LSD bad trip report : Never ending recursive thought loops of madness

[Lurking667]

WARNING :

The following story contains detailed retranscription of very distressing thought and fucked up reasoning that really made me question my sanity for a short period of time. I would not recommend reading this if you are tripping on weed or any psychedelics right now. I would also avoid reading if you suffer from OCD, as obsessive and intrusive thoughts are at the heart of this experience, but hey, you do as you wish.

 

I apologize for the lengthy post but I really wanted to make sure to get all the details down, I hope this level of description will give some insight about what exactly constitutes the experience of a bad trip from an internal point of view for those who never experienced it, and especially how things can gradually go objectively more insane while remaining somehow coherent and making perfect sense for the person experiencing the trip. I've read many trips reports but I've never seen one explaining in detail the inner workings of the mind trying to persuade you that your madness is real, which is what I'm aiming to do with this story. Another reason I'm writing this is to gain some insight into the interpretation (if there's any) of the events that happened that night. What does it tell about myself, my state of mind, consciousness, or the way the human mind works in general? Such questions I don't think I can answer right now, but I'm eager to hear what you all have to say. The events I'm about to describe have deeply disturbed but also motivated me to develop a new mindset of self-improvement and spiritual research, it kinda woke me out of a state of slumber you could say. Now that I've seen the tremendous power of the mind, I realize the importance of every single moment of my life and I want to get the most out of it, which include fixing my intellectual and behavioural shortcomings, becoming a better person on all accounts, especially my relationship with myself and others, and stop wasting my days doing nothing. Sorry for the rant lol now comes the interesting part :

 

This happened about a month ago. I had already taken LSD a few times before, in moderate dosage (200ug each time). I'm 20 years old for reference. At the moment, I was already interested about metaphysical topics such as the nature of reality, consciousness, and so on, but I never really dug into the subject and I was still very ignorant about spirituality in general. (I had a very fixed materialist vision of life, I was pretty much your typical STEM student who think he has it all figured out, you get the idea)

Anyway, I discussed with some friends I had tripped with before, and they all told me how the experience changed their daily lives and how they were more grateful/conscious/detached from reality etc... I got a little frustrated because I really couldn't say the same about my own personal experience, even though I was the one who initially suggested taking LSD to "get something out of it". So the next evening, I made the incredibly wise decision of taking a much larger dose (375ug) by myself, at night, in my bedroom, to finally get the sought-after "realization". The actual come up of the trip went surprisingly well, the visuals were slightly more intense than usual but nothing too crazy, my mind was alright too, even though I was overall very confused and my thoughts made no sense most of the time. (btw my acid comes from a very reliable and well-known guy on the DW so I'm pretty sure I'm not underestimating the dosage). Anyway, I decided to light up a joint to enhance the trip, with no regards for the fact that cannabis has always made me very very nervous and self-conscious (I'm sure you can start to see where this is going  ) 

Only a few seconds after the last toke, as I was observing the streetlights, I started questioning the utility of taking LSD (It's something I have always done during the previous trips, and I always feel like I cannot provide a relevant answer, which for some reason makes me feel very uneasy). But this time, I felt a sense of absolute existential dread at that thought. It was as if I HAD to answer right now or the consequences would be absolutely dramatic in a way I couldn't even fathom. I cannot describe the feeling of pure terror that I instinctively felt as I realized I was absolutely unable to provide an answer that would satisfy me (I think no answer could at that point). I instantly tried to think about something else like my life depended on it (and I was absolutely convinced that was the case) but this only made the feeling even more intense and the thoughts in my head became more aggressive. Each effort I made to try to think about something else, the thought would come back at me, bigger and more terrifying than ever. It was not even about the initial question anymore, but about the fact that I couldn't calm down and move on. I tried to think about logical arguments to get out of this irrational thought trap I had gotten myself into, and I kept repeating to myself that I shouldn't make such a big deal of virtually nothing, but the voice would respond each time, overriding my pathetic attempts to regain control of the situation.

