Chapter 5: Working with Difficult Experiences
We have all had difficult experiences, or bad trips, at one time or another. It is something that sort of comes with the territory, so to speak. Tripping is just like life; there are ups and downs, heavens and hells, and we all experience both sides of the yin-yang. It can feel like you are dying, going crazy, or that you are lost in your own mind. At the time, you often wonder if you are ever going to come back to reality. Then you often wonder what reality even is…
During the Experience
There are ways to prepare for a trip (discussed in Chapter 2) that will help you avoid tripping in many of the psychological mind states and environments that often lead to difficult trips. With that said, you can still have a bad trip when you are in the most perfect set and setting. And more often than not, these bad trips teach you more about yourself than the easy ones. So, it isn’t always good to try to avoid them.
During a difficult trip, fear is often the driving force behind your experience. You let it take over your thoughts; everything in your trip makes you more and more afraid. Your consciousness is fractured and you’re afraid you might die. You’re afraid you overdosed and took way, way too much. You’re afraid of what your friends are thinking of you. You’re afraid because you can’t remember who you are or how to speak with words. You’re afraid you’re going crazy. You’re afraid you’ll never come back. You spiral out into all of these thoughts and you completely lose yourself in them, over, and over, and over again. Your existence evolves into an endless loop of fear that repeats itself for a timeless eternity.
Whenever I have been in this headspace, I have tried different things to make it stop or at least make it easier. I discovered that what works in one experience, might not always work in another experience. There is no definitive way to turn a difficult trip into an easy one. Each person is unique, which means that to truly work with this type of experience, you have to figure out what works best for you.
Reassurance. Sometimes all it takes to smooth out a bad trip is a little bit of reassurance. It helps to talk a person down a bit by explaining to them that everything is alright and that they are going to make it through the trip. It is good to help them understand that they are safe, this way the fear they are experiencing will have a chance to pass.
So now, what happens if you don’t have someone else around to reassure you? Or your friends tried reassuring you and it didn’t work? Or you don’t want to tell anyone how you are feeling? At this point, you might try reassuring yourself. You can tell yourself over and over that it is going to be okay, that the effects will where off shortly, and that you are very much alive and well.
Calm. It is important to remain calm. I know this is easy to say, when you are there and your fear is encompassing you. But, it really will help you ease the negative thoughts and emotions. There are many things you can do to promote relaxation. Some ideas are to take slow deep breaths to slow your heart beat, try stretching in some yoga asanas, or laying flat on your back and meditating.
Contact. Human contact can really be helpful in these situations. Cuddling up with someone you trust and love can immediately put you at ease. If one of your friends is having a difficult trip, try giving them a big hug. It will increase their sense of safety, relaxation, and it will help reassure them that they’re still here in this world.
If you’re tripping by yourself, another way to get contact is to be near a pet. If you have a dog or cat, it can feel really good to go over and start petting them. Running your fingers through their fur and feeling their unconditional love could propel your trip into a whole different direction.
Environment. Often when a person is tripping, they absorb the energy of the place that they’re tripping in. So, if you’re tripping in a place that is very high energy, with lots of lights, loud music, and people dancing you often feel that upbeat energy. This can be a wonderful experience, although it can exacerbate the anxiety of a bad trip. If you’re in this type of situation, like at a rave, you might try getting sober friend to drive you to a more relaxing location with fewer people and less stimulation. This might be a friend’s house or a secluded area of a park.
The next idea is more applicable if you’re in control of your own situation, like if you’re tripping at your home. It is good to have a few easily accessible CD’s with calming music that you can listen to throughout the experience. When you come to instances of anxiety, it can really help to play them and create a peaceful background if to your trip. I’ve always found that listening to tribal music, with drums beats and people singing beautiful melodies from other cultures, can nudge a trip into a new direction that has a more universal focus.
Also, you might try taking a shower. The warm water rushing over your body can feel really calming. As the water is washing over you, try to envision it washing away all of the negative energy and bad thoughts that are keeping you down. As the water drains out of the bathtub, visualize the negative vibes draining out too.
Headspace Shift. It is good to try to learn how to shift your head space, or train of thought during an experience. Sometimes this is easier said than done; it takes practice, and even with practice it can be difficult to accomplish without using a combination of the other methods described above. With that said, I will describe two methods that worked for me.
