3.5 gram shroom trip report: "Insanity and devil"

[Peo]

My past experience: I did 0.5 grams shroom for the first time when i was 18. After that i have increased the dose from 0.7g, 1g, and 2g. Now 21 year old i did 3.5 gram shroom. 

I decided to do 30 min of do-nothing meditation before my trip. I ate 3.5 shroom. The effects kicked in 30 min and I started to get bright colors everywhere and mild visuals. I was sitting outside in a comfortable chair watching the clouds and the sundown. I was very happy and at peace just watching the clouds breathing and morphing. 

Unfortunately this did not last long before my mind started to go down the path of insanity. So after like 20 min i started to get thoughts just going on loop over and over again. At first I tried to just let go of my thoughts, but it only got worse. So I started to get frustrated that I was not in control. It started to feel like the do-nothing meditation on crack. My thoughts were like going at 1.5x speed. I have a small supposition that the 30 min of do-nothing meditation was the cause of the bad trip. It would only get worse as consciousness started to get more fluid. My thoughts started to feel more real. Where the duality between reality and thoughts started to break down. My thoughts went from normal stuff to more extreme things like violence. Thoughts about killing people, torture, hell and just terrible bloody thoughts. Then it just went down in a spiral where they would go on loop for what seems like forever. Whenever i would try to distract myself with music or try to control my thoughts it would just drag me further down the spiral of evil and devilry. My old personality was forgotten and replaced with the devil. I started to say stuff to myself: “This is not me, I would never harm anyone” I started to fear myself. I did no longer trust myself so i decided to stay put and not move. I was afraid I would do something stupid in public. I could hardly recognize myself anymore of what I have become. It was like i became a different person. Now here is the scary part. In this altered state of consciousness I really started to believe I was the devil and i enjoyed being the devil. That I am meant to inflict pain and suffering on others. It felt like being the devil was the only thing I knew. There was no empathy, no love, only darkness and insanity. I just staretd to laugh so hard, since i knew i had lost my mind.

Now on my peak of the trip things started to just get weirder. My thoughts started to morph. They took on nonsensical forms and different dimensions. It's difficult to explain. I was so overwhelmed to the point of insanity. I started to feel like i was losing my fuking mind. I would even start to have auditory hallucinations. I know someone is just going to say “its just thoughts don't worry about it, just let it go or whatever”, but in this state you really can't use logic. All logic and social conditioning goes out the window on shrooms. Logic is just imaginary. I could see how consciousness stretches into many different forms and how fluid It can get on shrooms. 

I am still not truly able to even understand my own trip. I am having difficulty even remembering my trip sober. Since nothing really made any sense, it was all just a bunch of random forms and thoughts. Anyone else got this? I always thought psychedelics was suppose to show love, infinity, ego death, beauty and god. I guess i was wrong. It was like this trip showed me the darkest part of myself.

I only took 3.5 grams so I knew the trip would end so I had no choice, but to ride out my insanity until my trip started to end. This was definitely a bad trip, but deep down i kinda also enjoyed this suffering. I was fine the next morning, nothing too traumatizing. I have experience much worse trip on weed then on shrooms. 

 

 

[Alex M]

Thought loops can be an absolute nightmare. Shrooms can get very warped at times. Sounds like your dosage jump from 2g to 3.5g was a step to much. Try ramping up much slower next time round.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Alex M

[Scholar]

I am inexperienced with psychedelics, only had one proper 150mcg 1V-LSD trip, but from what I can tell, this was what almost happened to me just with a different type of thought pattern.

The problem is that you had violent thoughts and you started resisting them. For my trip, it was the idea that I would have a horror trip and basically come out of the trip with my brain permanently fried by terror. I was in a complete, existential dread type panic before the tripping even started.

 

What saved me was something I learned during visualization exercises. One of the things about direction attention, and therefore directing your trip, is that you subconscious does not know negation. You cannot negate anything. If you try to negate it, you will just get the opposite plus an increase in your attempt to negate it, meaning resistance to the experience.

So, you had bad thoughts, then you resisted those thoughts and started getting scared, so naturally the thoughts become even worse and worse, until you became so scared you didn't trust yourself. And naturally, you then became the devil. You created a narrative because you did not know how to point your attention.

 

And pointing your attention is actually a subtle skill. You think when you sit down and point your attention at some object of meditation that this is the skill of attention control, but it is actually not, for the most part it will not engage the core mechanism responsible for attention control.

