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Comment by corndoge | Hacker News Reader

From personal experience, there are such things as bad trips.

I recently had one of my friends -- a relatively experienced psychedelic user -- dive out of a window because he thought the world was going to end. Among other things this resulted in my friend barely escaping death by hemorrhage (I called emergency services, he was hospitalized), an uncomfortable police encounter, quite a few articles of clothing lost due to being soaked in blood, and some unsavory legal consequences for my friend. Not to mention a rather scarring mental experience for myself.

Set was good, setting was good, substance was known good. I had absolutely no reason to suspect anything going wrong. But it did go wrong.

Even if you know what you are doing and are experienced, it is always possible for bad things to happen. Getting cocky and saying there are no such things as bad trips is an invitation for trouble.

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It is unfortunate that your jurisdiction does not have good samaritan laws.

Yeah I don't mean to sound cocky about psychedelics. I'm anything but. Maybe I should have said bad trips are over exaggerated instead of "there's no such thing".

How much did he take? It sounds like he took too much. Taking a sensible dose should not result in this.

He had prior experience with the same substance at the same dosage. It was a little high but nothing unheard of, certainly not a heroic dose.

I just want to mention that I'm glad he survived, and I hope this doesn't put him off using psychedelics for the rest of his life. I take shrooms regularly, only ever in doses of 1g dried at a time. I would like to take more but I am aware that it is possible to lose control, and I am very cautious of this.

> I hope this doesn't put him off using psychedelics for the rest of his life

I think a lot of people could benefit deeply from responsibly using psychedelics, but they're not always the answer. They're powerful tools with great potential for good and great potential for harm. When or whether to take psychedelics is a very personal decision; our psychological landscapes can be very difficult to map out even from the inside. Part of being responsible about psychedelics is not making blind judgments of what other people should do with their minds.

Pretty scary. It reminds me of the girl who went to Amsterdam on a school trip, took shrooms and jumped off a building, killing herself. It resulted in fresh shrooms being banned for sale there.

Yeah, but the thing is, people (and children) commit suicide all the time, shrooms or not. I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some depression or other tendencies lurking behind such a case..

"Gaelle Caroff's parents blamed their daughter's death in March on hallucinations brought on by the mushrooms, although the teenager had suffered from psychiatric problems in the past."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08...

yeah, reminds of the people who commit suicide after taking anti-depresants because they feel more motivated after taking it, but unfortunately use that motivation to commit suicide because suicide was all they were thinking while depressed (.e.g before letting anti-depressants fully do its thing, which can take months).

Armchair anecdotes. Everyone can and will have a different experience. Even from "safe" doses.

>substance was known good.

Salvia?

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