What is a Bad Trip?

[sweetsweetmary]

This always has intrigued SWIM. What is a bad trip? Is it psychadelics mixed with adrenaline? Is it your mind playing tricks on SWIY’s monkey, or cat. Is it pent up baggage that needs to be let out? Is it the negative side of a positive, because we all know one can't have one without the other. Is it's psychadelics way of showing us that they are drugs? All very interesting points and sWIM would like to hear what the rest think.

So it is a combination of fear, ego, and life. Interesting. So that would mean a bad trip is actually trying to be more enlightening. Kind of like a bad dream, when SWIy wakes up and SWIY's like what the fuck, is there anyone there!

SWIM thinks Natural psychadelics to have a more real sense of a bad trip. SWIM knows at least with Mushrooms, SWIY’s arrangatan sometimes can't tell the difference between reality and the visuals, including open eye. SWIM once had a mushroom trip where SWIM blacked out in the middle of it and ended upstairs in a fetal position and didn't come to for like 3 hours, or whatever because SWIM have no idea. SWIM’s girl had a bad trip from the same mushrooms and experienced similar blackouts. During this time They also experienced extreme difficulty in communicating anything. This trip was probably set off because their relationship hadn't quite manifested yet. They were still in that inbetween stage and their comfortableness with each other at the time was to say the least, not there (this happened a long time ago). SWIM’s bad experiences with acid were more absurd, but scarier. One time SWIM’s girl saw a tree go all the way down and touch the ground. SWIM thinks synthetics tend to have a root to the bad trip, like double vision or fear combined with adrenaline, and possibly some pent up discouraging thoughts, while naturals tend to bring out bad trips from nothing at all. Basically proving that living organisms produce these materials for one reason, survival. While one may like a trip distinguishing if it is bad or good is in the beholders eyes, because without bad there is no good. So to qualify a trip it would be called a different state of consciousness, so wouldn't a bad trip be described as just a more different state of consciousness, one that might involve fear and and other chemicals to be released into the brain?

[chinpokomaster]

For SWIM a bad trip is when one's tendancy to face the unknown with fear outweighs one's tendancy to face the unknown with intrigue and then spirals into depravity and bewilderment rather than ascending into godliness and profoundness.

Reputation Comments on this post:

awesomely put!

[sweetsweetmary]

YEah SWIM was thinking of going the simple route and just saying a bad trip is when SWIY wants to take a break afterwards.

[chinpokomaster]

Are bad trips more common with higher doses? SWIM's only bad acid trip happened after dropping 10 tabs (don't ask).

[Alfa]

A bad trip is when you hit the brake when you are already driving downhill at 120 MpH. Better enjoy the ride instead of struggling.

[sweetsweetmary]

SWIM has had bad trips on two hits, but the hits were taken seperately and the trips didn't mesh well together (There was a peircing sound like one was peaking and the other trying to go the other way), SWIM would call it bad because it was completely unexpected and SWIM was unable to distinguish the noise, and came to the conclusion of taking doses at seperate times. SWIM beleives they were taken too far apart, SWIM also had a seizure on a half eighth of mushrooms (Now Tons of tequilla and a bob marley joint had a little to do with that). This was equally as scary SWIM says because it happened 5 or 6 hours into the trip. But that is what makes a trip exciting, the unknown, so there is no way to tell, but for certain in order to be able to tell, there needs to be a definition of a bad trip.

[Lobsang]

Well SWIM would say that in his opinion that a bad trip involves FEAR. A bad trip could also be if someone does things on the trip which later prove very embarrasing. For example SWIM heard of a guy at a concert that was so seperated from reality that he started masterbating to the grateful dead. He would not stop and continued. The police took him to the hospital and in a psychotic trance he continued to do it and had to be restrained so he would not hurt himself. That would be classified as a bad trip.



SWIM has only had he would say 2 "bad" trips. One was on Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds. He began to feel sick and then got all feeling "forelorn" and insecure. This was when he was very young. He curled up in a chair and kept looking at pictures of churches in a book. This made him feel better. I mean churches with pictures of stained glass and saints and Jesus and such. That trip was strange.

SWIM had another bad trip where he took too much mescaline at only 14. The trip started wonderfully but progressed to fear and seeing visions of purple octupi on the other side of a glass door. He lay in ther fetal position hugging his dog for comfort

SWIM had what he would not classify as a "trip" really but his DXM trip was horrible
http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56304

On one LSD trip SWIM drempt this up. The rest of the trip was good pretty much but this excerpt from it might be considered "bad". This was when SWIM was an irresponsible kid. This happenend in a dream...

