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I don't have any evidence of this but I stronly suspect that doing regular meditation will reduce the chance of bad trips or atleast let you deal with them much

I don't have any evidence of this but I stronly suspect that doing regular meditation will reduce the chance of bad trips or atleast let you deal with them much better. I'm saying this in case someone decides to experiment with DMT or other halucinogens, you should seriously consider trying meditation as a prerequisite.

avenoir 9y ago
Interestingly, I've been reading that traumatic/bad trips are actually the most healing because they often reveal inner, subconscious struggles and repressed feelings that haven't been adequately dealt with.
- nowherecat 9y ago
  There is potential for healing, yes. But what comes up needs to be integrated and dealt with appropriately .. if not, it can mess up things quite a bit.
virtualwhys 9y ago
> doing regular meditation will reduce the chance of bad trips or at least let you deal with them much better. Perhaps, but meditation as it is often practiced by lay people is one of convenience. That is, this is pleasant, I'll sit for an hour, but not more, because that would become unpleasant (to my knees and back). I don't think this kind of practice does anything to prepare you for the rigors of deep psychedelic experience, where control and choice go completely out the window whether you like it or not. A one week meditation retreat, with 14 1-hour sittings per day, however (i.e. Vipasana, Zen, etc. style retreats), that will help for sure, though I suspect none but meditation masters can emerge unscathed from the psychedelic deep dive.
R_haterade 9y ago
Anything specific practices you recommend? I'm not interested in ayahuasca, but meditation has been on my list for a while now.
- openfuture 9y ago
  Nadishodana. My reasoning: The idea of energy in the body is a very general concept that many different traditions have discovered independently (prana and qi are examples). Most people scoff at the concept but if you progress far in yoga or martial arts the metaphor makes sense and from a western perspective cells need energy to do their thing and that energy requires oxygen, nutrition and blood flow or some means of travel. The better your bodily awareness the more you can feel if a part of your body is cut off from the flow of energy. Anyway to make a long story short nadishodana is a meditation practice designed to clean the "nadis" or energy channels in the body. Any psychadelic will greatly improve your bodily awareness to the point you will hallucinate vision of your energy flow. Ayahuasca especially helps with cleaning your body and breaking blocks in the energy flow, the more it has to clean the more you will need to change and the "trip" will be more hardcore. I base this line of reasoning on anecdotal experience with using microdoses of psychadelics along with meditation to treat swelling after exercise and from having tried Ayahuasca and DMT before.
  - computerex 9y ago
    Are you accounting for confirmation bias in your anecdotal experiences? There is no "western" perspective, there is only reality and falsehoods. Whilst I am a proponent of meditation and mental health, I don't think prana or qi exist as real physical entities in the real world because their presence has not been detected in reproducible, controlled settings. There are many religions in the world, all of them false when scrutinized through the lens of science and reason. The whole concept of life energy is not grounded in reality based on the available evidence (or lack of evidence).
    - openfuture 9y ago
      When I say western perspective I'm talking about the words I'm using not some different world... i.e. "cells need nutrition" ... but in meditation I feel a lot of the progress is changing your understanding of what it means to breathe. I kept (unwillingly) redefining the word until it had essentially became synonymous with the concept of "running lines of energy" (to whichever body part I wish to breath into). Ultimately these words (prana, life energy, qi) are just metaphors to assist you with your own bodily awareness (so they are subjective) and maybe if you are some expert these metaphors can work for deciphering the body of someone else but trying to relate them to some object is not going to work. What I wish to say is that I don't consider these concepts to be objective truths in the same way I don't consider stories to be objective truths. However it does not impede my ability to learn from them. Objective science is great for physics and is constantly improving our understanding of the human body as a machine but as individuals living in these machines we must also conduct our own subjective science, experimenting with our behavior to find how best to care for our unique body, mind and soul (a dubious concept at best but I like the rhythm of naming all three).
ericmcer 9y ago
Just general health is a good prerequisite. I always liked to have a center/grounding focus for a trip if it starts to go off kilter. Back in High school I would use my world of warcraft character alot. That definitely seems dumb and not at all spiritual on reflection, but it would help ground me and lighten the mood (also he was a badass warrior so it was just cool to think about).

