50ug LSD trip induced fear of death

[Rodrigo SIlva]

So after several years of on and off spiritual practices and some decent progress with it I decided to give LSD a try. One thing that I wasn't expecting was that I have a TON of pre trip anxiety but I just force myself to do it anyway. 

The first time I did 50ug and it it was unpleasant at the peak, I think because my trip sitter was judging me and getting offended at the stuff I was saying so it got a little ugly or maybe just because I was scared going into it.

Last week I decided to give it a try again but now alone in a beautiful apartment with a great view. Again I had a ton of pre trip anxiety and was getting afraid that that could mess up my trip. The peak was actually great I looked at myself in a new way full of love and understanding which I thought was very helpful because I've been very judgmental towards myself and now I see a new way to relate to myself and the world. But still the trip had this fearful, unsettling vibe to it especially when I turned off the music and there was just silence. I kind of felt claustrophobic and weird with the world around. That night after like 20 hours since I dosed I had this intense fear which I couldn't be in silence with. I felt like if I surrendered to it I could have a mental breakdown or a panic attack or something. Since then I've been feeling this same thing and been distracting myself a lot. Like I want to hold on strongly to my ego.

What do you think I should do with this?

Put off psychedelics for awhile and just meditate, do 50ug again and try to surrender more fully, or jump to 100ug (scared to do so)?

Thanks in advance!

[allislove]

I'd slow down and just do what you enjoy the most. Give yourself a rest, give yourself some appreciation for starting psychedelic journey 

I'd trip when the answer to the question whether trip or not is "Hell yes!" 

[Rodrigo SIlva]

20 minutes ago, dimitri said:

I'd slow down and just do what you enjoy the most. Give yourself a rest, give yourself some appreciation for starting psychedelic journey 

I'd trip when the answer to the question whether trip or not is "Hell yes!" 

Yeah that sounds like solid advice. Thanks!

[OBEler]

@Rodrigo SIlva I know your situation from myself. Good work, that you decided to do it anyway, you have strong will power. This sounds like  a good trip in terms of growth, which will help you a lot in your journey.

But dont go up. make a break and then do 50 again and again until you can rest in silence with bliss. silence is pure beauty. your ego just hates it

For me I also get this claustrophobic silence, and I feel weird. Even music will not stop this. I then concentrate on the breath, that helps

Edited March 15, 2020 by OBEler

[Shmurda]

I feel for you mate. I started doing a lot of research about climate change and it made me realise how dire our environmental crisis is. When it really hit me that my body-mind may die from this, along with those of every person who I know and love, I felt great anxiety and resistance. The claustrophobic fear and feeling of being seperate hung in my awareness creating a sense of dread. I started to see death everywhere. 

I meditated on it and kept telling myself "accept it, its okay, c'est la vie..." and all this, trying to reconcile my ego with its own imminent end to no avail. I would be browsing the internet and see an article about arctic ice melting and feel a chill run down my spine.

So, I decided to take a strong dose of mushrooms and really delve into this feeling. As the trip came on I felt that familiar feeling arise. I also felt myself reeling at the prospect. So I said to myself "This is it. This mushroom trip is last thing you will ever do. You aren't gonna die in 5 or 10 years, your death is now." Then, I let myself die and all the pain and fear came pouring out and what was left was peace.

What I'm trying to say is, there was no way for me to work around this fear, sit with or take it easy and wait for it to pass. It had always been there, lurking in my shadow and I brought it up to the surface. Then it only had two places to go, back down into the shadow or exorcised from the self by letting the self-concept die.

This is what a stronger dose psychedelic can do for you if you're prepared to surrender everything. Let the crippling fear of death collapse onto the self-concept and crush it under the weight of certainty, thereby killing the self. Once your self has died, there's nothing left to fear.

[Rodrigo SIlva]

5 hours ago, OBEler said:

@Rodrigo SIlva I know your situation from myself. Good work, that you decided to do it anyway, you have strong will power. This sounds like  a good trip in terms of growth, which will help you a lot in your journey.

