
The Psychedelic Experience FAQ - gnosis
https://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/faqs/psychedelic_experience_faq.shtml
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cnp

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~~~
kozlovsky
...and grab you towel

------
contingencies
Once upon the internets, there was a story of some tech-oriented CEO or other
in the US who took LSD on a regular basis (I believe, daily). I cannot
remember the source of the story. As web searches these days seem filled with
Steve Jobs results (argh), this seems like an appropriate forum to ask if
anyone remembers who that was?

While a quick search failed, it did highlight the 'notable Polish security
research group' Last Stage of Delerium (LSD) and lsd.net, a separate
programming business. It seems that the relationship between psychoactive
substances and programming (as with any other form of
art/creativity/invention) seems a fascinating and well attested one.

(PS. I have contributed to Erowid over many years and also use and recommend
the rather quirkier <http://bluelight.ru/> which can be fascinating, if you
are in the mood for forum-browsing)

~~~
wyck
Well there is John Perry Barlow - EFF founder, also John C. Lilly (meta
programming and SETI).

And this long discussion, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4720121>

~~~
contingencies
Wow, I never knew a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead founded the EFF.
Amazing. Also I wasn't aware of Lilly's obvious impact on the video rendering
of Neuromancer (re: dolphin communications).

Searching for more on those I found what I believe was actually the origin of
my recollection: <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015>

Thanks for taking the time to reply! A very good tangent from work. ;)

------
virtualwhys
Do not bring money or anything of value with you on your voyage. Why?
Inevitably your "higher" self will feel compelled to toss the stained worldly
items away.

Later, your "lower" self will regret having tossed them ;-)

~~~
girvo
I had a very bad habit of buying stuff while tripping. To this day I still
have the mirrored aviator sunglasses that I once purchased... That was an
expensive but hilarious mistake.

~~~
virtualwhys
Interesting, I tend to go deep into the woods, but did, on one occasion, find
myself tripping on LSD on a riverboat casino in Mobile, Alabama.

At the time Black Jack seemed like an overwhelmingly deep and mystifying game;
can only imagine what the dealer thought ;-)

~~~
alxndr
Last summer Phish played two nights at the Harvey's in Stateline NV (ie South
Lake Tahoe), a Tuesday-Wednesday. Apparently no one working at the casinos
knew what Phish's fan crowd is like, because they were all pretty surprised
when the crowd of brightly colored tripping kids (who would be awake until the
sun came up) all came back to the casinos after the show ended on Tuesday and
filled up their blackjack and roulette tables.

~~~
PaulMcCartney
Phish?! On HackerNews?!! Worlds are colliding Jerry!

~~~
sunyata
The Bozo bus must pass.

------
jpdoctor
Evolution:

1\. This is the greatest thing ever! Absolutely the path to enlightenment!

2\. I had a crazy trip. I need some time to recover and to digest these
thoughts.

3\. This crap just gets in the way.

~~~
gnosis
Like a relationship with a person, a relationship with a substance might also
not work out.

This might indicate that:

1\. This is the wrong person/substance for you.

2\. You're not ready. Perhaps if you worked on yourself (through meditation,
mindfulness, yoga, spiritual practice, therapy) you could get more out of
future experiences.

3\. You're abusing the relationship. You're not treating the person or
substance with enough respect. All too commonly, psychedelics are used as
"party drugs" rather than used constructively in a deliberate therapeutic,
spiritual, religious, or shamanic context. This can lead to all sorts of
problems.

4\. You don't have the right guide or purpose. A therapist skilled in
psychedelic therapy could be a great help, as can some serious introspection
about exactly what it is you need to get from the experience.

5\. Another problem that's all too common is that trippers fail to integrate
what they learn on a trip in to the rest of their lives. This could lead to
lessons forgotten and backsliding.

6\. You might just need a break. Doing psychedelics too frequently is
bordering on abuse.

~~~
virtualwhys
"get more out of future experiences"?

Where is the future and what is there to get?

~~~
gala8y
You caught him.

------
seanlinehan
If it is deep, unfiltered introspection you seek, psilocybin is your liege.

