I guess the irony is that to really defend against/avoid bad trips you have to know yourself very well. But one of the best ways to get to know yourself well is having bad/hard trips.

 

[beacon]

I've never smoked (vaporized?) DMT, is it anything like a high dose mushroom trip? Or do you just plain feel like you're no doubt in a whole other dimension/time-space?

it is absolutely and irrefutably the latter. no doubt. what even is time?

 

[anon_003]

Like others have said, I think set and setting are absolutely the two most important considerations for how your trip turns out.

Also, the more you think about avoiding a bad trip, the more you think about bad trips, and I would like to note that sometimes overthinking something will turn it into a self-fulfulling prophecy. Instead of dwelling on ways to prevent a bad trip, you should think of things that would be incredible to experience during your trip.

ALSO, bad trips don't come out of nowhere. Every single one of them happens for a reason and there is really no more powerful of a way to teach yourself an important lesson. Just don't let them spiral out of control from there. If you find yourself going down that road (and I am sure many of us here have) try to rationalize WHY you are freaking out and address the problem. Often times when we are caught in a negative feedback loop we are feeding it with utter nonsense. Realize that what you are freaking out over is NONSENSE and drive on.

Example: Let's say on the peak of a particularly intense acid trip you decide to smoke a large bowl of synthetic cannabis, because you are on probation. This kicks everything up several notches rather quickly and you find yourself in the midst of a full blown (and then some) panic attack. You are absolutely convinced that you have taken too many drugs for too long and your body has reached its breaking point. For a minute you are utterly convinced that your lungs are being dissolved by the caustic synthetic cannabis smoke. The more you think about the damage that YOU KNOW is happening, the more YOU CAN FEEL your lungs blistering and burning. Then, you remind yourself that wait a minute, there are no nerve endings in lungs! There is no way that you could feel anything in your lungs! Then, you remind yourself that lsd is incredibly safe and that you smoke synthetic cannabis ALL THE TIME without a problem. So you take a step back and say, "well if all I am freaking out about is my lungs burning then I should stop freaking out because as I just remembered, my brain is bullshitting me." A glass of water and a minute or two of deep breathing later, you are in much better shape. Not that this ever happened to me or anything...

Moral of the story - don't smoke synthetic cannabis! That stuff is S-K-E-T-C-H

 

[cubeananda]

My experience with burning Copal Incense (Hymenaea Coubaril) and Smoking Salvia Extracts has proven to me that Copal is truly defending you. It can be used to ritually cleans objects (such as mushrooms or clothing or rooms) and I have found it IMO to be more than placebo.