Seeking Advice: Shrooms, Anxiety, Digestive Upset, and Weed

[WetStaples]

I've been having a bit of a problem for about 2 months and I figured why not post it here, since it may or may have to do with psychedelics. Thank you if you take the time to read it all.

So I had this bad shroom trip a while back. It wasn't really that much of a trip, I was just overwhelmed with anxiety because of a fear my parents would find out. Unrelated side note here: I had recently started smoking weed sometime before this. It wasn't frequent use, maybe averaging once a week. And now, it's still only twice a week. Anyway...

Some time later, I did a very small dose with a friend. The small dose because I was hesitant about the whole first bad trip, especially with my lack of experience anyway. I still had the same negative mindset and anxiety like the first bad trip, but this was much less overwhelming.

Problems start 3 weeks later when one night as I am trying to go to sleep, I have an anxiety attack where I think I'm going to have a bad trip flashback because I am having the similar distinct anxiety feeling that was new to me when I had my first bad trip. But it was just anxiety, and I worried non stop for half an hour and slowly calmed down over the course of another hour. Felt nauseous and gassy too, much like I do on shrooms. More digestive symptoms that I'll spare you the details of.

The following days, my stomach was very upset and my appetite would come and go. My mood was also very wonky and felt very fragile. I got better, with a dip in mood a week after, but that's it.

A month later, it happened again. It wasn't as strong as the first time, but I was still scared I was going to start tripping randomly. I knew it was silly at the time, but it just kept nagging me for 15 minutes. And then I had similar symptoms and mood the days after.

I went to a doctor and they've ruled out anything major. I still have an appointment with a stomach specialist, but that's a while away.

Catching up to the present, this weekend I went to an all-night downtown art festival and got stoned throughout the night. We ended up seeing some pretty big crowds and it was really scary when I was baked. o_o I got home very later very tired, and hadn't eaten much that night. The next morning, I ate breakfast but had a shitty mood later on and had no appetite for dinner. Shitty mood lasted a few days, just like the other times. I smoked just a little weed yesterday, when I felt better, and today, I had a slight mood drop. It got me wondering if weed is the culprit.

Is it likely the weed somehow puts my mind closer to the anxiety and stuff related to my bad shroom trip? Any other ideas? Do you think all this is physically or mentally caused? Thanks again if you got this far, and thank you if you post something. I just need opinions and ideas atm.

 

[Forkbender]

Don't smoke any weed for a month. Eat healthy. Take care of yourself. Relax. Take a sauna or steambath and get a massage. Whack off plenty.

You'll be fine when you realize that you made the trip bad yourself and that you need to find out why. Next time don't work up your nerves as much before taking a psychedelic drug.

Good luck, buddy. My first trip was in T-dot and I loved it there.

 

[Dr_Brazil]

It sounds like a run-of-the-mill anxiety attack to me. Smoking usually relieves me of them, rather than causing them, personally. But, a lot of times when I have anxiety attacks it's due to some inherent moral conflict (the association with your 'shroom trips, and the fear of your parents knowing seems to point in that direction to me) which I can generally rectify fairly easily afterword by weighing out the pros, and cons, etc. and, making decisions accordingly. But, I have had anxiety attacks over any number of things with no apparent correlation. *shrug*

If your problems persist after your physical examinations/relaxation/reevaluation/drug abstinence, perhaps you should see a shrink (not likely to be a very popular solution here, but sometimes it's helpful).

 

[magickmumu]

I agree with Fork.
Stop smoking for a while and see how it goes.

Good luck

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

If you're smoking only twice a week, I don't think it's the weed. But if the anxiety and flashbacks are typically triggerred by the weed, then of course it's better to smoke less.

Could it be that the anxiety upsets your digestion? Chew well! Don't drink or talk while you eat. Do some breathing and relaxation exercises before you eat, and before you go to sleep.

As far as shrooms are concerned, just stick to mushroom tea.

