what is a flashback actually like?

Hi - are they more like day dreaming or an actual dream? do they flash?

Also how long are they.

I'd just like to know because it seems to be the main negative side effect of psychedelics and i dont know if ive had them (I just feel a little spaced out with anxiety sometimes).

ok thanks

 

Flashbacks are not something that you could describe in a factual way. Different people perceive flashbacks as many things, im happy to explain the only flash back ive had that was due to mushrooms so here we go. It was about 2 weeks after i had a horribly bad trip from shrooms, i woke up at 8am to go to work as normal but when i woke up reality wasnt what it usually is and i could not understand why this was going on. I woke up looked at the clock on my bed side table saw the numbers yet they ment nothing to me, i looked at my mobile phone and realize i needed help as to what i needed to do as i had a sense of something was not right. I decided to call my girlfriend at the time who had made her way to work about 30 minutes before i woke up. So i called he explained to her i have no understanding of whats going on yet i realize that something is ment to be done today, she went on to explain to me that i was ment to be getting ready for work, i walked around my living room in a daze for about 5 minutes trying to grasp reality again, after that i realized i needed to have a shower and put my clothing on for work. After the shower reality decided to show its face and i slowly realized what was going on.
Sorry this is a fairly vauge recount of what happen, the best way to explain what i went through was i felt the utter confusion of my shroom trip along with visuals and as i woke up this way i didnt understand what was going on until it was over.

Im sure if other people would explain their own experience it would differ

 

Flashbacks are mentioned mostly by people who have never tripped. It's supposed to be one of the big dangers. It's mostly fiction, but I think it sometimes happens.

I've taken many trips and I've never had a flashback.

 

I think I'd like a flashback haha.

 

While I've never had what you might call a "free trip", sometimes things just .....look kind of funny. Like this baby blanket we have with a black, white, and grey checker board pattern. Sometimes it vibrates. I don't think it's supposed to do that.

 

i think the well-known 'flashback' is something like post traumatic stress syndrome.

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another after effect of psychedelics seem to be open eye distortions/hallucinations while sober or stoned.

it usually occurs for me while listening to music, and the distortions follow the rhythm and eccentricities of the instruments. i dont consider it negative. it takes a bit of concentration; or a bit of letting your mind be blank and meld with music. or a lot of it.

 

i've had a bunch of little "flashbacks" since i've tripped on salvia. i don't really remember having much in the way of flashbacks after using other psychedelics.

but sometimes i'll just be going along, doing what i'm doing, and something will trigger the energy/feeling of what the trip felt like, or i'll see a pattern and remember that it was in my trip and for a few seconds i'll feel like i'm being sucked backwards into that place i went in my trip. after a few seconds it goes away, but so far has been extremely helpful in gleaning all the helpful self information i can get out of the trips i've taken with the salvia.

my description probably seems pretty vague, but it's like a strong memory that overpowers all the senses, and i feel like i'm back in the trip. afterwards, i usually feel a little goofy for a minute or two, until i get my bearings, and i have a hard time getting my mind back out of my mind, because when i feel the trip, i just want to go into it. so it's like dragging my mind back outside of myself again.

 

my brain sometimes gives me alternative explanations for what my visual data is reporting to me, and i assume this is what people mean when they say 'flashback'. like when you see a leaf blowing in the wind in the corner of your eye and for a second you think it's a cat looking at you. Pretty harmless stuff and imo just linked to the creativity-expanding effect of psychedelic use.

 

a flashback is when you sort've out of the blue or triggered by something (radiohead's kid a album did this for me for a while)...you start sorta feeling like you're tripping again.

i had tracers in my vision off and on for a year or so when i used to shroom i lot too.

 

ive tripped numerous times, and never experienced a "terrifying" flashback like my DARE officer told me i would if i used lsd. however, sometimes if im listening to music or thinking, it kind of brings me back to a time where i was tripping. if anything i enjoy "flashbacks"

 

mine were somewhat uncomfortable. i didn't hallucinate or anything, but i really couldn't listen to kid a for a while without feeling a little twisted and demented.

 

thanks for the info everyone, they dont seem to bad at all.

 

has anyone had a post traumatic stress related flashback? I guess they're based on a particularly negative trip?

 

I had a horrible flashback once. It was about 6 months after a horribly scary lsd trip in which I died. I'd just had a bong and was cutting some onions for dinner. Next thing I know I'm yelling out to my girlfriend "I'm having a bad trip" and out of nowhere my train of thought derailed and got stuck in the same loop of thoughts I was stuck in when I was dead. I feel to the kitchen floor and for what felt like 5 - 10 minutes I believed with ever fibre of my being that I was still dead, stuck in that trip I'd had 6 months ago. I believed I was about to wake up and realize that the last 6 months of my life were a dream.

When I came to my senses again my girlfriend was hugging me and I was standing at the kitchen table. Apparently I hadn't fallen over and it had only lasted like 30 seconds. Crazy stuff.

I've had nothing like that since and I think I'm *almost* over my crazy scary trip.

Holy shit. I'm going to the same festival I died at last year next weekend :S

 

i would say "flashbacks" for me, is just remembering a good or bad time by seeing somthing that i paid a lot of attention to while i was tripping and the little giggle that came with it. just like any other life changing experience would do to ya. i would say there more "intense" for a tripper though, i definatly treat deshavoo and double takes differently now than then.

 

Gore, limbs, explosions, you know like planes and shit.

 

In college I did liquid LSD brewed by a good friend going for his Masters in Chemistry. The quality of this stuff was his thesis. We'd dip a sewing needle in the liquid and rub it under our tongues. The effects were almost immediate. It took years for the flashbacks to completely reside. Sometimes they were pleasant and other times not.

 

Would you mind saying what the unpleasant ones were like? any similarity to the the ones explained in socker's post?

I supposed 'flashback' is an umbrella term for a bunch of different experiences but i'd really like to know if the bad ones totally overide reality or just alter perception slightly.

thanks everyone...

 

I might have had a flashback a few days ago, but it also might just have been hypnagogic imagery as I was going to sleep, and I was also high on an opiate. But I felt a return of the DPT body high, confusion, disorientation, I wasn't sure where I was, I thought I was on a couch but I was on my bed, it went away about as quickly as it came on.

 

Thats awesome bro.