[lsd_throwaway]

For a counterpoint to this - I decided to do 150 micrograms of LSD after reading a lot about it on HN, talking with many friends that had tried it or do it fairly regularly and reading as much as I could find (Sam Harris, Huxley, What the Dormouse said etc.).

Nothing can really prepare you for it - the dream like state, the visuals and just the capacity of how different things can be. When looking at things I saw them shift, it felt similar to those computer vision machine learning videos from google. As if I could see my vision attempting to resolve images into objects that fit their parameters. I felt like I got some insight into how consciousness works by messing with it.

The trip itself was mostly pleasant - the next day and several months were not.

The next day I couldn't stop pacing, couldn't relax - kept hyperventilating. I couldn't eat either, basically kept having panic attacks. Over the next few weeks I felt outside of myself - like it was weird to be alive and in a person. I was terrified that I was going schizophrenic or losing my mind. I thought I might have a psychotic break. All of this paired with insomnia/general sleep disturbances (which scared me too). I thought I might have to stop working, I had anxiety with real physical effects (headache, lack of appetite, extreme fear). Even watching TV was difficult/overwhelming.

I had serious existential fear about dying and the inevitability of my family dying (and still do to some extent) - sometimes feeling that everyone else is insane for not being afraid.

I didn't end up taking SSRIs, but I did tell people and got help - it's about seven months later and I feel mostly better.

I'd caution people against trying it.

[ChristianBundy]

I'm sure that any medical professional you saw has already told you this, but the symptoms you experienced are normal, and referred to as "hallucinogen persisting perception disorder", and I had a very similar experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...

The symptoms will go away, and you'll feel better. Promise. 150 mcg of LSD is, in my opinion, more than I'd recommend someone taking for their first time. Microdosing (around 10% of your dose) and slowly increasing the dose is a much safer way of going about it, and I'd recommend doing it gradually if you ever feel like trying psychedelics again in the future.

For now, the best thing you can do is to stay busy and try not to focus on it. LSD can give you a very raw view of reality without the candy-coating of normal consciousness, and it can be a very jarring experience.

If you ever need to talk, feel free to reach out to me personally, or join the IRC chat at tripsit.me:

https://chat.tripsit.me/

[adrusi]

What the parent was describing isn't HPPD, which involves sensory disturbances, usually minor optical hallucinations, and is mostly limited to people who used psychedelics heavily over a long period. The parent probably experienced the disturbances of mood that psychedelics can cause in the days following a trip, got panicked that something was wrong, and then the anxiety perpetuated their destabalized state. Or something else, but not HPPD.

[goldenkey]

More likely, he experienced derealization or depersonalization. The shake in consciousness can be jarring in that, one realizes the weight of being the "one" behind the sensors, heuristics, and thinking. The ghost in the machine... Really, there are books written about this. The Wisdom of Insecurity by Allen Watts. Life is intrepid and scary because consciousness is a black box. Anxiety is just a symptom of being shown the unusual, being shaken to a core of meaning that defeats the usual humdrum of assumed knowledge.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

[deadtofu]

I'm surprised the drug trip sitting chatroom blacklists Tor.

[martin1975]

I'm gonna bet you're not addicted to any external substance and that in your case, this was purely a mind expanding experience. One could also say LSD might have unlocked what was already there in the background (i.e. "subconscious") of your mind.

I would not consider this a bad trip. More like a rude awakening. Had you gone through something else in real life, major trauma of sorts, you may have experienced exactly the same... half life of LSD is about 5 hours, which means in about 30 hours, most of it > 99% was gone from your body, but your head/brain was still attached :), meaning, whatever your worldview was, got shaken to the core for one reason or another...long after the LSD was gone.

If everyone who tried it had an experience, or rather, epiphany such as yours, we'd all be so lucky.... and maybe the world would be slightly better place than it is today. Unfortunately, few if any experience reflection upon using drugs, pot, LSD or whatever, and continue to abuse them rather than deal with the pain of what's going on (mostly angst and integrity/identity issues that fester for decades sometimes) in better ways.

EDIT: I've never tried LSD, though I've been tempted after reading many testimonials on Erowid from some really smart people who did it to 'see what it's like to have your mind bent'.... Guess I'm too chicken to try it.

