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Comment by Trasmatta | Hacker News Reader

Bad trips are a real risk with all psychedelics. I don't like the attitude in psychedelic communities that there's "no such thing as a bad trip, only a challenging one".

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.

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I took mushrooms three years ago and immediately gained a pervasive baseline anxiety in my life. Haven't been able to shake it since. Wouldn't recommend if you have any issues with anxiety in your life beforehand.

This is a risk that many psychonauts seem unwilling to accept.

Hope you're doing okay. That anxiety is something that's almost impossible for people to understand if they haven't experienced it.

I'm doing okay. You are right, it's a very vulnerable and almost inevitable feeling, like I've been shown who I "truly" am inside, something that I only accessed directly during that trip, but which exists below the surface all the time. Which obviously cycles heavily back into the anxious feelings.

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.

So it basically allowed you to start the process of reconciliation with oneself, finding balance that was never truly there, being able to work with sore spot that was before hidden too well. You probably felt a bit off before but never went digging and accepted it just as part of you.

What a wonderful therapeutic substance, it just doesn't fix everything on its own but requires further work, paving the path for it.

No, that's not what happened.

I had similar at 16 and took 10 years to process it but it was there for a lot longer.

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.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have some sort of PTSD from a very humbling mushroom trip almost 15 years ago. Never had anxiety attacks before that.

I developed an anxiety condition from extensive periods of deep meditation. In my viewpoint it had been there all along and I had mostly just covered it up with other emotions - but the meditation amplified things a lot, I went through a crisis lasting months about a decade ago. I still get anxiety attacks sometimes and had never had them before. I don’t know if your trip caused something new or just uncovered something that was already there, I think either are possible.

I feel similarly to meditation as I do to psychedelics. I think it has more risks than people want to admit.

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.

I am sorry to hear that. You might find very useful this EP about meditation from Andrew Huberman: https://youtu.be/wTBSGgbIvsY

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.

The alternative is: now that you've found this anxiety you have, you should challenge it, and work on root causing, mitigating, and resolving it.

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

This is a beautiful quote: "falling off the bike solves the fear of falling off the bike real fast". Thanks!

I stumbled onto Huberman some weeks ago. He is a really great podcaster and exceptionally intelligent. I really enjoyed his talk about dopamine and addiction. Highly recommended!

I'd agree with the uncovering sentiment, I had been very good at ignoring and repressing anxieties up to that point. Maybe the trip just permanently ruined that illusion, since then I haven't really been able to handle anxiety well at all.

I mean you went from not having a problem to having a problem. Whether it "was there before" just seems like semantics to me.

I have a similar problem. I did a lot of psychedelics in high school and eventually developed a weird issue with anxiety. I don’t have panic attacks. Rather, I constantly imagine every possible thing that could possibly go wrong in my life and fret about it, even though 99% of the time my worry is unfounded. I’ve spent so many nights waking up at 3am and not sleeping all night because of some obscure, 1/1,000,000 scenario I’ve concocted.

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.

Mine went away in about 1.5 years. Going from a normal person with no worries in the world, to a person having a panic meltdown while shopping for food or driving is not something I wish on anyone. It's hard to verbalize/articulate the experience.

I'm not trying to dismiss your experience here, in fact I'm sure its all accurate, but I must make the curious observation that I don't seem to get the distortion of emotional state so many others seem to have on psychedelics (be it positive or negative). I get all the other distortions. Time is skewed, vision gets geometric patterns, stream of consciousness becomes more of an unnavigable white water rapids of consciousness etc. But the whole experience is mostly orthogonal to good or bad or scared or euphoric or any other emotion you can list.

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.

> 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

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.

I'm not denying that its possible to lose all concept of a "face" or even know what "is" is and to only be left with pain, suffering, spinning and eternity. On the contrary, I find it to be an immensely scientifically valuable observation that you lost all concept of a face, didn't know what "is" is and only knew pain, suffering, spinning and eternity. Just knowing that you end up with that experience and other people do not tells us something insightful about which sorts of brain function are universally hard wired and which parts can differ from person to person.

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.

This is an example what I dislike about proponents of psychedelics. The condescending tone and appeals to "science" when a scientific method is nowhere to be found.

"nowhere to be found"

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.

Not to mention Johns Hopkins and many other prestigious research universities which are studying psychedelics.

Many of these highly respected researchers are psychedelic advocates.

"you can lose all concept of what a "face" is. Or even what "is" is"

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.

I too feel quite similar. I have never had any experience approach bad. The experience just... Is

The experience isn't bad until it is. And then the bell can't be unrung.

yes but if u stick long enough, a bad trip can turn into a good trip. just some bit flips and bang u are out into hyperspace again.

