Maybe you can share some more details to inspire/discourage the new generation of programming youth.
At the time, I thought that was it: a bad trip but glad it was over. But over the following months I developed a chronic anxiety triggered by all sorts of things. First time I noticed it was next time I was in a hotel room; I had a panic attack and had to call an ambulance as I didn't know what the fuck was going on with my head. Then, other things became triggers. If I happened to be thinking of either of the hotel room incidents and felt anxious, then whatever else was present at the time would become a trigger for the anxiety. This included internal thought-triggers and external visual and situational ones. Over the next couple of years I had panic attacks in all sorts of places, sometimes seemingly apropos of nothing.
Anyway after a couple of years I managed to get it somewhat under control using a combination of anti-depressant medication and cognitive behavioural therapy. But even now there are some situational triggers that will make me exceedingly anxious, and earlier this month - after several years 'clean' of attacks - I couldn't hold off the anxiety and had another really large attack. Though I was very stressed about something else so I suppose my background levels of anxiety were high anyway.
Before all this happened, I was a pretty relaxed and chilled out kind of guy. It makes me sad that I'm never going to get back to that state of mind. When I look back at recordings or writings of the pre-mushrooms me, he seems almost like a stranger. It's very odd.
This of course is not necessarily a typical experience on mushrooms, and I suppose I was predisposed to this somehow, but it was a very unpleasant way to find this out.
These conditions can be initiated by using books or movies to reach dark ideas, or even aimless or subconscious thinking (too much thinking time or idleness).
That is just a bad trip. The problem is that if it brings up a lot of issues and you can't properly integrate them then you will have chronic anxiety issues, and any resulting physical brain changes would be from the chronic anxiety rather than from the psilocybin itself.
The normal advice when this happens is to do the drug again and to try to resolve whatever issues came up. But if you're on anti-depressants right now then that's not really an option, and you also probably wouldn't want to do that without a more experience guide.
I'm not on anti-depressants and haven't been for years, but your advice seems completely bizarre. Why on earth would I risk taking the mushrooms again after it fucked me up so much the first time? There's no way I'm ever touching them again.
It's roughly analogous to if you get PTSD after getting raped. That doesn't mean that rape causes chronic anxiety per se, even though it's a common outcome. I'm not trying to say that mushrooms didn't have an adverse effect on your life, only that it wasn't due to psilocybin directly altering your brain.
"I'm not on anti-depressants and haven't been for years, but your advice seems completely bizarre."
That advice wasn't for you specifically, I'm just saying that it's the standard advice. But it normally applies for people who have had a bad trip a week or two ago, not several years ago. The idea is that the only way to come out of it is to follow whatever you were going through until you get to the logical conclusion.
Here are a few guides in general to dealing with 'bad trips':
http://www.maps.org/videos/source4/video9.html
http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/faqs/psychedelic_crisis_...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/1795sk/the_psilocybin...
I used to think of that night as the cause, but I later noticed that I had been building up to some kind of "breakdown" for months. I had always been a bit more tense, a bit more worried, and more sensitive than most. I had a deep belief that, if I tried hard enough, I could prevent bad things from happening. This sense of control is at the root of anxiety disorders. Most people don't think bad things will happen to them, so they lose no sleep about it. Those of us with anxiety issues are just the opposite: we're constantly trying to prevent and prepare for the worst, even though the majority of those feared events will never materialize.
Anyway, if you haven't already done so, I suggest that you not think about the mushrooms as being the cause but rather the trigger. Once anxiety attacks begin, they are very difficult to control. It wasn't the mushrooms specifically; rather, it was the anxiety that caused the downward spiral, as the conditioned fear response gains strength through repetition. (There's a load of good publications about this.) In short, there aren't two versions of you ("pre-mushroom you" and "post-mushroom you"); you just had a serious transformative experience.
and started meditating. That alone stripped loads of baggage. Urban areas have plenty of zen centers and the like. A lot of crap is self created, bad habit oriented behavior, like sitting hunched before the screens.
Speaking of, signing off ;-)
Cheers
Taking fewer hits, smoking weaker weed, and/or smoking less often can help.
Out of curiosity, may I ask how you dealt with your experience in the following months afterward?
So I spent the next year reading about anxiety, going through workbooks, taking supplements (another thing I had never done before), and trying to "gain control." Turns out, trying to wrest control is a bad way to approach anxiety; it imposes impossible expectations upon yourself--"If only I were smarter and stronger I wouldn't have these panic attacks. I just need to get it together." This kind of thinking makes anxiety worse. And it got worse.
Eventually though, I was able to find a better approach that involved accepting anxiety as a part of my life. I was inspired by something I had read about Zen Buddhism, so I began trying to view my anxiety as an old friend, my old torturer, my own brand of human suffering. Believe it or not, this worked. I began to intentionally do things that made me anxious. Axiety is much less powerful once you acknowledge that its roots lie in the brain, in the evolutionary drive to protect oneself from danger, and you can't consciously control it. All you can do is acknowledge it and move on, or "Feel the fear and do it anyway." I forced myself to reengage in life. I never stayed home when feeling anxious (I found this was the worst possible thing I could do); I accepted invitations to parties, I traveled, I enrolled in college, I moved.
But I continued having recurring episodes of severe anxiety that would leave me crippled for weeks: I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat, I had difficulty doing simple things like grocery shopping. So, at the urging of my family, I saw a psychiatrist (who was not helpful at all, as all she wanted to do was find out whether someone had touched my peepee when I was a boy. Hint: no one had), a neurologist (who was very helpful and very knowledgeable about anxiety), and a new primary doctor. My doctors coordinated to find a suitable medication, an SSRI. With this, coupled with my learned coping skills, I eventually began to feel "normal" again. A few years later, after experiencing no severe anxiety, I dropped the medication and was able to move on with my life.
Anyway, sounds like you've found some ways to address the anxiety. Life isn't easy, had you never taken shrooms, well it wouldn't be your life. There may be some transformation that comes from the anxiety -- Eckhart Tolle, for example, suffered from severe anxiety and depression for years, and then, one night the weight of the world was gone. If we could all be so lucky.
Many, if not most people go through their lives mostly unconsciously, with very little introspection or understanding of their subconscious. Many of them have serious issues and demons from their childhood or other trauma that they've never dealt with and do everything within their power to avoid thinking about.
Is it really a surprise that when they take a substance which has the effect of powerfully bringing subconscious content to consciousness, a substance they've never been taught how to use properly, that some of them are unable to deal with and are frightened of what they find?
Too many people take psychedelics with little clue as to what to expect, or with intention to just "party" or "see some trippy colors", not realizing just how powerful these substances are, and not realizing that they should be treated with respect and prepared for properly (we could say a lot about set and setting here).
Furthermore, psychedelic users rarely know what to do with or how to integrate what they learn after the experience is over. This lack of integration and refusal to deal with negative as well as positive emotions and subconscious content can also cause many problems.
This is why psychedelic use is best done under the guidance of experienced therapists or in a shamanic context where the tripper can get help both during and after the trip.
I'm not saying that doing or not doing any of the above is what led to the bad trip you experienced, or to the anxiety attacks afterwards. I don't know you or anything about how you approached the experience to hazard a guess. However, it would not surprise me if some of these issues were at play here.
Most panic attacks are that way.