How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores
technologynetworks.com
technologynetworks.com
Another aspect of this for mental health is that it is possible to experience the common "machine elves" that people encounter. I am as skeptical as it gets but I'm really not sure if I've encountered beings from some other dimension or if my own mind is capable of the weird, sometimes horrifying, always profound shit that I've seen. The first Ayahuasca trip I went on I immediately had intense hallucinations of the feminine spirits. They put out their hands and invited me to walk with them. As we were walking down some kind of hall I reminded myself that these beings were easily a creation of my mind, that we do this kind of thing all the time in our sleep. As I was entertaining this thought one of them violently turned around and yelled "NO". The other being, in a sad voice I'll never forget, asked me why I felt the need to reduce and explain away the experience. I think about this often.
I believe psychedelics make it easier to become religious, because they teach you how to have faith in a higher power than your conscious self. I now have a deeper trust in the universe, which is another word for God, which is another word for my subconscious.
Realizing that I’m dreaming, I ask questions and to my surprise their answers and reactions are not of my doing. I ask in the manner of only listening immediately (clear minded with no thinking) so as to not influence their response. The brain is truly mysterious.
I wonder if hidden personas are created and stored and revealed in our dreams?
Or that our brain is connected to a plane that actually exists outside of our reality.
Maybe one day I’ll experience what you have.
Thanks for sharing.
IFS, DMT, and other experiences can surface those models to the conscious layer and allow us to introspect them more directly.
In that vein I think sympathy is our intelligent/conscious level modeling of other people's emotional states, which is a higher level process that happens with conscious awareness. In some ways I think sympathy is actually harder, and I respect it more because it shows conscious effort put into modeling experiences you haven't already had / can't intuitively relate to without effort.
The way I see it dreams are unconcious imagination running wild. Lucid dreaming is your lucid brain being put in reality created by your unconscious mind, so there is no real way for the lucid part to "know" the info beforehand, just like there is no way to predict what you will dream about this night
Almost every time Ive done DMT Ive communicated with some kind of voice. I only see them as vague shapes though if i even see them. Actually they almost always looks like Egyptian gods. Bird like faces, but its always floating lines. Except one time, i saw an owl, it was 2d and didn't communicate with me.
But based on the way people describe their trips, idk if I need to do more or something and I never got the real and full experience. Ive taken between 25-35mg.
That entity actually asked you a very valid question. Why do you need to explain it away? Is it because of fear that it might be real? Why would you be afraid of that?
They don't fire completely random neurons. All drugs have some consistent(ish) effects. Among other things MDMA is more likely to activate empathy-related mechanisms, (some) cannabis is more likely to activate tiredness-related mechanisms and DMT is more likely to affect entity recognition and related mechanisms.
>That entity actually asked you a very valid question. Why do you need to explain it away?
Because generally it's a good habit to have true beliefs. In this case asking yourself might've been better after the experience but the habit itself is good to have and deluding yourself even after the fact is bad.
I was skeptical in the beginning but it's a different reality. Just because we can't normally see them doesn't mean they don't exist.
I don't see spirits most times I drink, but I once had a gecko-like plant spirit climbing all over me... I often see beautiful patterns and landscapes.
It's an amazing medicine. It cured my depression and my daily panic attacks. It wasn't easy, and I even packed my bags a few times to leave, but if it wasn't for ayahuasca I wouldn't be alive.
“We are completely unaware of the magical world of the shaman. It is quite simply stranger than we can suppose.“
— Terrence McKennaIn general, we define existence in context of consistence of stimulus with everyday experience, including other people's reports of experience. Dreams are very rarely consistent with each other, so we know they're dreams. But imagine if every time you went to sleep, you woke up in a "dreamworld" with all the experience sequentially consistent with your previous dreams. How would you know that the "dream" is the dream, and that the real world is the real world?
I'm not saying that hallucinations are real - I strongly believe the opposite. But I can see such how powerful and consistent hallucinations could make the person believe in their existence, especially if combined with low life satisfaction/self-esteem and strong desire to feel special in some sort of way, to know something that the "unenlightened" don't, or to be a part of something. It's a similar mechanism to one that makes people join religions - psychedelic experiences have a lot in common with religious experiences. One could also hypothesize that religion was invented when humans found psychedelics, and couldn't explain their effects.
