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Psychedelics make you learn stuff that you cannot easily "unlearn", like any major life experience. It expands your awareness in ways that sometimes are not pleasant (very often, "ignorance is bliss"). That's the reason most psychedelics are not recreational, but rather "spiritual" drugs. They are self-development tools, and like any tool you must know how to use them. It's totally possible to be enlightened by a bad trip, rather than traumatised. It all depends on your outlook on life, how you instinctively react to adversity. You should see everything under the self-development lens, where everything is an opportunity for growth, and never feel victimised. Your goal after a bad trip should not be just "to recover", but rather to become your best yet. Much like a muscle that grows stronger after you strain it at the gym, psychedelics exercise the mind, and can make you mentally stronger. However, like in the gym, the recovery periods are essential, and over-exercising is detrimental. In answer to the people who always bring up the subject of psychosis: any extremely stressful event can trigger psychosis in people who are prone to have it (for example a divorce, or any big loss). As a rule of thumb, if you're close to 30 and you've been through tough times and feel fine, you're safe. I personally believe that if you're a lucid, clear minded person, looking for self-development, psychedelics are for you. If you're an easily scared person not interested in self-development, psychedelics are definitely not for you. |
One of the most enlightening experiences of my life was a horrendously frightening trip on salvia divinorum. I took it by tincture. I later learned that I'd done a much bigger dose than I'd thought I had. Anyhow, the experience was akin to madness. I felt detached. I lapsed into fugue state. I saw, heard, and "felt" things. Above all else, I maintained just enough lucidity to retain meta-cognition: I was sane enough to know that I'd become crazy. That is an awful feeling. I thought I was losing my mind, and that I'd never return to normalcy.
Well, ridiculous as it sounds, the idea of becoming permanently schizophrenic frightened me into a very deep, very fast-paced analysis of my life to date. With whatever scrap of sanity I had left, I scrawled down my hopes, my dreams, and my goals for the future. Goals I'd need my wits about me in order to achieve. Some of these goals I'd had for years, and I'd made virtually no progress towards them. In this brief period of paranoia -- this fear of never again being able to pursue my dreams -- I strengthened my resolve to try.
Oh, and I also wrote a bunch of sappy, ridiculous emails to all of my closest friends. They still pull those emails out, from time to time, for shits and giggles. They're pretty loopy. And yet, there's a real heart and honesty to them.
I'm glad I had the experience. I'll never do it again, though. (I've tried other psychedelics, fwiw, but this was my only honest-to-goodness "bad trip").