 

[FluidDruid]

Smoke more weed! Your endocannibinoid system is lacking cannabinoids causing you to be over-excited. Mind over matter, with all seriousness. Who cares if your parents find out, as long as they dont actually do any physical harm to you. Move out! I've gone through A LOT at a very young age, and all of the experiences I've gained have just provided much wisdom. Trust me, or better yet trust yourself. It's a silly thing to be worrying about your parents finding out, this sounds like the source of your problem. If your really stressing about things, this can affect your digestive system greatly; more than people think. I have been in your situation, if not many worse ones. Mushroom's dont give you flashbacks, you may find "credible" sources saying they do, but they also claim Cannabis too gives flashbacks. Its a scare tactic, which sounds like it worked Most of your symptoms sound psychosomatic to be honest.

1. Smoke more cannabis, if you want to know more about why send me a message.

2. Dont stress about the parents whatsover, its your life not theirs.

3. Read more about the mushroom as an entheogen, rather as something to just have a good time.

4. Maybe take some pepto-bismol

:lol:

 

[JohnDoe_2012]

I've responded to the OP by PM but in case this helps someone else out here's my response:

I've had a very similar experience in that I had a really bad high dose mushroom trip, then a few months later I tried to trip but on a much smaller dose thinking I would avoid those problems. Even though the dose was well within the range I could handle in the past I got the anxiety and negative thoughts and it was maybe 70% as bad as the heavy dose bad trip.

Weeks later I began having anxiety, at first a couple of big bouts. Those lasted an hour or two each and I felt disconnected from reality, like it was a dream or I wasn't real. This is called depersonalization or derealization as I found by reading online (btw if you are feeling anxious don't read about these things at THAT time, it will only keep it going)

Since then I've had a few less frequent, maybe once every week or two an hour of anxiety that is 30% of the first ones. Basically not nice but manageable. I've been using breathing techniques and some little tricks to distract, calm and center myself. I'd suggest this to you:

When you're in an anxiety moment overthinking or trying to think your way 'out' of it don't seem to work for me. Instead try to breathe, focus on your breath and ignore thoughts for a little bit to give yourself a break from the spiral of thinking and also try to distract yourself a little bit. If you have friends/family awake play a console game with them or a card game or something. Have a little fun even if you have to fake it at first, a lot of this comes from intent and belief in my opinion so you can use those tools to get yourself through a bad spot and into a better one.

Even if it turns out this isn't something you can just solve overnight don't worry, you can get through it and you will. Nobody ever died from an anxiety attack but some people let them imprison them. You came looking for help and advice here so you've shown me that you're looking for a way to counteract or combat the problem. Don't even take what I'm saying here TOO seriously, you might never get another moment/attack again and things might be great from here on out. Just try and remember this basic set of tools:

Positivity, breathe, laugh, focus and try not to worry. You'll get through anything that gets thrown at you.

Don't feel like it's all the drugs and you've had something put on you, the drugs most likely triggered what was inside you. It's time to heal yourself and move forwards.

Good luck mate.

 

[druglessdouglas]

sounds like an anxiety attack to me also. could be triggered by the weed. anxiety feeds itself. when you get anxious you breath shallow and your heart rate goes up to compensate and pump more oxygen around your system. increased heart rate brings on more anxiety.

the trick is to slow your heart rate. you do this by breathing very deep slow breaths. 3+ seconds too breath in, all the way down using your diaphram (try not to expand your chest) and breathe out slower. the slower and deeper you breathe the better. your heart rate will drop rapidly and your anxiety will dissapear.

the stomach upsets will be related to the extra adrenalin in your system. its part of the fight-or-flight response. our ancestors would evacuate (shit themselves) to lose an extra few ounces before running away. you can see this in all animals especially prey animals such as deer. we carry our ancestors with us every day.

practice for a few minutes every day. the morning is best. this way you wont forget when you feel an attack comming on.

in my opinion flash-backs are a myth. its my opinion that what most people think of as a flash-back is actually an anxiety attack. the method ive described willl stop you anxiety attacks from escalating, or stop them all together

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

in my opinion flash-backs are a myth. its my opinion that what most people think of as a flash-back is actually an anxiety attack. the method ive described willl stop you anxiety attacks from escalating, or stop them all together

I agree. Especially because most flash-backs are triggered by cannabis, which is known to make many people anxious ("paranoid").