But dont go up. make a break and then do 50 again and again until you can rest in silence with bliss. silence is pure beauty. your ego just hates it

For me I also get this claustrophobic silence, and I feel weird. Even music will not stop this. I then concentrate on the breath, that helps

Thanks for the advice! Yeah the thing is that I felt like it went half way but never got to any release. I know some people find 50ug a little anxious, weird, boring because it comes up but there is never a real release from the ego, the mind never goes kabom. Do you think this unsettling vibe could be because of the half dose or is it just my inability to surrender properly and with more dose there will just be more resistance?

[OBEler]

@Rodrigo SIlva I heard from many people that low doses (not microdoses) can be weird. They say you are hanging in between a trip and sober consciousness.  You are not fully in a trip, you are between two worlds if you know what I mean. Therefore your ego is very well active and can be afraid. Higher doses will solve this problem. In your case I still would do some more low doses. You mastered 50 mcg, next time it will be a little less wired and so on. Then go up to the next level

 

 

[Nahm]

One person’s fear of death is another’s dropping of a belief. 

13 hours ago, Rodrigo SIlva said:

I felt like if I surrendered to it

What would that look like?

How could you both create a belief, and yet surrender to it? 

[Rodrigo SIlva]

3 hours ago, OBEler said:

@Rodrigo SIlva I heard from many people that low doses (not microdoses) can be weird. They say you are hanging in between a trip and sober consciousness.  You are not fully in a trip, you are between two worlds if you know what I mean. Therefore your ego is very well active and can be afraid. Higher doses will solve this problem. In your case I still would do some more low doses. You mastered 50 mcg, next time it will be a little less wired and so on. Then go up to the next level

 

 

Yeah that sounds like the right thing to do

[Rodrigo SIlva]

3 hours ago, Nahm said:

One person’s fear of death is another’s dropping of a belief. 

What would that look like?

How could you both create a belief, and yet surrender to it? 

I'm not sure if I understood your point. The trouble with the surrendering is that my mind doesn't know where to invest it's sense of self and security in. Like when I speak it's confusing to understand what is that thing that is speaking like if the rigid self got loosened up and now I'm not so sure who I really am. So I guess the belief that is dropping is the belief of being this very specific character.

[Nahm]

@Rodrigo SIlva

Suppose you acknowledge thoughts that are about you, aren’t true.  What do you figure would happen? 

What are a few things that feel good, about being you? 

Also, we’ve heard what thought has to say about you...

What does perception (seeing, hearing) and sensation (body / feeling) say about you?

[Forestluv]

@Rodrigo SIlva There can be anxiety when the mind and body feel like it is losing control over defining reality. A loss of control over how things are perceived and the mental narrative in the mind. For me, this is mostly a survival instinct to protect the survival of the mind, body and self construct. What I’ve found is that with more experience in which nothing “bad” happens, the anxiety and resistance can decrease. 

I’ve had trips in which I felt anxiety as I lost control over the mental narrative. “Omigosh, my thoughts don’t make sense. What is happening? I don’t know what is real. What if I harm myself or someone else? I want this to stop, but I can’t make it stop”. . . During the comedown, I may realize “Oh, it wasn’t dangerous. Actually things look quite beautiful. I think I’ll go for a walk and admire the beauty of nature”. . . After going through this many times, the mind can adapt a during trips and more easily let go. The mind-body knows it doesn’t have to go into fight or flight mode. . . Yet the opposite can also occur. If I tripped in a crowded train station, list control over reality perception, got anxious, freaked out, put into a straight jacket and sent to a jail cell - that would be traumatic to the mind and body which could increase anxiety / panic on the next trip. . . For this reason, I try to choose a safe, simple, peaceful setting. Usually a place we’re I don’t have to interact with a lot of people. For me, that adds in variables. 

What I found over time is that with enough exposure to this unknown, anxiety transformed into curiosity and fascination. For example, the first time I lost sense of “me” in a cafe was very frightening. The “me” dissolved and I lost control of perceiving “me” relative to everything else. It was like I was becoming the entire cafe and it was scary. I didn’t know what would happen. . . Yet after this happened about 10 times and nothing bad happened, I started getting curious when it happened. It was like being a kid exploring new terrain. Now, I’m learning how to actually turn it on while sober. 

