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There's no simple answer because "bad trip" refers to a category, not a specific phenomenon. Some bad trips are a result of circular thought patterns. You'll hear people say things like "I got stuck in a loop". Other bad trips are a result of fighting against intrusive thoughts. Usually, they're memories of or residuals from unresolved trauma that the person refuses to confront and integrate. Still other bad trips are caused by fear and anxiety. Maybe the person's not in a safe, comfortable environment and they enter a sort of "fight or flight" mode in which they begin to hallucinate manifestations of their fears. This is why people advocate the principle of Set & Setting as a tool for avoiding bad trips.

Generally speaking, a bad trip is an experience primarily characterized by unpleasant emotions. Interestingly, even though there's not a single cause, there is a single solution: Let go of fear and accept the experience. It's mental, it's temporary, and it's part of you but it's not you. You are not your thoughts, emotions, and experiences. They are an object of your consciousness, they are a reflection of your mind, and they are trying to show you something about yourself. Sit, breathe, listen, observe, and let it flow over and past you.

Thanks for writing this, it is really helpful!

Your brain. It's wild, and it doesn't function the same as other people's brains. It doesn't always even function the same in exactly the same circumstances. Now add a substance that makes it fire off even more randomly with hallucinations and watch it try to cope. Brains are so complicated that we haven't even figured out how they work normally without any drugs altering their function. Figure that one out, and maybe one day we'll figure out the bad trip.

Actual good advice.

Bad trips aren't a singular thing, and they don't have a singular cause.

First you have to define what a "bad trip" is. Some people describe any unpleasant experience during a trip as a bad trip. Others reserve the term "bad trip" for a much more profound, severe reaction that isn't merely unpleasant, it's horrific.

The psychedelic experience lends itself to extremes at times. An intrusive thought that would normally be discarded can be obsessed over. Confusion can lead to thought or action "loops". Interactions with other drugs (such as THC) or external events can cause anxiety/paranoia.

In most cases, there's the possibility of a feedback effect. Something is unpleasant, creating a heightened reaction, which makes things seem even more unpleasant, creating an even stronger reaction, etc. This kind of feedback can be difficult to break out of, particularly if you let it get past a certain point.

With high doses of psychedelics, the user's perception of reality can become whatever they think it is. That can be great, but it also means that if you think that horrible stuff is happening, horrible stuff effectively is happening. In extreme cases, the person having the bad trip is immune to logic or external stimuli...they are in a world of their own making. You can't reason them out of it, and they can't either. All of their senses are telling them stuff that isn't true.

Anyone who says that "there is no such thing as a bad trip" or "there's always something good that comes out of a bad trip" or "you just need to relax and go with the flow" has never experienced an extreme Bad Trip.

Reason doesn't always work on people who have lost the ability to reason correctly. Or who are reasoning correctly, but are responding to invalid input.

A bad trip can be caused by anxiety, dose, the setting, your company, or nausea.

Personally, I can't enjoy mushrooms due to the intense nausea I get from them. I've tried every method of ingestion and it makes no difference, every trip is horrible.

Memory reset and thought loops are what led me to stop for now. Mine were never horrific, just the same 30 seconds on repeat. It was more annoying than anything.

Trying to figure out why my vision is weird

Slowing down visuals

Asking myself or my wife a question I was confused on

Realizing I am tripping

Finally coming back mentally to enjoy the trip

-memory reset-

Trying to figure out why my vision is weird ...

Yeah that's pretty much what I remember from mine. That and if I got up and stood i would start dying

That’s exactly why I always preferred LSD to mushrooms. I get in these loops that cause anxiety and I’m not able to just settle. With LSD the intense moments ebb and flow, shrooms for me are just 100mph the whole time and I don’t find them enjoyable.

Except for microdosing. I really enjoyed that when I did some experimenting with it.

One feature of psychedelics is that they enable (or force) the mind to drill down into very specific and granular thoughts and feelings, to assess a given thought or feeling from an almost infinite amount of perspectives.

You can't consciously choose which of your thoughts or feelings get interrogated in that way and it's very influenced by your state of mind and the environment you're in (set and setting, as Timothy Leary called it).

Therefore if your mind decides to focus on something happy, you'll experience indescribable bliss but if your mind goes somewhere negative you'll have an equal intensity of horror.

Often it's possible to work through the negative feelings but it requires submission. You have to accept what's happening to you and not shy away from it. That can result in long lasting positive effects because you'll have thoroughly worked through something that's been bothering you. But if you fight it, or you're otherwise not able to "solve" the bad thoughts it can have long-lasting negative effects because you've "proved" to yourself that it's an intractable problem.