 

[IJesusChrist]

I've had a very similar experience in that I had a really bad high dose mushroom trip

Ok, there is John Doe, and poster number 1, and now me, we have all had the exact same situation happen to us, i.e. it's not "just an anxiety attack".

These are from the drugs, however they are usually caused by already psychological things in the brain, usually because the person tends to 'over think' things already, and given drugs (in what seems most comomon, mushrooms) this overthinking goes on high power, and sort of shorts out the brain from rational thought.

JohnDoe had basically described my entire life exactly, which is nuts, but I have a few tricks of my own (my attacks still come on over a year later) but they usually last less than 15 minutes now, and I'm so used to them, they go away quickly.

I have hypothesized that very minute amounts of psilocybin can stay locked in your system, or it is possible that psilocybin makes its own neuro path ways in the brain, that if you use, are going to get worse, so wait till these paths are gone before attempting shrooms again, or other psychoactives.

My current deal is going to do extasy in the spring, when I usually have zero attacks, feel good, etc...
By the way, I'm speaking directly to you: Don't smoke weed. If you can completely quit it, thats great, weed is not good for your type of thinking.

 

[druglessdouglas]

"I have hypothesized that very minute amounts of psilocybin can stay locked in your system, or it is possible that psilocybin makes its own neuro path ways in the brain, that if you use, are going to get worse, so wait till these paths are gone before attempting shrooms again, or other psychoactives."

it is an anxiety attack. you ill get further realising this. the initial trigger is not really relevant. hypothesizing that little bits of psylocin somehow lodge in the system wont help you. in fact harboring such beliefs will set up neural pathways which willl be detrimental in the long run. if you want to fix a problem you must first see the problem for what it is.

sorrry for being so blunt but get real

if a tree is hit by lightning and catches fire, it is because wood is flamable,not because little bits of lightning have lodged in the tree

 

[user_1919]

I have hypothesized that very minute amounts of psilocybin can stay locked in your system, or it is possible that psilocybin makes its own neuro path ways in the brain, that if you use, are going to get worse, so wait till these paths are gone before attempting shrooms again, or other psychoactives.

I have a very hard time believing this.(don't take it the wrong way) Your brain is very sensitive, and if something like happened, it could have very serious effects.

peace & love

 

[IJesusChrist]

it is an anxiety attack. you ill get further realising this. the initial trigger is not really relevant. hypothesizing that little bits of psylocin somehow lodge in the system wont help you. in fact harboring such beliefs will set up neural pathways which willl be detrimental in the long run. if you want to fix a problem you must first see the problem for what it is.

sorrry for being so blunt but get real

if a tree is hit by lightning and catches fire, it is because wood is flamable,not because little bits of lightning have lodged in the tree

Here I'm going to explain something. I realized something while on shrooms that brought an intense amount of anxiety. The problem is, the realization is still true after the trip. It was a bad trip, that I realized was bad even after being sober. The second thing is that whenever I think of that realization, which comes from absolutely nothing, believe me I've tried to figure out why it comes up - it is just somewhere in some random pathway.
I have been studying my own thoughts for over a year now man, take me seriously. I am not making up this stuff, this is not an anxiety attack I would have gotten had I never done shrooms. It is the exact same feeling with the exact same thought process. I can control it now by just not recognizing it as soon as the thought comes about. This is hard. Imagine if you had to ween yourself off the thought of sex completely. Every time you thought of sex you would have an axiety attack, because you realized what sex really was.
This is not what specifically happened to me but is basically the same analogy.
It happened because of shrooms, I can't deny that, and neither should you, these two other people had the exact same consequences as me. Take us seriously. Anxiety attacks do not take a year to stop re-occuring.

But you are correct; the more I think its more than anxiety the more it is more than anxiety. I hate those type of things that happen with the brain... But I tell you with the upmost certainty, I would have no had that happen without taking a large dose of mushrooms.

