Taking Psychedelics too often.

[travsha]

Shamans I know usually host ceremony 3-4 times every week - year round. Many of them have been doing this for decades straight. This is pretty common in Peru. I usually drink 2-4 times every week and it is going very well for me - my life has never been better. But I am also a practitioner so most of these ceremonies are not necessarily for me, and if I was just drinking for myself it would probably be more like 3-5 times a month....

I am on a different path then many people though. For a lot of people this amount of plant use would probably be too much and could easily be overwhelming.... But everyone has a different path and I see myself continuing this level of work for a long time.

 

[anne halonium]

back in the 70's we would casually eat owsley wholesale,
and , go to the quickie mart.

we didnt over think it .
and we turned out just fine.

 

[caputo]

I've been tripping about 35 times a year or about three times a month for about 8 years. I exclusively trip on pharmahuasca (180mg of harmalas, 70-115mg of DMT), mescaline hcl, or shrooms. My trips are almost always done at home and are always beautiful, orgasmic, and colorful. I don't seem to get any powerful messages about life, worthwhile epiphanies, or spiritual events. At high doses, the trips can get intense where logic twists and imagination becomes limitless, but I see my usage as like visiting a strange circus that I don't seem to get bored of. The magic never goes away, the trips never repeat themselves, and I can honestly say that each trip is "the best trip of my life."

I suspect that since my trips are nothing but pure recreation, I don't slip far into magical thinking, paranoid thoughts, mystical mindsets, or deja vu noticing. I credit my materialist mindset with keeping me sane - or at least allowing me to function in what others would consider consensus reality. I can imagine "mystical minded" people getting weird with my tripping regimen.

I spend a lot of time wondering what long term impact this relatively heavy usage might have on my psyche. I know that I might be in denial or that I might not be able to accurately judge myself, but I see no downside to my usage. I'm healthy physically and emotionally and stable by every measure. I wonder if in a few decades I'll get some sort of early dementia or other mental illness for putting my mind through this. As far as I know, the studies so far suggest that psychedelic use is safe, but I'd feel better with larger studies and more of them.

 

[Cazman043]

I support your ideas shared to a degree. I've seen people who used psychedelic drugs recreationally at Bush Doofs have their brain scattered into intense confusion. I meet these guys, and they're all beautiful people, but you can tell their brain has been shown such intense visions that they just haven't been capable of integrating what they've seen, creating a pulse of thoughts and questioning running through their minds which they simply don't want to deal with.

That being said, each persons journey is driven by their karmic grounds and they're being taken exactly where they need to go in every moment, who am I, or any of us, to claim they're doing something irresponsible or wrong? Every moment is perfect, you are exactly where you need to be on the journey to remembering.

 

[woogyboogy]

This topic I feel, is coming back to every long time psychedelic user once in a while.

In the last 3 months I got my ass kicked by mushrooms twice. The second time was a day before New Year, and it was a 6 hour trip, of not getting out of some bad thought loops, touching onto deep paranoid unconscious thought patterns. I thought this time I truly messed up my mind long term.
Ive tried to approach these substances in a respectful manner, having indulged my self with studying them for about 5 years now. My problem how ever was, that I didn't really took the time, to integrate the experiences, and sometimes ignoring my own instincts, mostly about the right time and frequency to drop.
On this night, the mushrooms showed me how I put my self in a bad place, and I should stand in more on my self and my needs, or in other words, respect myself equally to how I want to respect them.

The key with those things, is really listening to your own gut(as probably in most things in life), but of course sometimes, that has to be learned the hard way.
Im taking a break from psychdelics, and getting my mind off them for some time.
Theres some integration to be done, before I feel its wise to go back...

 

[ultraviolence]

I've been using psychedelics for over 14 years now and I've had this question in my mind many times. Usually it's when I'm tripping too often in a short period of time or if I take a larger dose than I feel I should have in a public setting. On one hard trip, I was at a Tipper show and I ate too much lsd, I worked my way through the tornado and came to the conclusion that I need to make life about the experiences. "You don't need drugs to have a great experience" is the conclusion that I came to and it reminded me of a time before psychedelics, years ago, when I would go to shows for the pure excitement of the experience. I would of course smoke some weed at the shows but I was mainly there to interact with the crowd and listen to the band.

That was last summer, I was tripping 2 times a week for months straight and it got to be too much. Now I am currently back to tripping 3 times a month or so, I get into a rhythm of tripping 3-4 weeks in a row then taking 2-3 weeks off and that seems to work well and gives me time to integrate. I would advise to do yoga and meditation in order to get more in tune with your inner voice while sober and then listen to that voice about how often is ok for YOU to trip.

