Aspects of the Entheogenic Experience: Fear
One of my first experiences on mushrooms was at a full moon party where I ingested an eighth of psilocybin mushrooms. The party environment was not at all conducive to this kind of experience, and I recognized my discomfort early on. There were a lot of people drinking alcoholic beverages, and so before I ingested the mushrooms, I had been sipping on some absinthe that a friend had brought.
Coming up I was watching my friend and his girlfriend spin poi, but I felt extremely isolated from them and ultimately retreated to the van we had carpooled in. Inside the van I couldn't locate the cannabis I had brought, and so this added to my sense of isolation. As the mushrooms set in, I became extremely paranoid that I was ruining the party atmosphere and this was compounded by the fact that my friend's dog was also in the car and I was trying not to make noise so as not to make her start barking.
At this point, visual hallucinations started to get really weird, and I became convinced that I was turning into a teapot and that I'd be left behind if I didn't find a way to stop this transformation. Furthermore, I became aware of free-floating shadows and small, dark-shaped people walking around the party that I didn't recognize. This terrified me even more when one of the shadow people appeared to walk directly through me. I also became aware of the enormous presence of people in the world, and this triggered an anxiety attack that was different from others that I've had in that my anxiety about interacting with people seemed to be coming from the perspective of the planet.
The panic I was experiencing did not subside until about an hour and a half into the trip when I experienced the image of a three-eyed, pyramid-shaped green fairy smiling and tapping me on the head with a quintessential star-tipped fairy wand.Peace Tree - absinthe, psilocybin mushrooms
2nd Ayahuasca Journey, Jurema, Mimosahuasca
10 grams Syrian rue, 10 grams Mimosa, boiled 15 minutes each, all approximations
Was not as intense as last time, and seemed to have lasted a little less time.
The visuals were almost exactly the same, and the experience overall was almost exactly the same, except this time I didn't even allow myself to go into the visuals.
More fear this time, and also more nausea at the beginning, though like last time, didn't throw up. Deep breathing helped.
The fear was around being alone, feeling separate, wanting pure, unconditional Love and not feeling it.
This fear made me realize that I must give and be that Love that I so much desire.
I must be pure, unconditional Love.
Right now, tonight, I'm almost going back into that fear of separation, realizing that my aloneness and feeling of being separate have been my own choice. I can change this.
I MUST CHANGE THIS. I must be LOVE.
I have chosen separation, and now I must choose True Communion.
I don't want to be better, different, separate, or anything Other than anyone else.
I want to be One with everyone and everything. To return to Source Awareness.
I want to be Home. In the Heart.
These experiences are scaring me straight, and that's perhaps their greatest benefit to me.
K. basically talked me through the fear, though as I expressed to him, I still felt some separateness between us that was disturbing to me.
We actually had a beautiful and true Communion together, from 11-3 am.
By midnight, the psychedelic effects had largely worn off, and I felt very clear, present, grounded, and at ease. It was wonderful just to share like that with K.
The DMT was showing me my issues, my demons, around power, wanting to be a god, separate from others, and how that would never be in my Highest and Deepest Interest, but would just be more Ego.
Allowah - Jurema (Mimosa Hostilis and Syrian Rue)
About 45 seconds after one very large hit of Salvia 5X from a water pipe I became aware of a very strong pull to my upper left. To fight the pull was physically painful. At this point I became extremely paranoid that the world was playing a mean trick on me, the experience was so strong that I also felt like I was in danger of dying. I kept on saying "where is it going". I remember everything beginning to swirl counter clockwise and thinking to myself that if I spin clockwise I would come back to reality. So in my mind I got onto my hands and knees and began to flip clockwise, in reality this never really happened.
In a seperate episode I remember watching my leg melt and swirl into the same vortex, this was actually funny and enjoyable to me. The extreme pull to the upper left was present in all my Salvia experiences.
Vaxian - Salvia 5X
hELLO to everyone !
i am writing to describe my personal bad trip experience and i'm sad to say my last lsd experience..until this time.