[lsd_throwaway]

I'm a fairly introspective person and I wouldn't say that it shook my world view - in the sense that I went in with a scientific world view and came out with one. I do have a better empathetic appreciation for mental illness and psychosis though (read And Then I Thought I was a Fish if you want to scare yourself). A trip makes you realize how incredible differently someone else's mind can perceive the world.

The challenging or scary part for me at least is when you rely on your own mind as a place where you can reason about things and then you start to worry if your ability to do that has been compromised.

The anxiety attacks after made me think that I really was dying or had a brain tumor or something and since I knew that the drug could no longer be in my system I got scared. I could no longer rationalize it as temporary affects of the drug. Researching all of the psychiatric information I could find online started to convince me that we know very little of how consciousness and mental illness actually work and I felt stupid for taking such a large risk.

Another thing I found scary is that a lot of healthy, normal people believe things I find absurd (like religion) and the information we're exposed to growing up seems to act as the training data for our neural net. I think consciousness emerged out of some evolved way to handle feedback and I didn't want to lose my ability to be able to reason about things.

The physical sensations after were really unpleasant (elevated heart rate, depersonalization, seeing visual patterns) and might have been caused by the anxiety that the LSD seemed to trigger. Also I had really low Vitamin D which seems to correlate with these kinds of issues too.

The fear of death I used to think about more than most people in a kind of distant way, but this experience made it feel imminent and traumatic - I think you're right that another life event could have caused similar symptoms.

I do worry less about things that aren't about people dying so maybe that's a good thing. It also comforts me a bit that everyone on earth is in the same boat, we're all sharing it for a limited time together and can work to make amazing things. Sometimes though, when I really think about the inevitability of dying it's still hard to go to sleep.

I think most people don't think about it.

[codebolt]

Personally, I'm not really worried about death at all. Having spent years of my life studying physics and coming to the conclusion that an eternalistic view of (space-)time is more likely correct, as seems to be implied by the theory of relativity, I know that my life here on earth won't disappear as a consequence of death, and this gives me solace.

I absolutely detest psychedelic drugs though, they nearly ruined my life twice. Anyone advocating their use doesn't know how much damage they can do to some individuals. There is nothing inherently enlightening about throwing a chemical wrench into your brains neural cogwheels.

[Mahn]

> an eternalistic view of (space-)time is more likely correct, as seems to be implied by the theory of relativity, I know that my life here on earth won't disappear as a consequence of death

Can you expand on this? Do you mean to say that your life won't disappear because you'll always exist at a specific point in time space?

[codebolt]

Yes, personally I believe that the past, present and future states of the universe exist as a kind of eternal structure. This is commonly known as the "block universe" view. In that context my life is but a small (but nonetheless eternally existing) pocket within space-time.

In particular, I think that the relativistic concept of simultaneity is a strong argument in favor of this kind of view.

[kayoone]

Thanks for this, that's inspiring. I suffer from fear about death as well, and will look into this as what i crave most is a way to just be comfortable with the reality of dying.

[simon_baker]

I'm curious, would you be able to go into how they nearly ruined your life?

[StanislavPetrov]

>The challenging or scary part for me at least is when you rely on your own mind as a place where you can reason about things and then you start to worry if your ability to do that has been compromised.

As someone who did LSD many years ago and was deeply moved by it, the scary part wasn't worry that my brain had been compromised by LSD. What was scary was that suddenly I was aware that perhaps my brain had been compromised all along, and I just didn't realize it until I did LSD.

If it does anything, LSD (at least at moderate-high doses) tears away the ego and strips away the unconscious filters through which we view reality. It can be a profoundly humbling, illuminating, and terrifying experience, all at the same time. Use with caution.

[altotrees]

"Sometimes though, when I really think about the inevitability of dying it's still hard to go to sleep."

I totally understand this sentiment. Thinking about death in life's quiet moments is almost like thinking about an absurdly complex problem set, for which there is no one right answer, and maybe one that needs no answer.

I have never tried psychedelics, but my idea of death was altered recently when a friend was diagnosed with stage IV throat cancer. He went from relatively healthy to "weeks to live" within a span of days. It shook me, obviously and shifted something in my perception.