That last para looks like taken straight from an episode of guided mindfulness meditation.

I remember the first mushroom trip I took, my friends and I were sitting around a campfire, and when we started to come up we got caught in a loop just laughing like maniacs. I don't remember what we found funny, but I do remember feeling like I couldn't stop laughing, that I'd be stuck laughing forever. Actually a really unpleasant experience. Then I remember my one friend saying "this isn't good... this isn't good... did I die?" And that sent me on a horrifying experience where I had to confront my own mortality while tripping balls. But you're absolutely right. Once I accepted the experience, the trip took a complete 180. I eventually thought to myself "ok, so you're dead. But something or someone is still here, having this thought. So relax." Letting go and accepting the experience saved me. I just felt so full of love and connectedness for the remainder of the trip. It was the best and worst experience of my life.

I think "tripping" will always rely on the user and their self-confidence/level of content with themselves and their surroundings.

You say you've tried every way possible. I just wanted to check if you've heard of doing a lemon tek? In my experience most people haven't heard of this method, and it's the only way I can do shrooms because of the nausea.

Grind them up, soak in lemon juice for 30 mins and ingest (I personally add sugar and water to make a lemonade, make it easier to drink) So, although nasty to get down, I have no nausea with this method. Added pros or cons depending on your views: a faster come up with a more intense trip, and a shorter overall trip. Wait, what? How exactly? You might be thinking. Well there are two important compounds in your mushrooms. One of them makes you trip, the other metabolizes into the first in your digestive system. Soaking ground up mushrooms in lemon juice essentially give you a head start on digesting them, but there is nothing using up the one compound so the concentration builds until you swallow your dose.

Yeah, I've tried this method, along with some variations of it. Unfortunately I still had the intense nausea.

Thank you for the comment though!

I'm guessing it's a coincidence but this made me think of Dune :)

>I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

I had a bad trip that started as getting stuck in a thought loop, but that wasn’t so bad. It devolved into paranoia, and temporary loss of language interpretation - I could barely articulate simple thoughts, and could barely understand simple english. I also lost the ability to forward plan and forgot what my daily routine was. To top it off, I had excessive paranoia and the other effects made me very scared. Simply put, it was terrifying. I thought my life was over.

Edit: a word.

So it’s caused by the user, not the mushrooms? As in, a bad batch?

That is definitely the case. A bad trip is not about a spoiled or tainted mushroom, it's about the user's readiness to accept the experience.

Every bad trip is ultimately psychological; there can be outside stimulus that creates stressors that can trigger a bad trip but in the end its on you and your ability to modulate your mindset throughout the trip. The key to having a good trip is planning it with the right setting, company, and current mood going into the trip. If any of these aren't lining up, I'd suggest its best to wait until you feel you've found the right moment where all of these are good.

And to add to that last part. That’s where people seem to reap the most rewards from their trip. Accepting what your going through tends to let you reflect and make certain realizations you hadn’t noticed before

I’m inclined to agree with the majority of this except the idea that there’s a single solution. It’s not simply about letting go of fear and accepting the experience. There’s all sorts of other factors that can affect a trip beyond fear. The vibes of people and places in general can bring ones mind in to the negative without fear being included.

Lots of long comments.

Your MIND is the answer.

It’s all about Set & Setting.

You have to submit totally to the experience. Any hesitation, or trying to hold onto yourself and your ego. Will result in a bad trip. You have to let go.

Somebody said there is no simple answer but there is it is a very basicd / cascading effect that simply starts with one bad feeling or bad thought that perpetuates a direct correlation in that direction of continued thoughts.

This is a very good example of why it is important to have a babysitter when tripping, not just so you don't use knives to draw pictures on your skin thinking they are markers or something absolutely psychotic but also to be able to bring you out of a steep fall in case your mind or you're feeling start to perpetuate towards the negative.

"Bad batch" means one ate mushrooms that aren't psilocybe. I've done that before. When I was a teenager, we gathered our own mushrooms from a cow pasture near my high school and I once made the mistake of picking a few of the wrong species. But they're not going to cause a bad trip, per se. They'll cause physical discomfort and vomiting, and that can in turn cause a bad trip as a result of the emotional distress. But it's not a physiological phenomenon in the sense of being directly neurochemically induced. It's not like the psilocybin "goes bad" and causes a bad trip the way food goes bad and causes vomiting.

