I’d like to hear about other people’s experiences of psychedelics. Note, however, that this isn’t the equivalent of a “tell us your fun drinking stories” thread. I’m just as interested in negative experiences as positive ones and I’d like us to dig into the psychology and neurology of psychedelic effects.
“Moderator Instructions: No discussion about how to get around the law in terms of buying, selling, or using etc illegal drugs. A discussion of your experiences is allowed.”
…did someone slip you a mickey, Mickey…?
I’m starting to suspect that one of my roommates may indeed be surreptitiously administering various mind-altering substances.
Perhaps other posters can help me decide which one of them looks guilty?
Administering to whom?
To you? To themselves? To the cats?
Huh?
When I was in my early-to-mid 20s (a couple decades ago) I dropped acid maybe a half dozen times, maybe a couple more. Most of them had unique personal experiences associated with them that I still can recall to this day, but hands-down, the “trippiest” trip I ever had was on a warm, late autumn day in Austin, TX in 1990.
At some point, I found myself lying on the floor with my head between two speakers as the stereo cranked Cream’s Strange Brew. I was on my own, and as the song “SWLABR” came on, it seemed as though I was starting to “peak”. There were waves of color which I perceived to be pouring out of the speakers, along with the music. The strangest bit, though, happened when I saw, not heard, the phone on the other side of the room ring. There were pulses of concentric rings emanating from the phone in regular intervals, without any accompanying sound. Very weird.
It’s the one and only time I ever fully experienced synesthesia.
You might not be so wrong…!
Not sure what you’re looking for. All I can say is I’ve had hell’a fun while doing them. LOTS of laughing involved.
The only bad experience I had was when I was a teenager. Friend scored us some acid. He told me it was "“weak” so we should take two hits to get the full effect. BIG mistake! That shit was NOT weak and for the next 8 hours I was hating life.
I know this sounds weird, but I had a life changing experience on shrooms. We did the shrooms and soon after my friends had to bail, leaving me to trip alone. I wound up meditating for a few hours. Did a lot of introspection. Made some personal discoveries that changed my world view to this day.
I would never do acid again, but if I could get my hands on some shrooms or mescaline, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
First pic, the one on the left. Shifty for sure.
So how do you plan to dig into the psychology and neurology of long ago acid trips?
Fuji, I don’t think it’s synesthesia to which you refer; more chromesthesia. My understanding is that synesthesia is a more permanent neurological phenomenon that you’re born with.
Yeah, that more accurately describes what I was talking about. Thanks. 
…fighting ignorance while not talking about acid and mushy trips 
I’ve had multiple and varied experiences with psychedelics, both as a user and a “guide”, if you will. But not for many years.
When acting as a “guide”, one of the things I noticed about most psychedelics is that they seem to strip away a lot of the facade that people maintain and you see more of the user’s true personality. I’ve seen people that are incredibly kind at heart, and people that have a terrible mean streak that they manage to hide in public.
By “guide” do you mean you stay sober while talking to the user like a psychiatrist would a patient? And if so, what would your qualifications be as a “guide”? Could anyone do it?
In my twenties (1970’s) I did acid and mescaline. I never really had any hallucinations that seemed real to me. They were very intense experiences in my head, but I never mistook what was going on in my head for what was happening outside.
I had two very memorable experiences (both on acid). Once we ended up at Jones Beach before dawn. I had a tennis ball and played catch with myself using the wind off the water. Far out. Another time we went to see “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan. Afterwards we wandered around a nearly empty Sunday morning 6th Ave, where a night watchmen invited us into the lobby of 30 Rock.
I could not really explain the interior nature of these experiences except to say that they were intense. I recall coming to earth shattering conclusions about myself that shattered themselves when exposed to sobriety and the light of ordinary days.
I grew suspicious of what we took as mescaline. That experience varied quite a bit and I suspect that it was often cut with amphetamine. I grew paranoid occasionally while on mescaline, though never so much that it disabled me.