This is why I steer clear of psychedelics...I fear that I could lose my ability to attempt to reason about such events. It is also why I don't drink. I feel like I need to be able to "control" such shifts. Sometimes though, I feel that this idea of control is a total illusion, or a coping mechanism.

[fsloth]

"Sometimes though, when I really think about the inevitability of dying it's still hard to go to sleep.

I think most people don't think about it."

I'm not sure if it helps but one can accept ones mortality and not be afraid of it.

I think about dying usually daily and contently accept it. At least until the time comes, probably. I don't believe in any kind of afterlife (at least the time of death comes, probably).

I think you are mixing up a knowledge of a thing and a fear of a thing.

The difference between knowing one will die one day, and being afraid of dying one day, is similar to the difference of knowing there are mice under ones bed, and being afraid of the mice.

I've had to deal with a shiteload of anxiety issues and seen close family members dead, though, so either there's the stoic acceptance or serious mental issues.

I've had help from stoic philosophy and zen meditation. Would be a total wreck without them probably.

[martin1975]

Religion is what the unconverted soul does in order to do right by God. To "make it to heaven", so to speak, by doing good things and avoiding doing bad or downright ugly things. All attempts at pleasing God - i.e. religion - are doomed because you inevitably will fail to meet the standard, because it is an impossible one - i.e. don't lust for women in your heart. Just as I wrote that...probably a thought or an image flew. Too late, you just sinned.

What's a chap to do in the face of the ever present human nature and its propensity to play God with anything and everything it can get away with? -NOTHING- seems like a really tall standard. Have you tried to do -NOTHING- lately in the face of whatever went on in your mind which was absolutely telling you to act?

Try that. And when you fail - and you will... MAYBE..and I say MAYBE then you might get a glimpse of how powerless we are as humans as well as our will to execute on what we know is right, but constantly fail to do.

Maybe this makes sense to you.. maybe it doesn't. My only advice is - keep being whomever you are... and you may, if you're humble enough, experience this conversion, past which there's no turning back.

The only two elements required to get to it is humility and faith..... in the end you will see Who God is, regardless.

I'll stop here before I start to proselytize or make even less sense.

[notpresident]

> because it is an impossible one - i.e. don't lust for women in your heart.

Not impossible. Hard. Worth it IMO.

I'm now married after having lived that way for a number of years and it still has benefits. Not only for my SO.

As mentioned above, breaking into that state was hard, I worked for months without luck so I totally can relate to the "impossible" claim.

I relate the breakthrough to my being "born again" experience and I think I would rather die happily on the spot instead of going back.

Edit: posted from sockpuppet account because while I happily might share personal stuff I try to separate it from work stuff.

[lsd_throwaway]

Without going too far off topic into a boring argument that won't go anywhere - I should say my religion comment includes the idea of a god/faith or supernatural creator etc.

[darkclarity]

I experienced a similar (but non-drug related) shock to you several years ago and it changed how I think. I came to the conclusion that religion is just an old fashioned, and highly specialised, way of treating mental health. Without going into details, it gives people an ultimate dose of peace of mind.

[martin1975]

well people have tried excessive orgasms for treating mental health... or drugs... or workaholism... or some other addiction. It never pans out. So I guess surrendering to a higher power isn't so bad. Just gotta choose that power wisely, no?

[martin1975]

You sir, at least have an inquiring mind. That's a lot more I can say for many people who I've known years and years.

[tremon]

don't lust for women in your heart. Just as I wrote that...probably a thought or an image flew. Too late, you just sinned.

Nope. A fleeting image or thought is lust in your mind, not in your heart.

Incidentally....

Religion is what the unconverted soul does in order to do right by God

Enlightenment is achieved by realizing one does not need God to do right.

[martin1975]

My problem is that I don't trust my own sense of morality.

[killa_kyle]

Can you expand on that?

[gjm11]

> I'll stop here before I start to proselytize

Too late.

(Also: If the standard is an impossible one, that is a problem with the standard.)

[martin1975]

theoretically.... it is possible to never act out of integrity. emphasis on theoretically.

