Ive been lucky enough to never have a bad trip. Im unlucky in that I’ve only been able to trip a handful of times.
Nope. Bad trips exist. I was sat laying down in my bed the entire time crying while my mind was spiraling down shitty paths that after the trip made zero sense. I was disguested with myself. I couldn’t make myself move. Not locked in but zero motivation. Like that feeling when you need to pee but stay in bed because you’re too tired to move cranked to eleven. I screamed in my head to raise my hand and it took way too much effort to do so.
I tried to cheer myself up thinking logically about the shit going through my head. It made it much worse. I wanted to die. That’s not hyperbole. About three and a half later I finally got out of bed and into the shower to cry there. I remembered everything I thought of and that I hated myself but it all wasn’t true. Completely illogical and mostly nonesense.
What did I gain from this? Nothing. You can say whatever you want to pretend there’s some underlying massive rebelation or positive that trip should have given me but I reject that whole heartedly. It just made me feel awful for about 5 hours fucked me up for about a week and made me hesitant do mushrooms again. Didn’t work though as shrooms are delightful most of the time
There are bad trips. Sometimes, yes, ‘bad’ trips are just an expression of one’s mental state, exacerbed. You can look into it, ponder and maybe do some introspection because it is necessary.
But sometimes bad trips are just bad trips. The drugs just hit too hard, or you’re not prepared for it and you go spiralling down an infinite staircase of pain and anguish. But you have nothing to gain from it, except the memory of a bad experience.
That’s why I prefer to frame it as three types of trip: good, challenging, and bad. Good trips are fun and maybe productive, challenging are productive and unpleasant, and bad are unpleasant and unproductive.
It can be really easy to mistake what should be challenging for bad and that’s where things like therapy techniques (cbt and dbt can really help here) and reintegration can be vital. But some people describe wholly unpleasant trips that don’t increase self awareness or present opportunities for growth or healing, as well as some people going in to psychedelics when they don’t have the tools or the spoons or the right mood that day.
For that last bit, every trip should begin with an honest reflection of your mental state and if you need to bail for the day, because once you get on the ride you can’t leave until it’s over.
No you really didn’t “try to hint at it”.
Honestly you sound like a teenager who just discovered drugs and really enjoys them so you went down the research rabbit hole.
And there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but everything you said sounds like it’s coming from an arrogant/privileged place.
Lol. So full of yourself. No one is trying to bring “seniority” into this.
Saying you sound like a teenager who just discovered drugs is not the same as saying you are a teenager* (*so shut up - the adults are talking?)
Retarded take. Yes, there are bad trips.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Stop spreading dangerous misinformation.
Honestly, delete this comment.
I had a friend explain it like
hey if your trip is bad, just focus on old fashioned death and pinup art of the devil and stuff. Just go full blast into it like YEAH TAKE ME MOTHERFUCKER and it should turn around on you.
I always loved that advice but never got a chance to try it
Honestly, that isn’t the best advice. A bad trip can be anything from mild discomfort, to paranoia, to a full on traumatic nightmare experience that has the potential to scar your psyche for a while to come. I had one of those nightmare experiences about 20 years ago after eating datura stramonium seeds. It was a 2 and a half day death trip, that I only came out of by being forcibly strapped to a bed and injected with haloperidol in a hospital. That experience messed with me for about a decade afterwards.
Gotta be desperate for a high to take datura. That is a poisonous plant with unpredictable results. It grew regularly where we lived, and we had a physician family member who basically said if you’re going to get high even some of the harder drugs were a better choice than datura. He’d seen too many people who didn’t survive or came out with permanent damage. It was a poorer rural area where they worked, and combined with boredom people tried other shit to get high. Datura’s got a bad track record.
I was young and I honestly had no idea what I was doing. A friend of mine gave me the seeds and I had never even heard of the plant before that point, and 5 minutes later I was choking down the seeds. I was young and dumb, and this was a gigantic mistake I made that caused me extreme trauma for about 10 years afterward. I didn’t actually even know what a deliriant was, or that it was even possible to trip like that and have hallucinations that were absolutely terrifying, fully formed, and were much more real than reality itself.
Your experience is valid but Datura seeds are NOT the same thing as acid and shrooms, yeah? Deliriants and psychedelics are completely different experiences. You are much more likely to have horrifying and terrible trips with deliriants, and you will not even understand what’s happening to you isn’t real, because categorically deliriants take that ability away from you.
In 2025, even in the 2010s, the Psychonaut Wiki is absolutely invaluable for harm reduction like this.
Well, this happened over 20 years ago in the very early 2000s. Psychonautwiki was absolutely not a thing, or even a concept. I was on erowid back then, but as I have explained elsewhere in this thread I was very young, very dumb, didn’t have any idea what I was doing, and didn’t even know what a deliriant was.
Better idea is to just walk into a different room.
It is like you walk into a different room in your mind. And it changes your mood considerably.
I had one try to go bad on me, but some friends took me on an adventure and it turned out great.
That’s awesome, friends are fantastic
I love friends. I’d sure love to have one someday!
I’ve found that being inside is a good way to have a bad trip, for me. Outside is great.
It’s not about the destination it’s about the journey.
Wait that’s a different trip.
Idk the first oath would probably really help when a trip starts going off. May not make it good, but could turn a bad trip into a challenging trip
A bad trip is just an anxiety attack while you are too vulnerable to understand reality.
Thanks Bernie!
This makes a lot of sense the more I think about it
The good old ecstatic condition.
Whoa, that sign is talking to me.