 

[JohnDoe_2012]

drugless makes a good point: even though these moments of anxiety only began for me after mushroom use I don't entirely attribute them to the drug itself. My current model for thinking about it is to consider the drug a catalyst for whatever turmoil was already within me, perhaps tightly locked away. It would do me no good to consider what happens to me as the drug's 'fault' as that wouldn't get me anywhere. Instead I try to work to heal whatever is damaged within me psychologically which could trigger these attacks.

I think there is some validity to the notion that high dose psychedelic trips can be like years of psychotherapy in a single night. Therapy seeks to have you examine negative or traumatic things which have happened to you in a controlled manner, gently working up to varying degrees of openness. Sometimes when we use psychedelics I think we kind of crowbar the door to our subconscious open and something big can come out all at once that maybe we didn't even know was lurking down there.

Whatever model you use to describe your experience try to keep a positive mindset in thinking that there's no point blaming anyone else or asking 'why me?', instead find ways to overcome your problems. Even if it's just a little at a time, progress is progress and that's what we all seek ultimately right?

It may be a cliche to experienced psychonauts here but despite all the negative aspects of my worst trips I've actually found they have spurred me to change my life in a number of ways over the last few months which I've found very rewarding and satisfying. I've also regained a healthy caution and respect for these substances. If I choose to do them again in the future it will be from a place of courage, having built myself back up again as opposed to a naive perspective.

Perhaps sometimes we've got to be torn apart to reassemble ourselves into a better form. Like the alchemists we learn to turn shit into gold

 

[mysticwarrior]

I have to say, this is a really interesting topic for me. I waited a while to see what people would gonna say. I've had almost the same problems as IJesusChrist adn JohnDoe_2012. When i did mushrooms for the first time on age of 18, i had just the most interesting experience of my live. At the end, i did go wrong and panicked a little. But this was not so strange, because i was with group of people in a city and on a place where i never had been before. I really did not know that the effects of mushrooms could be so heavy. I think i was there with 10 other people and 2 friends and i took some mushrooms. I was astonished that something like this could happen. I never thought, that the world could be so different. But then the whole group decided to go to the city. My friends did not felt so much from the mushrooms. But i was really tripping my balls off. No one in this group had ever seen me doing that strange. They all looked at me, and laughed about me and i i felt a little fucked up you know.

When we did leave, i did not even came close the peak of my trip. We did go walking, and every meter i walked, i felt my self stranger and stranger, but i also had still some fun in it. When we arrived in the city, i was experiencing the peak of my trip. And there where just to many people around me, so i started to feel myself uncomfortable. But then my friends decided to go in a disco, luckily enough i was not allowed in this disco because i had not the right dress code But my friends had not noticed this, so i was for almost 15 minute's alone in a city that i did not know. That's when the anxiety came up. I hided away for everything an sat somewhere in a corner to wait till my friends would come out of the disco. It also started to raining and it was cold to be there lonely outside. Then my friends came out of the disco and entered another bar. Of course i followed them, but when i entered the bar it did look like there where thousands of people. So i freaked out and did run outside. A friend of me followed me, and we sat outside for a while. And finally after a while i became sober again.

Afterwards i still liked the experience and was planning to experiment with it some more. In the same month i did another try at my own, while my parents where at home. Stupid of course, but i would stay in my bedroom sitting behind my computer. I tripped really hard, but it felt not so nice as the first time. I still did keep feel my self uncomfortable. But i did not panic or something like that. I just did try to sleep as soon as possible. The next month i decided to give it a last try. I toke some Hawaiian mushroom thee. And everything did go so fucking wrong. I am not going in to detail, but i felt my self terrible for months. I then stopt using mushrooms.

Before i used the mushrooms i was a real dick head! I was absolutely not spiritual or something like that. but these mushrooms triggered something in me, that changed my perception totally. It was a really reality shift that did occur. Afterwards i see that it helped me to find a way to overcome my depression and psychological problems. I really started to pay interest in books i would normally hate! I started try to be as open minded as posible. And when finally a year did past, i was fully cured. But i still had a problem with my ADD but beside that i could enjoy life a little more.

