Stuck on lsd

[Joscha]

Disclaimer: this is not meant to deter anyone from lsd. It just so happens that I got into a negative situation with it.  I am writing this post so I don't feel alone with it anymore and perhaps to receive a few helpful ideas.

 

Hello guys, 

two weeks ago I took 60 ug lsd. First two thirds of the trip were positive: mild visual changes, feeling of lightness and fun, laughter, etc. There was also a point where I became very aware of my being, with a feeling of strong inner peace. I seem to react quite sensitively.

Things took a turn in the last third. I slowly started to feel uncomfortable. Thoughts started to loop, I would get stuck on a thought and hope it would go away, but that seemed to make it stronger. Things like "I want the trip to stop", "I'm gonna freak out", "Something terrible is going to happen", "I'm losing control". There was a very sudden shift and I suddenly felt myself in extreme danger. Danger of myself freaking out and hurting myself. So I immediately took an old xanax I had lying around, though I don't know if that had any real effect, but it calmed me immediately after swallowing a little bit, in a placebo kind of way. I still, for the rest of the trip, had to exert a lot of mental effort at not freaking out. I had to tell my friend he had to lie down with me. I forced him to give me easy calculation exercises to solve in my head. I told him to keep me engaged. I had to distract myself as much as possible, watching stuff with him on my iPad, trying very hard to focus on normal things instead of my thoughts. I was in survival mode. I also seemed to regress and became a little like a young boy, I felt like a scared, dependent child. There was this strong desire to be held and protected.

After a while I felt better, my friend left and I could sleep. I was intensely exhausted. The next day is a bit of a blur. I was mainly resting I think, I can't remember so well. For one week after the trip I had a stinging pain in my chest area, close to the heart. The second day after the trip I had to work. I was talking to a client and mid conversation, I had a similar thought again, like in the trip. "What if I freak out". There was also this weird, strange uncertainty whether I was really sober. Things didn't "look" sober, but there also weren't any obvious visual effects. My heart started pounding like crazy. I was very afraid of my life. I would see images of me freaking out, hurting myself. I also had these ideas of "what if this never stops". I felt very stuck, similar to during the trip. I still pulled through the conversation. After she left I seriously considered going to a clinic. I had to exert effort again at not losing myself in the thought loops. They were not as intense as during the trip and I had more concentration power, but the fact that this was happening without a substance is what made it, in a way, even scarier.  

I used affirmations to help myself, even though I was never an affirmations type person. Things like "I am the observer, good things are coming to me, I am strong, I am stable, I am centred, I am sober, god is with me (I am not religious but the concept of a benevolent god helped me). On that second day after the trip those were very helpful. I would talk to myself aloud the entire evening, repeating myself over and over again. It was a random idea to do that and it helped somehow. The days after the anxiety would come in waves. I get triggered also by places, like the kitchen and my room (because that's where it started). I was seriously happy when "normal" worries would reappear after a few days, like work and relationship stress. I was literally relishing a bad mood over this survival mode situation. I thought I was pretty much good, but then yesterday I felt this mild anxiety during the afternoon again. It's this very subtle shift in how I notice my thoughts. And it build up slowly. I tried to ignore it. At night I laid in bed , very tired, and the loops seriously started. There the thought "I am dying" and the sensation I connect with that from earlier, other lsd trips, appeared. Here again I was scared of freaking out. My heart pounded crazy. In these situations I feel like there's sudden adrenaline shot into my veins. I had to get up in the middle of the night and go running. Then, while walking around, I was doing "The Work" from Byron Katie on the thoughts (Mainly: I am dying,  I am losing control, I have to do something against the thoughts, I have to control, I can't trust myself, I am in danger, I have to do something against this, etc.). This was also very helpful, even though it took a while and a lot of focus. I also used a mindfulness technique on the walk, where I simply named all the stuff I saw with simple words. The techniques  I have used for help were just sudden ideas, I don't know why they "came" to me at particular moments. 

