bad high/trip experience

[Butters]

Made this post to trauma dump and also process a bad trip I had this weekend and for others to share their own experiences with hallucinogens. 

 

--block of text warning--

 

I had a pack of thc gummies I bought from a smokeshop here in nyc a few months ago, usually I would take half of one in a sitting since I'm a lightweight and have a good time with friends or alone in my room watching movies and listening to music. My experience with weed has always been fine (not a regular user though), it usually just has me laughing and smiling and extremely relaxed. Anyways I was bored and Friday evening around 6 I thought it would be fine to take a 2/3 of a whole (the recommended amount is a full piece ) and I ended up having a a bad trip. Not to be dramatic or anything but it was probably the singular most horrifying experience of my adult life.

 

I was scrolling through TikToks as I usually do when high and alone, chuckling and smiling at any dumb video I saw and I suddenly stopped scrolling and felt very weird. I started looking very closely at the faces on my screen and realized how strange everyone looked. I examined my own reflection and I was horrified because I was suddenly so strange looking, like someone slapped a bunch of pieces of meat together to make my face into a Picasso painting. I truly did not recognize my face in the mirror, like it did not look like a face to me. I started hallucinating peoples faces that would freeze, then suddenly explode and liquify and turn into a square with all the features distorted into the "reality" of what they actually looked like. I felt as though I was an alien from another dimension observing humans for the first time seeing from their perspective, how hideous and horrifying we all must look. Just to be sure I wasn't just having a revelation of how ugly I was in particular, I looked at pictures of people that I considered were beautiful and they would look the same, like little gross slabs of meat (circles for eyes, triangular nose, mouth, ears) on a blank slab of meat, positioned very arbitrarily and lacking any kind of reasoning for it to look that way. Human brains are programmed to recognize other faces but for a few hours I think I lost that function. I couldn't fathom in anyway how my brain and our species as a whole had been trained to accept that we looked anything but utterly horrifying and ghoulish. It was like I was looking for something recognizable in a deep sea creature, or an insect. I tried picturing my mom in my head and she just didn't seem like a recognizable human to me, like I felt very very distant from whatever she was, even she was a fake slab of meat like everyone else. I realized that I felt zero connection to her, or any of my other loved ones  in my life. I didn't care if anything bad happened to them, if they lived or died because they were just talking and moving slabs of meat. That scared me, a lot.

 

I tried to turn out the lights and go to sleep. then I caught a glimpse out the window and I could see the outlines of buildings and lights and it all seemed fake, like a movie set where the studio lighting was off and everyone went home. I was looking at pictures on my phone of beautiful places I'd been and was shocked at how fake and desolate everything looked. Even food seemed extremely unappetizing and unreal. I thought that there was nothing beautiful left in this world, my experience of life was all a sick joke and the filter had been lifted, and I could see things for how they truly were. I started seeing everything spliced, like chopped up and scrambled, and started to become aware of a higher dimension that I could never ever be a part of. I had the terrible thought of being trapped forever like this, stuck in this vessel of a meat slab with the new awareness that the perspective/consciousness of everyone that I would ever know and I were just made up by our brains coping with the fact that nothing matters, we're all just organisms designed to reproduce and create copies of each other. We were nothing better than worms that had tricked ourselves to think we were superior to other creatures on our planet. At this point I was seriously considering ending my life. Fortunately I couldn't gather the courage to get out of bed. I was just hyperventilating and I could feel my heart beating extremely fast. I thought that I would be stuck forever. I knew I had to get some food in me but again, I had zero appetite, and I couldn't leave my bed, let alone go outside and interact with someone for food. I reasoned with myself that it was just a weed gummy, that it was gonna end, that I'd be normal again. I put on my headphones and tried zoning out to kpop, which definitely calmed me down. Felt a lot better than using my eyes for anything. Ended up sleeping 15 hours. I woke up feeling vaguely myself, went to the gym, had a full meal, met up with some friends and felt a lot better at the end of the day. 