Finally after 5 years, i had developed a new perspective on life and i thought that maybe i could try do some mushrooms again. I noticed that it was something spiritual, and since i had overcome so much problems i thought that it would be the right time for a trip. I started with a really low dose, i toke only 2 mushrooms and i still had a heavy trip. Everyone seemed to be able to join this stuff, but i could not. It really bothered me, because i found it so interesting, and it did heal me in some sort of way. I started to notice that mushrooms could be a tool for psychological problems. I had constantly heavy trips and i really had to do my best to go trough them. But lucky enough every time it became more easy to handle. I also could handle more and more in normal life.

Then i read a book, that told me to accept everything while i was tripping. It also told me to not try to fight against negative feelings and things like that. I just had to let myself go and experience the emotion and just see the things for what they really are. I decided to run not any longer away for myself, and just wanted to give it one more try. This time i had a great day and i experienced for the first time one great trip! I learned that night so much!!! I started to practice this accepting technique till it really became a automated process.

I think there are really many reason why someone go bad on mushrooms. But it all depends on your perspective on life and how much you can handle in your brain. Do you step in the roller coaster or will you gonna look at it safely from a distance? Do you gonna give your self a opportunity or do you gonna fail anyway? This are really important questions, because without noticing this you easily go bad and fail again. In my case, i had a lot psychological problems. I became really fast anxious about a lot of things. Because of that i became a little claustrophobic of life. I felt unsure etc, and after the first trip i became really depressed. But it give me the change to learn and accept more and more emotions. Now these days i am still practicing this, sometimes it's hard but i think mushrooms are just not always fun.. They just teach you hard lessons, it's just that you won't accept them. And i didn't notice this, except for the hard experiences i was going trough. I was really to afraid to let my self go. But finally i learned it! Now I only have to deal with a brain disorder ADD, which i think it could also be one of the problems why i did go bad. Because of the ADD i can't concentrate to much on one thing, so i look/hear more things on the same time. I can't filter my perception on the important things, like normal people can do. Because of this, i am getting really chaotic in my brain, when i have to handle certain things. When i am tripping i am really dealing with the same problems, but then 10 times stronger and bigger then me. I can't concentrate, get to many thoughts and finally it go's really to fast etc etc. This was something i needed to accept and experience, and finally i focused on this while tripping. I really wanted let my self really go, and let the mushrooms decide what the experience would be.

This is also why i believe the mushrooms do have so much power. They are a tool, to heal people in some sort of way. If you guys go bad, try to look the bull in the eyes. Don't run away, experience the pain and in fact try to enjoy it. I know that is hard, but you really have to go trough that. Don't give up, just try and stair the bull in the eyes. Your could be surprised how liberating this can be!

Greets,
Mystic.

 

[WetStaples]

I see this topic sort of re-ignited. Thanks everyone for your inputs. I stopped smoking weed for a bit over a month and there was no observable change, which is what I thought. I saw a stomach doctor, and he's 99% sure my digestive system is just sensitive, and no damage is actually being done, so I don't need to worry about that anymore. The anxiety hasn't really gone away, as I'm learning this evening, but I'm definitely becoming more accustomed to it over the months. I worry that I'll be like this forever, but that's probably the anxiety. Whatever happens happens, I guess is a better way of looking at it. My hope is that it gradually tapers away over time... Positive attitude!

I don't blame the shrooms or the drugs for this. I try not to think about it too much, though, because that just makes the anxiety worse. All I know is it's too powerful a tool not for me anytime soon.

My stomach doctor said digestive stuff can be brought about by good or bad change in life. I think this probably also applies to the mental aspect. I used to be very strongly introverted and while I still am, near the end of the school year I started hanging out with friends A LOT more. So yeah, that's likely too.

Now I'm going to run away from this forum to get my mind of this stuff, lol. Peace!

 

[mysticwarrior]

Now I'm going to run away from this forum to get my mind of this stuff, lol. Peace!

You can run, but you can't hide yourself