I have used lsd many years ago excessively and then had a disastrous, traumatising trip. Afterwards I have taken, just a few times, psilocybin truffles in small, but not micro, doses. With truffles I have not yet had bad trips, which confuses me, as it is still quite similar to the lsd experience. I have also used lsd a handful times with microdoses, up to 30 ug, and had no bad trips. You might wonder, why the hell would I take it again after a very bad experience? I think the memory of the badness from the bad trips back then on lsd has somewhat faded and my thought was, since its such a low dose (before my bad trips only started at 500 ug and up..) and I have someone experienced there with me, it won't be an issue. Well, jokes on me I guess. I am attached to the positive experience I had on it, apparently enough to forget the bad stuff. Im wondering if it's the length of the lsd trips that trigger me at some point, as all the bad stuff on my trips has always started in the last third of the trip. Since truffles have shorter duration, maybe that's one reason for why they haven't triggered me. 

The thing is, I don't have these panic attacks everyday. But there is this background anxiety often. And I am scared that it is a sort of macroversion of the whole loop. You know, the loop starts with mild anxious thoughts and discomfort. And then, after a while of it not getting better, it starts to get out of control, becoming "I must get out". And the shift is then very sudden. It goes from 20 percent fear to 100 percent fear. And the 20 percent slowly build up first. That's the micro situation. What if that's happening on the macro-scale now. I feel this sense of discomfort and anxiety. And I am scared of the flipping point. Sometimes life then starts to feel like a trip and I feel incredibly stuck. I also just feel very "wobbly" all the time, like I can't balance myself properly. It's weird how I want to go back to my sober state how it was before the trip, as I was kind of miserable then too. But my misery had nothing to do with fearing for my life. I guess suffering is relative.

 

I had to write it down and post it somewhere that's already helped. Perhaps someone has a similar experience and has something helpful to share. A part of me is quite scared to have permanently fucked myself up. Though I still have hope that things will quiet down.

Thanks a lot for reading and have a good day.

 

[PolyPeter]

I’ve been exactly where you are. the raw terror of reality feeling permanently unstable after LSD shattered the solid, materialist worldview you clung to for safety. I get it from lived experience, not theory. Here’s the direct truth:

That fear isn’t the drug breaking you; it’s the fierce attachment to the old framework (“reality is fixed matter, I’m a separate self in control”) dissolving. Psychedelics don’t just give a glimpse, they make you know directly that solidity was a cultural conditioning, never the Truth.

There’s no U-turn back to the old paradigm because you can’t un-know what you’ve seen. Trying to “forget” or suppress the experience only fuels the loops and anxiety.

Stability returns not by reversing, but by building forward: a new, wider frame that includes the non-solid, interdependent, empty-of-fixed-self nature of reality.

It feels like death at first because the ego is losing its grip, but the peace comes when you stop fighting the truth and start living from it.

Some practical steps:

- Keep questioning catastrophic thoughts, and what they are actually signaling.
- Daily meditation as the observer. Thoughts and fear arise and pass like weather.
- Ground the body: walk in nature, exercise, simple routine.
- Read non-dual / idealist perspectives to intellectually support what you experientially know.
- Be patient and gentle with yourself. this is integration work.

 

The terror is the resistance. When you stop battling and allow the new understanding to settle, stability emerges from within, deeper and freer than before.

You’re not broken. You’re in the middle of the transformation. Many come out the other side saying it was the best thing that ever happened to them.

Big hug.

[Judy2]

it seems like you already understand the mechanics of what went "wrong" - namely, your resistance to certain thoughts only amplified them further and made you more anxious. 

as you mentioned that you are struggling with the length of lsd trips: do you set aside an entire day (ideally a Saturday or a personal equivalent in your schedule) and the morning after? this already helps free up your attention. 

another tip that comes to mind is creating a gentle plan for the last third of the trip. you don't have to resort to it, but in case things are getting confusing, it might be helpful to have a few activities or tricks to change the setting up your sleeve, for example, by putting on music, changing the lighting, watching a specific video about meditation or spirituality, and so on. sometimes having this emergency plan at the back of your mind can already help calm you down and it'll be a nice way to bridge the rougher parts of the trip if you forget that it'll also come to an end in a few hours

Edited 14 hours ago by Judy2

[Alexop]

I took 100ug once and had the same feeling. Just constant anxiety and fear. SInce then I did not dare to take a full dose, just 50 ug at a time. I think I will try mushrooms instead. I had serious problems with social anxiety in my youth, maybe this can have something to do with it.

Edited 8 hours ago by Alexop