This assumes that the sober state of mind takes precedence over the altered state of mind. But there's no evidence that the one is superior to the other.
One could equally claim that things that one experiences when sober does not exist, and only things that one experiences while altered does.
Which is the more real? There's no "objective" standpoint one could take to evaluate the two and compare them to the "real real" to judge which is closer.
First, define "superior".
Second, if you have 20 sober people looking at thing and reporting it looks the same, then you drug them and every one of them reports someone else, I'm giving that to the "sober mind", even when some tiny minority might be reporting in "sober" state what others would classify as "drugged"
Ask people in a different state of mind and they can give you plenty of other criteria... such as that what they are experiencing is to them "more real than real", or that they're able to commune with their god in that state while they're unable to in a sober state, or that they're able to communicate with their dead relatives in the altered state, or that it's more spiritual, etc...
Why should some sober people's consensus trump the criteria of people in altered states of consciousness?
Because hallucinating people usually aren't in consensus about what is real, while sober people are. Consensus is the only criteria for reality we have, don't we?
Not saying that consensus makes it a reality, but it's the best indicator of whatever we're calling reality.
Why would they be hallucinating? Most people don't drink ayahuasca.
But it's still the best indicator we have. And consensus is measured by numbers, so Amazon rainforest guys aren't really more meaningful than flat earthers, alien abductees and scientologists. Of course, number is only a shorthand - in the age of modern science, all knowledge about reality must fit into the general framework that explains and predicts reality in order to be worthy of being considered true, regardless of how many people believe it. But that boils down to consistency again.
I believe the fact that people cannot drive a car properly while hallucinating seems to be a bit of evidence of "superiority" of the sober mind over the intoxicated, at least in the real world.
Why not pick love making, or singing, appreciating or making music, laughing, communing with spirits or gods, feeling empathy for others, or making art?
Sure, all those things are pleasant to people, but that doesn't have anything to do with them being "real". When you watch a good movie, the scenes feel real, but they are very much not.
Singing/making music is just making random sounds until they sound good. No biggie.
Speaking to god is just saying whatever comes out of your mind until you feel better. No biggie.
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Everything can be made to sound silly when you oversimplify it. Such arguments don't have anything to do with activity "being real" at all.
Color me dubious.
Believe it or not, most people who toy with DMT are aware of what hallucinations are, and wouldn't conflate them with reality without a good reason. You're being quite reductive and inconsiderate of your audience - this isn't /r/trees.
One time, a girl I know came crying because she had been chased by duendes. The men went out in the forest to blow tobacco smoke to keep them away.
I am personally very skeptical of the "realness" of anything that happens during a hallucination.
Felt very spiritual and almost religious at the end, interesting to experience as an agnostic (but this changed nothing, in fact just reinforced this opinion).
It just tells us how little we understand our brains, how creative it gets when receptors who provided 100% feed all life give suddenly only a garbled mess. And maybe that all of us have inside some innate desire for good, beauty, connection with all living, nature, universe. I mean, isn't that enough to marvel? Especially when such experiences often permanently change participants for the better.
Which is all fine but none of this needs aliens from other dimensions to explain. But in same vein some folks see conspiracies everywhere, ufos flying and monitoring us etc. while rest of us just see world as usual go by.
Is it a hallucination, though? That's an open question in the scientific study of these substances and experiences.
I sincerely doubt that there are scientists questioning whether clockwork elves are real or not.
Hallucinations are considered hallucinations because they are seen only by the person who ingested the hallucinogens, and none of the other people who might be present but didn't ingest the hallucinogens. Consistence is crucial to the very definition of reality - hallucinations are not consistent, therefore they aren't real.
Or that's just the way I see it.
I agree.
However, I think skepticism should not stop at "we can't know nothing". Once we've established that, the purpose of skepticism is to figure out which reality has a higher probability to be true. In which case, the sober reality has the advantage of being the first (we are born sober and intoxicate ourselves later) and always being there at the end of every trip. Trips are relatively short compared to our sober state.
Of course, an individual might be intoxicated more than he is sober, in which case, from his perspective, sober life wouldn't be "real". But that might also be the case for alien lifeforms that perceive the world with something other than 5 human senses.