The first method is to go into the fear and let it encompass you. Try to convince yourself that your worst fear actually happened and confront it head on. As an example, let’s say that you’re having a bad trip because you are afraid that you might be going crazy and that you will never come back to reality again. In this instance, try to go into the fear and explore it to the fullest extent. Say to yourself, I’ve gone crazy. So what? I’ll never come back. So what does this mean? Why am I so afraid of this? Keep delving deeper and deeper into what is causing the fear. Eventually you will come out the other side having learned the true cause of the fear in the first place.
The second method is to try remembering a part of another trip in which you had a completely blissful experience. You can sort of retrace the steps in your mind, or memory, in order to bring the qualities of a past experience into the present. Remember that time and space do not exist in the same way, during a trip, as they do in normal reality. So with that concept in your mind, believe that it is possible. Reach out and grab the ideas you want and incorporate them into your experience.
One way to sort of look at this, that might be easier to understand, is to compare tripping to dreaming. When you’re dreaming you often feel like you cannot control anything. Sometimes fear over takes you and you have nightmares. Usually, when you have a nightmare you simply wake up and the bad dream ends. Shifting your head space during a trip is just as simple as waking up from a bad dream. Once you learn how, it becomes second nature. The most difficult part is learning how to shift your head space in the first place.
Pharmacological Intervention. Taking a medication to bring you down is a last resort before going to the hospital. I cannot recommend for any of you to take a prescription medication; for that, you will need to see your doctor and follow their directions for using the medications they prescribe appropriately. However, I can explain what has worked for me.
There have been several times that I took a benzodiazepine, like valium or xanax, to bring me down from a really strong, bad trip. Each time, I tried everything else that I could think of to calm myself down; yet nothing worked. So, once I exhausted my other options, I would take one valium. I would usually start to relax about half an hour after taking it. Some of the effects of the entheogen were decreased, but at the time I was happy to come out of it and start to sober up.
After the Experience
Everyone processes difficult trips in different ways. Some people become very afraid and refuse to ever do entheogens again. Some view their experiences as a hallucinations and joke about what they if have experienced. Others try to understand but quickly learn that we are not equipped with the tools to easily understand our experiences.
Meditation. One thing that I have found that always helps me after I come back from a difficult experience is meditation. It is like slowly wading into the ocean of existence; while the entheogenic experience drops you into the ocean without teaching you how to swim. Meditation can be very relaxing and calming; I use it to sort of center myself.
Whenever I’ve had a very difficult entheogenic experience, I always revert back to it. While I am meditating, I often contemplate the fearful headspaces. This gives me time to reflect and process what I just went through. I often try to understand the reasons I was afraid. I ask myself over and over again. Why was I afraid? And why is that? And why is that? This gives me a chance to examine the basis of my fear, to bring a sense of peace to the uneasy feelings, and to find solutions to ease my perplexed state of mind. This way, I can get some closure and put the experience behind me in a positive and beneficial way.
Entheogens are like an elevator straight to the top of all existence. You do not need a lot of practice to experience the divine levels of our shared consciousness. All you need to do is take a pill or drink an entheogenic tea. You do not need years of training to get there, like with meditation. Therefore, this elevator ride to the top can often move too quickly and may cause fear, tension, and confusion. If we are not prepared for what we are about to experience, it can take us off guard. Meditation can sort of help build a safe and spiritually rounded platform to launch from. It can enable us to be able to fully understand and integrate our experiences. And with practice, it can eventually lead to the same place that entheogens take us.
Build Faith in Your Self. It is important to have faith in yourself and your Self. What I mean by this, is that you need to have faith in your normal self that you experience on a daily basis; at the same time, you have to have faith in your higher self, or whole self, or more universally divine self that you have experience firsthand while on entheogens. This faith will strengthen your convictions, self-confidence, and self reliance. It will prepare you for the next time you trip and will enable you to realize that everything will be alright no matter what happens. It will bring you to a peaceful place inside while you are tripping and in your everyday existence.
A lot of times, self doubt is at the root of a fear driven trip. It can creep into your headspace and cause you to question your beliefs. There are many ways to build faith, yet it is difficult to describe them. This is because each of us must decide what we have faith in and how to go about developing it for ourselves. For me, reflecting on my experiences and really pondering the universal questions of life have been helpful. Also, I try to understand why I have doubted myself and my beliefs at different times during trips. This way I can heal that part of my psyche. (For a more in-depth discussion on integrating your experiences, see Chapter 6.)
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