[kayoone]

I can really relate to what you are saying. I share many of your fears and have general anxiety about dying too early and death or not existing anymore in general. But i never took drugs. For me it started with a traumatic event (passed out one morning 3 years ago when i was ill and did not drink) and even after doctors checked everything countless times i developed fears, especially related to my heart and premature death scenarios. I have it under control and can live normally, but these thoughts are basically is always somewhere in my mind. I also have slight visual disturbances (like visual snow) that are persistent for 3 years now and started in the time when i had most of the anxiety and panic attacks.

[throwaway163]

I had a similar experience. Except it was caused by marijuana.

It sounds like a classic case of Depersonalization disorder, which is a subset/interconnected with anxiety. Google it.

The consensus is that it can be triggered by substances in approx 3% of the population. Weed, mushrooms, ectstacy and LSD are the most common culprits. It's extremely common, though it has very little mindshare among mental health professionals. Probably because there is no pharmaceutical treatment.

It took me about 2 years to get back to reality after my trip. I'm still not quite the same. But I'm thankful for the experience because it's been the hardest thing I've experienced and I've learned a lot about myself, self care and the importance of relationships

Good luck sailor!

[throwaway9839]

I had a similar experience (depersonalization) also caused by marijuana. Mine lasted for several months until I was back to normal-ish. It was very scary and disorienting.

For anyone experiencing this, I have three pieces of advice: (1) Don't worry too much. Things will get back to normal, and worrying is part of the cause. (2) Try meditating. When I started to meditate while depersonalized, the effect was incredible: it changed from a negative experience to a very positive one. I'm now actually glad for the experience overall, despite the initial scariness. (3) Your worldview is changing. Try not to fight it too much.

[throwaway102942]

I tried marijuana and my experience with it was a lot more like what my friends and you describe LSD or similar drugs to be like. Before marijuana I already had mild hallucinations and I was diagnosed with schizophrenia from a mild psychosis. It's definitely made my existing hallucinations much stronger even years after smoking.

For me the general feel of the trip was as if some sort of filter had been removed so you get to experience things you probably shouldn't experience. This includes experiencing experiences (fractals). What we experience tends to be individual so I won't go into that. But you get a wider eye view, motions are more defined, shapes are more defined, etc. It's like a burn in effect (in an image editing sense) but applied to other senses as well.

My favorite was probably not being able to determine the size of objects (or that it would fluctuate) which made sitting in front of a computer like sitting in a gigantic room with a gigantic tv.

It was a bit uneasy after the trip at first but I got used to it quickly. I've already had similar experiences but of course not as strong.

In my experience with all of this so far the best tool for me is being skeptic. My only fear is that I'll lose the ability to reason forever, which I have already lost in short bursts here and there.

[ethanbond]

I'm immediately skeptical of people who claim to have felt "similar" effects to LSD without LSD, but that's a pretty interesting scenario involving weed (how much?!) and schizophrenia. No clue how close you could get to emulating it, but it sounds like at least a few of the common effects of an acid trip.

[soundwave106]

There does seem to be some links between the endocannabinoid system (the primary target of marijuana) and the serotonin system (the primary target of LSD). EG:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17944876 http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/43/11700.abstract

From what I can see, the relationship isn't terribly clear at this time. As dopamine and serotonin systems are linked to schizophrenia, until more is known, I personally think anyone with even mild signs of schizophrenia would do best to avoid chemicals like marijuana, LSD, stimulants, etc.

[throwaway102942]

Just one big drag with some tobacco. (i don't smoke so maybe nicotine also has a say) although I've had plain as well and I remember it being somewhat the same.

I have never taken LSD so I can't really say for sure but it just sounds more relatable. Maybe something in between?

Some of the things I vaguely remember: There are fractals, although not as strong as people suggest on lsd. If i close my eyes it's like I'm going through different scenes (kinda like a dream I guess). Sound and touch feeling kind of echos Events are somewhat quantized or it's like you can see them before they happen/react to them Mild synthesisa (it doesn't seem as strong as people who say they have it is) Some mild out of body experiences (I've had stronger out of body experiences without) Sound volume becomes meaningless so I can't tell if a sound is close or distant Very vivid side vision hallucinations like I can see my friends gaming or whatever in my side vision but when i look I realize they went out to the grocery store Almost human like facial expression in cats