Our world only exists in our minds, but our ability to communicate with others allows us to describe the world to them and hear their descriptions, which gives us a lot of confirmation about reality - which we define to be same for everyone.
And indeed, if I had a dream recurring with 100% regularity and consistency, I'd be very freaked out and question which reality is reality :)
If you interpret "realness" as do they exist in the real world, then of course no.
But perhaps the subconscious mind is manifesting these "entities" so that some communication with it is possible. In that sense they are a real part of you, and you could perhaps gleam benefits from such an interaction.
If there truly are beings of other advanced "planes", and they are communicating, why are they only doing it in vague ways that mimic dreams? And why is that information never something novel? If they're beings more advanced than us then we should be able to ask and get answers.
Same problem with ghosts. If there is evidence for their existence, then we can collect that. But every time the evidence is never there when it's no longer he said/she said. Even if ghosts were real and sentient they have to mess up eventually.
Sounds a lot like a limited intelligence human mind undergoing a bombardment of chemicals that change how the senses input/output information.
I would say: why not? I've never done Ayahuasca or taken drugs to hallucinate, so I have no idea about what people experience, but if what they experience is not only a product of their mind, why would we be so surprised of the hidden structure of the universe (if any)? We literally know very little about everything, so "our way" is probably not the "only way".
Some people can forgive themselves or their parents on psychedelics, can completely come out a different person, can have their cripplingly severe depression cured..
Can these be fairly described as "hallucinations"? A better word is needed.
And here is why it is one of the most profound things in your life. Not saying that ayahuesca and other psychedelics do not provide you with a different outlook on life, but by sacralizing this ritual, making your life focused on it and therefore massively overemphasising its importance.
You could have the exact same feelings with LSD if you hyped yourself up for months and the whole thing was a ritual with scientists disguised as aliens from outer space.
This has been shown in research time and time again.
In all of the studied cases the things that were told by the "machine elves" was either something that got verified as false/made up or something the user already knew.
It was something I read many years ago. Didn't find it from a quick search now.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th...
I wonder if the variability in experience isn't partially because it is a plant concoction allowing some substitutes:
> Ayahuasca[1] is commonly made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, the Psychotria viridis shrub or a substitute, and other ingredients including Justicia pectoralis,[5] one of the Brugmansia (especially Brugmansia insignis and Brugmansia versicolor, or a hybrid breed) or Datura species,[6] and mapacho (Nicotiana rustica).
It seems to me that it would be hard to get a repeatable dosage and combination of the active ingredients this way.
Not only that, different ayahuasca "shamen" tend to have different recipes for making it. There are no standardized dosages and no quality control beyond what the individual brewing it chooses (or not) to do.
All arguments made about god like things are true here too.
Things like: why would anyone care about us humans specifically.
Why would they be 'elves'.
Plenty of 'normal' people believe in very stupid things like loch Ness etc.
We know no one who just changed physical laws.
Also you do sound like you prepare yourself, guess who aligns himself to those types of stories? Exactly you do.
You prepare yourself by traveling there and doing it with some old dude in some jungle.
You could just do Aya in your lifing room tbh.
I personally would try to avoid assuming this is more than it is. This might become a dangerous brain and reality killing self journey instead of something crazy to experience.
For me personally LSD told me not that there is something else out there but allowed me to feel and realize how fragile my brain can be. It helps me to have more empathy for brain illnesses.
It also stabiled my life by knowing the normal boring world is just what it is: real. I still need to work and earn money and fees myself even after a trip etc.
If set and setting are so important, what does that say about it being an aid for negative ailments like anxiety and depression.
It, like a lot of psychedelica, sound like a great thing for people who are otherwise in great emotional shape, and want to find themselves or take it to the next level.
I personally broke my brain with irresponsible use of psychedelics. Fortunately modern medication enables me to live a normal life, but I can’t help but feel that this study should be mentioning these risks. It’s important to understand responsible patterns of use: mostly spacing out your large-dose trips with 3 months in between each. A history of these mental illnesses in your family is also a strong indication to stay away from these drugs (psychedelics).
