Afraid of psychedelics. Or am I?

[ivankiss]

Some of you may have read my "hospital trip report". It was my very first post here.

I don't think I gave it justice back then. I still had a few steps to make in order to see the picture clearly. Still, to this day I have no explanation of what went down that night. I cannot rationalize the experience. It was way too much. Way over the top. 

It left a mark, for sure. I was and still am traumatized by the event. Can't deny. 

I did trip on acid and shrooms a handful of times afterwards. But this strange sensation would not allow me to surrender fully and explore the magic freely. Somewhere deep down I was always afraid. 

Now the tricky part is explaining what it is that I am afraid of exactly. I struggle pointing at it. Precisely because I struggle explaining what I went through on that terrifying night. But I know when I "go there". I know how it feels. I know where it leads.

It is not just death. 

It is beyond death. Yet there still seems to be annihilation. Destruction. Dematerialization.

Reality falls apart. Quite literally. It is torn apart, to be precise.

Parallel realities start merging. I become aware of all of them. To the point where I am literally there, in all of them. Imagine having your TV screen split to a million parts; each playing a different movie. It's kinda like that. 

The mind starts freezing. Time is long gone. No sense of linearity or a continuum, whatsoever.

Then...Everything is pulled to the center and it burns...it burns so bad. I cannot imagine anything more painful. 

All there is left is pure light. No individual. No being. No reality. No issness and no amness. No breath, even. Only light; crossing its own path. Swirling.

Until it stops.

And then there is nothing. No light. No sound. No sensation. Absolutely nothing. And I have no idea how it is that I know about it. It should be impossible.

At that point, there is no more awareness to be aware of anything - including nothing. It's just infinite, black nonexistence. Unknown and unseen. It's Source.

Why the heck does this happen? Why can't I trip normally, like everyone else? Simply explore magical realms, dimensions and all the wonders of existence? Even very low doses can trigger me into that shit...whatever it is.

I went through it once completely sober, as well. 

It often feels like I'm tripping even without taking any substances. Why? 

It has crossed my mind that perhaps I'm "too conscious" as I am. And consuming psychedelics catapults me stright into nothingness; destroying everything. Maybe psychedelics are not relevant to me. Maybe I should just explore life and its magic naturally; sober.

Or is this paralyzing fear all that's "in my way" ?

Something in me wants to trip. But it would be nice to have something...Anything...That is...Not being torn apart. 

A reality. An experience. An experiencer.

The biggest paradox is that in that precise moment of terror I seem to be left with no choice. If I surrender - I surrender myself to fire. If I don't - I still burn. Suffering and destruction seems to be inevitable. 

Choice is only born once I am one with nothing; Stay eternally still and silent or reconstruct everything from scratch and give birth to existence once again?

I chose to be here.

Help?

 

[mandyjw]

What is the emotion, what is the feeling of it?

Why do you choose to be here? What is that you want to experience, feel? 

[Forestluv]

I’ve had trips similiar to how you’ve described. It was traumatic to the mind and body such that I needed to walk away for several months. There are places I would dread returning to. 

One thing that helped me was to try different psychedelics at different dosages and settings. Each mind-body has a particular resonance with different psychedelics.

For me, a lot of what you describe about timeless deconstruction if reality is not disturbing (although there can be some resistance of “holding on” at times). At a personal/human level the hardest zones for me are those in which I can’t make it stop and it will go on forever. As well, that there could be harm caused if I let go. That’s where my fight or flight goes into overdrive. For me, mid to high doses of shrooms or lsd can feel very possessive which can be disturbing. In contrast, San Pedro is the opposite. It is not possessive at all and I can “leave and return” as I please. Others like al-lad and 4-ho-met are relatively gentle and 4-ho-met has unbelievable CEVs.

To me, what you wrote about your trips (and your posts in general) seem very heavy, intense and serious. Yet you seem to crave a light magical exploration into other realms. There might be something holding you back from the whimsical. . . . This is just what I sense, it could be off. Yet if I’m onto something, I would shift toward using a more easy-going psychedelic with a mindset and setting that allows you to enter other realms that are more majestic and even playful. 

[Raptorsin7]

@ivankiss @mandyjw Do you think shadow work or inner work could open more up our psyche up so it's easier to accept and integrate these kinds of intense, reality bending experiences?

