[I_am_me]

Originally Posted by DJTetsu

Ok, I thought about this today on the road and I'm ready to challenge some commonly held beliefs about bad trips.

I've always liked the saying that if you have a bad trip that maybe perhaps you life isn't quite in order, you had issues, or the mushrooms are trying to tell you something. Believing in these things can in fact result in less bad trips, since you have a healthy amount of respect and fear for what you are getting into.

But is it all superstition? And we are trying to connect the dots where they aren't as closely related as we believe?

My analogy that I came up with is when people get into car accidents. People may say it was Karma, your destiny, or god's will or what not, but really, it was for no other reason than you didn't know how to drive, or more accurately, you were'nt careful enough.

I would like to offer a possibility that maybe we are empowering the mushrooms or our current circumstances for the quality of our trips when the fact is... we should be better and more careful 'drivers'

We need to be careful obviously because in the tripping or meditative mind state, our minds are very sensitive. Many of us know that when we are tripping and we are seeing or thinking something, our mind sort of skips the 'authenticating process' and instead more easily believes that what it sees is real.

I don't like the statement that you should ride out that bad trip either. I think we have or should have more control. Now as I mentioned earlier, you shouldn't 'fight' the bad trip, but very easily, almost effortlessly replace them with positive thoughts and without creating a negative emotional response. You can read above to see the details on that.

Counting to 10 and smiling... I think these are more of the helpful types of advice.

The reasons why I think these things is that no one ever told me when I shouldn't be meditating. I guess I'm at the same time challenging that they are similar.

If the mushrooms are indeed trying to tell us something, yes, it all comes down to we need to be more patiently loving (read above why I think patience is important). Going in with a positive, humbling attitude also helps (and I think that's why some myths get passed on).

BTW if it sounds like I'm reducing the trip to an objective science or maybe that I'm not tripping deep enough, believe me... I've had many trips where I'm tearing as I realize and believe in the beauty of it all.

It seems to me that many bad trips come on because of fears and anxieties about things that were already there before the drugs were ingested. Sometimes this isn't true though like when certain events spark a bad trip. I think the key to handling these things is that realizing that when you're tripping you're still living in the real world and bad things are a part of that world. I find the beauty in sadness, pain and sorrow. I guess maybe beauty isn't the right word. I think it is more of an accepting and respectful understanding of why bad things have to exist/occur in life. As long as you're accepting, understand and respectful of these dark thoughts they won't get the best of you. I've been able to let go of a good bit of anxiety and fear in my life because of the thoughts I've confronted and made peace with while having intense trips. Even things like getting paranoid or stuck in some crazy thought loop. You always learn about yourself and as long as you understand there is never any true reason to panic, not even in the face of death, you can probably keep a cool head while tripping out. Then again I've tripped shrooms and lsd hundreds and hundreds of times and in very high doses and I can't say that I've ever had a "bad" trip. Sure have been put through the ringer quite a few times.