This occured about more than a year and i am still considering it.I felt the most pressure i had ever felt , and i couldn't recognise one of my friends!I can remember the feeling of embarassment and the need to hide myself from everyone...while my friends where searching for me very worried...i was feeling and looking like crazy..while i was alone - some minutes i remember that i controlled it...but when i heard my friends'voice i responded.
they were trying to persuade me go back to the party..or go to a friends' house ..to where i wennt at last but very suspicious..saying all the time:"i;m having a bad trip"...my boyfrienb prefer to continue his party and was left with my girlfriend wonderind "are you my friend?"Like i didn't accept that friendship...it was really strong.In this setting the half of the people had a bad experiense ...it was a bad quallity lsd they said...i'm still wondering whats true ?maybe we never know ..
i can't say who cares...even if we like to ''see'' -through our doors of perception-beyond bad and good terms..we can at least recognise bad and good effects..i would recommend lsd ...this have happened to me because in general i was not psycologicaly in a good phase ..i was anxious about practical and future things ...and now i know that this is the problem of all the people of develop countries...we are anxious-->and then anxiety-->becomes fear_>>and then we become paranoid-->and we see enemies everywere.......there's no need for that..like bob marley said.."we all see the light small and naked"we are EQUAL ΑND TOGETHER IN BABEL...WE COULD BE LOVED
Eve Greece - LSD
well i took some 2c-b and it was about 30 milligrams,and my trip was amazing at first, i was with 2 really close friends and one was really trippin hardcore and the other only to 20 milligrams and i was getting amazing visuals simular to mushrooms,and a little bit of ecstacy feeling and lsd effects, but then i felt like i was not in control of myself and me and the friend that took the same amount ended up laughing so hard, more then ever before and my head was hurtin for a couple of minutes,but my friend got stuck in a loop i guess and he went into a retarded state and didnt know how to reply,focus,and he felt fine but me and my friend noticed that sumthing was wrong and then i started thinkin something wrong was gonna happen to me then i took a cold shower and it got worse i started thinking my right side of my body was numb and i was scared of dieing all of a sudden and i got so scared i went and called someone to pick me up, and i felt like i was having anxiety and my heart started hurting and i felt like i needed to go to the hospital but i didnt want to because it was a research chemical and i didnt want to cause problems with the 2c-b and have the government to write there stupid propoganda bullshit ..............BUT IF U CAN PLEASE FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED PLEASE CAUSE MY FRIEND HAS NEVER BEEN THE SAME AND NEITHER HAVE I!
Seth - 2c-b
This was about 3 years ago, and I am still extremely paranoid from this trip. I fall back into it from time to time, just so you know how serious and life altering this experience was and still is for me before we begin. I had never taken LSD before. I had tripped on mushrooms a hand-full of times and always had great experiences. I was a heavy pot smoker as well and had rolled on x many times with no bad effects either. Well, a friend of mine had gotten some acid and invited me to trip with him and some mutual friends of ours at their apartment one weekend. I agreed. I went over and we all ate the paper, one strip a piece. I can't put my finger on where it started to go south, but I'm fairly sure it was when two other friends I hadn't seen in a while showed up while we were pretty far out. They brought along two females whom I had never met before. Somehow I ended up in the bedroom while everyone else was having a good time in the living room. One of my friends that was also tripping cam in the room and played some music for me and on several occasions attempted to get me to come back out and hang out with everyone. I just couldn't do it though. I couldn't process conversations or sentences. Everything seemed to have a double meaning, like I was being mad fun of by nonsensical sentences that had veiled meanings. It might have been that it was my first acid trip and I lied to them before to try and seem cool and said I had tripped before. For some reason during the trip I admitted that it was my first time. I guess I thought that if I did they would stop fucking with me. I ended up sitting in the room by myself listening to the same album over and over again until the next morning when I left and went home. My girlfriend called me up before I was all the way down and dumped me. To this day I haven't seen any of my friends. I am afraid of what they think of me. And to this day I still very often when around people who I'm not related to, I fall into the trip again where I can't follow the conversation and everything sounds like gibberish to me, but gibberish that has a double meaning. I feel like my mind is being manipulated and raped. Sometimes I feel like my actions are being narrated. I cant smoke pot anymore because I just trip really hard instead of getting stoned. Someone please help me. I try to just chill and go with the flow and all that. Am I just a bad person? It feels like there is a secretly that all the good trippers know that I don't and I have to figure it out to get back to normal, and to be good tripper again. If anyone wants to email me with help or advice it would be IMMENSELY appreciated. my email is joshua82nd@yahoo.com thanks.