Obviously, you will not be able to employ this skill if you have not ingrained it in yourself during such moments. Because, the natural reaction is fear based, and once your attention drive is fear based, it will just pull you right where to where your fear is. I think there is a point of no return during a trip, where if you have not gotten your mind on track by that point you will not be able to get it on track until the trip is over. By on track I mean have the trip be about the particular thing you want it to be about, or not to be about.

 

When you started trying to distract yourself from your bad thoughts, you should have immediately realized "Oh shit, I am scared of these thoughts... I am trying to avoid them.", and see that if you continue on that path of resistance, that will be precisely what you will get from the trip. In your case the climax was becoming the devil himself.

There is a skill of "mind switch", which is not the same as trying to surpress something or distract yourself. Surpression during a trip is like telling yourself over and over "DON'T THINK ABOUT A PINK ELEPHANT, DON'T THINK ABOUT A PINK ELEPHANT!".

A mind switch is actually being able to switch your mind and fill it with something new while leaving the other thing behind. This cannot be done if there is attachment to the prior thing. And fear, ironically, is such an attachment. If you are scared of the thought, it will be impossible to perform the mind-switch, because you will be pulled back to the object of your fear over and over.

What I did is I kind of went into my fear, because I was unable to perform the mind switch. Or at least, I was only able to do so temporarily. After that, I transformed my experienced by a ceasing to resist to my fear. I became curious and started obsessing over the cause of my fear, which became the source of very valuable insights into the nature and process of creation of fear and fear narratives.

So, this might be what I recommend if you cannot perform a mind switch. Actually become curious about "Hm, where do these thoughts come from, what is this about?", etc.

 

You did the absolute worst thing you could have done which is "Oh no I cannot be thinking about this, let me make it go away, please, please make it go away! These are terrible thoughts, what if I could harm someone?!". And during a trip, the literal thoughts you will have will completely shape your reality, and before you know it the trip is so intense you completely lose agency, being trapped with those ideas that you have created for yourself.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Scholar

[Leo Gura]

@Peo Yes, this can happen.

Next time lower your dose to 2g.

A) It takes experience to learn to control your trips.

B) Sometimes a trip will go sour for no good reason.

C) One bad trip means nothing. It's still possible to get all the good stuff you seek from mushrooms.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Leo Gura

[LSD-Rumi]

@Peo Psychedelics flood the brain with glutamate which is the main neurotransmitter responsible for racing the mind and intrusive, and looping thoughts. You have to have a good grip on your mind before doing higher doses. 

Edited September 21, 2023 by LSD-Rumi

[vibv]

@Peo @Scholar Adding to what Scholar said, which is all very good and true advice, sometimes the most valuable trips are precisely confronting those fears. So there are actually 2 things to learn:

1. Maneuvering the direction of a trip without resisting it

2. Confronting your deepest darkest thoughts and fears - also known as Shadow Work

I would agree to lower your dose next time and take it a lot more slowly. There's absolutely no need to hurry.

[Peo]

1 hour ago, vibv said:

I would agree to lower your dose next time and take it a lot more slowly. There's absolutely no need to hurry

I agree, but lower dose like 1 gram and 2 gram was weak. Althought maybe my scorces had just very potent shrooms this time. My sources are bit everywhere so i can not tell if its good or bad stains. I have had bad stains before, so weak it was very disappointing. I have done 1 gram and i could just barely feel the effects, with no tolerance. 

[vibv]

@Peo Yeah I read your other trip report later, that seemed like a lot more fitting dose with the tolerance from the day before.

You have to find your own dose, my point is: No need to hurry. Trust your intuition and not what somebody tells you on the internet.

[Breakingthewall]

@Peo psychedelic path is precisely, a path. It's not that one day you take a huge dose and your life changes, at least I see that as totally wrong. you have to let the psychedelics slowly work their way into you. Low doses are much better at first, then you naturally increase them.

[Razard86]

I've experienced what you experienced...it can get even darker...what you got to experience was your shadow. If I locked you in a room and tortured the hell out of you long enough....the part you just experienced....would surface. So you got to meet your dark side. The reason you enjoyed it is because you LOVE DARKNESS!! You LOVE EVIL!!!! This is a secret most don't want to explore. You love everything, and I mean EVERYTHING!!! What you think you hate is just societal conditioning, the constructed ego. Those shrooms got you out of your conditioned mind to experience malevolence.

It's crazy that, that is just as much you as the normal fun loving guy you normally are huh? Now that was the REAL WORK!!! I'm glad you got through it okay, glad you didn't get suicidal. 

That trip showed you why WAR exists, slavery, genocide, and whatever other horrors you can think of.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Razard86