I think some people just don't get a lot of crazy trips on the path, for whatever reason, and some people get crazy intense trips but for whatever reason they just shrug them off and keep it moving on the path to full realization. I wonder what's the main causal factor here...

[exhale]

Im not implying that this is what you experienced, but people can have psychotic breaks from drugs with far less psychoactive properties.  
 

Admittedly, I have not experienced hallucinogenic or psychoactive drugs.  

I am open minded to the idea that they could be helpful in some situations for certain people.  Though, I am disturbed by the apparent eagerness of young, growing, maturing, and at-times unstable minded individuals seeking these powerful treatments.  
 

Not sure what your question was though.  I think your story is important to share (Thank you) to remind people that these are not fleeting benign experiences and there can be long-term consequences.

 

[purerogue]

You should be able to explain most of your trip, none can really do it for you, as there was way to much going on and you know better.

First you have to remember that you must be calm when you are under any substance, or your mind will start to uncontrollably jump from one idea to another, even then it will  drag out your deepest mental patterns depending on setting that you are into, you had allot going on both in internal experience and external experience that was new to you, so your mind was getting in middle of experience and trying to reason with what is going on. 

Also mind likes to rearrange experience after it happened in his own way, not in direct experience way , but memory is problem that you have to remember too.

What you have to do is untangle experience and see what is what. 

To be more precise, what was experience itself, what was mind reasoning of experience and what was just action to reasoning. 

Edited December 28, 2019 by purerogue

[DrewNows]

Where’s the burning? In the stomach? I’ve experienced it in the stomach and having very similar sounding dimensional splitting as you describe.

Imo it really has to do with setting and (mainly) intention, whenever I take a trip and I have no clear intention or desire, the subconscious mind dictates the experience and so there’s no clear desire to be in my current reality, I’ll launch into other dimensions with no recollection and barely an awareness of my breathe. However “I” was seemingly able to find anything I wanted to know

my advice is simply to have clear trip plans and activities, an empty stomach, and to use the breathe to shift focus/direction while tripping  

[mandyjw]

@Raptorsin7 Yes. Shadow work transmutes fear into love. 

My one and only truly extended over a period of time mystical experience or awakening was in itself shadow work and the aftermath. I got an intimate glimpse into how shadow work is done from standing outside, with love. I stopped eating much of sleeping much and woke up in the middle of the night channeling insights, mostly about my memories. The best way I can describe it is I got a glimpse into how perfectly, sychronistically infinite intelligence created me and used all my "traumatic" experiences and things I pushed against. It felt like the end of a Harry Potter book when all the clues come together and are revealed in the end, and I saw the truth that my entire life and story was a creatively and brilliantly written fiction. It felt like falling deeply, intimately in love with the Devil. In the end, I accepted him/her as myself. This culminated in the most freeing and total experience of love I've ever experienced. This is leaving out a lot of details, it happened over a several days. 

I know that I went through an emotional path, which Sadhguru refers to here. There are side effects.  I can see though, that most people here are going by a different path so I can see the aspect that they might be missing. I do believe that what we want to to embody and open to both the emotion and logical aspects of our whole Self. 

The thing about shadow work is that there is stuff that has to be felt fully to move through it. You can't intellectually tell yourself it's a story, a fiction, that it's in the past and gone.  To truly let go you must embrace, fully letting the emotions go makes the entire thing this beautiful bon fire of passionate love that burns the whole fucking construct of you down. This sounds scary and painful, but it's so beyond that, it's not at all because you KNOW that you are just a person watching the movie of your life and nothing that happens on the screen can threaten you. You just sit there and watch the fire with a mad look of love in your eyes, appreciating the beauty of the whole thing. 

 

[DrewNows]

To me it’s a bad experience/trip that would normally result in psychosis but without an ego attachment, it just ends in confusion and the feeling of a “losing myself” in that trip, even though there’s no longer a possibility for a “bad” trip, maybe that resonates? 

Edited December 28, 2019 by DrewNows

[electroBeam]

Take mescaline instead of LSD and shrooms then. If it's too scary for you right now.

Then after 100 trips of mescaline, go back to taking heroic doses of shrooms.

With Psychs in my opinion, it's much like gym training. You pick a weight that puts you out of your comfort zone, but not so far that you break an arm. You build up to heavier weights by going through safe amounts of pain, discomfort, fear and agony. 