------
quasque
My biggest regret is tripping on mushrooms. It permanently ruined aspects of
my mind.

~~~
hiker
Maybe you can share some more details to inspire/discourage the new generation
of programming youth.

~~~
quasque
It was mushrooms in a hotel room in Amsterdam several years ago. I took them
with my then-girlfriend - her trip was okay but mine was awful. The visuals,
the thoughts, the emotions all felt terrible and when it really hit me I
couldn't stop panicking.

At the time, I thought that was it: a bad trip but glad it was over. But over
the following months I developed a chronic anxiety triggered by all sorts of
things. First time I noticed it was next time I was in a hotel room; I had a
panic attack and had to call an ambulance as I didn't know what the fuck was
going on with my head. Then, other things became triggers. If I happened to be
thinking of either of the hotel room incidents and felt anxious, then whatever
else was present at the time would become a trigger for the anxiety. This
included internal thought-triggers and external visual and situational ones.
Over the next couple of years I had panic attacks in all sorts of places,
sometimes seemingly apropos of nothing.

Anyway after a couple of years I managed to get it somewhat under control
using a combination of anti-depressant medication and cognitive behavioural
therapy. But even now there are some situational triggers that will make me
exceedingly anxious, and earlier this month - after several years 'clean' of
attacks - I couldn't hold off the anxiety and had another really large attack.
Though I was very stressed about something else so I suppose my background
levels of anxiety were high anyway.

Before all this happened, I was a pretty relaxed and chilled out kind of guy.
It makes me sad that I'm never going to get back to that state of mind. When I
look back at recordings or writings of the pre-mushrooms me, he seems almost
like a stranger. It's very odd.

This of course is not necessarily a typical experience on mushrooms, and I
suppose I was predisposed to this somehow, but it was a very unpleasant way to
find this out.

~~~
bollockitis
Something similar happened to me, but with weed. I was experienced with LSD,
mushrooms, and marijuana, but one night, after watching Fight Club while high,
I couldn't get the thought out of my head that my buddy (also high, who had
suggested we watch the film) was merely a projection of my alternate
personality. At first I found this odd thought funny and I brushed it aside;
but it kept recurring and it turned into a multi-hour panic attack. Like you
said, I used to think there was a "before" me, and an "after" me. It truly
changed my life. I struggled with severe anxiety and panic attacks for many
years afterward. To some degree, I still do.

I used to think of that night as the cause, but I later noticed that I had
been building up to some kind of "breakdown" for months. I had always been a
bit more tense, a bit more worried, and more sensitive than most. I had a deep
belief that, if I tried hard enough, I could prevent bad things from
happening. This sense of control is at the root of anxiety disorders. Most
people don't think bad things will happen to them, so they lose no sleep about
it. Those of us with anxiety issues are just the opposite: we're constantly
trying to prevent and prepare for the worst, even though the majority of those
feared events will never materialize.

Anyway, if you haven't already done so, I suggest that you not think about the
mushrooms as being the cause but rather the trigger. Once anxiety attacks
begin, they are very difficult to control. It wasn't the mushrooms
specifically; rather, it was the anxiety that caused the downward spiral, as
the conditioned fear response gains strength through repetition. (There's a
load of good publications about this.) In short, there aren't two versions of
you ("pre-mushroom you" and "post-mushroom you"); you just had a serious
transformative experience.

~~~
quasque
I'm sorry to hear of your similarly terrifying experience. The mental model
you use to describe it is interesting though, and makes me consider that the
narratives we (in the general sense) formulate to represent our lives are an
important tool in processing them. Will definitely have to think about this a
bit more.