Without drugs I've had: Out of body experiences Different household ish sounds, usually slamming sounds People talking (although mostly gibberish) as if i'm at a party Explosions and sometimes screams (sometimes my name) Seeing bodies and faces in for instance piles of clothes or similar randomness lots of programming related experiences where I think I can program in real life (I thought stack overflows would cause my consciousness to pop and reset) sudden "messages" such as i see an image of my fridge being on fire so I have to run and check. I've had ghost-like people (I don't believe in ghosts) pull my skin, feet, etc Sudden bizarre realizations with strong visuals and sometimes out of body experiences that show how to solve them (for instance I thought a programming problem I couldn't solve was caused by my kitchen chairs not being aligned properly to the table) I thought I was talking to people telepathically (mostly people I know online)

Fortunately I don't have much of this anymore but when I do it's a lot easier to handle than before. I dropped out of college because of this and I wasn't particularly good with school in general so it really really helps reading and understanding how the brain and technology works.

This is something I've always wanted to talk about. I keep most of this kind of secret as I don't really like talking about some of the experiences I had and I don't like feeling as if I'm bragging about it so a throwaway account turns out to be a nice idea.

[fernly]

Nasty sounding condition. Here's a link[1] and a summary,

> ...a mental disorder in which the people have persistent or recurrent feelings of depersonalization and/or derealization... Depersonalization is described as feeling disconnected or estranged from one's body, thoughts, or emotions. Individuals experiencing depersonalization may report feeling as if they are in a dream or are watching themselves in a movie... derealization is described as detachment from one's surroundings. Individuals experiencing derealization may report perceiving the world around them as foggy, dreamlike/surreal, or visually distorted... the inner turmoil created by the disorder can result in depression, self-harm, low self-esteem, anxiety attacks, panic attacks, phobias, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization_disorder

[lovemenot]

Never heard of this before.

It sounds somewhat like what many people report having experienced during their trip proper. But extended well beyond that time.

I wonder whether people with DePersonalisation Disorder had somehow held on at a time when most would have just let go.

Disorder is another word for chaos, which has, of necessity, been embraced by many.

[jsonne]

I don't partake in any kind of drugs outside of alcohol in social settings. I do however have an anxiety disorder that comes with a lot of panic. I always described myself in the throws of panic as feeling like I was playing a video game. It's a very surreal experience to feel like you're driving a car except your body is the car. You think right arm move and it does, but it doesn't quite feel like yourself. Very strange experience. Incidentally, it took me about 2 very long years to get a good handle on it where I'll only have an episode like that once or twice a year.

[bayonetz]

Perhaps you really saw the "bitter truth" as GP put it for the first time? I really don't mean this in a patronizing way. More that powerful drugs like this have a tendency to show you things about reality both good and bad that you otherwise would never have known. The discoveries you make can reverberate for years. The resulting bum out about the bad things (and I guess the stoke for the good things) can manifest sort of indirectly/physically (as opposed to consciously/mentally).

[martin1975]

> Perhaps you really saw the "bitter truth" as GP put it for the first time?

That's exactly what happened. He saw the cosmic joke of existence.

[kough]

Sorry to hear about that :( The first time I took LSD (not hallucinogens in general, but LSD) went sort of similarly for me. Of course a life provides many confounding factors, but I ended up depressed and anxious for about three or four months afterwards. Took me a while to work my way out of it. I still think it was a worthwhile experience, but my symptoms weren't as bad as yours sound. I hope you're making a good recovery.

[DominikR]

I just don't get it why anyone would try a second or third time after you already had 3-4 months of depression and anxiety after the first trip?

For me that would mean the end of my business and on top of that it would certainly hurt my relationships with other people.

No way I'd ever do such a gamble.

[superswordfish]

> I ended up depressed and anxious for about three or four months afterwards

Holy shit, that sounds awful.

[kough]

Like I said, there were a lot of confounding factors that make it hard for me to put the blame solely on the acid. But pretty much I went in to it without taking it seriously. I ended up tripping pretty hard, by myself, from 1 PM - 9 PM, then kept tripping (not very hard, but enough that I didn't like it) throughout the rest of the night. I ended up watching the movie Chinatown on Netflix because I absolutely could not sleep -- pro tip, this is not a good movie to watch when you're afraid about not having come down and you're not sure if this is what life is going to be like forever into the future. This was the day/night before my school's next semester of classes started; needless to say it put me in a really weird place.