Yet I also respect psychedelics and I try to be cautious at 40ug and above, especially if I’m in public.

[Rodrigo SIlva]

22 hours ago, Nahm said:

What does perception (seeing, hearing) and sensation (body / feeling) say about you?

Well my perception says that I'm here and I'm experiencing stuff. That's all. And this feeling of here is inside my body and more pronounced in the head.

[Rodrigo SIlva]

@Serotoninluv This has been exactly my experience and it actually makes sense that if the fear is grounded on an ilusion that with enough exposure to it the mind starts to stop resisting it because it recognizes that there is no danger in letting go. So has long as we have the courage to face the fear it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I think the real problem happens when we don't have that courage to look at the illusory monster right in the eyes but keep running away from it reenforcing it's reality.

[Forestluv]

1 minute ago, Rodrigo SIlva said:

@Serotoninluv 

the fear is grounded on an ilusion 

I like the phrasing of "grounded on an illusion", since it includes the both sides of the paradox.  .. . We could also say "groundless on reality".

For me, it gets tricky. . . If I tell myself "This is an illusion", it doesn't honor the realness of it. If I tell myself "This is real", it doesn't honor the imaginary-ness of it. 

[Commodent]

I've had similar fears. I haven't done LSD yet, but oftentimes when I focus on my chest area I get very anxious and feel like I'm going to have a heart attack if I keep doing it (I get weird sensations in my chest). Facing the prospect of my own physical death is very difficult, but I feel like I'm gradually getting there. I wonder what that would be like on LSD.

There is this one quote by David R. Hawkins that I particularly like:

"In serious spiritual work, it is necessary to have a few simple basic tools that are absolutely dependable and safe to rely on in order to walk through fear and uncertainty. One basic truth that is of inestimable value and usefulness is the dictum that all fear is fallacious and not based on truth. Fear is overcome by walking directly into it until one breaks through to the joy that the fear is blocking. The joy that follows facing any spiritual fear comes from the discovery that it was merely an illusion without basis or reality."

[Nahm]

2 hours ago, Rodrigo SIlva said:

Well my perception says that I'm here and I'm experiencing stuff. That's all. And this feeling of here is inside my body and more pronounced in the head.

That ...(imo) is far better to inspect non-trip, than in a trip (going back to your op).  The trip will ‘say’ there’s no you, no here, and you are not experiencing stuff...that feeling / here is not inside the body.  That’s what “could be lost”, that’s the “fear”.  You can ‘peel it off’ with a psychedelics, but that’s like taking a band aid off with a bulldozer. This is generally indicative (no offense) of a local culture of psych’s being “the work”, whereas imo they are “the reward”, the pleasure cruise through infinity, for having done the work.

[Rodrigo SIlva]

5 hours ago, Commodent said:

"In serious spiritual work, it is necessary to have a few simple basic tools that are absolutely dependable and safe to rely on in order to walk through fear and uncertainty. One basic truth that is of inestimable value and usefulness is the dictum that all fear is fallacious and not based on truth. Fear is overcome by walking directly into it until one breaks through to the joy that the fear is blocking. The joy that follows facing any spiritual fear comes from the discovery that it was merely an illusion without basis or reality."

Loved this quote

[Rodrigo SIlva]

4 hours ago, Nahm said:

That ...(imo) is far better to inspect non-trip, than in a trip (going back to your op).  The trip will ‘say’ there’s no you, no here, and you are not experiencing stuff...that feeling / here is not inside the body.  That’s what “could be lost”, that’s the “fear”.  You can ‘peel it off’ with a psychedelics, but that’s like taking a band aid off with a bulldozer. This is generally indicative (no offense) of a local culture of psych’s being “the work”, whereas imo they are “the reward”, the pleasure cruise through infinity, for having done the work.

Yeah I'm not entirely sure if psychedelics are really a useful tool to go deeper in any lasting way or just a short term profound experience. But at the very least it seems to leave you with a lot of food for thought which could be helpful in the sober self-inquiry practices.

[Nahm]

@Rodrigo SIlva It relative, they can be both. Journaling might be good. Any chance getting what you want in life in front of you might unclog some things? Some self doubts etc?