The Psychedelic Underbelly

I want to offer a bit of a warning before this article, for a couple of reasons.

First, I encourage you to read my recent opinion piece?On Truth ?to help understand and frame my writing. It helps lay out my general disposition and reasons for sharing the writing that I do. In brief, it is important for me to note that I think psychedelics will have a positive effect on humanity overall, but we should be aware of the risks, too. That’s not a black-and-white ‘psychedelics are bad and I’m the guy telling you all about it’. Please understand that this is a complex issue, and understanding the nuance and seeing the whole picture is important.

Second, I don’t normally do this, but I’d like to issue a ‘trigger warning’. That is to say that some of what I share here may be upsetting to certain individuals who have undergone trauma, including sexual trauma, and thus may be upset or experience difficult symptoms as a result of reading this work. If that’s you, you may want to skip this article.

What I am coming around to understanding is that there is another, deeper layer to this work that we do not understand. We, as a society, do not have a framework for understanding the shadow side of psychedelic work. Not only the shadow side, but the deeper, darker portals that this work may unfold.

Our understanding of the shadow side of psychedelic work equates to a mere signal, which is often disregarded as unimportant. It often goes something like this:

1. You just had a challenging experience. It’s not a bad trip. You probably just didn’t have the set and setting right. Once you integrate it, you’ll find the value.
2. That person didn’t get harmed. Getting harmed in this is super rare, and it’s not because of the psychedelics.
3. Adverse experiences are not that common. It’s just occasional headaches and nausea.

A?recent survey ?showed that 82% of psychedelic users reported lifetime intense positive experiences, and 52% reported challenging psychedelic experiences. More than half (56%) of users that reported challenging psychedelic experiences reported that ‘some good’ came from the experience. The value that those users gained from their challenging experiences was?described as the following:

• Resolved a challenging situation or emotion – 38%
• Gained insight into a difficult problem – 59%
• Overcame personal fears – 46%
• Addressed longstanding physical or psychological trauma – 28%
• Experienced ego death – 29%

These are important considerations. Essentially, what we are seeing is that?half?of people who take psychedelics have a challenging trip, and?half?of those people are able to extract meaning or gain value from that challenging experience. What about the other ~25%?

Are those 25% of people who are left wondering what to do and how to make sense of their experiences the ones we see on the documentaries of spiritual transformation? Are they on the media headlines, the top-selling books, the press release? I’m afraid not.

They are, however, posting about their experiences on?Reddit .

Over the past couple of weeks, while casually browsing Reddit, I have come across many shocking case examples of individuals who suffering irreversible and irreparable harm from their psychedelic use. Some of these were one-time occurrences, and others were taking lots of psychedelics mixed in with other substances.

One of these was?deleted by the author . I will summarize from my recollection. Essentially, this was a young woman who took LSD with her sister and a friend with an intention to explore some past-life work and to celebrate her birthday. She reported losing a hold of reality and stripping down naked, which shocked her sister. At some point, the male friend molested her and tried to rape her, but was unable to due to the author’s menstrual cup. She accused the rapist, who denied it, and was given a lot of the victim-blaming mentality. She has since suffered a list of symptoms, of which I cannot directly recall.

In another case, a user reported that they ‘loved acid ’. This is always a red-flag for me. I am not saying that you cannot have an innocent good time while on LSD, but I get concerned when users have this kind of mentality, especially users like this one who tripped every two weeks with two tabs for six months. I encourage you to read the story yourself, but, essentially, he became extremely paranoid that the government was spying on him. His paranoia persisted for three days, when he… well, read for yourself:

One morning after my dad went to work, I stripped off all my clothes and took my Bluetooth speaker outside and started screaming at the top of my lungs. Ran up and down the street butt ass naked until I was out of breath. Then I just laid on the sidewalk facedown with my hands behind my back waiting to be arrested. It was not long after until police and my dad show up at the same time further making my beliefs true that everyone was a cop or something. Anyways my dad takes me inside gets me dressed and takes me to the hospital where I spent 31 days in the psych ward. They diagnosed me with bipolar and put me on meds to take me out of my mania/psychosis. I’m still on meds to this day over a year later.

Since then, he reported being depressed, unmotivated, and unable to do anything. He writes:

Life just sucks now. I wish I could take a tab again and reset my brain but it’s just not worth the risk of going insane again. Also my meds (geodon) wouldn’t even let me trip I’m Pretty sure. Either way I’ve been stuck in the same spot for a year after experiencing lsd induced psychosis. Seems like it’s never going to end, even with therapy and medication. Be safe with this drug. I loved it so much but I just went overboard I guess. Thanks for listening.

Another Redditor reported taking?3g of Penis Envy . Penis Envy mushrooms are often reported to have 4-5 times the psilocybin content of other strains of psilocybin containing mushrooms. So, this user in particular may have had the same of psilocybin content as somebody else who took about 15 grams of another strain. Be careful and know what you’re taking, folks!

I’ll quote this one directly since it’s short:

I took 3 grams of penis envy cubensis about one month ago. It was a terrible trip and I believe I did have an ego death.

Recently I’ve been noticing a lot of dissociative and depersonalization symptoms. I think I might have given myself PTSD.

I tripped near a music festival, and now every time I hear music festival bass I start to panic.

I want to cry, and I never do. I feel hopeless and terrible. Sometimes I like to hurt myself, not with a knife, but simply pinching or something so I can feel something “real” again.