I never really did a lot of hallucinogens. I would be surprised if the total number of times exceeded twenty. After the age of twenty five, I don’t think I did it again. Now that I am older, I might try acid again if I found a safe friendly place to do it, but I do not seek it out. I find that I have more of an investment in the ordinary nature of things.
By “guide”, I just mean staying sober and making sure everyone gets through the experience okay. No psychiatry or anything like that, just calming nerves and making sure no one gets hurt. Could also include occasionally putting on different music or suggesting people go outside to maximize the possibilities of something cool happening.
good for you!!!..I’ve helped that way myself, its not an easy task. I’ve always felt that having a psychedelic experience is part of your birthright as a human, and not not be legalized away.
That said, its not for everyone, and folks who have a degree of self awareness seem to fair better than those without.
I see that the use of mushrooms and other substances are being used for end of life issues with people, with success.
I gave up my use of LSD (or whatever it was) back in the 70’s, it had devolved in just sort of partying, but later in the 2000’s rediscovered the online plant using “entheogen” communities, Ayahuasca, Mushrooms. Salvia divinorum etc…
I grew an impressive amount of plants for awhile,mostly the salvia…(you can find my salvia pics all over the Internet , they are the ones with flowers, a rare treat…:o )which was really the fun part. I sent plants around the world, and posted thousands of posts regarding growing etc…
The communities, though, seem to devolve into “cultish” behavior,and I no longer post to any of those groups, although I befriended many good people around the world, who I still know.
I do think these substances are tarnished with too broad a brush…(“mess you up”), although the chemical side of things, IE manmade…I’m not familiar with that, so…they are sort of a different animal…
I always felt as if it was some sort of reset switch. I dont think I could ever describe any, except that some felt like a NDE, and then going home, but being “suggested” too, that it was not your time yet…weird positive conspiracy thoughts:D…aliens love me too…ect…probably all inside my goofy head!!! haha
I think the possibilities for helping folks with opiate problems are very positive, with ibogaine and perhaps with salvia divinorum as well.
When I was 18 my sis her friends n I were going to a U2 concert. One of her friends had a bottle of Jack Daniels. After a few shots i noticed feeling really strange. They told me they had put four hits of acid in it. :0
Everything was good till my aunt called. She lived in Minnesota and we rarely saw one another. I thought I handled my end of the convo fairly well, but that wasn’t the case. She called my parents and asked if I was ‘OK’.
About 10 years ago, I took some shrooms over at a friend’s. I remembered an MK Ultra experiment had a test subject drop acid and then attempt to draw the doctor who gave him the drug on a sketchpad. (It used to be online, but I can’t find it) The first drawing, before the acid drop, was a perfectly normal drawing of the doctor’s face. One hour later, the new drawing opened up into all sorts of patterns and streaming bands of symbols. Each new drawing done afterward was more bizarre and whacky than the previous.
So, I brought a sketchpad and charcoal pencils. My friends had a Godzilla statue - the monster’s upper torso. His jaws and claws were reaching upward. I drew it before taking the mushrooms.
An hour later, my second drawing showed Godzilla in the clouds, light as air and all fluffy looking.
My third drawing started the departure. Like the MK Ultra test subject, I started seeing entire universes and colonies of alien ants streaming all over Godzilla’s hide. I tried to draw it, but I couldn’t capture motion. I eventually got to the point where I would draw furiously, trying to capture the movement I was seeing, then rip the page out and start a new drawing. I started writing cryptic words along with the Godzilla head, always trying to capture the nonexistent alien ant colonies swarming on his hide.
My friend eventually came up to me while I was in my frenzy, and asked me if I was OK. I thought he was from an alternate plane of existence, trying to trick me into leaving my own. He gave me a water bottle and encouraged me to drink it. I eventually started to drink, and my frenzy started to settle down. When I sobered up, I gathered all my drawings, saw that they were all pretty much giant unintelligible scribbles, and scanned them on my computer. I don’t know if I have those drawings anymore, but it was one of those moments when I truly felt the left side of my brain was no longer imposing order, and the right side of my brain took over and let me run wild.