joshua - lsd
I took some shrooms with my cousin right after his football game, which looking back probably wasnt the best time. We had no plan so we watched planet earth until they kicked in. But something was wrong with the dvd and it kept repeating itself, this freaked both us out so i turned it off then proceeded to turn every light in the house off. I mean EVERY light, even the appliances that had led lights. So now I'm lost in the darkness and my cuz pops out from no where and asks to use my bed to sleep (which I thought was weird at the time. Who can sleep whist tripping face?) I checked on him later and sure enough he was asleep, maybe too asleep. So I put my ear up to his face and looked at his chest and...nothing. I flipped out, thinking he died, and violently shook him awake. He was tripping too so I cant even imagine what that was like for him, but it was the most overwhelming fear i ever felt. To top it off, this happened nearly every time he fell back asleep, about 10 more times until the morning when he had to leave for foozball practice.
ThEGREEN Machine - Mushrooms-cubensis
At some point I felt the presence of an external factor influencing my thoughts. the image that came to mind was an alien face which was strange because I wasn't into aliens at the time. It's been eight years since that trip, and i just found this possible explanation:
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/10/20/02677.htmlXavier - LSD
My trip wasn't exactly fear, but the main part that stuck out in my mind about my trip was one part that, for only a split second out of the entire happy trip, I had fear rush through my body down to my bones and soul. That may not make sense so... let me tell you exactly.
I had taken two tabs, I do not remember anything specific about how strong each was, but I was fully dosed. Me and my boyfriend were at a friends appartment. Later as the trip progressed, two of the people there also on LSD went outside to sit, so I decided to go out too. Before happy, as soon as I stepped out from the doorway I felt this hot rush of pure frighteness, like I had stepped into a sauna and I had seen a ghost all at the same time. I immedatly stepped back inside, sat on the couch, and everything was fine again. But I don't know why it was so powerful and out of every trip this is the one thing I can never get over... like I had litelly stepped out of a doorway into some different dimension I wasnt ready for...?Nesta Notkey - LSD
the only fear was at beginning of trip which is the stage most people throw up. it's expected and some say required to cleanse the body\mind for the rest of the experience. i tried hard not to throw up and didn't. looking back, i should have welcomed the purge. maybe the trip would have been even better...
Xavier - Ayahuasca
Started out ok slight visual and audible changes, but after smoking some canabis i started going really paranoid- thinking people were talking about me,laughing at me and then this snowballed into they were conspiring against me. eventually i was totally convinced that every one in the party was wanting to kill me. i got home and went straight to bed and for the next 24 hours i could hear people outside my window and in the yard outside and i didnt dare look out to check.
metric - LSD
The first time i took salvia i remember being ok when it first hit the trip was this odd cartoony type thing of me as dots falling into place to make me, like i was one of my pointillist drawings, this is my closed eyed visual btw (I hardly ever open my eyes when tripping). Anyway my trip's goin fine(I have tripped before on mushrooms and DXM and later on DMT) and we're trippin at night and we're all pretty goddamn toasted off the weed we had (It was club shit, u know how it is) and we hear these firecrackers. This is when my paranoia set in, I immediatly thought they were uzis. So i started freakin out and opened my eyes from the trip and my vision is really weird everybody was melting and i just went into disillusionment thinking that I was making a whole bunch of noise and screaming at the top of my lungs (just thinking that Im doing things that aren't real or just thinking i was going to die stuff like that). I don't remember how much I took but I think my friend said two bowls to myself. This expeirence was very terrifying but also eye opening.
anonymous - Salvia 10x & Cannibis
After doing a few stretches, I took about 4 droppers full of salvia tincture with about 1 1/2 droppers of water. I sat down in my bedroom and meditated on the question, "How can I improve my meditation practice?" I began to feel a strong grinding energy that seemed to be attempting to shred my mind and body. It had a strong gravitational pull. I attempted to be receptive to the energy and allow it to take where it willed. Sweating profusely, I began to feel cold and got into bed under the covers.
