10 ms·

Totally anecdotal but LSD made my depression significantly worse than improving it in any way. I had two proper trips and had a seizure kind of thing at the sta

• pwr22 6y ago
  Hope your recovery keeps moving in a positive direction :).
  • joeberon 6y ago
    Thank you
• dr_dshiv 6y ago
  Can you share more about the context of the trip? Typically mindset and setting have a big influence. Were you in a safe environment with people you like and trust? Thanks.
  • joeberon 6y ago
    Yes, first time was on a canal boat (EDIT: my father-in-law's boat, but he was away) with just my wife. Very safe and secure setting. Second time was at a very small psytrance festival with my wife and her parents. I trust them completely and they are both very nice, and there were not any scary people about.
    • PoachedSausage 6y ago
      Also hoping you move towards recovery and it sounds like you have good people in your life to support that. I would say that a festival (even small and friendly) is possibly not the ideal place to take psychedelics, unless you're very experienced. If you are particularly prone to paranoia, it can surface with psychedelics (even Cannabis) even in good settings.
      • joeberon 6y ago
        I suffer from diagnosed generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). Weirdly that second trip was actually much more relaxed and enjoyable during the trip than the first alone with just my wife on the canal boat, even if I did almost pass out at the start.
        • PoachedSausage 6y ago
          Thinking back, your experience of the seizure thing sounds similar to what a friend of mine experienced, not with LSD but MDMA. It is possibly related to the motion sickness and brain poisoning reflex.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_sickness#Defense_against_poisoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_sickness#Defense_agains...
          • joeberon 6y ago
            I did experience motion sickness on LSD so could be related
          • slfnflctd 6y ago
            This is what it made me think of as well. My first experience with MDMA started out in the grips of anxiety, trembling and feeling multiple uncomfortable symptoms, afraid I had taken too much. I don't think I was able to even stand or walk for several long minutes. I went on to have a wonderful & memorable experience, feeling closeness & positivity with every human interaction for hours. The worst part after I got over the initial freakout was coming back down. I've heard people talk about such early-stage freakouts happening on other psychedelics, too, but I don't have much experience there.
• 01100011 6y ago
  Similar experience taking LSD(or whatever was on the blotter) when I was a kid. I've done psychedelics since and enjoyed it, but that was my third experience and it was decades before I tried again.
  • PoachedSausage 6y ago
    That is what puts me off trying LSD. It seems that unless you live in the Bay area and are friends with certain organic chemists, your chances of getting good quality, real LSD are slim. However, mushrooms are quite easy to grow.
    • jdc 6y ago
      [...] you're chances of getting good quality, real LSD are slim How do you figure?
      • PoachedSausage 6y ago
        It is not that popular as a drug and there can't be that many people world-wide capable of producing it.
        • moreaccountspls 6y ago
          Nah, it's an extremely popular drug and right now it's probably more available than any time since the sixties.
    • joeberon 6y ago
      That isn't true here in the UK at least, it is easy and quite cheap to get real LSD. Also it's pretty easy to test too
      • PoachedSausage 6y ago
        I guess I haven't been that motivated to really look for it, so maybe I'm wrong about availability here.
• specialist 6y ago
  That's rough. I'm sorry you're struggling with the aftermath. My own story may be relevant to you. FWIW: I was really into zen as a kid. Part of my rebellion against Christianity and leaving my church. Once while meditating, I accidentally had a pretty bad trip. (I can describe the actual trip separately.) I was completely unprepared, didn't even know such a thing was possible. It's kicked my ass ever since. From what I read (afterwards), others have called that kind of trip ego death, death-rebirth, religious experience. In buddhist terms, if that was the 2nd stage, I had ZERO interest in experiencing the 3rd stage, much less the 4th stage (aka "enlightenment"). A few months later, I was diagnosed with an acute life threatening disease. I was hospitalized for months, spent a few years recovering. So the upside to having the living shit scared out of me while meditating was that actual near death real experiences were emotional cake walks. My care providers were like "Who is this kid?!" My family was less amused by my apparent blasé attitude. Any way. To wrap this up. We're all going get "there" one way or another. You're gonna die. It's all pointless. Yadda, yadda. But you can choose to resume your normal life. You cope. You adapt. Fake it, if you have to, like I did. And eventually the habit of day to day living, striving, struggling, smelling the roses will become your new normal. Most of the time. Just one caveat. Your pharmacology can absolutely change your brain, personality, outlook. Mental well being isn't just happy self-talk. Mind and body are inseparable. So figure out that other stuff too, if needed.
