I had a fling with psychedelics in my teens, and everything was great until the one time it wasn't. I was taking psychedelics pretty much every weekend, and by my count have tried over a dozen of them.
Had an experience with LSD which completely shook me to my core and gave me such severe PTSD and trauma that every night I started to have massive panic attacks and needed medical help. My entire worldview and perception of reality was shattered, I wasn't able to "anchor" myself anymore and it all felt like a sham. I was completely dissociated. I also got HPPD: to this day, everything has a sharpened oil-painting type texture to it that increases based on my anxiety level, and I'm sensitive to visual + aural stimuli (loud, brightly-colored places are unpleasant). If I get too anxious, I start to dissociate.
It took ~2 years for the PTSD to subside for the most part, but still if I am under a lot of stress I am liable to have a panic attack and get flashbacks and need to go find somewhere quiet to sit somewhere alone to try to work through it.
LSD being the particular substance has nothing to do with it, in my opinion. I was young, dumb, reckless, and played with fire then got burned. It could have happened with any of the other dozen psychedelics I took, but it just so happened to be LSD the one time that it did.
But I want to add, that while giving me the most nightmarish, traumatizing experience of my life, the best/most positively-profound experience has also been on the same substance. I grew up in a pretty abusive household and didn't do well forming relationships growing up, and had a lot of anger and resentment in my worldview. After taking psychedelics (LSD, 2C-B, Shrooms) and MDMA with the right group of people a few times, my entire perspective shifted. For the first time in my life, it felt like I understand how it felt to be loved, and what "love" was, and how we're "all in this together" so we may as well be good to each other while we're here.
It's been a long time since I've touched any of that stuff and I'm not sure I ever will again, but I don't think it's inherently bad or good. Psychedelics are like knives, they're neutral - can be used as a tool or cut the hell out of you if you're reckless.
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Footnote: For context, this was probably due to life circumstances/psyche at the time. I was in a relationship with a pretty toxic partner, and my mental state wasn't the greatest. In hindsight, it seems like I was almost begging for a "slap in the face" if you will.
I think it is a bit too reductive to say they're neutral, just yet, but I am willing to say they can be used responsibly if the right information actually existed - but like with any science I am open to changing that if the conclusions were found to be different. Again let's just stick with acid instead of all psychedelics.
I had done it probably ~20-25 times by that point, along with a bunch of other stuff.
LSD
Mushrooms
2C-B
2C-C
2C-I
DMT
4-AcO-DMT
5-MeO-DMT
5-MeO-MiPT
DOM
> Again let's just stick with acid instead of all psychedelics.
What you won't find in academia or textbooks is that, at a high enough dose, all psychedelics feel the same. You reach a point where it's indistinguishable and the unique properties vanish. It's hard to describe if you don't have experience with a bunch of them, but there's this "peak psychedelic state" where they all sort of converge, which is what I only assume is the result of your serotonin receptors getting completely bombed/saturated.
Personally, I was much more of a fan of phenethylamine psychedelics (particularly the 2C series), they're more clear-headed and "light"/enjoyable. The time dilation from psychedelics makes the 12-16 hours from LSD feel like days, and by the end of it, generally the last 4-6 hours you just want to be finished with it already.
It's really difficult to make a blanket-statement like "can be used responsibly" about psychedelics, because it's a dice roll. No matter how cautious you are, there's always the possible that this time, things go sideways. Though most people (when I was in that scene as a teen) couldn't really empathize after my bad trip because they'd never had one, so it's a rare occurrence. Maybe I was psychologically predisposed, who knows.
But I do think that people stand to gain a lot from having a psychedelic experience in their life, and from having an experience taking MDMA and talking with someone they love.
Yeah this is another thing I've seen.
Online there are lots of stories of "bad trips", like this one.
In person its "what happened? I've never had a bad trip [so what's wrong with you]". It is very unscientific, and for the people that do empathize, it is very reductive to "bad trip". No discussion about PTSD. And then you can't talk to anybody else about it because they are illicit substances.
Well, that night went bad. Really, really, life-alteringly bad. For the first time, I had a bad trip. And not like, some mildly uncomfortable thoughts. I got a bad feeling in my stomach from the moment I dosed, and I knew something was going to be different this time.
As I started to come up, the bad feeling and a dark presence grew, and I pulled out my phone. I started a timer, and I watched as the time slowed to a point where it completely stopped. I started looping, I would get up off the couch, walk a few feet, and be teleported back. Over and over.
I realized that I had gotten so high, that time was no longer moving. And if time was not moving, I could maybe never come down. I was stuck here forever. And then the hellish nightmare started.
I felt like I was losing control of myself, like something else was trying to take over, and whoever won the battle, that is the consciousness that would exist. The more I fought, the more painful things got. Pain the likes of which I no one can physically imagine.
Went upstairs and laid down in my bed, began going out of body. I started dying over and over in unimaginable ways in my head, trapped in loops. Pain beyond anything I've ever felt in reality, there was no limit. It was tied to my breath, I realized that it had been so long since I had breathed, I kept forgetting who I was and what was going on, and then I would catch a slight glimpse and remember and fight so hard to take another breath. And there was so much pain in fighting to "survive" and hold on to who I was.