 

I did some research and what I experienced was some mixture of ego death, depersonalization and derealization, and a lot of people go through similar things. Thankfully I've mostly come down from those feelings. It probably helped that I don't have any history of mental illness and am a person that doesn't tend to dwell on negative feelings and thoughts. But I feel irrevocably changed. Honestly this has deeply impacted my perspective on life. I might even go as far as to say that I'm a little grateful to have had this experience but I also never want to experience anything like that again. I'm like 85% all better but I still can't look into the mirror for too long without feeling a pit in my stomach.  I don't think I'll be getting high for a while, never again alone.

 

And this is lowkey embarrassing cause it wasn't like I took mushrooms or dropped acid or anything, it was literally not even a single full gummy that anyone can pick up at a corner shop that put me in psychosis for a few hours  I wanted to share here since I'm too embarrassed to tell most of the people in my personal life. Also a PSA to never underestimate what you're putting into your body, and always eat something before. 

 

--

 

Anyways, please share your experiences here. Help me feel less alone 

 

[Scummyman]

I’m sorry you felt like this! It will definitely pass,

I’ve had my fair share of bad trips lmao,

 

once on molly I thought I was str8 and in love with a woman which was terrifying lmaooo I thought my whole life was a lie up to that point.

 

But once I experienced something similar,

 

It was like we lived in a matrix as a sort of punishment or something, and our bodies, our real bodies are trapped somewhere and they made me experience a life of suffering which I would never get out of, and then I started seeing the matrix kind of glitching, and I was “waking up” in my real body outside the matrix, and I started hearing people freaking out because I was waking up, and my boyfriend was just another person talking to me from outside the matrix telling me to calm down through a microphone so that I would stay on the matrix, and maybe someone was helping me to get out or something, telling me to kill myself and jump out of the balcony so I could see that it was all fake and a Matrix, I also remember hearing things like there were people in the moon making sure we stayed in the matrix or something, it was crazy. I calmed myself down counting from 01 to 10 again and again and trying to move my body. It was scary as **** because I felt like the matrix was glitching and I didn’t want it to be real and wake up and see that it was all a lie. It was insaneee.

 

In contrast, I had an enlightenment experience before when I was meditating where I understood we were all one and no one ever dies. I wasn’t on drugs tho.

[Butters]

11 minutes ago, Scummyman said:

I’m sorry you felt like this! It will definitely pass,

I’ve had my fair share of bad trips lmao,

 

once on molly I thought I was str8 and in love with a woman which was terrifying lmaooo I thought my whole life was a lie up to that point.

 

But once I experienced something similar,

 

It was like we lived in a matrix as a sort of punishment or something, and our bodies, our real bodies are trapped somewhere and they made me experience a life of suffering which I would never get out of, and then I started seeing the matrix kind of glitching, and I was “waking up” in my real body outside the matrix, and I started hearing people freaking out because I was waking up, and my boyfriend was just another person talking to me from outside the matrix telling me to calm down through a microphone so that I would stay on the matrix, and maybe someone was helping me to get out or something, telling me to kill myself and jump out of the balcony so I could see that it was all fake and a Matrix, I also remember hearing things like there were people in the moon making sure we stayed in the matrix or something, it was crazy. I calmed myself down counting from 01 to 10 again and again and trying to move my body. It was scary as **** because I felt like the matrix was glitching and I didn’t want it to be real and wake up and see that it was all a lie. It was insaneee.

 

In contrast, I had an enlightenment experience before when I was meditating where I understood we were all one and no one ever dies. I wasn’t on drugs tho.