I have a ton of weird files that I wrote in VIM while I was tripping most heavily. I kept opening a new split/file instead of using parentheses, and I kept wanting to do this because my thoughts kept becoming more and more abstract. So I'd write a sentence, move that thought process to more abstract language, open a new buffer, repeat. At some point I remembered how to write macros and wrote a recursive macro that wrote some line of text and then a newline. I should really post this .tar.gz I have of all the files at some point, they're pretty out there.

EDIT: I guess this is the time I talk about my weird acid trip on HN. OK. Hope you all enjoyed.

[duncan_bayne]

> I have a ton of weird files that I wrote in VIM while I was tripping most heavily.

Which of course is the normal state for anyone who uses VIM by choice ;-)

[executesorder66]

Why not post them now? I'd be very interested in reading them.

[sadgit]

Post the .tar.gz

[cfarre]

I agree

[cfarre]

Vaja

[fibonachos]

Damn. This is my normal without any drugs. No LSD for me.

[paperskull]

Probably a good idea.

I have a great circle of friends and family and would describe myself as possibly more stable and relaxed than most people, yet I had a similar experience to the above poster. Then again, I was kind of asking for it.

My tip for anyone wanting to try hallucinogenics is to micro dose (~10µg) and to be really cautious about the set and setting.

[Joof]

As a counter-counter point, I tried it as something of a last-ditch effort after having daily panic attacks for a year. I haven't had one since and I'm depressed much less often.

I took a hell of a lot less and made extra care to do it with kind, experienced people in a safe environment with incredibly joyful activities lined up (The Lego movie is a favorite; starts with a song called 'everything is awesome'). A friend who is a clinical psychologist lived nearby which didn't hurt if things went south.

Maybe the brain is somewhat more plastic for the duration, I'm not sure, but I do think caution should be used. In research contexts a professional is there to keep you on the right track. I'm willing to bet that if I had been alone, I would have ended up worse than I started.

There's very little reliable (read: modern) academic research out there, but looking for it can probably give a little piece of mind. I'm on my phone, but there's a paper (linked to in this article; not sure how permanent that is) that shows that mental disorders in psychedelic users appears similar to mental disorders in the regular population.

There's also some personality studies showing a long-term increase in the openness trait which is an incredibly unusual occurance.

Edit: I considered posting this under a throwaway, but it's sort of a shame that we can't talk about these things at least a little openly.

[utexaspunk]

>I felt like I got some insight into how consciousness works by messing with it.

That's what I got out of it. When people ask me what it's like, I say it's like those stickers people put on large windows so that birds will realize there's a window there and not fly into them. By introducing this aberration, you become aware of the lens through which you perceive everything and get a sense of how the lens may distort reality.

[zby]

I recently tried to read 'The denial of death' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death). I did not manage to go too far - but one of their theses, maybe the main one, was that we are basically crazy not to fear death, that in the childhood we learn how to ignore the objective reality which is too much for us to bear.

[nefitty]

That is one of my favorite books of all time. If the book is too big there was film made that was highly influenced by Becker's ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_from_Death

[pasquinelli]

I had a similar experience with dmt, but it was horrible at the time of the trip also. But I do look back on the new perspective I got from it, though difficult to adjust to at the time, as ultimately positive.

I also attribute some of that difficulty to the stage I was in I'm my life, young adult.

[alchemism]

Have you had any bipolar or schizoaffective symptoms in your past medical history? ...Or does anyone in your family by chance?

LSD (even small doses) is known to trigger manic episodes and schizophrenic breaks for those who suffer from such things -- oftentimes the person is not even aware they have the underlying problem until after it is triggered by drug use, which leads to the popular mythology of "folks who never came back from their trip."

Psychedelic-aware health practitioners would strongly advise anyone who has any history of schizoaffective or bipolar symptoms to avoid LSD at all costs. 'Shrooms won't hurt your brain though, and you can benefit from meta-cognitive reflection in that state just as well.

