I took mushrooms three years ago and immediately gained a pervasive baseline anxiety in my life. Haven't been able to shake it since. Wouldn't recommend if you have any issues with anxiety in your life beforehand.
I developed an anxiety condition from extensive periods of deep meditation. In my viewpoint it had been there all along and I had mostly just covered it up with other emotions - but the meditation amplified things a lot, I went through a crisis lasting months about a decade ago. I still get anxiety attacks sometimes and had never had them before. I don’t know if your trip caused something new or just uncovered something that was already there, I think either are possible.
I am sorry to hear that. You might find very useful this EP about meditation from Andrew Huberman: https://youtu.be/wTBSGgbIvsY
It’s the first time I saw someone differentiating different types of meditation and it seems to match your experience.
Basically, we can either exercise and build up our focus to our internal state and bodily sensations OR do the same but focusing externally.
The interesting thing is that some people are biased to one or another, and if you have issues like anxiety then you should probably practice meditation to strengthen your focus and attention less on your body and more externally.
Really recommend the whole EP, I think you’ll find particularly interesting given your story.
The alternative is: now that you've found this anxiety you have, you should challenge it, and work on root causing, mitigating, and resolving it.
I get super anxious about doing anything I haven't done in a while, but falling off the bike solves the fear of falling off the bike real fast. For me, at least
I stumbled onto Huberman some weeks ago. He is a really great podcaster and exceptionally intelligent. I really enjoyed his talk about dopamine and addiction.
Highly recommended!
I feel similarly to meditation as I do to psychedelics. I think it has more risks than people want to admit.
Have you looked into Internal Family Systems? Your experience seems to match pretty closely to the idea of protectors and exiles in IFS. I think meditation sometimes bypasses protectors, which can result in extreme pain.
I'd agree with the uncovering sentiment, I had been very good at ignoring and repressing anxieties up to that point. Maybe the trip just permanently ruined that illusion, since then I haven't really been able to handle anxiety well at all.
I have a similar problem. I did a lot of psychedelics in high school and eventually developed a weird issue with anxiety. I don’t have panic attacks. Rather, I constantly imagine every possible thing that could possibly go wrong in my life and fret about it, even though 99% of the time my worry is unfounded. I’ve spent so many nights waking up at 3am and not sleeping all night because of some obscure, 1/1,000,000 scenario I’ve concocted.
If it’s any solace, I’ve come to enjoy this aspect of my personality. My constant worrying annoys my wife, but I’ve come to accept that this is how I think, and that has given me solace. I’m not sure I would change it if I could now.
I'm doing okay. You are right, it's a very vulnerable and almost inevitable feeling, like I've been shown who I "truly" am inside, something that I only accessed directly during that trip, but which exists below the surface all the time. Which obviously cycles heavily back into the anxious feelings.
I've never really put this experience in to words before, reading it back maybe it's time for me to try something other than waiting for it to burn itself out.
God I know exactly what you mean. There's this feeling that surfaces during the trip that's so familiar and so real and you realize it's always there, but hiding under the surface. And now that you've seen it, you can never quite fully ignore it again.
> maybe it's time for me to try something other than waiting for it to burn itself out.
It hasn't burnt itself out for me either. I don't think it ever will. But therapy has helped, as has leaning into life, and getting lost in it a bit.
So it basically allowed you to start the process of reconciliation with oneself, finding balance that was never truly there, being able to work with sore spot that was before hidden too well. You probably felt a bit off before but never went digging and accepted it just as part of you.
What a wonderful therapeutic substance, it just doesn't fix everything on its own but requires further work, paving the path for it.
I had similar at 16 and took 10 years to process it but it was there for a lot longer.
However, 30 years later I have understood it and am very full and compete due to this process.
I think what is scary is that it takes us from unknowing children into fearful adults without the skills to self reflect in a way that we can heal ourselves.
High quality therapy with a sound and grounded therapist really helped me. Beyond words actually.
It is easy to blame the trip but it isn’t the trip. We can alter ourselves, or the way we react to things.
Mine went away in about 1.5 years. Going from a normal person with no worries in the world, to a person having a panic meltdown while shopping for food or driving is not something I wish on anyone. It's hard to verbalize/articulate the experience.