I don't think I'll be able to rewatch the Matrix without getting triggered. But yeah, I was basically screaming at whatever higher power there was to put me back into the matrix. I never saw anything

the molly story its wild how vulnerable and malleable our minds are

[May]

damn y’all make me feel lucky

 

i quit weed bc it started making me feel paranoid that i was gonna die or anxious that my facial expressions looked weird to other ppl and i thought THOSE were bad trips .. y’all are having whole tim burton movies happening

[Uncatena]

edibles can be very intense. what you describe sounds like a classic depersonalization episode. happens relatively often to people who have too much THC. if you should continue to partake, make sure you keep a close eye on it and speak to people around you about it. sending you well wishes <3 

[JoeAg]

ack i’m sorry you went through this! edibles are no joke tbh 

 

first time i ever did shrooms was freshman year of college, and in colorado the winters can get BRUTAL, so this particular weekend there was a damn blizzard 

 

so my silly dormmates were telling me, a notoriously skinny manlet b*tch, to take a damn EIGHTH FOR MY FIRST EVER SHROOMS TRIP. the whole trip was to take place in the dorm, and it was a f*cking sunday, the day before i had a few tests. we were so messy back then, i can’t believe my 19 year old self didn’t die lol. anyway, about an hour into the trip (before i even peaked) the fire alarm in my dorm goes off. apparently some dumbass on the 1st floor had microwaved tin foil. i had been hitting my bowl in my dorm room out the window with two friends at this point but the fire alarm freaked us all out so i put my pipe down on the windowsill while we started exiting the building. i was already having a brutal panic attack, i felt like i was walking through a hellscape and every few minutes the snowy ground looked like fire and burnt wood, idk how to even fully explain it! but i was panicking outside the dorm in front of my RA Mark but he was so sweet and definitely liked me a bit more than some of my douchy bro hallmates (yes, those exist in the music school!) so he was like “oh poor Joe, you’re just startled!” lol little did he know…

anyway that evening i had planned to go to one of the dining halls with my flutist friend Katie and a few non-music majors. all the hallmates of mine who were also tripping had dispersed and i was left alone. at this point in time, my ex boyfriend Miles had moved to Boulder to be with me (which is crossed off my bucket list yk) and i texted him and Katie and they came rushing to meet me outside that dining hall and i was crying in the quad while snow piled on top of my hair. it was horrible and Miles brought me back to his apartment on the Hill while Katie looked on, bewildered. the next day, she furiously texted me that i was acting “pitiful” the previous day and that i let my friends down. we made up later that week but it was so rough and draining dude… 

 

i have more bad trip experiences, maybe i’ll post more when it’s not 2 am lmao

Edited January 16, 2023 by JoeAg

[whtvrdude]

I've had a couple but the worst one was my first, when I took some shitty ass acid all alone and it quickly escalated, I vividly remember how I was fixated on one thought - to slit my wrists so it would be over. Very traumatic experience.

Edited January 16, 2023 by whtvrdude

[zasderfght]

Before weed was legal for adult use in my state, my friend made brownies using at least an eighth of flower. Because I later froze the brownie batter, I thought the potency wouldn't be as strong when I thawed out and microwaved the brownie, so I ate a Tupperware-sized brownie (and not the small ones made for sandwiches; I'm talking the size of a lasagna). I was high for 12 hours, and I had the worst poops. I was nauseous for a bit. Pretty sure I had the chills, and I heard my mom telling me, "Dinner's ready," which is an auditory hallucination.

 

To make matters worse, I was so paranoid, I ended up calling my sister and having her and my dad alongside me to calm me down (I was at my parents', still), and my mom was freaking out that something bad happened to me since I went to the basement and wasn't coming upstairs for an extended period of time. The day after she proceeds to tell me how disappointed she was in me and how she didn't "raise me" to be like that. Keep in mind my mom was raised Pentecostal and is Latinx. 

 

My mom has come a long way, but that was an experience I will never forget. I would say maybe the last few hours of my high were enjoyable since the edible was wearing off, but yeah, very glad dispensaries are a thing now, you can properly micro-dose, and you can get edibles with CBD.