In other words, the psychological phenomenon of the bad trip occurs as a mirror image of the physiological phenomenon of the food poisoning. And since vomiting is a common occurrence at the beginning of trips, it's useful to learn to accept that "purging phase" without panicking and spiraling into a bad trip from the fear of potential food poisoning. Just trust your body to be able to process what you've put in it and you'll come out the other side all the stronger. It's important to learn the basics of the science involved with tripping. For example, the physiology of food poisoning and what one's body does to deal with it. Knowledge is power and it will help you overcome fear borne of the unknown. If you go to the hospital, they're just going to pump your stomach and rehydrate you intravenously. It's scarcely different from what you're already naturally going to want to do instinctually, which is vomit and drink lots of water.

And ultimately, if you are actually poisoned, there's not much anybody can do for you. Accept the L and die with grace on the forest floor. It's better than dying in a hospital bed surrounded by cops and moms. At least, that's my personal opinion.

Actual fantastic advice and quote!

Dang bro, you could talk anyone out of a bad trip.

As someone who has experienced a bad trip, you absolutely nailed this response. The truth is, it can be caused by internal or external factors, and those factors could be minor or major.

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Best method for me was to grind them up and put them in gel caps

This was actually the first method I used, as I bought them this way, before I grew my own. Unfortunately I experienced the same problem.

I've just accepted that my body doesn't tolerate shrooms, or atleast psilocybe cubensis. I may try the PE strain at a future date, if I can build up the courage.

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I was always able to pull myself out of a bad mushroom trip... which honestly was always the part when it first hits and if I had any trepidation about taking it at that time... the negative feelings would start to manifest... I would walk off from the group, try to throw up lol.... but then 1 simple act of a buddy coming over seeing me a little distressed and then Saying.. HEY! you're all good come back and chill.. and as soon as I would accept that I made the decision because I wanted to experience it. Everything would be smooth sailing...

Now the few times I ate them by myself with that mindset... not as easy to right the ship.

But that was at a time when a lot of my life was insecure.. recently I make sure I put myself in proper situations and with the proper people and maybe a little less than I used to take... good lord I don't need a whole eight to the head 😅 and its really been great for a while.

Now.... I just tried lsd for first time and WOOOOOO!!!!! that was fun!

The worst trip I ever had was wayyyyyy back in the day when used to fuck with DXM.. that stuff will really fuck with you and there was no pulling out for me... thought I legit had died and was headed towards the light.... also used to give me sleep paralysis somewhat frequently which is a total nightmare... would not recommend

A lot of people warn me about getting stuck in a trip? Is that actually possible?

Usually, if you are new to it... it is because you're scared and don't feel in control. You have to release that feeling and know it'll end and you did it for a reason and to let it show you what you need to see.

If you're not new to it, it means you're subconsciously..or consciously... repressing something and it is coming out of the dark so you can deal with it. If you feel the devil or some evil force around you, it is not real, it is a part of yourself you are refusing to deal with. Gotta integrate the shadow to become whole.

Or it is just a bad set and setting. If your parents are upstairs and you decide to trip and they are super anti drug... guess what...you're gonna have a bad time.

Edit. As someone who's had a lot of good and bad trips, while my best trips by far were good ones, the bad ones taught me a lot also and I'm equally grateful for those, even if they were difficult in the moment

our "protocol" in the 60s-70s was a simple mantra - "It's just the drug - roll with it"

negative vibes.. set and setting make up the trip .. the rest is up to you to enjoy or learn

To my knowledge, it's the sort of rare thing a very small percentage of people with preexisting neurological conditions would have to worry about (e.g. heritable schizophrenia risks). Generally speaking, that "neverending trip" stuff is fear-mongering anti-drug propaganda from the days when the War On Drugs first started and programs like DARE were used to try and scare kids away from experimentation. But don't take my word for it; Spend a bit of time learning about psychedelic compounds and how they interact with the brain. It's pretty interesting stuff, actually.

You rock. Thank you!

TAKING TOO MUCH

You must use a scale to dose. You don't need anything else. You don't need a pipe, you don't need a lighter, you don't need a cup, you don't cook it - but you must use a scale. Every dose. Most, if not all, "bad trips" are people who took way too much and the number one reason for that is they eyeballed the dose. Get a scale with 0.01g if not, at least 0.1g accuracy.

Number two reason is intentionally taking too much - don't do that either. Work your way up to higher doses.

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Fear, anxiety and paranoia. That’s why the only sure fire way to stop a bad trip would be to take a Xanax

I knew a woman who had a bad trip that resulted in a short time in a mental hospital. They thought it was a result of the mushrooms reaction to her birth control.

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This was my go to in the early 2000’s. That and a reality anchor, something that I knew was real before we ate the mushrooms. If I got too far out I’d find Mike and repeat “Mike is real, everything else is just the drugs….” I’d come back to reality a bit, cool off, then start climbing the rollercoaster hill again