[lsd_throwaway]

I don't and as far as I know my family doesn't - I wouldn't have tried LSD if I did (I was already nervous enough even without the additional risk). In general I'm pretty stable.

Given all the data I could find it seemed that the majority of people have positive experiences and only a minority have the trouble that I had, but it's possible that it's underreported - either way the risk is real.

I've never tried shrooms, but from what I read the risk there seems similar.

[CuriousSkeptic]

Interesting. I've had some short periods of my life like that (without drugs). It could have been some growing pains of the brain (age 20 roughly) but I also correlate these episodes with time where I shifted religious beliefs.

Could it be a normal response when adapting to changes in our fundamental axioms? I mean, it's bound to be stressful when you don't even trust your most basic assumptions of reality.

[p0nce]

> I was terrified that I was going schizophrenic or losing my mind.

This is probably depersonalization/derealization with a bit of HPPD

[dhimes]

it felt similar to those computer vision machine learning videos from google

Very, very interesting observation.

[cabbeer]

It sounds like you went through existential depression, Glad to hear you're doing better now.

[marincounty]

They way you felt after taking LSD is kinda what I have been experiencing life for the last twenty years, but not the severity as you describe. It all happened after a horrid panic attack, actually a few.

I remember having a bad panic attack, seeing the walls in the bathroom undulate, my perception of things seemed different. Why do we all seem to run to the bathroom, and look in the mirror when we feel sick? I had more than a few panic attack according to my doctor, but to this day I still don't know what's wrong with me. I am better, but I think the aging process had something to do with that?

Anyways, I cried, and cried that night. I was a nervous wreck, but finally fell asleep.

I woke up, walked down the hall, thanking God it was over. When I got half way down the hall, all the nervousness, tearing, etc. came rushing back. I thought maybe it will just be another day.

Well days turns to weeks, weeks to months, months to years.

The very next day, I remember going through the yellow pages looking for a psychologist. I really belived a therapist would help. I went for months, and it didn't help in the slightest.

I did end up seeing the right Psychiatrist, and he helped, but the medications he precribed never seemed to be strong enough, and they were both addictive.

For years, the only drug that helped were two 12 o.z. beers. I would hold off until 3:00 p.m., and take my alcohol medication. I tried to keep it to two because I didn't want to turn into my father. Well, I just gave up, and drank. I had good and bad days. I pretty much gave up social drinking. I knew I needed to save my liver for the bad days.

I can honestly say whatever I had, and haven't completely rid myself of, ruined my life. I made some money, but it was just luck.

I used to be the most capabable person in school, work, or in most situations. I got to the point where I couldn't buy groceries, without shaking with fear.

I look back, and my breakdown happened after a Thanksgiving dinner. To this day, I don't know what caused me to bust a gasket. I was happy with pretty much everything in my life. I didn't have a bad childhood. I was just a twenty something trying to finish school, and have a life.

Growing up some people use to kid around with me, and say stuff like "_________you seem like the type that doesn't need drugs to have a good time?" I would laugh it off.

Anyway, maybe they saw something in me, I couldn't see? Even though I had hair half way down my back, I didn't take drugs. I drank beer, and maybe had five joints up to my breakdown, but psychadelics, and any illegial drug was definitely out. I never told anyone. I didn't want to come across as "that guy".

I recall in second grade, the teacher made us watch a movie about taking drugs. The guy was just doing normal things, took a drug, and his world was a spinning vortex. I remember thinking, why would anyone do this to themselfs? I've even carried this fear up to this day. Who would have known my brain tripped out on its own?

I know this, because of that event, it's been sheer luck I'm not homeless. Sheer luck! I could be homeless within a week? As to mental health professionals; they try. They definetly know more than the family doctor.

[aaimnr]

Have you ever tried practicing meditation? Among other things it allows to notice and distance from ones current cognitive bias, including strong fear, delusions etc. It requires at least some stability at first, though, so that you can practice it when it's easy.

[dreamdu5t]

Do you have any insights on helpful therapies, or really any advice on what you think is the mechanism?

My significant other experienced the same kind of unexplainable paranoia/anxiety that also had a sudden onset that didn't seem to be triggered by anything. In her case, alcohol is still the most effective medication, combined with anti-anxiety drugs for the "bad days".