Psychedelic Psychosis

[King Merk]

Quick story.

Background: I've been doing a wide variety of psychedelic drugs for 5+ years now with great benefit to my overall wellbeing.

I have a dear friend of mine I sometime do psychedelics with that occasionally has a psychotic reaction when he does LSD. Not every time but when he does it's bad. This is beyond a "bad trip". 

A little about him, he doesn't have any underlying mental disorders. He's a well educated physicist, athletic, relatively healthy and even owns his own business. I say this so that you know he's in no way some "weirdo brain fried hippie". However, he is a typical American/stage orange/scientific materialist/atheist with little to no consciousness work. I don't believe he's ever meditated. 

I've done LSD with multiple people over the years and I've never seen anyone react the way he has. I've been with him on three different occasions over the last few tears where he completely lost awareness of who he was and flipped the fuck out.

I'll make this brief as possible. The first time it happened he went completely psychotic and was running around our schools campus with his shirt off, yelling at people and climbing atop building. After having the cops called on us, I chased him down and got him to run back to the room. I then forcibly locked him in our bathroom (or should I say sober tank lol) and sat in there with him for hours. While we were in there he couldn't respond normally to any dialogue. He's occasionally blurt of some random word out of context but that's it. When he "came to" he had zero recollection of what happened other than that he'd felt like the laundry detergent bottle was shooting him with a sniper rifle.

The second time he kept asking me questions that were completely irrational, physically blocked the doorway out of my bedroom and speaking gibberish. This again lasted for hours.

The third time was the scariest of them all. He'd taken a single hit of acid at a concert the night previous. I wasn't there but we lived together. Apparently he never felt anything that night at the concert. Him and his girlfriend came home later that night and went to bed. Around 6am his girlfriend woke me up (we all lived together) and told me my friend really needed some help. I walk into his room and my heart dropped. He was lying in his bed on his back with every single muscle in his body flexed. One arm was outstretched as if he was a zombie with his wrist bent back as far as it could go. His face resembled that of a goldfish with a circular lips, jaw clenched shut and eyes popping out. He was gasping for air through his teeth with every breath. Hell of a thing to wake up too. I asked his girlfriend how long he'd been like this and she said for the last two hours straight. I sat there massaging his muscles and trying to talk to him but he was completely unresponsive. In his eyes was an abyss of nothingness. Like absolutely no one was home. I left for class an hour or so later. Around 10am (notice this is about 15 hours since he took the tab) I got a call from our other roomate while sitting in class. He informed me that our high roommate had regained control of his body. He not only broke up with his girlfriend (who thereafter left him alone at our house going crazy) but was also running around our suburbs yelling at people to worship Jesus and not letting them drive away from their houses. I raced home only to find he'd gotten in his car and driven away. When I saw him later that evening he literally spoke with me as if nothing at all strange had happened and had no recollection of anything that had happened until I told him. 

SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS SHIT

I know he wasn't under the influence of some other drug as we typically get LSD in bulk from the same source and share it. So the same drug from the same batch that made him go crazy was extremely therapeutic to me. What I don't understand is the extreme differences in experience between our two reactions. 

All psychonauts know first hand the ego dissolving effects of psychedelic. And of course there will be variation in people's experience while tripping but don't understand how a single tab of acid can make someone so seemingly healthy in their day to day life have such a psychotic reaction. 

Anyone else have similar experiences or an explanation to my buddie's behavior? 

[Leo Gura]

Look, people have different genetics, brains, and psyches. They process things differently and chemicals affect them differently.

Clearly psychedelics are not for him.

Sounds like he is extremely sensitive to them and he has zero foundation for it.

Don't forget that some people actually are psychotic, psychopathic, etc.

[inFlow]

@King Merk wow what a frightening yet funny story. Dont give him more lsd for sure. His body just responds differently, once it kicks some people just kinda cant control their actions on it.

[Nak Khid]

People you think are "normal" can have private sides to them you might not know about or a stronger vulnerability to psychosis if stressed in particular ways that you might not find stressful.   And in this situation LSD lasts a a long time so it prolongs these adverse reactions.  If he had meditation practice under his belt  it may have helped.
Or not