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How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

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Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#61

Bad trips are a real risk with all psychedelics. I don't like the attitude in psychedelic communities that there's "no such thing as a bad trip, only a challenging one". I had a couple bad trips. It felt like living in hell for a literal eternity. It's almost impossible to describe the agony that the human mind is capable of experiencing. It's absurd how much suffering the human mind can experience. The main message…

Yeah i never experienced fight-or-flight panic (outside of the brief moment before a car accident collision or whatever) until a few weeks after i tried a strong salvia extract. Its like those neural connections got well-trodden enough in that afternoon to become a real pathway.

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#62
post #59
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to dismiss your experience here, in fact I'm sure its all accurate, but I must make the curious observation that I don't seem to get the distortion of emotional state so many others seem to have on psychedelics (be it positive or negative). I get all the other distortions. Time is skewed, vision gets geometric patterns, stream of consciousness becomes more of an unnavigable white water rapids of consci…

I too feel quite similar. I have never had any experience approach bad. The experience just... Is

The experience isn't bad until it is. And then the bell can't be unrung.

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#63

I have friends who have done both Ayahuasca and DMT. Ayahuasca seems to be much longer acting and more intense when administered correctly (but a lot of it seems to be set and setting). DMT has two variants, the n-n and the 5-meo. Friends report the n-n to be much more visual and the 5-Meo to be more physical. 5-Meo has been known to cause seizures at high doses. I think both of these compounds raise your blood press…

5-meo-DMT is indeed a tryptamine, and related to "DMT" (n-n-DMT, the DMT everyone means when they say DMT).

But it's no more a "variant of DMT" than Psilocin (4-HO-DMT), or more exotic ones like 4-ACO-DMT

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#64

Is it similar to "shrooms"? I was considered traveling from San Francisco to Oregon or Colorado (?) where I think psychedelic mushrooms were legalized and you don't need to "know people" to get them. I've wanted to try psychedelics for a while, I haven't done them before. Unless Salvia counts.

You can buy them in Oakland at Zide Door. Though my friend told me they also saw them for sale at an Oakland head shop. I’m not sure which one. Also last time I went to Dolores Park on a sunny day, multiple people walking by offered to sell me shroom chocolates.

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#65

Bad trips are a real risk with all psychedelics. I don't like the attitude in psychedelic communities that there's "no such thing as a bad trip, only a challenging one". I had a couple bad trips. It felt like living in hell for a literal eternity. It's almost impossible to describe the agony that the human mind is capable of experiencing. It's absurd how much suffering the human mind can experience. The main message…

We can get bad trips with any type of drug. Even weed and alchohol. It can be so bad that we never want to try it again. It's all apart of the journey and the experiment. I've had a couple bad trips, and I'm glad I had them. They created clear fear, paranoia and terror that I'll always remember. It caused me to appreciate the 'real' world a lot more.

I mean, you can have a bad experience on alcohol, but I'm not sure its a useful comparison between doing dumb things blacked out on a CNS depressant or being a sad drunk to.... dissociating, thinking you are dead and literally everyone you ever cared about was a fleeting and imaginary while the panic circuits in your brain are cranked up to 11 for 8 hours

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#66

Is it similar to "shrooms"? I was considered traveling from San Francisco to Oregon or Colorado (?) where I think psychedelic mushrooms were legalized and you don't need to "know people" to get them. I've wanted to try psychedelics for a while, I haven't done them before. Unless Salvia counts.

> I was considered traveling from San Francisco to Oregon or Colorado (?) where I think psychedelic mushrooms were legalized and you don't need to "know people" to get them.

Yes, Colorado just passed Prop 122. https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Proposition_122,_Decriminal...

But it's not "legalized" in the way that weed is "legalized". It's "legalized" in that it's no longer an offense to purchase/obtain/possess/use shrooms; but it's still a crime to sell shrooms (except for supervised mental health treatment), so you still need to "know people" to get them.

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#67

Quoted post unavailable.

Is chemotherapy Stockholm syndrome? Sometimes the medicine has to be pretty bad to fight off something worse!

No, because if there were a treatment as safe and effective as chemotherapy at treating cancer, but that didn't cause nausea or vomiting, we'd all switch to it in a heartbeat.

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#68
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too feel quite similar. I have never had any experience approach bad. The experience just... Is

The experience isn't bad until it is. And then the bell can't be unrung.

yes but if u stick long enough, a bad trip can turn into a good trip. just some bit flips and bang u are out into hyperspace again.

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took mushrooms three years ago and immediately gained a pervasive baseline anxiety in my life. Haven't been able to shake it since. Wouldn't recommend if you have any issues with anxiety in your life beforehand.

This is a risk that many psychonauts seem unwilling to accept. Hope you're doing okay. That anxiety is something that's almost impossible for people to understand if they haven't experienced it.

I'm doing okay. You are right, it's a very vulnerable and almost inevitable feeling, like I've been shown who I "truly" am inside, something that I only accessed directly during that trip, but which exists below the surface all the time. Which obviously cycles heavily back into the anxious feelings.

I've never really put this experience in to words before, reading it back maybe it's time for me to try something other than waiting for it to burn itself out.

Re: How safe is ayahuasca? Large-scale study explores

#70
Ayahuasca ceremonies are among the most profound, cherished experiences of my life. I prepare for months before partaking in them to make sure my emotional, physical, and spiritual health is in a good place. And I can't imagine taking this drug without being under the care of experienced guides. I also wouldn't recommend it for anyone except those who really desire to push the limits of their mind. Some trips have felt like mystical, blissful experiences. Others have felt like an eternity in hell. You never know what you're going to get and you have to be ready for it.

Another aspect of this for mental health is that it is possible to experience the common "machine elves" that people encounter. I am as skeptical as it gets but I'm really not sure if I've encountered beings from some other dimension or if my own mind is capable of the weird, sometimes horrifying, always profound shit that I've seen. The first Ayahuasca trip I went on I immediately had intense hallucinations of the feminine spirits. They put out their hands and invited me to walk with them. As we were walking down some kind of hall I reminded myself that these beings were easily a creation of my mind, that we do this kind of thing all the time in our sleep. As I was entertaining this thought one of them violently turned around and yelled "NO". The other being, in a sad voice I'll never forget, asked me why I felt the need to reduce and explain away the experience. I think about this often.

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