There's no guarantee of this.

but there is also no guarantee of every trip being your kind of horrible experience either (i do respect your experience though and its a good warning you are giving people that just blindly waltz into it). i've had my share of horror trips and some totally life changingly awesome trips too.

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.

"I don't seem to get the distortion of emotional state so many others seem to have on psychedelics (be it positive or negative). I get all the other distortions. ... I inevitably start trying to figure out how it works, and the whole trip turns into scientific self experimentation."

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.

This reads like the psychedelic equivalent of "true Communism has never been tried." You're saying psychedelics always have whatever emotional effect, and if they seemingly don't well its your fault for putting up a defense mechanism, or actually it did work but you don't remember.

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?

Agreed, there is a lot of victim blaming and invalidation in the psychedelic community that is oddly paradoxical.

“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”

And the problem with these Eternity in Hell experiences, is that it can permanently traumatize you and embed (new) triggers for things like anxiety/panic attacks and other stress disorders. It can feel truly real, truly horrifying, in a place where time don't exist, where you don't know words or language. That kind of experience can change a person, and not always in a good way.

Yes, they have the potential for harm... which is why they should be treated with the utmost respect, with serious preparation, and ideally under the guidance of a trained psychedelic therapist who you like and trust.

Yeah i never experienced fight-or-flight panic (outside of the brief moment before a car accident collision or whatever) until a few weeks after i tried a strong salvia extract. Its like those neural connections got well-trodden enough in that afternoon to become a real pathway.

"The main message I got out of those experiences was that everything I learned in hell could have been learned in other, safer, ways."

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.

It's possible to learn empathy without having to spend eternity in hell first.

Thanks for sharing this. I agree the risk is just shrugged off by experienced users.

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.

I've had painfully horrific bad trips that lasted for eternity but none have seemed to have any lasting downsides. If anything they build my confidence in my own psyche because I can endure them and come out fine on the other side / can now approach them with confidence and usually de-escalate the horror during the trip.

Not for everyone but I don't mind the occasional challenging/painful trip.

You had a couple of bad trips? They way you describe them it was awfully bad, and yet you did it more than once?

Humans are dumb (me too!)

Maybe he had like 230 trips, and of them, a couple was bad.

"Bad trip" is a huge space of possible levels of bad. I've had tons of uncomfortable trips but none were "bad" enough to deter. Each person has a widely varying level of comfort with discomfort and resolve to keep trying. Same thing with extreme sports or any voluntary exposure to discomfort with perceived gain.

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.

I fractured my leg the first time I went skiing. I went skiing again the next season without a second thought because it seemed like I could have fun if I was careful to do it right.

Yep I was dumb. The first one was bad. The second one was infinitely worse.

I’m sorry you experienced that. Do you feel like it left any lasting effects?

It's been almost 3 years, and there's still some remaining effects. Doing a lot better though! Therapy has helped.

Could you elaborate on what exactly you experienced (and your takeaways) from your bad trip?

Do you feel like set and setting or your previous mental state going into the trip caused the bad trip?

> Could you elaborate on what exactly you experienced (and your takeaways) from your 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?

Thanks for sharing.

Part of the set is who is there, and if there's someone there who's experienced (or, ideally even trained in psychedelic therapy) and who you like and trust, they can help guide you and support you.

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.

After experiencing a subjective "literal eternity of hell" once, why did you do it again?

Because I'm a dumb human, and wanted to touch the flame again.

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.

We can get bad trips with any type of drug. Even weed and alchohol.

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've had some horrible experiences with alcohol, but nothing compared to the experience of eternal torture I felt with psychedelics.

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.

Comparing a bad psychedelic trip to a bad experience with cannabis or alcohol is kind of trivializing it. A moderate LSD dose can last 8-12 hours and at its peak is much, much more intense. Unless you have some valium on hand, if things go south there is no escaping it. You can't just go to sleep like you could with alcohol or cannabis.

Edibles can kick your arse in a major way and go on for hours. I've had a few experiences that surpasses most of my trips on LSD. But I agree that a moderate-high dose of LSD that goes south is much harder to control. Sometimes it's just like a bomb detonates in the center of your mind, and you're using the next days (weeks, months or years) collecting the debris and trying to piece them together.

"Take it easy duuude, but take it!" - Terence McKenna

What is moderate-high in your book?

I would say 150mcg is a moderate dose, maybe pushing into the high dose territory. Anything beyond is high dose. And kamikaze at 500mcg? Beyond that you have thumbprints.

All subjective, and the lines become fuzzy.

I mean, you can have a bad experience on alcohol, but I'm not sure its a useful comparison between doing dumb things blacked out on a CNS depressant or being a sad drunk to.... dissociating, thinking you are dead and literally everyone you ever cared about was a fleeting and imaginary while the panic circuits in your brain are cranked up to 11 for 8 hours

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