That was where I realized in horror that I had absolutely no control over that voice in my head. I started to perceive these thoughts as a sort of alien, demonic presence that would keep tormenting me until my death. It was my punishment for experimenting with drugs and opening gates in my brain that should have stayed closed. Now comes the really really fucked up part, in my opinion, the realization that made me fall into the abyss of madness for the next 3 hours: I understood that I had become obsessed with the voice narrating my own thoughts. Now the thing about obsessions is that eventually you get distracted from what's clouding your mind and start to think about something else... but the thing that's distracting you is usually your own thought stream, and therefore "the voice" itself. In my case, that was precisely the object of my obsession, which meant that I had absolutely no escape from that headspace, for whenever I tried to think of something else to get myself out of this nightmarish thought loop, I would instantly recognize the voice "linked" to my though, and fall even further down the rabbit hole. Another disturbing thing I experienced in that state was amplifications of my thoughts like my head was an echo chamber: I would think about something and instantly recognize the voice narrating the thought in my head. By unwillingly paying attention to it, kinda like reading it in my head, I would create a new voice saying the same thing (much like when you read something and you have a voice narrating what you're reading, except I was reading my own thoughts if that makes sense) then I would start reading that new voice, creating a new layer, etc... that process repeating itself hundreds of times in a matter of seconds, each step making me feel like I was diving deeper into insanity. Not cool. A few minutes of delusion later, I felt like I had a total understanding of the way my mind worked, and more precisely the way the different thoughts flowed into each other. I understood life was a never-ending succession of thoughts, each one coming to distract myself from the previous one. I could see that each new thought would usually trigger a kind of reset in my memory, making me forget my current focus to switch onto the new one, in an indefinite cycle. I guess that's not too far off from reality, to be honest, haha, except that in my current mental state, I could sense immediately whenever that "reset" was triggered, and the realization would instantly make me loop once more. Again, I was trapped in a (seemingly) endless cycle of obsession, since the object of my obsession was now the very moment when a new thought form in your mind, and I was convinced I would keep noticing this process until the end of my life, thus making me theoretically unable to ever think about something else... forever. I let you imagine the sheer terror I felt when I came to this conclusion, which seemed logically indisputable to me at the time. I was absolutely convinced I would never be able to think about anything else that this damned loop, and that I would be transferred to a psychiatry ward the next day. The worst part is I thought I had undisputable logical arguments to support that claim (as the thought process that drove me to this conclusion seemed backed by pure logic and not irrational thinking)

During this whole part of the trip, I had a progressive sense of feeling the demonic presence of psychedelics into my brain, that manifested itself through "the voice" and some weird shadow worm hallucinations in the corner of my sight. (like hundreds of dark little tentacles all around my field of vision, that kept squiggling all the time. They evoked me a parasite that would feed on my happiness and remind me until my death how life was now dull, meaningless and a cycle of perpetual suffering). I felt like the drug had opened new realms inside my mind and connected things that should have stayed distant from each other, and now I was stuck in my own head with this demonic entity, trapped on the other side of reality, as I could only watch the outside world through my eyes in despair, reminiscing of my previous happy life, back when I had not broken the process of thinking and my head was working properly. I knew nothing had fundamentally changed in the objective outside world, but now I was trapped in my own head, in a psychedelic mind prison. At that point I had a closed-eye visual of sitting at the bottom of a bottomless hole (I know it makes no sense) and above me were infinite layers of fractal-like weeds made of shadows, waving menacingly above my head. I thought they represented the psychedelic headspace that had swallowed me whole and was now closing in front of me, separating me from my old reality forever.

I then spent a couple of minutes on my smartphone, reading on various forums about drugs and mental illnesses, doing research with keywords like LSD, thought loop, obsession, life ruined etc... and I was convinced that I was reading many reports of different people trapped in the same mental state as me,  after noticing the same thought patterns I did and after following the same "logical reasoning", giving them the same recursive obsessive thoughts that would now ruin every single second of their lives. When I went back on these sites the next day I realized the stories I had read had actually nothing to do with my own experience, I remember this thread in particular terrified me :

 https://www.reddit.com/r/PsychologicalTricks/comments/eojn16/pt_how_do_i_get_out_of_a_thought_loop/   

