Wow, what a fascinating (and terrifying) list of experiences. People like to say that bad trips are uncommon, but I see so, so many reports of them online. Maybe that's because the only real numbers we have are in controlled clinical settings, where the bad trips are going to be obviously be less frequent, due to the precautions and guard rails in place.
And even if they are uncommon, somebody else in this thread made the good point that the mind's capacity for suffering appears to be so much greater than its capacity for happiness or pleasure. I don't know if this is actually scientifically true, but it sure feels that way. Out of curiosity, would you say your most positive, beautiful experience was anywhere near as powerful as your most negative, terrifying experience?
Out of curiosity, you said you stopped a long time ago -- do you happen to suffer any long term negative side effects? Anxiety, PTSD, DP/DR, etc? I'm about a month past the trip that blew my mind to pieces and I'm still suffering with some residual fear and anxiety, and hoping it'll continue to pass with time. (Before anybody says it, yes, I'm considering therapy. And also yes, I realize everybody's experiences are going to be completely different, some people would get over a terrible trip in a week, and some people may never be able to completely recover.)
>Out of curiosity, you said you stopped a long time ago -- do you happen to suffer any long term negative side effects?
No not really, aside from the memories of some of the bad experiences. Sometimes I'll be looking in the mirror shaving my neck, washing my hands, whatever and I'll remember seeing this bloated, mottled skin version of myself with deep bruising around my neck and remember being at the toilet on my knees forcing myself to 'throw death up' but it's not traumatic or anything.
Sometimes when I lie down in bed my brain will go to one of those DMT trips where I was in a morgue drawer type deal. A lot of DMT experiences were while in bed so even when I wasn't in a crematorium oven/morgue drawer I'd often experience myself going into some sort of compartment not unlike those or even like an MRI head first and then I'd go to what people usually describe as the 'waiting room' where there would be weird alienish faces/entities so that'll probably always be a thing occasionally when i get in bed. It doesn't scare me or disturb me or anything though, just reminds me of it.
Mostly I'll just remember effects or events from random trips while going about my life, nothing like a 'flashback' just kinda like how you'll smell something and it'll trigger a childhood memory or you'll see something and start thinking about an ex or something. I'll see a spider and maybe one out of twenty times I'll 'remeber' the 'time I was a giant spider in the corner of the room' because as I was coming up on a trip I was getting some water from the sink and there was an orb weaver outside of the kitchen window making its web so then when I was peaking I thought I was a huge spider hanging out in the corner of the ceiling for a while.
Sometimes I'll miss the visuals and I'll go watch some HD mandelbrot zoom.
>? I'm about a month past the trip that blew my mind to pieces and I'm still suffering with some residual fear and anxiety,
So when I mentioned the 8-bit video game loop salvia trip, that did stay with me for the better part of a year. I didn't want to do any other drugs, I didn't want to drink, I didn't want to watch anything animated or computer generated including playing video games, but it eventually just worked itself out.
Time will likely help considerably but talking about it will help. I did suffer PTSD when I experienced hypokalemia so severe I woke up effectively paralyzed [1] and required hospitalization. Once I was released I couldn't sleep, I couldn't even sit for more than a few minutes before I'd start getting panicky and have to get up and move. I was drinking close to a fifth most nights to try and relax enough to get to sleep because as soon as I'd start to relax my brain would panic and think "it's happening again!" and flood my system with adrenaline, cortisol, etc. Eventually I dealt with that by modulating the cortisol with 'large' doses of inositol and phosphatidylserine and by talking about it to myself. I'd have to tell myself it's fine, you can move, just relax while sitting. Then in bed I'd have to joke about it to myself leading up into bed, try and find humor in the few hours I was awake and couldn't move like the dog coming in and sniffing me as I shouted for help and then walking away like "I don't care about him!" until I could just make being still not immediately make me panic. That took the better part of 2 years to get my panic episodes down to less than once every few months. I had sleep paralysis last year and it only panicked me for a few seconds after I could move again so I'd say I was successful at fixing that. Seeing a professional probably would have been a lot faster though but I'm not one to ask for, or willingly receive, help.