A feeling came over me that I have experienced before in different ways on psychedelics. It was as though I was looking at myself from an outside vantage point and the emotion that accompanied the experience might be described as shame or self pity. There was a feeling of being small and somehow pathetic. The feeling was strong and persistent but at the same time, lacked the depth and timeless quality of a truly transcendent experience. I was able to not identify with this unpleasant feeling but at the same realized that it exists in me unconsciously to a far greater extent than I have ever before been aware. There was a feeling of judgement towards myself for being powerless and foolish. There was also a mild feeling of frustration and even hostility towards Salvia Divinorm for giving me such an unpleasant experience. I kept this feeling in close check as it also lacked a genuine quality, reflecting rather the ego's desire for comfort and gratification.christopher david - salvia divinorum tincture
The next day I found out that when I clapped my hands together my friend saw me dissappear and in his mind die. The whole forest turned to a wasteland of burned embers. All life was gone. He freaked out and made his way somehow back to my parents house. He walked in the door and went into their bedroom and got in bed with them like a scared child. They turned on the lights and saw him. He started crying and told them I was dead. But he did not know what happened. He told my mother that I hung myself or had drowned. My mother stayed up all night comforting him and stroking his head as he wimpered like a baby. The next day I made my way home in the morning after I got back in my body. But no one was home. They were in the park looking for my body as they thought I was dead. I still thought I was dead so I started looking through the newspaper on the kitchen table for my obituary. I wanted to attend my own funeral. No one was home and I was convinced they were at my funeral.
Bob Hanes - very high dose of LSD
Extreme, terrifying FEAR beyond FEAR
Within 30 seconds after taking a hit of Salvia from a water pipe, it suddenly became apparent that everything I was, everyone I knew and every experience I had was not real. It was as if giant beings were playing with me on a board game, I was a wooden toy figure of the game, and they had decided to fold up the board and put it away.
I thought to myself "Who would be so mean-spirited to make me think I was real all this time when I am not?!" In addition to the fear, was the strongest sense of disappointment I've ever felt. I was crying and screaming for help.
I was completely dis-associated and this caused more fear than I have ever experienced in my life. I was "messed-up" for three days, because I did not know if I was really back or if this feeling would start over again. I mostly got over it with the help of a caring friend, but I've never been the same since.
The effects just came on so suddenly, it ramped up so fast and that started off the "fear-fest" that was this experience. There was nothing good about it, except for the fact that I learned just how HUGE my ego is that I would be petrified to lose it.Sparks - Salvia Divinorum
Due perhaps to recent spinal surgery, chronic pain, split with girlfreid, homelessness, loss of job etc, this was quite a bad trip. I inhaled deeply & very suddenly i did not know what had happened, but thought my spinal injury had snapped or something, & that i was dying. Things became intense. Suddenly a rip seemed to appear above my bed, in space/time??. I saw my parents peering down at me from a hospital ward, with a doctor. They were screaming at me to wake up, & that it had all been set up to get me out of a coma i'd been in & it was my last chance to awaken to "reality". I think i kept saying "i don't know how to", because my body seemed to be being twisted & gripped painfully by weird gravity, then the rift closed up. I fought the 'tugging of my soul from my body' feeling, thinking, "not yet, too much to do, gotta say goodbye", but gravity seemed to twist me in half, & i eventually tried to give in, effectively trying to allow the tugging into death, which of course didn't happen! After discovering that i was now physically joining up with & distorting the universe's fabric irrepairably, i thought,"i can't even go to a hospital, cos the doctors & the entire building will join onto me & distort beyond repair." I truly believed i was destroying the whole universe. I then heard a huge, booming male voice, saying;"You are Benji, you have always been Benji, you will always be Benji." This also terrified me. I felt it as well as heard it. But i know what the message meant, & despite the whole trip being more terrifying than imaginable(i remember thinking afterwards that a gun to the head would've been less scary), it gave me new life, new appreciation for the gift of life. (Male, 40yrs.)