avenoir 9y ago

Interestingly, I've been reading that traumatic/bad trips are actually the most healing because they often reveal inner, subconscious struggles and repressed feelings that haven't been adequately dealt with.

nowherecat 9y ago
There is potential for healing, yes. But what comes up needs to be integrated and dealt with appropriately .. if not, it can mess up things quite a bit.

virtualwhys 9y ago

> doing regular meditation will reduce the chance of bad trips or at least let you deal with them much better. Perhaps, but meditation as it is often practiced by lay people is one of convenience. That is, this is pleasant, I'll sit for an hour, but not more, because that would become unpleasant (to my knees and back). I don't think this kind of practice does anything to prepare you for the rigors of deep psychedelic experience, where control and choice go completely out the window whether you like it or not. A one week meditation retreat, with 14 1-hour sittings per day, however (i.e. Vipasana, Zen, etc. style retreats), that will help for sure, though I suspect none but meditation masters can emerge unscathed from the psychedelic deep dive.

R_haterade 9y ago

Anything specific practices you recommend? I'm not interested in ayahuasca, but meditation has been on my list for a while now.

openfuture 9y ago
Nadishodana. My reasoning: The idea of energy in the body is a very general concept that many different traditions have discovered independently (prana and qi are examples). Most people scoff at the concept but if you progress far in yoga or martial arts the metaphor makes sense and from a western perspective cells need energy to do their thing and that energy requires oxygen, nutrition and blood flow or some means of travel. The better your bodily awareness the more you can feel if a part of your body is cut off from the flow of energy. Anyway to make a long story short nadishodana is a meditation practice designed to clean the "nadis" or energy channels in the body. Any psychadelic will greatly improve your bodily awareness to the point you will hallucinate vision of your energy flow. Ayahuasca especially helps with cleaning your body and breaking blocks in the energy flow, the more it has to clean the more you will need to change and the "trip" will be more hardcore. I base this line of reasoning on anecdotal experience with using microdoses of psychadelics along with meditation to treat swelling after exercise and from having tried Ayahuasca and DMT before.
- computerex 9y ago
  Are you accounting for confirmation bias in your anecdotal experiences? There is no "western" perspective, there is only reality and falsehoods. Whilst I am a proponent of meditation and mental health, I don't think prana or qi exist as real physical entities in the real world because their presence has not been detected in reproducible, controlled settings. There are many religions in the world, all of them false when scrutinized through the lens of science and reason. The whole concept of life energy is not grounded in reality based on the available evidence (or lack of evidence).
  - openfuture 9y ago
    When I say western perspective I'm talking about the words I'm using not some different world... i.e. "cells need nutrition" ... but in meditation I feel a lot of the progress is changing your understanding of what it means to breathe. I kept (unwillingly) redefining the word until it had essentially became synonymous with the concept of "running lines of energy" (to whichever body part I wish to breath into). Ultimately these words (prana, life energy, qi) are just metaphors to assist you with your own bodily awareness (so they are subjective) and maybe if you are some expert these metaphors can work for deciphering the body of someone else but trying to relate them to some object is not going to work. What I wish to say is that I don't consider these concepts to be objective truths in the same way I don't consider stories to be objective truths. However it does not impede my ability to learn from them. Objective science is great for physics and is constantly improving our understanding of the human body as a machine but as individuals living in these machines we must also conduct our own subjective science, experimenting with our behavior to find how best to care for our unique body, mind and soul (a dubious concept at best but I like the rhythm of naming all three).

ericmcer 9y ago

Just general health is a good prerequisite. I always liked to have a center/grounding focus for a trip if it starts to go off kilter. Back in High school I would use my world of warcraft character alot. That definitely seems dumb and not at all spiritual on reflection, but it would help ground me and lighten the mood (also he was a badass warrior so it was just cool to think about).