1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881115596156
Ignoramuses in the medical community will occasionally go as far as to say “take these warnings with a grain of salt” trying to deem them coincidences. Any seasoned hippy (and many young people who frequent festivals and/or are experienced with the scene) will tell you to be careful. As the source I linked indicates, there is hard evidence behind the seasoned-hippy-wisdom.
Most research these days is focused on the benefits of these drugs (and rightfully so; it’s promising research). That being said, there are risks associated with their use that are very different (and potentially more serious) than something like cannabis or alcohol.
fast talking man at end of commercial: “dont take if you’re bipolar/schizo/pregnant/have suicidal ideations or if anyone in your family has had this either” tada!
> The researchers analyzed data from an online Global Ayahuasca Survey that ran from 2017–2019, recruiting 10,836 respondents from over 50 countries.
"requiring medical attention" includes any and all "felt bad, called ambulance or doc" scenarios
> Approximately 2.3% of the participants reported that they required medical attention for any adverse effects. “These results are consistent with previous studies, with regular users reporting that most adverse physical effects seem to not be serious and do not compromise health,” Perkins and colleagues explain.
and the paragraph right before states that nausea and headaches and drowsiness are expected and consistent with previous studies.
So what exactly is the message of extracting just this number, without that context?
Meaning, if you know the mountain and your skills well and are prepared (or have a good guide leading the way and the preparations), it will likely be a great experience. But not necessarily a "nice" experience and even seasoned climbers have gone missing on a bad day.
So framing any drug trips as safe, like the current hype does way too much, is of course dangerous and missleading.
I do recommend both, though, but you have to be prepared and you have to be in good condition.
I never touched it, am very happy about it, and hope my kids stay far away from it.
I know people who did all kinds of drugs, and nothing positive ever came out of that. Sorry that's just my opinion.
On a more serious note, some drugs do much more good than harm. Some psychedelics have extremely good results when treating hard psychiatric patients with conditions our modern medicine has absolutely 0 cure for. I mean way beyond anything current pharma industry can produce, much less side effects. Its abhorrent and primitive medieval mindset to ban such treatments to those whose lives are completely destroyed by their conditions, just because you were brought up in some primitive society that scaremongered you/your parents into clear falsehoods and lies (ie nixon ban on drugs when demonizing hippies and Mexican immigrants in 60s, which through mandatory UN charts was pushed to the rest of the world even to places like India, where cannabis is a sacred plant of god Shiva).
I'm 43 and never had a cigarette in my mouth, and very happy that I don't have to sit in that disgusting smell in cafes anymore. Do I drink alcohol? Yes. Would I mind if my kids don't drink alcohol? No. I saw alcohol destroy families.
And your statement that somehow I and my kids would be curiosities in society just because we stay away from that shit makes you look really stupid.
Check out "Jack Herer's First Time High"[1]. (If you're curious, there are more details in the first 12 minutes of this bio on him:[2])
Also see what MDMA did for a man with Aspergers: [3]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYwedCQtW7s
Sorry to disappoint, but I also don't have Aspergers.
And the person with Aspergers is again just simply describing experiences which are open to anyone... you don't have to have Apergers to benefit from such experiences, though of course they're not guaranteed to anyone.. nothing in life is, and different people experience these substances differently. Still, I found it interesting. Sorry you did not.
How do you define drug? You admit drinking alcohol which as you said destroys families, and a direct correlation has been shown between alcohol consumption and cancer. You cannot use a blanket statement "I don't use drug" without defining what a drug is. If your definition is what's legal, remember that alcohol was illegal in the US at some point and that both tobacco and weed are legal today.
When you say "I don't need them", do you drink coffee daily?? Do you eat pastries? If yes, why, given that they have mostly negative effect on health (very high calories, low fiber, low nutritient content) and that we don't need them?
It's great to establish hygiene rules based on fact, but reconsider judging others' rules without analysing them properly (hallucinogen are typically not addictive and don't have negative health effects when used in moderate quantities) and your own choices of rules which are somewhat arbitrary (you drink alcohol which is addictive and has negative effect even in small quatities).
The fact that you don't distinguish between categories of drugs is, no offence, a major indicator of ignorance in the subject matter. Hallucinogens are not stimulants are not depressants are not dissociatives are not alcohol.
If you mean "illegal drugs", do you really think that the objective, scientific threshold between harmful and harmless is legality?