and looking back at it I really can't understand why, but the LSD warped my mind in such a way that everything I read was interpreted to fuel my existential anxiety I guess. The only thing that bugged me is that I was genuinely convinced that if I were to explain my "looping issue" to anyone, even sober, they would become crazy and obsessed with their own thought stream as well since I thought it was totally logical and understandable reasoning that drove me insane initially. Therefore, I did not understand why I had never heard of this demonic loop before, as it had the potential to destroy humanity (lol). Was I actually the first-ever human to realize that? It can't be, I just read testimonies of other guys experiencing the same. Then the truth hit me like a truck: It was fake all along, reality never existed and everything was a simulation. My family, my friends, my school... nothing was real. At that point, I was still reading comments online and I thought they came from other people who had taken psychedelics and had broken through the illusion of reality as well (which makes no damn sense since other people were supposed to be fake but actual rational thinking was not an option anymore I guess). All the comments were complaining about being trapped in an eternal time loop now that they had broken their mind and discovered the ultimate truth, so I began to think the same. I was lying in my bed with my headphones on, and I was absolutely convinced that this would be my destiny for eternity. This is, I think, the most distressing state of mind that a human being can find itself in. If I had a gun at this precise moment, I would have blasted my head without a moment's hesitation. The feeling of eternity is truly mind-shattering. I kept coming with reasons to calm down and downplay the issue, trying to find my way out of this nightmare, but every 3 seconds or so, I would have a realization, like the voice was telling me "Oh no no no son, you don't understand how serious this is " and for a split nanosecond I gained a fundamental insight about the true nature of reality and I would realize that I was indeed trapped until eternity, that all my effort to think myself out of this situation were vain, then I would immediately forget about it (I don't think there was actually an insight at all, just an overwhelming feeling of having one), resulting in me trying one more time to think rationally for 3 seconds, only to be crushed again by this intuition, etc... the process repeated itself for an indefinite time. I was listening to random songs on a Spotify playlist that wasn't mine, and this song that I didn't know at the time, "sweet sound of ignorance", started playing :

I thought the "universe" (aka the wicked entity that had created my reality and manipulated my life the entire time) was playing this song to mock me and tease me about taking psychedelics to get a deeper understanding of reality, because now that I knew the truth, all I wanted was to forget and get back to my old ignorant self. I love listening to this song nowadays, I find the melody absolutely haunting and it captures perfectly the ethereal feeling of watching the very structure of reality melt in front of your eyes... weird I know but I can't help it so that's a positive aspect of this trip I guess haha

Anyway, at that point, I started getting extremely focused on the music randomly played by Spotify, because I felt it was trying to tell me something, I remember thinking it was displaying a summary of my entire life for some reason. My memories are very sparse from that moment, but I remember this song playing :

At the sight of the religious imagery on the cover (I didn't even notice the fucking lasers and probes lmao) I instantly felt an intense warmth rushing through my body. I think that for a moment I thought I was God, then I thought I had definitely gone crazy, then I felt like God again. I could feel the inner workings of my mind, the way neurons communicate and the way thoughts and information were conveyed intuitively. At the peak of my delirium, I felt that I was a being of light and that I could communicate with other beings like myself, through a way that didn't require actual thinking somehow, and all these beings were telling me I had found the way to transcend the illusion of reality and the infinite loops of madness, and now I was in the superior realm of fractals where the evil thoughts were unnecessary and I could remain here at peace for eternity. I have absolutely no idea what happened after this. Obviously, I had forgotten a long time ago that I was tripping.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt so fucking relieved that I was still my normal self, and that I hadn't gone crazy and obsessed with infinite recurring thought patterns or other weird stuff. I believe all of this experience was just a gigantic psychotic delusion, including the "awakening and transcendence" part. I really do not attribute a deep spiritual meaning to what I lived, for it was most likely the result of extreme suggestibility induced by the drug, coupled with an undisciplined mind and ignorance of its inner working (I'm pretty sure I could have handled these intrusive thoughts after only a few weeks of meditation but at the time I really couldn't stop identifying to them). I did learn to sit the fuck down and stop doing irresponsible shit with such powerful substances. I will definitely trip again but with lower dosages, and only after gaining enough knowledge and mastery over my own mind. 

Thanks for reading!

[Leo Gura]

16 minutes ago, Lurking667 said:

I believe all of this experience was just a gigantic psychotic delusion, including the "awakening and transcendence" part.

Nope. What you're saying now is the delusion. The truth is that you are God hallucinating reality.

You just weren't ready to handle the truth.

[Javfly33]

This is with no doubt the more acid-esque trip report I've read in my life.

Congratulations for having survived that. I enjoyed reading your adventure very much.

[abrakamowse]

Thanks for sharing! I think we all have to pass through a kind of "Dark Night of the Soul" to arrive to that place of peace or to your true self.

[vibv]

Great report, thank you for sharing.

And I could really vibe to that Soko song.

The solution to such a situation is of course complete and utter surrender.

You stumbled upon the truth, which is out of the perspective of the ego absolutely horrifying. That's why it has to be surrendered.

[SoonHei]

As you close your ears to shut the noise you cannot stop by leaving that area.

So too, You can shut the ears of your mind.

The thoughts cannot be stopped by you because you did not start them. 

You can only choose to not be interested.

Your focus is your control.

Focus on breath. Focus on the senses and mind becomes a faint echo which eventually dissolves when you stop the supply of attention which is its only fuel.