Psychedelics are definitely not meant to be pleasant experiences. They are meant to "hurt".

[ivankiss]

@mandyjw In that precise moment; pain, agony and terror. 

Otherwise I have mixed feelings about it. At times I'm terrified, other times amazed.

I can sense things shifting internally now, as I shared this. It helps.

I am simply here to experience life.

 @Raptorsin7 Well, to me, posting something like this here is a part of my "shadow work." It's about transforming fear. Shining light onto the darkness, if you will. So that once an aspect is healed, I can move on freely - however that may look.

@Serotoninluv Thanks, that was quite soothing. You're right - I definitely have a heavy, serious approach to things at times. I do want to experience lighter states. And I also do, quite often.

This is just how my process of transformation looks like. 

Appreciate your help.

 

[ivankiss]

@exhale In a way it was a psychotic breakdown, yes. At least that time I landed in a hospital. But there was also much more to it. I became aware of so much. Too much at once, obviously.

And I wasn't even "seeking truth" or any of that. It all just happened on its own.

@purerogue Not sure if explaining the experience away is what I need. It's impossible.

Even in this post I said too much. All there really was...was just a structure that structures itself. And deconstructs itself. Over and over again. Me trying to step in its way is what caused all the pain. I guess.

What I need is this. Opening up and sharing. I heal through expression, the fastest.

@DrewNows Thank you. That makes sense. Setting is a huge factor, I know. Intention, as well. 

I guess I needed to go through it the way I did tho. I took away alot. No matter how terrifying it was. 

@electroBeam Even if they are meant to hurt, which is arguable, are they meant to completely tear reality down? Haha.

If so, then heck, its really not for me. 

I had beautiful, amazing moments on shrooms and lsd, as well. It was not all just suffering. But I sense I could deepen the magic. Go further into wonder and beauty. If only I could release this fear I carry around.

Hence my post.

 

Edited December 28, 2019 by ivankiss

[Raptorsin7]

@mandyjw That's beautiful. I think inner work like shadow work is so underrated on here. I've been "meditating" for a few years now, but only recently have i just stopped to feel what  my life actually feels like and it's very profound. I'm going to start an organized shadow work system, and i'm excited to come back and post my results here.

What did you actually do? What kind of shadow work did you practice?

[mandyjw]

@ivankiss The relationship between fear and love is an interesting one. The most intense forms of love cannot be felt unless there's fear there at first. That's why people love motorcycles, bungee jumping, have the fear of the opposite sex at first, etc. It's all programmed in to make the experiences of life deeper. Fear is just another indicator of how amazing you are. 

[mandyjw]

@Raptorsin7 It was all purely by accident, I had no intention or desire to do shadow work beforehand. I started a journal with another member here, titled "Is This Journal Mine or Yours" because we had a strong connection but I couldn't tell who was helping who. I had had a strange experience in which it seemed someone was communicating with me from the dead, desiring me to read his book, etc, and I told him about the experience because I thought I was getting wrapped up in a story and I wanted him to help me let it go or make sense of it. Starting the journal and his presence awoke a creativity in me and it was as if everything written there was channeled. Once I recognized this, I remembered that I had a novel in my head for a few years and I wanted him to help me write it. But instead of writing a novel about a character I made up, I ended up writing to him the story of my own life, sprinkled throughout with other spiritual insights. Then the inability to sleep or eat normally and strong channeling started in. There was a lot of physical pain, strange bodily sensations, but the entire thing was too enthralling to be bothered by it except for brief moments of recognition. The entire thing was very book/story themed. Don't look for it, it's been deleted long ago. I saved just the start of it. 

I can now on my own do shadow work that is left to be done. A week or so ago I did some on a small scale because I felt the need arise on its own and the next couple days were wonderful. Release = bliss. I do think there's value to intentional or organized shadow work as long as intuition and inspiration are honored and included in the process.  

 

 

[ivankiss]

@mandyjw Beautiful. Thank you.

[remember]

@ivankiss it is your choice to not touch the splinters. it reminds me of the story of the snow queen.

for nothingness experienced in a state of soberness nothingness is the state you are in when you cut through or see through what people call maya and mara - if you arrive there with the help of a psychedelic it`s clear why there seems no pointer towards it, as all pointers point outside.

Edited December 29, 2019 by remember