You are free to do whatever you want, it's your body. But perhaps learn more about something you don't know anything about before passing judgement.
I'm not discussing that when you have an illness or mental problem that drugs might help (or which drugs). But just take it because somehow it would "enhance" your life... still need to see proof of that. Most of the "enhancement" that I saw went to other direction.
It’s highly unlikely that you’ve never taken psychoactive substances—caffeine, for example, is found naturally in enough foods that it’s hard to avoid. Many spices produce psychoactive effects—e.g. vanilla, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, etc. I suspect it’s not your opinion that these are all bad as well.
Your kids at some point will be exposed to some of these things, and if “drugs are bad” is what you’re teaching them then they will understand, as we do, that your opinion on this subject really isn’t helpful.
That's great news for you, because now you don't have to take any of the other drugs if you think these things are the same :P.
> if “drugs are bad” is what you’re teaching them
No, I just show them the people who smoke, and ask them if they want to be like them.
What happens when they see all the rich and famous people on TV who also smoke and sing/rap about smoking? What makes you so sure they won't want to be like them?
Smoking is mainly about trying to look cool, which in the end makes you look stupid. And once you see that, you cannot unsee it. My kids already see it.
And looking at the people that smoke, just confirms the theory.
I thought you were talking about weed. Smoking cigarettes is a whole other story.
Regardless, the "people smoke to look cool" perspective is very limited. There are multitude of reasons why people do anything, including smoke, and simplifying them to a single reason that's the easiest to attack might work on small children, but will wear out as they get older.
But I'm not here to give you parenting advice. You seem to be very strong in your beliefs, while having a condescending attitude towards the people who use drugs. I don't appreciate the condescending attitude, but I doubt I can do anything about that just by writing words on the internet.
So farewell, enjoy your sobriety.
So people that have been smoking for years, i.e. addicts (I am an ex nicotine addict), only do it because it looks cool? Geez, alright.
Must be nice up on that ivory tower of ignorance, and again, I mean it with no disrespect but in the purest sense of the word: you don't know what you're talking about, yet you think you're smarter than anybody else in the room because you had the fortune to live a sheltered life of strong preconceptions about the world.
Hope you enjoy the vista from up there.
And in some cases that boost to creativity might've earned them a lot of money.
But yeah, I'd wager in vast majority of cases the outcome is neutral at best
It’s not something I take often, but I can’t imagine living anywhere as close to as fulfilling a life without psychedelics.
I know plenty of people who take/took them very seriously. None of them are particularly wise, although quite a few believe they are and will try to convince you of their profundity. But it usually boils down to banal platitudes and "psychedelic gibberish".
I know old people who have run businesses, fought fires and been through wars and poverty. They possess wisdom that is meaningful and actionable.
None of these drug-taking people have gone on to really make a meaningful impact in the human realm compared to the people I know who were focused on diligent hard work. Those people became doctors, engineers, musicians or artists. The psychedelic takers often partake in art, but it's always the same derivative alex grey type stuff.
DNA was discovered on LSD, among countless other major works in math, science, literature, CS, and other fields.
Just Google "things discovered on drugs" or "famous/accomplished people that took drugs", the list is loooong.
Countless artists, writers and musicians were influenced by psychedelics. It's not hard to make an argument that the music most people listen to and love today would not exist without the influence of psychedelics.
The Beatles are just one super famous example, where the influence of psychedelics on their music is super obvious and the tremendous influence of The Beatles is undeniable, but the same could be said of many if not most 60's/70's musicians, which in turn had huge influence on what followed, not to mention the obvious influence of psychedelics on psytrance and dance/club music in general.
Something else to consider is that from the time psychedelics were outlawed until very recently admitting psychedelic use was taboo, and so many psychedelic users were in the closet.
These are more open times, so some people are admitting it now, but many are still in the closet because coming out as a psychedelic user could still negatively impact your job prospects, the way society in general views you, and perhaps your relationships with people you care about.
So there are probably way more psychedelic users out there than most people realize, and their accomplishments when taken as a whole are very significant.
How much of such accomplishments were due to the influence of psychedelics? We don't have enough information to say for certain, but there have been studies on the effects of psychedelics on creativity[1][2][3] which show a positive effect. That's not to mention the well demonstrated potential of psychedelics to help with depression, the alleviation of which could also help users to create and contribute to society.