If it's really bothering you, I'd talk to someone because I think it would probably help. Either a friend or a professional. Fear is something that's easier to deal with if you talk about it in my experience.
Thank you so much for sharing! It does help to hear about other people's experiences, and where they are now (even though I know it's different for everybody).
> If it's really bothering you, I'd talk to someone because I think it would probably help. Either a friend or a professional. Fear is something that's easier to deal with if you talk about it in my experience.
For sure, this is great advice! I've been working on finding a therapist. For the most part, I'm okay. I don't think I'm suffering from PTSD, but my base anxiety levels have risen a lot, I've had one panic attack (a couple days after the bad trip), and sometimes I catch myself ruminating on some really dark shit. (Like the idea that the natural state of consciousness is eternal suffering, which is what I 100% believed was the truth during the trip.)
Before my experience I would read stuff like your 8-bit Salvia experience and think "okay, yeah, that sounds scary, but also super interesting, and something I would maybe want to experience". I kind of thought people would exaggerate how scary things were for dramatic effect. Now I know better. The human brain has an amazing capacity for self torture.
I'll probably lose track of this thread now but you can find me with on reddit as /u/ryanmercer too if you have any other questions.
>"okay, yeah, that sounds scary, but also super interesting, and something I would maybe want to experience".
It was definitely the strangest experience I've ever had. I felt like I was going up a roller coaster ramp but everything was like when an NES cartridge would glitch and kept looping... I would get the impression that time would go forward 3-4 seconds then would just pop back 2-3 seconds. So I was slowly working my way up this thing that felt like a roller coaster.
The angle of the climb of 'roller coaster' (it was just like a million kaleidoscopes threw up with vague notions of movement) months later made me think it was the exit ramp to get to my friend's apartment. We were driving up the exit ramp and I closed my eyes because the sun was just blasting them and I was like wait, this feels like that horrible trip.
Upon review of most of my trips, I can link them to real memories/objects I'd recently seen. Like the spider, the dragon I'm pretty sure was a mix of books in the Pern series, I was Santa because it was the day before Christmas Eve, the morgue/crematorium were always when I was in bed in the dark and wearing a sleep mask to block out light, the octopus tentacle face guy reminded me of the guy in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, a few times I felt a consciousness and tried to reach out to it only to have a buzzing and painful clap happen in my ears that would snap me completely out of the trip... per Biblical lore man can't hear the voice of God so that's probably where that came from.
The only time I had positive experiences from psychotropics was when I was in relaxed social settings with friends. We used to take acid at the mall in high school and we'd rove around together so we all had good experiences. Various things at outdoor concerts, floating down a river or creek on innertubes, hiking or camping. Even then though you'd eventually get tired of it long before the effects wore off but it wasn't so bad because you could just talk and keep busy, alone I'd often also get bored relatively quick on mushrooms/mdma/lsd and there's nothing you can do but just continue on with disjointed thoughts and a tight jaw (it took me forever to figure out to chew gum) and that's when you'd get antsy or paranoid or dark thoughts would start to creep in. Once you get antsy/paranoid/dark the trip is soured and almost certainly will stay there or get worse.
It was an interesting part of my life but it's nowhere near as glamorous as the internet, or even movies, make it out to be. DMT specifically can just be a generally unpleasant experience and appears to be pretty universal in that, while some people have good experiences pretty much everyone has some bad ones once they've done it a handful of times.
And even if they are uncommon, somebody else in this thread made the good point that the mind's capacity for suffering appears to be so much greater than its capacity for happiness or pleasure. I don't know if this is actually scientifically true, but it sure feels that way. Out of curiosity, would you say your most positive, beautiful experience was anywhere near as powerful as your most negative, terrifying experience?
Out of curiosity, you said you stopped a long time ago -- do you happen to suffer any long term negative side effects? Anxiety, PTSD, DP/DR, etc? I'm about a month past the trip that blew my mind to pieces and I'm still suffering with some residual fear and anxiety, and hoping it'll continue to pass with time. (Before anybody says it, yes, I'm considering therapy. And also yes, I realize everybody's experiences are going to be completely different, some people would get over a terrible trip in a week, and some people may never be able to completely recover.)