 

[caputo]

Ultraviolence, when you say that "it got to be too much," what do you mean by that? Did your sober mind act differently? How did it bleed into nontripping states?

 

[ultraviolence]

Too much meant that I wasn't taking the time to integrate the trips and they ended up confusing me rather than guiding me. I feel like I currently live with one foot in this reality and the other in the psychedelic world, its kind of tricky but I'm getting the hang of it. My main focus in tripping is to bring back things that will positively affect my sober state.

 

[Cazman043]

Too much meant that I wasn't taking the time to integrate the trips and they ended up confusing me rather than guiding me. I feel like I currently live with one foot in this reality and the other in the psychedelic world, its kind of tricky but I'm getting the hang of it. My main focus in tripping is to bring back things that will positively affect my sober state.

Yeah i know this feeling, i have a friend who got very concerned with this sensation, went to a psychologist and was diagnosed with Depersonalisation and derealisation, resulting in anxiety, name for everything haha.
Meditation/Yoga is great to help integrate and maintain an equanimity amongst feeling fairly alien to this world due to the amount of mind altering experiences you're having.
Psychedelics and the mind are like a rubber band, you can keep stretching and stretching the band until it snaps, you can stretch it so far out that when it comes back it isn't back to its original state, or you can stretch it and then let it go back into its original state, choose wisely (I do add, Terrence Mckenna was many times told by people that he'd "gone too far" in which he would reply "To far from what") so as long as you aren't being driven by fear due to the state you've entered, and can remain balanced, equanimous and content with your current moment perception, you're all sweet

Much Love ~~MC~~

 

[ultraviolence]

Yeah i know this feeling, i have a friend who got very concerned with this sensation, went to a psychologist and was diagnosed with Depersonalisation and derealisation, resulting in anxiety, name for everything haha.
Meditation/Yoga is great to help integrate and maintain an equanimity amongst feeling fairly alien to this world due to the amount of mind altering experiences you're having.
Psychedelics and the mind are like a rubber band, you can keep stretching and stretching the band until it snaps, you can stretch it so far out that when it comes back it isn't back to its original state, or you can stretch it and then let it go back into its original state, choose wisely (I do add, Terrence Mckenna was many times told by people that he'd "gone too far" in which he would reply "To far from what") so as long as you aren't being driven by fear due to the state you've entered, and can remain balanced, equanimous and content with your current moment perception, you're all sweet

Much Love ~~MC~~

I seem to have a pretty high mental tolerance when it comes to psychedelic experiences, I try to push my mental boundaries with each trip and it has been working out well so far. I have pushed my limits further than ever in the past year, and in return, I have had amazing personal growth. I have a respect for psychedelics more than a fear of them, but only because I've had some terrifying trips.
Thanks for all the input!

 

[Psilociraptor]

While I disagree on frequency I agree on intent. Part of the reason I just signed up on this forum is because a change of attitude towards psychedelics. Don't get me wrong, I've always held them in a "spiritual" and growth-oriented light. But for the past few years I've really got caught up in the game of eating psychedelics with great expectations and not taking the time to really sit down and set intentions. Rather than getting familiar with a handful of substances and defining a ritual I've been chasing the endless barrage of new RC's, dosing whimsically on my off days, etc. This often lead to lackluster experiences, not because of the chemical but because it is really hard to hit your target when you keep changing the game. And in the end, half of them would take me to the same place if i allowed them to. Ironically it was an RC, 4-aco-met , that made me desire less promiscuity and seek a more meaningful relationship with a handful of these substances. Of the past few years i can only recall a handful of truly meaningful trips, yet a lot where I sat watching the walls melt wondering where the magic had gone. So part of my plan here is to better explore the culture and use of traditional entheogens, not because I feel they are intrinsically better, but because of a need for connection to ritual. To make every trip a growing experience. As far as frequency, i think this varies. I generally don't trip more than once a month at the most but there are times in my life where I feel some back to back trips would actually be really helpful in advancing my mental health by allowing me to approach each trip with fresh perspective. I'm not sure where you got that they only trip once every three months in the amazon. There are many different rituals and cultures revolving around psychedelics down there and while I don't know them all it is not particularly uncommon for some of them to take ayahuasca back to back nights. Perhaps this is a more modern phenomena due to tourism and the need to condense the rituals. I would love to know more on that. But in either case, i think as long as you have healthy intentions frequency will naturally fluctuate with your needs. Sometimes you need to dive deep and that requires a journey, followed by a short time of integration, followed by another journey while things are fresh. But eventually, yes, it is important to actually apply these experiences and take weeks/months to actually integrate any positive perspective into daily life goals.