Eventually, the pain/struggle became too much, and I "gave in" and said "okay, I give up, you win, I can't take it anymore, I'd rather die." And that's when it's stopped. There appeared this giant shape of light/energy that was every color at once, and colors we don't have words for, and it "touched me" (could have been me moving towards it, or it towards me, there wasn't really a concept of this).
When it "touched" me, what it "showed" me was something I later learned is called an "Ouroboros", the snake eating it's tail. It showed me what "infinity" really meant, and that was too much to handle and shattered my psyche.
In that moment my body/mind/soul felt like it was obliterated to pieces by some energy beam in the most excruciating, searing pain, and I woke up in my bed having just pissed myself.
It took a long time to piece myself back together after that one.
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There are a lot of details I've omitted for brevity's sake, but this captures the gist of it.
The majority of my trauma has to do with anything related to loops: think Nietzsche's Eternal Return, general time-loops, fear of time-stopping, etc.
When I have panic attacks I have to stop myself from starting a stopwatch on my phone to make sure time is still moving because it'll cause a feedback loop and ratchet-up the panic, causing the time-dilation to increase in a vicious cycle.
> Permanent schizophrenic zombie, maybe a bit extreme, but severe and traumatic long-lasting psychological damage is a not-uncommon phenomena.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/6124/does-not-un...
https://towardsdatascience.com/an-introduction-to-multivaria...
HOW PSYCHEDELICS REVEALS HOW LITTLE WE KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING - Jordan Peterson | London Real --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaY0H9DBokA
Jordan Peterson - The Mystery of DMT and Psilocybin --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gol5sPM073k
> LSD being the particular substance has nothing to do with it, in my opinion. I was young, dumb, reckless, and played with fire then got burned. It could have happened with any of the other dozen psychedelics I took, but it just so happened to be LSD the one time that it did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...
I have a close friend who had the same experience with excessive use of marijuana, but my money would be on psychedelics being far more likely to produce the outcome you unfortunately experienced. He's much better today, but not entirely "ok".
> But I want to add, that while giving me the most nightmarish, traumatizing experience of my life, the best/most positively-profound experience has also been on the same substance. I grew up in a pretty abusive household and didn't do well forming relationships growing up, and had a lot of anger and resentment in my worldview. After taking psychedelics (LSD, 2C-B, Shrooms) and MDMA with the right group of people a few times, my entire perspective shifted. For the first time in my life, it felt like I understand how it felt to be loved, and what "love" was, and how we're "all in this together" so we may as well be good to each other while we're here.
This sounds rather similar to my friend's story.
Can Taking Ecstasy (MDMA) Once Damage Your Memory?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081009072714.h...
According to Professor Laws from the University’s School of Psychology, taking the drug just once can damage memory. In a talk entitled "Can taking ecstasy once damage your memory?", he will reveal that ecstasy users show significantly impaired memory when compared to non-ecstasy users and that the amount of ecstasy consumed is largely irrelevant. Indeed, taking the drug even just once may cause significant short and long-term memory loss. Professor Laws findings are based on the largest analysis of memory data derived from 26 studies of 600 ecstasy users.
> (from your comment below) I took 300ug of LSD recklessly on a particularly bad day for me, in a particularly uncomfortable setting.
https://www.trippingly.net/lsd/2018/5/3/phases-of-an-lsd-tri...
Lots of details, plus dosage guide (25 ug and up) & typical experinces
https://www.reddit.com/r/LSD/comments/34acza/do_you_guys_bel...
imo 300ug is the point where you need to have some serious experience with tripping to be able to handle yourself. because if you're coming up, the acid is already circulating your bloodstream, and you get that horrible sinking sensation of thinking you've taken too much... you're in for a really bad time if you don't know how to control the trip.
I think it's difficult to say how big a dose really is until you've had a bad trip on it. only then can you see how insidious everything can get and as such just how intense 300ug can be. the reason people say not to start on doses like that is so they will AVOID those horrible experiences. so yeah, 300ug is a large dose, just because if shit goes wrong on it then you're fucked.
not having a reliable way to know exactly what you took can amplify the anxiety, when your brain starts filling up with seratonin and whites everything out just like people on their deathbeds report, are you supposed to let go? when your sense of self has been obliterated and the next moment you are in the body of another mammal lost and confused in the forest for an entire lifetime before being transported back into your body and only a minute has gone by - but your trip is to last another 9 hours, should you fight it? Distinct neural networks in your mind that never communicate are now connected, vestigial components of the mind are now being expressed, are you being replaced in a firmware dump and flash?
a lot of people have a friend with them to guide them through an acid trip because trips can be steered with sounds and words, simple chimes, melodies.
would it have helped? very hard to say. but as the author wrote, the bad day and uncomfortable setting did not help. It is similar to a dream state (just radically more intense), where the things on your mind and also happening around you can affect the direction of your dreams.
> when your sense of self has been obliterated and the next moment you are in the body of another mammal lost and confused in the forest for an entire lifetime before being transported back into your body and only a minute has gone by - but your trip is to last another 9 hours, should you fight it?
There was a lot of this, during that out-of-body-period. I existed in multiple places/points in time at once as different people of various ages/genders/nationalities and then occasionally as animals, and lived entire simultaneous lifetimes. At one "time", in places + times A, B, C, D as different living things. Really does a number on your sense of self for a bit, heh.
Sorry for the questions, we can talk about it somewhere else, just add an email or protonmail account to your hackernews account I'll mail you there