Out of curiosity, may I ask how you dealt with your experience in the
following months afterward?

~~~
bollockitis
At first, I didn't deal with it very well because I didn't realize what was
happening. I thought I had gone crazy, or was in the process of going crazy.
Back then, the Internet wasn't as helpful as it is today (or harmful,
depending upon how you want to look at it), or I would have Googled it; but I
had heard about panic attacks through film and TV (The Sopranos, for example)
and I eventually dragged myself into a bookstore to browse the self-help
section (something the "before" me never would have done), and there I
stumbled across books about anxiety disorders. After a few months of
suffering, this was enough to motivate me to see a doctor. Of course, the
doctor was familiar with anxiety, and suggested that I see a psychiatrist.
This totally blew my mind. A psychiatrist? I was "normal" just a few months
before. I had never even considered seeing a psychiatrist for any reason, so I
brushed it off, thinking that I just needed to get it under control by myself.

So I spent the next year reading about anxiety, going through workbooks,
taking supplements (another thing I had never done before), and trying to
"gain control." Turns out, trying to wrest control is a bad way to approach
anxiety; it imposes impossible expectations upon yourself--"If only I were
smarter and stronger I wouldn't have these panic attacks. I just need to get
it together." This kind of thinking makes anxiety worse. And it got worse.

Eventually though, I was able to find a better approach that involved
accepting anxiety as a part of my life. I was inspired by something I had read
about Zen Buddhism, so I began trying to view my anxiety as an old friend, my
old torturer, my own brand of human suffering. Believe it or not, this worked.
I began to intentionally do things that made me anxious. Axiety is much less
powerful once you acknowledge that its roots lie in the brain, in the
evolutionary drive to protect oneself from danger, and you can't consciously
control it. All you can do is acknowledge it and move on, or "Feel the fear
and do it anyway." I forced myself to reengage in life. I never stayed home
when feeling anxious (I found this was the worst possible thing I could do); I
accepted invitations to parties, I traveled, I enrolled in college, I moved.

But I continued having recurring episodes of severe anxiety that would leave
me crippled for weeks: I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat, I had difficulty
doing simple things like grocery shopping. So, at the urging of my family, I
saw a psychiatrist (who was not helpful at all, as all she wanted to do was
find out whether someone had touched my peepee when I was a boy. Hint: no one
had), a neurologist (who was very helpful and very knowledgeable about
anxiety), and a new primary doctor. My doctors coordinated to find a suitable
medication, an SSRI. With this, coupled with my learned coping skills, I
eventually began to feel "normal" again. A few years later, after experiencing
no severe anxiety, I dropped the medication and was able to move on with my
life.

------
danabramov
This is a really great guide. Many good points there. You should definitely
read it if you plan on trying anything.

------
meej
The Psychedelic Crisis FAQ is also a worthwhile read.

[http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/faqs/psychedelic_crisis_...](http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/faqs/psychedelic_crisis_faq.shtml)

------
papaver
i must say experiencing level 5 is amazing and scary. one truly understands
how reality is constructed by the perception of the senses.

------
theviciousfish
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR7KnQ_5ZxE>

~~~
jimjimbo
[http://yooouuutuuube.com/v/?width=192&height=120&yt=...](http://yooouuutuuube.com/v/?width=192&height=120&yt=sR7KnQ_5ZxE&flux=1&direction=rand)

~~~
ivarv
that's fantastic! Thanks for sharing

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Evbn
I find it hard to imagine someone reading this document and coming away
thinking that taking psychedelics are a good idea, if they have any sense of
stability in their lives. (for someone with nothing to lose and little hope
for better, I can imagine drug consequences not being worse)

~~~
gnosis
On the contrary. The more stable and integrated your life and psyche are, the
greater the chances of having a good experience.

Psychedelics often bring a lot of subconscious, repressed content to
consciousness, and it is mentally stable, healthy, and integrated individuals
who are in the best position to deal with that content.

I would strongly caution unstable individuals, or people who are experiencing
or being treated for mental illness to stay far away from psychedelics (unless
you're using them under the supervision of an experienced therapist -- and
even then, that's very controversial).

------
martinced
Several of the hallucinations described can be reached by meditating.

And there are hallucination types due to drugs that aren't in there. I've seen
crazy stuff, like people's neck stretching for tens of meters and their head
coming right in front me although they were on the other side of the street. I
did stop taking drugs, nearly 20 years ago, after that one did happen to me.

I still do meditate that said.