Benji - Salvia divinorum
i was in the hospital for overdose, i had a vision of myself being placed in a holding cell, like i was an ancient puzzle hanging on the wall, it flowed and i looked like some kind of mayan calender, with countless others surrounding me, each in their own holding cell. thoughts of all the people whom i would forever see, their lives torn apart from my death, all the guilt and pain flowed through me, and there was nothing i could do.
nave rotool - DXM and Cannabis
My very first experience with an entheogen was in March 1967. And luckily for me, i experienced the full effects with no fear at all. This, i think , set the ground for future trips with very little fear in them. First: Set is important...(how you mentally prepare in advance, your anxiety levels in general, how adventurous are you in general? etc.) Next: Setting is important...( the immediate environmental surroundings, how safe, relaxed, and comfortable the general situation is before and during the trip, the people you're tripping with--are they friends or not? etc.) Tripping alone is not conducive to a good trip. As i said in telepathy :"psychic amplification"---good friends that you have a natural connection with will greatly enhance a trip, at least for a medium-intensity one. Merging with the Godhead i haven't achieved, so i can't comment on that level. For me, having a naturally low fear response has been a blessing. Its allowed me to experience entheogens without feeling strange and worried when i'm in that mind-state.
Moloko - fresh mescaline cactus, pureed with vanilla ice cream
With the handful of salvia trips I have had, I've found I usuall have a temporary moment of fear in the beginning, when making that transition from normal reality to salvia's reality.
I was curious to see how saliva would effect me if I smoked it alone. So one evening I smoked some, mixed with a small amount of cannibas, with the lights low and soft music playing in the background (I also recorded it on video in order to see just how I reacted afterwards). At first I felt the familiar discombobulation, and then I began to hallucinate in a dream-like sort of state. I saw myself/felt like I was getting hit by a car, but everything was goofy and exaggerated, as if I were in a cartoon. I was entering another world through the tires of this bizarre car which had run over me, being pushed into another dimension, piece by piece, but only through the side of my face. I was stuck between two worlds, and I felt claustrophobic going in face-first. At this point (I know from watching the video) I was covering my mouth with my hand, grabbing at my face with a puzzled, frightened look. It felt like this was going on for ages, although it all happened in the span of three minutes. Everything was moving slowly. I tried to get a sense of this new world I was coming into. Then, I heard a tiny, high-pitched voice talking to me at the same slowed down pace. Though I couldn't tell you what it was saying now, it seemed to explain to me what was going on. Soon, the fear melted into humor, and all of a sudden I started laughing, realizing how ridiculous the whole situation was. I stood up and walked over to my bed, and a few seconds later, I was coming down, suddenly back in my own reality again.
Poppy - Salvia 10x
To begin, I could have posted this in either the category for fear or the death/rebirth category. I chose fear because I think fear of death is a fairly common experience.
I believe that I have experienced what it is like to die through the use of entheogens. During the beginning of several of my trips, I developed this fearful feeling that I was going to die. Then I would start to freak out. I would think to myself something like, "it is coming on too strong! I took too much! I've done it this time! I'm going to die! I don't want to die! I'll never take another psychedelic again if I can make it through this!"
At some point during each of these experiences, I would grow tired of fighting for my life and decide to just let go and die. At the point of letting go, I would often feel a little bit of sadness that my life was over. Then I would feel great peace within myself. And this is where it would always get interesting. Time would stop being a part of my new/old reality. Also I wouldn't perceive any of my senses; I would be sort of out of body. I would instantly know all the knowledge in the universe, or the collective unconscious. We don't have the words in the English language to adequately describe what this is like. Experiencing the Godhead is life changing, to say the least. Eventually, toward the end of my trips I would regain awareness of time, my senses, and those around me.
You see I wasn't really dead, even though at the time I thought I was. My ego had only stopped clinging to this illusory reality. I think that is what happens when we die. We just stop clinging to the illusion and return to what we always are deep within ourselves.
Krystle A. Cole - Multiple LSD Trips
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