"Ok so I took six hits of 4 way windowpane LSD. I lost who and where I was. All I remember was being in the middle of a highway trying to stand up but I kept falling down. I was crawling around. Cars were screaching to stop and swerving. Honking their horns. Some body was saying "oh my God" I remember talking in gibberish and making animal like sounds. I remember a guy pulling up next to me and saying "Buddy can I help you?". I was on all fours. I lashed out at him with a bunch of animal sounds. I remember staggering away into the woods...."

"Then I walked a while and came upon a police car in the park. No one was in it. I tried to open the back door to get in and sit in the back seat. I was going to explain to the cop that I was tripping and did not know how to get home. And would he take me home wherever home was? But it was locked. Then I tried to break the glass of the window to get in but it would not break by hitting it with my hand. Then I continued in the forest. Then I was convinced I was dead. I needed to get home to find my obituary because I wanted to attend my own funeral."


But we also have to consider that what one may perceive as "bad" during the experience or shortly after may in fact turn out to be of benefit later in terms of growing as a person. SWIM will say this. There has NEVER been a trip that SWIM did not learn from or grow from. But SWIM would not recommend some of the things that he has experienced as the ideal methodology to acheive the knowledge. But dosn't the old song go..."You can't always get what you want....You get what you need." Something like that.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Very nice wording, noticed the fetal position SWIMself

[Strangeness]

Bad trips, from SWIM's limited experience and not-so-limited observations, almost always are defined by feelings along the lines of "alright I want to stop tripping" or "I shouldn't have done this."

Doubt. Confusion. Resistance. Doubt about what's real and what's not. Confusion about what's going on. Resistance of what little remains of rational thought. Doubt about whether the madness will end. Confusion about whether it's all the drug talking or if one has truly lost their mind. Resistance as opposed to just 'going with the flow.'

And that's a bad trip. Alfa's analogy is quite good IMO.



Also, that's a crazy story about the guy at a Dead concert, I don't doubt that it happened. Some people just like to punish themselves I guess. Because I don't see any other reason to take a high dose of something at a public event like that. When you're gone, you're gone, and who knows what the fuck you're likely to do.

[dr_haldol]

I don't think bad trips are dose-related in any way. Of course high-dosing can be bad, but even with a small dose your trip can be really bad.

Just like the ad for Fishermens Friend pastilles: If they [the drugs] are too strong, then you're too weak. So drug XYZ isn't for you. At least not at the moment.

I think taking drugs is a bit like going on holiday. You enjoy your holidays, but it's okay to get back to work again.
One without a stable psyche and having a good life where he/she can return to after the trip (without wanting to be "on" all the time, because it feels better than normal life) shouldn't ingest drugs IMHO.

[sweetsweetmary]

SWIM saw a SWIY mention a fetal position. This tends to occur with SWIM when his brain overloads. SWIM's first trip ever, on a ridiculously high amount of some sort of Do* produced similar effects. Too much chaos, brain overload. The only thing swim could do is lay in bed and turn out the lights and deal with the closed eye because the open eye were just as bad, but swim can justify the closed eye (oh it's just SWIM's immagination), SWIM couldn't justify having a person melt right in front of SWIM. So a closed eye shot into the galaxy with aliens happened to be preferred and when the atmosphere was changed it went from a bad trip to a weird trip (which isn't so bad). SWIM just found mushrooms to be the most unpredictable substance in the world, and could cause skull like patterns and loss of which way is right or left, and after brain overload blackouts, seizures, and the lovely fetal position

[chinpokomaster]

Originally Posted by dr_haldol

I don't think bad trips are dose-related in any way. Of course high-dosing can be bad, but even with a small dose your trip can be really bad.

Just like the ad for Fishermens Friend pastilles: If they [the drugs] are too strong, then you're too weak. So drug XYZ isn't for you. At least not at the moment.

I think taking drugs is a bit like going on holiday. You enjoy your holidays, but it's okay to get back to work again.
One without a stable psyche and having a good life where he/she can return to after the trip (without wanting to be "on" all the time, because it feels better than normal life) shouldn't ingest drugs IMHO.

SWIM disagrees totally about the drug not for you and not being ready, thing. SWIM's first few acid trips were great but then he had one that was awful. The ones after that were good but slightly dented by the bad experience for a while.

I don't think it has anything to do with any macho handling of drugs.

[dr_haldol]

I also said:

At least not at the moment.

Maybe there is/will be a time...

[RaverHippie]

My friend said that he doesn't really have bad trips, he find the ones that border on the line of uncomfortable end up being the ones where he realizes the most about himself. Overall so much is taken from these experiences and to him part of the fun is hanging on for dear life and surviving, and that to him really is fun.