  • joeberon 6y ago
    Honestly it was similar for me. I'm not sure if this is related to what you are saying but partly for me the suicidal and fearful thoughts were just from considering how incredibly intense the trip was. The emotions and anxiety and just general rawness of nature felt so clear on the trip that it gave me some kind of PTSD and flashbacks that lasted afterwards, to the point where whenever I thought back to the trip I would crave death instead, and these intrusive thoughts were getting more and more frequent to the point of daily. I remember having many thoughts were I was so scared of even the thought of tripping that I would immediately start to obsess over the idea of being dead instead. I knew that wasn't ok at all so I ended up going back on my old SSRIs which, unsurprisingly, massively turned down the intensity knob on everything and brought me back to reality. I think I struggled with the aftermath for about 6 months. At first I thought my anxiety was cured by the trip, but about 2 or 3 months after I started losing touch with reality. I am better now (due entirely to SSRIs) but still struggling with the generalized anxiety disorder I have grappled with for my life so far
• breakyerself 6y ago
  I don't reccomend LSD to anyone. My last time taking it was devastating. Traumatic hallucinations and delusions during the trip and I had anxiety and uncomfortable tactile sensations that took more than a year to dissipate.
  • joeberon 6y ago
    I also suffered from intense tactile sensations throughout the trip that lingered for a few months afterwards. I've always had oversensitivity to touch on THC-heavy cannabis strains but I experienced strong synesthesia on LSD which translated to a few months where feelings of anxiety were directly coupled to my sense of touch in my right index finger and thumb
    • Trasmatta 6y ago
      I've had a very similar experience with my hands. I believe it's a symptom of Depersonalization.
• shlant 6y ago
  I wonder if some have a genetic predisposition to bad reactions to psychedelics. My best friend had an LSD reaction similar to yours (increasingly intense hallucinations until falling on the ground and starting to seize). His brother had a bad experience with psilocybin and jumped out a window. I believe a second brother also had a bad experience. Makes me even more concerned when people talk about psychedelics as a low risk self-treatment for various illnesses. I myself have had a bad trip which resulted in years of anxiety and panic attacks (although after having done psychedelics many times before).
  • joeberon 6y ago
    Yeah I think that the psychological harm, much like some other drugs, can be underrated. Another example of a drug people see as harmless is cannabis, which can reliably give people (including myself) intense anxiety and panic attacks. It is conjecture on my part but I can't think that it is healthy for your mind to subject yourself to intense feelings of anxiety. These days I steer clear of all drugs except for my SSRIs and alcohol, the latter being basically the only recreational drug I've taken that seems to not put me at some level of psychological turbulence.
    • saiya-jin 6y ago
      Powerful psychoactive substances shouldn't be taken by people who are not mentally 'balanced', meaning just fine, happy with themselves or similar. I know its easy to say in hindsight, many of us tried those things when we didn't think about it, and it worked better for some and less for others. I think the old set & setting has some proper meaning here and can vastly bootstrap the incoming experience. Having a calm, even soothing environment, no negative outside influences like badly tripping / drug rejecting friends who can drag anybody down to mud. If one is really unsure, have some friend 'spotting' for you and drag you back and calm down if bad trip comes. If one is in bad mental place, just don't do it, it ain't alcohol which can be taken almost on any mood. Personally, I've never had a profound trip unless alone, relaxing on the bed with nice music in the background, but that worked for my specific personality.
      • 6y ago
• crisissolution 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing, I'd like to add my own experience on LSD and the long-lasting effect of fear-of-death it can result in. I have taken LSD only three times and can't say I enjoyed it very much, but I still wanted to give it a chance. Last time I took a 1/2 of what was recommended for me to see how it goes, and the beginning was pretty enjoyable, I played League of Legends, and the mobs started walking on the wall behind the monitor as if the view was projected on it, it was fun. I used to smoke a lot of weed at that time, and it always had a soothing and calming effect for me - not this time. Marijuana never caused me any panic, but at the end of the trip, I was barely feeling anything and smoked a joint, what happened next was frightening. I felt an ache at my heart and considered calling the hospital for several hours, but was scared because of intoxication. I could not relax and sit at one place, there was darkening in my eyes, and peripheral vision was gone, and LSD made the feeling of fear massively intense. It felt as if my heart was going to stop just because I was thinking so much that I was dying. I can only name what helped me then: I started walking short distances telling myself that if I manage to go from point A to point B then I'm fine and it's just a bad drug tripped. It helped, also tasting various flavours and hearing sounds from outside the street helped me focus my attention on something else. After a few hours of walking/tasting/hearing, I noticed my heart pace slowing down and the realisation that I wasn't in any real danger followed next. A terrible feeling that I will never forget. The bad trip lasted about 6 hours, and for the next few days, I felt a sharp pain in my chest.
  • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    My experiences with psychedelics and cannabis (many decades ago now) were similar in that LSD or psilocybin were terrific on their own, but the addition of cannabis made it extremely unpleasant. I still find cannabis unpleasant now. I found cannabis very enjoyable before trying that combination. My advice for any explorers would be to not smoke cannabis while tripping.
    • vmception 6y ago
      I've heard so many anecdotes about how to steer acid trips by mixing with other drugs. These candy flipping practices seem like a great way to die!
• raducu 6y ago
  If you used to be on SSRIs and they worked, then LSD doesn't sound like a good match. I regret not taking psychedelics, but I hallucinated from a large dosage of hashish and had visual disturbances for a couple of days after, so I figured it's better to not mess with other psychedelics. I also got a bad panic attack from a moderate dosage of stimulants(bad idea mixing them) and I could not drink coffee for 2 years, or I would get a panic attack just from the coffee -- it all went away eventually and I can drink coffee without a panick attack now (though it does seem to cause joint pain so I try to avoid it).
  • joeberon 6y ago
    >If you used to be on SSRIs and they worked, then LSD doesn't sound like a good match. Well honestly I had thought that LSD could be great for anxiety and depression under the right set and setting. Since I was very sure I could have a great setting (which I could) I thought that my chances of a bad trip were very minimal. Unfortunately I think I just didn't pay enough attention to the "set" part
  • blaufast 6y ago
    Mental disturbances from hashish and psychedelics, while similar symptoms, are completely different internally. I wouldn’t rule out psychedelics based on that experience.
    • raducu 6y ago
      It wasn't just "mental" as in anxiety -- those were visual disturbances -- tracers in bright led lights, bright spots in grill patterns (metal or my chess-pattern shirt). The experience just made me think I'm predisposed to HPPD so I thought to play it safe.
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    > If you used to be on SSRIs and they worked, then LSD doesn't sound like a good match Do you have any evidence at all to support this claim? LSD isn't inherently an anti-depressant. The research around psychedelics involves many sessions of intense therapy with LSD used in some sessions to help facilitate the therapy. Researchers aren't just dosing people with psychedelics and walking away. The drug itself isn't doing the heavy lifting of addressing the problems.
• spuz 6y ago
  The process that patients go through when participating in a medical trial of psilocybin is so different than the typical recreational setting that the rest of us experience these drugs. They do everything they can to make sure the patient is well prepared and has the minimum chance of having a bad trip. However, every time I read about studies into psychedelics, I only ever hear about the upsides and not the potential downsides. I went through a similar experience to you - although not as severe. I had anxiety for about 3 years after my bad trip which luckily gradually reduced over time. What worries me is that the more these drugs gain credibility in the medical field the more likely it is that depressed kids are going to self-medicate and given the ability of these drugs to multiply the user's existing anxieties, they should be the last people who should be experimenting and self-medicating with them.
  • Trasmatta 6y ago
    I also had severe, lasting anxiety after a couple of bad trips. I will never use again unless I get the opportunity to do so in a therapeutic setting with trained professionals. There is tremendous potential for good with these substances, but they have some real risks.
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    > The process that patients go through when participating in a medical trial of psilocybin is so different than the typical recreational setting that the rest of us experience these drugs. They do everything they can to make sure the patient is well prepared and has the minimum chance of having a bad trip. Not just this, but they surround the sessions with intense therapy. They're not just giving people psychedelics and keeping them calm. Look up the MAPS (a foundation for psychedelic research) protocol. People are given a series of intense therapy sessions, only some of which involve psychedelics. Sadly, many of the studies fail to have an active control group. That is, they aren't comparing therapy + psychedelics to therapy alone. That's a major pitfall in the current research. And unfortunately, the therapy component of the research is lost in most internet headlines and articles. People are walking away with the impression that psychedelics are inherently anti-depressant compounds, when the reality is that they're being researched as adjuncts to intense therapy.
• empath75 6y ago
  I don't want to downplay the negative effect it had on you and the difficulty you're having integrating the experience, but it's possible that long term, confronting those thoughts and feelings directly and coming through the other side will end up being better for you. Everyone has to confront their own mortality eventually.
  • joeberon 6y ago
    >confronting those thoughts and feelings directly and coming through the other side will end up being better for you. I am not sure whether this is actually true, or whether the rumination and pondering will mess me up more
    • empath75 6y ago
      Well, hopefully you can come to some resolution about what it all means. I went through something similar after a bad trip and it made me focus on what’s important to be doing in life with the time I have left.