[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35105186/
[2] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2723891/
[3] - https://www.amazon.com/LSD-Spirituality-Creative-Process-Gro...
When I was a teenager, I heard the claim and believed it. All these musicians and artists I looked up to did psychedelics! So I took psychedelics! What I came to find, however, was that all of those artists had some sort of classical training early in life and a decade of working hard touring/painting and building their professional practice. The drugs came after, not before.
I'll grant that stimulants may have made positive contributions. Oh how I love/hate stimulants.
The Beatles were highly skilled musicians before taking drugs, but it seems reasonable that attempting to recreate the psychedelic experience on tape pushed them towards new sounds and techniques that they wouldn’t have otherwise tried.
There is also no control, can't exactly tell if that was LSD that made someone discover something or that they just thought that it did. Hell, for all we know drug usage might've delayed the discovery.
Or it might've been as simple as "getting high together brought right people together at right time".
Not sure about “seeking” it though - it’s mostly spontaneous. You get sick and purge.
Its called La Purga for a reason though, prior to vomiting, because you are starting to trip, you get into a negative thought spiral, this builds and builds and you feel vile.
Then all of a sudden - blam. Kidney coming through your nose level spew.... along with all of the negative thoughts.
Despite feeling like my eyes had popped out - I started doing cartwheels - I felt so light.
Worth experiencing once - better ways to do it than Ayahuasca though after that IMO
This is why I like dissociatives more, they don't artificially inflate the sense of meaningfulness and don't tank your working memory so you can explore deeper and wider with more skepticism during the trip. If only MXE still existed...
Disassociatives like Ketamine are totally different, in some ways more profound (and the shorter time of action is a big draw) but I cant say I "Love" them but finishing a night on them is an experience everyone should try if they are interested in exploring their mind and ego-death.
You don't get black eyes either.
I think both of these compounds raise your blood pressure a lot. That’s not good for a lot of existing conditions.
But it's no more a "variant of DMT" than Psilocin (4-HO-DMT), or more exotic ones like 4-ACO-DMT
Taking the tea in the absence of this is a completely different experience.
Having a capable maestro in the room is like having a doctor in the ER - vs having only the patients getting high on whatever they find.
In western medicine at least there are requirements of strictly documented education and training at accredited schools, ethical standards and review boards, and professional, monetary and criminal penalties for misconduct. Even then scammers, incompetent, and malevolent doctors slip through the cracks.
There's virtually no accreditation, professional standards or penalties for misconduct in the underground shaman scene, where anyone can hang up a shingle claiming they are a shaman with a long lineage, and where consumers tend to be pretty gullible and naive, and have little to no way of verifying if some self-styled shaman's claims are credible.
This is not an area of purely academic concern either, as some self-styled shamen have raped and tortured people, for starters.. and it's not uncommon for a shaman to fly in and do a one day ceremony then disappear, leaving very vulnerable people who've just been through a profound, possibly life-changing experience with absolutely no support.
Start your relationship with this practice 15-20 years ago when the ratio was much better, spend time in the Amazon close to the roots of the lineage and build distinctions and understanding.
Second best thing is to know someone who did, and has remained connected through ongoing practice and dietas.
I wish there was a fast and reliable way but there’s so much money to be made and so little understanding that yes, this is a serious issue.
One more thing regarding the article - there’s no “one” ayahuasca tea. Every brew varies - sometimes even when made by the same people in the same place. And, the clear liquid in the article photo is definitely not aya :)
If you're listing those two together you better also list 5-MEO-DiPT, 5-MEO-DALT, 5-MEO-AMT, 4-HO-DMT, 4-HO-MET, 4-HO-MIPT, etc. there are many many in the tryptamine family with fundamentally different subjective experiences.
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Tryptamine_(compound) https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Substituted_tryptamines
I had a couple bad trips. It felt like living in hell for a literal eternity. It's almost impossible to describe the agony that the human mind is capable of experiencing. It's absurd how much suffering the human mind can experience.
The main message I got out of those experiences was that everything I learned in hell could have been learned in other, safer, ways.
“that experience doesn’t count! that person should have known they have, or their family has, a history of schizophrenia!”