Your attention is your fuel. Conserve it. Be. Hold. Anchor. Consious payments of attention only. Don't let the mind rip you off

[Corpus]

Really good description. Such an experience has to be had to really grok the torment involved of perpetually being back in the same place, knowing that the same essential agony is to unfurl again...and again...

I have had one similar experience and it changes how one "interacts" within the psychedelic space henceforth forever, which is very very instructive. It fulfils the criteria for an acute psychotic episode pretty well, and has IME/O bugger-all to do with any God realization but does beautifully demonstrate how ones thoughts only appear to be under your control, and "just surrender" becomes almost impossible to do without guidance from an experienced sitter, or other external source. 

 

[vibv]

35 minutes ago, Corpus said:

[..] and has IME/O bugger-all to do with any God realization but does beautifully demonstrate how ones thoughts only appear to be under your control, and "just surrender" becomes almost impossible to do without guidance from an experienced sitter, or other external source. 

It's not about bringing the thoughts under control, but to surrender the one who is stuck.

This is totally possible in any circumstance. But you can be blocked due to various egoic patterns. That's why it's very important to practice meditation beforehand, to properly prepare and to be in a fitting setting. Otherwise you risk being stuck in such a state, and suffering tremendously.

Meditation is in a way a method to practice surrender.

Surrender means to completely embrace what's happening, and in a sense let reality obliterate you. It means letting go of the identification with the small self that clings onto survival. And when it dies, what remains is pure Reality .. or God. Without yourself. And this is the Truth.

Surrender can not be achieved by thinking about it, or in any way through logic.

[abrakamowse]

59 minutes ago, SoonHei said:

As you close your ears to shut the noise you cannot stop by leaving that area.

So too, You can shut the ears of your mind.

The thoughts cannot be stopped by you because you did not start them. 

You can only choose to not be interested.

Your focus is your control.

Focus on breath. Focus on the senses and mind becomes a faint echo which eventually dissolves when you stop the supply of attention which is its only fuel.

Your attention is your fuel. Conserve it. Be. Hold. Anchor. Consious payments of attention only. Don't let the mind rip you off

Great advice, thanks!

[Adamq8]

43 minutes ago, vibv said:

It's not about bringing the thoughts under control, but to surrender the one who is stuck.

This is totally possible in any circumstance. But you can be blocked due to various egoic patterns. That's why it's very important to practice meditation beforehand, to properly prepare and to be in a fitting setting. Otherwise you risk being stuck in such a state, and suffering tremendously.

Meditation is in a way a method to practice surrender.

Surrender means to completely embrace what's happening, and in a sense let reality obliterate you. It means letting go of the identification with the small self that clings onto survival. And when it dies, what remains is pure Reality .. or God. Without yourself. And this is the Truth.

Surrender can not be achieved by thinking about it, or in any way through logic.

What an awesome explanation! Beatiful ?

[Moksha]

1 hour ago, SoonHei said:

Your attention is your fuel. Conserve it. Be. Hold. Anchor. Consious payments of attention only. Don't let the mind rip you off

The Buddha couldn't have said it better.

If you meditate earnestly, through spiritual disciplines you can make an island for yourself that no flood can overwhelm.

The immature lose their vigilance, but the wise guard it as their greatest treasure.

[Corpus]

57 minutes ago, vibv said:

I

Meditation is in a way a method to practice surrender.

Surrender means to completely embrace what's happening, and in a sense let reality obliterate you. It means letting go of the identification with the small self that clings onto survival. And when it dies, what remains is pure Reality .. or God. Without yourself. And this is the Truth.

Surrender can not be achieved by thinking about it, or in any way through logic.

And what if one does not have a meditation practice prior to the trip?

The paradox of the thought-loop is that the attempt to keep a rein on things morphs into an autonomously functioning runaway train, spiralling into subjective madness. Taking up a meditative practise is often one of the lessons learned if one intends to trip again. Nevertheless, it is a valuable learning experience, IME. 

[vibv]

@Corpus Of course you can learn from a difficult experience to prepare yourself better for it. 

When you ride a bike and fall, it is certainly a learning experience. It hurts anyways. So it's better to be smart and not to go too fast with little practice. Else you risk not daring to ride again.

[Frenk]

1 hour ago, vibv said:

It's not about bringing the thoughts under control, but to surrender the one who is stuck.

This is totally possible in any circumstance. But you can be blocked due to various egoic patterns. That's why it's very important to practice meditation beforehand, to properly prepare and to be in a fitting setting. Otherwise you risk being stuck in such a state, and suffering tremendously.

Meditation is in a way a method to practice surrender.

Surrender means to completely embrace what's happening, and in a sense let reality obliterate you. It means letting go of the identification with the small self that clings onto survival. And when it dies, what remains is pure Reality .. or God. Without yourself. And this is the Truth.

