After a few bad/disaster trips it seems when i'm having a difficult experience these days i'm majorly on top of my anxiety and can always convince myself i'll be fine in a few hours. Maybe i'm more responsible these days and know how to avoid bad ones better or maybe my mind is in more control and less overwhelmed by getting used to intense psychedelic exps (or maybe a mix) How about you?
i've gotten a lot better at dealing with difficult experiences. No more overt freakouts - thought this only happened once and it was in 1989. People have laughed at me as i have calmly sat and quietly stated, "i am freaking out." i usually just keep my eyes open, feet on the ground, try to just let it happen, call a cat to me if possible, ask my sitter to comfort me, etc. It always passes and yeah, they are inevitably growth experiences.
I've never had a bad trip. It's always been really awesome. I do trip alone 90 percent of the time though. I don't know if that's relevant or not.
So '89 = one bad trip, so for that "drugs can cause a bad trip." They don't tell you that it can accrue once every 2 decades.
The only time I freaked out was my very first trip ever, which went sour early on due to outside circumstances -a domestic violence issue with my best friend at the time and having to talk to my mom on the phone, held it together until the issue was resolved but the impact/paranoia from the situation kicked my ass for the last 4 hours or so of the trip. These days, as long as nothing outside goes horribly wrong I can ride out rough patches without much difficulty. I've only had one trip since then that started going wrong about 4 hours in and couldn't shake it until I came down 8 hours later and was finally able to sleep. Even the next day I was off a bit. But I didn't freak out, just sat silently in hell for half a day. I don't know if I could call that one insightful in the sense that I learned anything new or saw something profound, but it shook me to the core and really got me to get my shit together in all the aspects of my life that had been sitting idle or going in the wrong direction. It was certainly one of my most valuable trips to date and although it gave me a psychological ass whooping like I'd never had before, I am thankful for the experience. So yeah, 2 "bad" trips out of (I lost count) over 7 years of psychedelic experience, not too bad.
Actually, i've had bad trips on LSD (one incident), mushrooms, DMT and 2CE. Only overt freakout was with LSD in 1989 - you know run screaming off into the night, stuff like that. Things are much calmer now with mainly a focus on breathing and grounding . . . and just waiting it out. i always return to baseline.
I freaked out when i was 17 from a large dose of LSD and major sleep deprivation. Don't take powerful psys without a good nights sleep.
Ive had minor anxiety on LSD mainly from body tension/ being around people (depending on settting....) etc.. its been overcome, you get used to the intensity of it... just as you stated. Use yourself, dont fight the flow.
This. Do not convince yourself that you are crazy or developed a psychosis or some bullshit like that.
If you are having cognitive delusions (such as was described above) but are not completely gone, try to just table the idea for 8-24 hours. Example, "I've gone insane. I'm never coming down." Well, if this is true, it will be true tomorrow. i tell myself to revisit this theory at this time tomorrow. Again, if i'm not completely gone, this is very effective in me for shutting it down (the item has been "tabled"). Of course when i do revisit things after 8-24 hours i inevitably find that they (the cognitive delusions) were not true and have a good laugh at myself. By tabling the idea, not checking it out, not acting on it at the time, i enjoy the trip more and avoid any potentially dangerous situations.