“that experience also doesn’t count, you should have known to use it in a familiar place around people you are comfortable with!”
I dislike how legalization crowds often come up with absurd arguments just to make their “side” look harmless, as opposed to “hey, we really need to research this to isolate its redeeming benefits if any, in reproducible peer reviewed studies where side effects are more than anecdotes”
It can be so bad that we never want to try it again. It's all apart of the journey and the experiment.
I've had a couple bad trips, and I'm glad I had them. They created clear fear, paranoia and terror that I'll always remember. It caused me to appreciate the 'real' world a lot more.
I'm not glad I had them. The pain wasn't worth it. The lessons I learned could have been learned in different (safer) ways.
The worst nights of alcohol poisoning, vomiting, and multi day hangovers aren't even a tiny fraction of the suffering I felt on psychedelics.
"Take it easy duuude, but take it!" - Terence McKenna
All subjective, and the lines become fuzzy.
Hope you're doing okay. That anxiety is something that's almost impossible for people to understand if they haven't experienced it.
I've never really put this experience in to words before, reading it back maybe it's time for me to try something other than waiting for it to burn itself out.
God I know exactly what you mean. There's this feeling that surfaces during the trip that's so familiar and so real and you realize it's always there, but hiding under the surface. And now that you've seen it, you can never quite fully ignore it again.
> maybe it's time for me to try something other than waiting for it to burn itself out.
It hasn't burnt itself out for me either. I don't think it ever will. But therapy has helped, as has leaning into life, and getting lost in it a bit.
What a wonderful therapeutic substance, it just doesn't fix everything on its own but requires further work, paving the path for it.
However, 30 years later I have understood it and am very full and compete due to this process.
I think what is scary is that it takes us from unknowing children into fearful adults without the skills to self reflect in a way that we can heal ourselves.
High quality therapy with a sound and grounded therapist really helped me. Beyond words actually.
It is easy to blame the trip but it isn’t the trip. We can alter ourselves, or the way we react to things.
Hope you make some progress.
Have you looked into Internal Family Systems? Your experience seems to match pretty closely to the idea of protectors and exiles in IFS. I think meditation sometimes bypasses protectors, which can result in extreme pain.
It’s the first time I saw someone differentiating different types of meditation and it seems to match your experience.
Basically, we can either exercise and build up our focus to our internal state and bodily sensations OR do the same but focusing externally.
The interesting thing is that some people are biased to one or another, and if you have issues like anxiety then you should probably practice meditation to strengthen your focus and attention less on your body and more externally.
Really recommend the whole EP, I think you’ll find particularly interesting given your story.
I get super anxious about doing anything I haven't done in a while, but falling off the bike solves the fear of falling off the bike real fast. For me, at least
If it’s any solace, I’ve come to enjoy this aspect of my personality. My constant worrying annoys my wife, but I’ve come to accept that this is how I think, and that has given me solace. I’m not sure I would change it if I could now.
Do you feel like set and setting or your previous mental state going into the trip caused the bad trip?
I experienced the worst pain I could ever imagine, felt my consciousness stretched to fill the infinity of space, and was then convinced this was my eternal state, with no possibility of escape.
> Do you feel like set and setting or your previous mental state going into the trip caused the bad trip?
It did. Set and setting is important. But it's almost impossible to get the ideal set and setting that precludes any possibility of a bad trip. Especially because psychedelics often appeal to those already suffering. It's the catch 22 of people suffering being told that psychedelics might help them. But how do you gain an ideal set and setting to take psychedelics until you gain the internal peace you want so badly that led you to psychedelics in the first place?
I suspect a lot of these bad trip reports and reports of adverse consequences long afterwards are by people who tripped recreationally, in poor settings, with little preparation, and little if any support during the trip, and no integration afterwards.
If you're reading this and thinking about it - don't do it if you're uneasy in any way. I've had awesome experiences taking boatloads of shrooms but it was only after I figured out settings I knew were 100% safe (caretaker, extensive prep beforehand reading online and had friends who had done it that talked me through details).
I believe these drugs will save us all someday but we can't just shove everyone into the pool hoping they figure out how to swim.