Surrender can not be achieved by thinking about it, or in any way through logic.

What if one experiences this bad trip on meditation? Isn't it the same then as taking that psychedelic? In both occasions one can either surrender or resist, but does this mean that you can't get enough prepared when this happens and one day you have to face this fully?

[Corpus]

2 minutes ago, vibv said:

@Corpus Of course you can learn from a difficult experience to prepare yourself better for it. 

When you ride a bike and fall, it is certainly a learning experience. It hurts anyways. So it's better to be smart and not to go too fast with little practice. Else you risk not daring to ride again.

Agreed.

One of the features of psychedelics is ones (egoic) sense of smartness prior to a thought-loop event has no conception of what "being" un-smart is, until mired within it.  And that is utterly harrowing. Trip-sitters should always be close by/available if dosing high, regardless of how much psychedelic practise one has done particularly with the longer acting compounds.

[vibv]

15 minutes ago, Frenk said:

What if one experiences this bad trip on meditation? Isn't it the same then as taking that psychedelic? In both occasions one can either surrender or resist, but does this mean that you can't get enough prepared when this happens and one day you have to face this fully?

You have to face it fully someday. But you can build up to it.

Doing it in meditation is generally a lot easier than unprepared on a high dose of psychedelics. The shift in consciousness on a psychedelic is much more rapid. It can really bitch-slap you hard. That usually doesn't happen while meditating.

[Brivido]

I have been there before. My first serious psychedelic experience was with 250ug of LSD, which, for me, was too much, too early. I did see the Truth, but I wasn't ready at all. I ended up descending into madness, when I realized that I was the only being in existence, a truth that my ego distorted and couldn't comprehend at the time.    

I felt like I created the whole universe in order not to feel alone, not to go insane. The universe was a place where I could hide from the truth of my loneliness. Everything that I regarded as real was only my imagination, I went crazy for eternity. When you cannot comprehend anymore what's "real" and what's "imagination", that's when things get hairy.

My suggestion is to take at least 6 months to digest what you have experienced, while practicing meditation and/or kriya yoga, only then go back with a smaller dose, my advice is to try mushrooms. For me LSD is too hard on my system, I have found that mushrooms are way better to work with energetically. After my experience with LSD, I have been working only with small doses of mushrooms which, for me, are more than enough to go deep. Your brain might be extremely sensible to psychedelics, in which case working with high doses could present you truths that you are not ready to comprehend.

[Lurking667]

On 01/12/2020 at 4:44 PM, Leo Gura said:

Nope. What you're saying now is the delusion. The truth is that you are God hallucinating reality.

You just weren't ready to handle the truth.

Even though some aspects of my experience could be identified with transcendent truths clouded by my ego refusing to dissolve, I believe it is much more likely that it was pure delusion fueled by extreme suggestibility induced by the drug. I didn't think I was God because of some deep realization but only because I saw a picture of Jesus and that was enough to drive my hyperactive thought stream into thinking I was God for no actual good reason. Even though the experience of the "fractal realm" felt very real at the time, I don't think I was in a superior state of consciousness compared to when I thought I would be stuck in time for eternity, as I'm pretty sure I was still very subject to my thoughts and I could have had a "relapse" at any moment, like believing the fractal realm was an invention of the entity to give me hope just to keep torturing me forever (thank god I didn't think about this at the time, that would have been horrifying)

On 01/12/2020 at 6:34 PM, Corpus said:

Really good description. Such an experience has to be had to really grok the torment involved of perpetually being back in the same place, knowing that the same essential agony is to unfurl again...and again...

I have had one similar experience and it changes how one "interacts" within the psychedelic space henceforth forever, which is very very instructive. It fulfils the criteria for an acute psychotic episode pretty well, and has IME/O bugger-all to do with any God realization but does beautifully demonstrate how ones thoughts only appear to be under your control, and "just surrender" becomes almost impossible to do without guidance from an experienced sitter, or other external source. 

 

I'm really curious to know how exactly your experience of psychedelics has changed since then, would you mind detailing? Weed just doesn't feel the same to me so I just stopped lol, all in all this was probably the most beneficial experience of my life on so many aspects, I'm so grateful and amazed at the way psychedelics always seem to find the right way to deliver the right message to whoever needs it 

[abrakamowse]

1 hour ago, Lurking667 said:

I didn't think I was God because of some deep realization

"think"

[Lurking667]

7 hours ago, abrakamowse said:

"think"

Yes that's my point I was still thinking the whole time, and thinking only leads to delusion right?