A mushroom trip can leave you feeling refreshed regardless but if you have a bad trip it may expose you to your deepest and darkest fears and become a terrifying nightmarish experience that weed couldnt induce if you tried.
The horror of a bad a trip didn’t necessarily teach me anything other than to respect mushrooms much more than weed.
I have had friends say the same. There is no comparison of the paranoia from weed vs the absolute horror of a bad trip.
I feel that people who say there is havent really done a lot of either to know the difference.
"At a dosage of 1.6 grams in a therapeutic clinical environment, we might expect 0% of people to experience some extreme fear, for an average of around 1 minute of strong anxiety, and we might expect around ~45% to report a persisting positive increase in mood from this dosage assuming they had first tried 0.8 grams, and then 1.6 grams5"
Via https://tripsafe.org/how-to-take-shrooms/#start-small
Based on studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27578767 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3308357/table/T... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3308357/
Give it time. It can take a decade of reflection to untangle/parse.
I don't know why you are dismissing my experience like that, or why you think that I do not have a lot of experience. Have you ever had a panic attack? Anxiety and paranoia are something I would get consistently from weed. I never felt the same anxiety, and never felt paranoia, on mushrooms. I never had a panic attack from mushrooms. Almost every psychedelic trip I take (between 50-60 so far) has a range of negative aspects, but I am able to better control myself, something that is not the case with marijuana. I have experienced terror on both mushrooms and LSD, and I was able to keep it together and turn it around every time. FWIW, I also prefer to do relatively large doses (3-5 grams mushrooms, 2-7 hits of LSD).
A friend did have a very anxious trip - it's possible. However it was topical for him. An introspection into deep issues of security and control, and probably a too high dose for that occasion in his life, with not much experience. But he's fine after!
The psilocybin family's effect is imo a bit more "fantastically bewildering" than LSD. In a sense like old fairytales are sometimes curiously and bewildering to a child. (Comfortably bewildering!) It's hard to put into words. It's a place of beauty. It can be scary if you're an anxious type (like I am myself) and go in a bit fast. (Haven't had an anxious experience myself though.) BUT it doesn't have to be scary or uncomfortable even if bewildering - and usually isn't except in exceptional cases - and doesn't occur with low starting doses afaik, there are still lasting benefits even if you get anxious (iow it is processing), it passes, and the interesting thing is that you're somehow always fine if you let go. A kind and insightful tripsitter is all the insurance I would need I think.
It's really interesting and really hard to explain. Maybe check out the studies and study protocols. Plenty of stuff on http://maps.org – As an example, I believe it has been shown that psilocybin mushrooms strongly reduce anxiety in terminal cancer patients. In a lasting way. I cannot imagine a more trapped and anxious state than terminal cancer. So even id there is anxiety while under the influence, it seems to mean something.