Maybe its because whatever the distortion is, I inevitably start trying to figure out how it works, and the whole trip turns into scientific self experimentation. Perhaps a normal person would be scared seeing a friends face morph into a demonic figure, but I just find myself asking "why his face and not everyone's face?" and then proceed to systematically look at faces for what feels like hours. Because I'm actively trying to figure out the trick, I'm never losing sight of the fact that it is indeed a trick. And thus I never loose sight of the fact that my friend isn't literally morphing into a demon and none of this can actually hurt me. So I'm never for real scared.
On some drugs, dosages, and settings, you can lose all concept of what a "face" is. Or even what "is" is. All I knew was pain, suffering, torment, spinning, and eternity.
Maybe it is possible to sidestep the badness you experienced by trying to focus on scientific self experimentation like I end up doing. Maybe that's just not possible for you for neuro-physical reasons. If you ever decide to trip again, try it and let us know if it works.
Seems you don't hang out on Psychonautwiki, r/researchchemicals, MAPS.org, or any of the highly scientific drug communities going about deliberate, skeptical research in the space.
Just because you don't look for them doesn't mean they aren't there. If your only experience is hanging out with fried deadhead hippies I can see how you might reach this conclusion, but the space is broad and deep and many other types of people approach and research it.
Many of these highly respected researchers are psychedelic advocates.
Not only that, it's not uncommon to forget that you've even taken anything, and these experiences are often felt as "more real than real".
This is why it's important to do to have an experienced person you like and trust there with you. They can remind you that you are under the influence, comfort you if you need it, and keep you safe.
basically, if you dont end up in hospital or break out of the trip with benzos or similar, then you are going to turn that bad trip into something less bad to good was what i was trying to get at.
This sounds like a defense mechanism on a dose low enough that your mind can still defend itself like that. It's possible to take such a strong dose of psychedelics that they blow through any such defense mechanisms.
Unfortunately, such doses sometimes lead to amnesia afterwards, as the mind may still try to defend itself from even the memory of it.
This is yet another reason to do this under the guidance of a trained therapist, who can prepare you for the experience, help you to engage with the experience instead of trying to talk yourself out of it, and help you integrate it afterwards.
Why are you rationalizing this? How are you so sure that there really aren't people who simply don't get major distortions to their emotional state, and that there isn't anything wrong with them?
Just like extreme sports each painful experience also has a non-zero risk of deterring you forever and no longer seeming worth it. Whether you're willing to keep rolling the dice is up to how much you gain from each experience and how you integrate it.
Not for everyone but I don't mind the occasional challenging/painful trip.
There was some thought that something important was waiting for me there, or that doing it again would heal the pain from the previous time.
It didn't heal me, and it was even worse the second time.
I learned way more in my bad trips than in my good ones. The good ones were fun, but pretty superficial. The bad ones forced me to face my shit that I might never had faced if I hadn't done psychedelics.
Going through pain and suffering has also made me a lot more empathetic to the pain and suffering of others. I know what it's like to be disoriented, afraid, and in incredible agony, so when I see someone going through something similar I can relate and have a lot of empathy for them. If I had never gone through something similar, I probably wouldn't.
I was considered traveling from San Francisco to Oregon or Colorado (?) where I think psychedelic mushrooms were legalized and you don't need to "know people" to get them.
I've wanted to try psychedelics for a while, I haven't done them before. Unless Salvia counts.
It's only legal if you don't know -- a thought crime
I am in a conservative EU country and you can legally buy spores and growkits since forever here, nobody cares. You have to find specialized shops because there is not even enough demand.
They're not legalized anywhere in the US. Oregon legalized them for supervised mental health treatment, which is still a far cry from the kind of legalization you're envisioning.
It's basically just decriminalized in a handful of states. Which doesn't mean you're finding shrooms on the shelves of smoke shops and dispensaries next to the whippets cartridges.
https://www.shroomery.org/8461/Which-psilocybin-mushrooms-gr...
Don't want folks getting hurt
Yes, Colorado just passed Prop 122. https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Proposition_122,_Decriminal...
But it's not "legalized" in the way that weed is "legalized". It's "legalized" in that it's no longer an offense to purchase/obtain/possess/use shrooms; but it's still a crime to sell shrooms (except for supervised mental health treatment), so you still need to "know people" to get them.
But how do you know if you've used it in a previous lifetime, without first trying it?