I’ve tried recreating the experience a couple times since, but never got back to that level. I did make a drawing of my friend’s wife that looked like Admiral Ackbar, but it was nowhere near as severe as my first trial.
Back in the days (decades ago!) when I tried acid the “guide” always took the same amount of the substance to “keep on the same level”. Of course, (s)he was much more experienced…
I remember a couple of amusing experiences. Like, when we did a night trip, and were watching from a hill side the lights from the far factories (and their reflections in the sea) across the bay, we all simultaneously broke out: It’s a line of elephants! They’re dipping their trunks into the water!
And approaching a great tree trunk was like landing on the moon. I saw more details the closer I got…
And once, riding my bicycle home (like 20 miles) from a party which involved acid as well as some alcohol, benzedrine and weed, I had the feeling that the asphalt road, illuminated by the street lights, was a lava flow, welling up from the depths to keep me afloat. No sense of fear; just a sense of wonder.
Yeah, those were the days…
My hallucinations were all legal and while I was in the hospital. I was on some very potent pain killers that caused me to hallucinate.
At various times:
I thought I was on a paddle wheel boat in South East Asia.
I was on a military mission with my wife and she was shot.
The building I was in was on fire.
I drank some bad water and had fish growing in my belly.
I thought the nurses were operating a prostitution ring out of the hospital and I “knew” so they were drugging me to keep me quiet.
I also thought the nurses were smuggling drugs in stuffed animals.
All of these were quite stressful for what ever reason and if anyone tried to convince me it wasn’t real, it was even more stressful. I swear that when I thought my wife was shot, one of the nurses came in and played along, patched up my wife and took her to surgery and told me to rest so I could help her when she gets out of surgery…which (from what I remember), calmed me down and I went to sleep.
This was fifteen years ago and, while I know they were all hallucinations, they still feel as real as I do sitting here today.
How did you find LSD different from shrooms or mescaline?
Could you go on about meditating/introspection on shrooms?
When you say “meditating”, you mean like focusing on your breath, that sort of thing? If so, what did shrooms add to meditation?
How does it strip away people’s facade? Could you provide an example?
I don’t really get how people get swept up into believing the hallucinations are real.
Watching 2001 is definitely on my list. Actually, there’s a whole list of movies that I’ll rewatch now.
Playing 90s Doom on a few hits is really nice.
When it comes up coming up with ideas, it should be seen as an amplified form of brainstorming and like ordinary brainstorming, there must be a sober review afterward. Given that, it can still yield good ideas as long as LSD is seen not as a source of ideas but as a way of modifying the way the mind works.
Could you go on about that?
Quite so. I first got interested in psychedelics when I realized that I felt the same way the day after a particularly good meditation session as I had the day after shrooms. It turns out that meditation and psychedelics have much in common. They both reduce activity in the default mode network of the brain. The DMN is mainly involved in stress, emotionally salient memories, projection of self in the past/future.
Ever notice how, when you’re stressed, it can build on itself? You can get deeper and deeper into sadness/anxiety/anger as you think of something (usually related to the past or future) which then causes you to fixate on it more which then increases the negative emotions. Then other stuff which might not stress you out much normally stresses you out even more?
I analogize it to a nuclear reactor. The more atoms are being split, the more neutrons are flying which then increases the number of atoms being split which then increases the neutrons flying. It builds upon itself.
Psychedelics and meditation are like a scramming procedure. They reduce the way in which this self-reinforcing reaction perpetuates and strenghtens itself. Hence, it acts much like the reset you talk about.
Which leads me to this:
Here’s a few presentations concerning the neurology of it, I’ll post something related to higher order psychology later:
For more info on the default mode network: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAcTIrA2Qhk&t=152s
Link between meditation and psychedelics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV5DCVxBXdk&t=1s
This is your brain on shrooms & ecstasy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNR4o5JZEi0&t=3012s (also mentions DMN and depression)
I’ve heard about that too. In what ways do you think it would help them?