Has anyone overcome bad trips like this? I am a 17 year old guy. I know what you are thinking, and I’ve likely been told everything. This was a mistake :(

I want to die. I am the happiest person ever and never been suicidal but now I have these thoughts every day

Another note of caution here. It is not recommended to take serotonergic psychedelics if you are under the age of 25, due to the fact that your brain is in a more plastic state. Personally, I have been taking psychedelics since the age of 16, though I would not recommend it. Be careful!

Another?user took acid a year ago and has not been the same since . I want to note that this user took a big bong rip while on the LSD.?Marijuana has been shown to induce psychotic disorders in young men who have a genetic predisposition to it in some cases . I would not recommend mixing substances like that, unless you?really?know what you are doing. If you really know what you are doing, you probably wouldn’t be listening to me anyways :)

The user writes:

but it went horrible when i took a bong shot (friend told me it could "kickstart visuals"), and i got pretty high. and it was nothing like any of my previous highs. it was horrible, i lost my memory, and i forgot that i had taken drugs and was just confused and disoriented for hours. i just kept asking my tripsitter "what happened whats going on" every minute or so.

it was fine after i came down and i could sleep. but from that day i have just felt weird.

i started to get panic attacks a lot which i never had before. i also felt pretty depressed, and dissociated a lot every day. that part has gotten better but i still just feel weird all the time, its hard to explain.

i started to get vivid dreams and nightmares, and i get scared for no reason at all. i sometimes get "startling images" in my head which scare me for quite some time. i know none of this might make sense but its just left me... feeling very depressed for a while now.

i didnt drink or get high for a while after that because everytime i did, it didnt feel like before, it felt more like the high i had during the trip.

i even thought of trying acid again, as absurd as that may sound, but in my mind i felt like it would give me some sort of "explanation" for whats going on.

This user reported this ‘looping thought’ train. I have seen this a few times, and have experienced it myself a couple of times, included in my most recent psilocybin experience. This is a very scary occurrence. There is really no talking sense to a person who is in this, because their mind is not capable of rational thought or making sense of reality. It often can feel like it’s never going to end, and that you ‘broke your brain’, which, while most people will say is bogus, is a terrible reality to reckon with.

To that point, one individual simply posted a screenshot of a timer at almost 20 hours and said they?took acid 19 hours ago and are stuck in thought loops . I have seen and heard that the half-life of LSD is about 12-14 hours, so, indeed, I would be concerned if it’s been more than 14-hours and the individual is still experiencing these thought loops.

This person commented later that it was not LSD that they took, which is another point of concern.

I'm home and safe, thank you all for your support. I keep going over the weird parts, it is not LSD. It started SO fast. 30 minutes come up, very intense from the start. It's nearly 26+ hours and I still have constant whirring and vibrations in my ears. I cannot believe the effects are still going. I have some left, I will test and update.

Thankfully this user went to Urgent Care.

My very first trip at 16 years old I took what I thought was LSD. Thankfully, it was only a half tab, but I had a very terrifying experience where I lost touch on reality, thought I broke my brain, and would never come back. I only somewhat recently learned, but always suspected, that it was very likely?25-I NBOMe . I know this because it tasted like I was licking a car battery. Real LSD should have almost no flavor. They say, ‘if it’s bitter it’s a spitter’. Essentially, if you take LSD and it tastes really bitter, spit that shit out!

NBOMes have a much higher?(1000 fold!) affinity for the serotonin 2A receptor . This means that at much lower dosage, you are at a much higher risk for?serotonin syndrome, a potentially deadly and very dangerous condition.

This was described in a case of 25-I intoxication :

An 18-year-old male presented to the emergency department (ED) with severe agitation and hallucinations after jumping out of a moving car. He was tachycardiac (150–160 bpm) and hypertensive (150–170 mm Hg systolic and 110 mg Hg diastolic), and required physical restraints and treatment with intravenous lorazepam administration. His symptoms gradually improved and vital signs returned to normal over 48 h, though he continued to have episodes of aggressiveness. An assay was developed by our analytical toxicology laboratory for 25-I, and serum obtained during ED evaluation and treatment was found to contain 0.76 ng/ml of 25-I.

This is a great place to say TEST YOUR DRUGS!!

A?simple reagent kit ?can be a life saver. This are cheap and easy to use. You basically just drop a drop of the liquid on some of your drugs that you place in a vial, and you see what color it turns. At one point, a friend of mine had bought what he thought was MDMA at a music festival, and we tested it. Turns out, it was Meth! Thank God our festival neighbors had a test kit.

You can also buy?Fentanyl test strips . I once heard on a Psychedelics Today podcast that Fentanyl was found in MDMA in Boulder, in my own backyard. One press release from 2021 showed that there was?Fentanyl in Oxycodone and Xanax in Boulder County. ?My point is that, even if you are taking drugs that are normally associated with containing Fentanyl, it’s important to still test them, and to know what you are taking.

As a final note, I believe there is a deeper knowledge and understanding of portals that this work opens up that we need to be aware of. We are dealing with peoples’ psyches, and unknown realms. We are taking people, and ourselves, to places that we do not understand. We are venturing into deep spiritual realms, possibly gaining a peek behind the proverbial curtain. Always question your ego and your capability and your knowledge working with powerful psychedelic medicines. We need to turn to our elders, and the people that have been working with psychedelics for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, and understand their wisdom and the way that they work with their medicine.

We also need to understand psychedelics in the context of our own culture framework. By that, I mean that we need more research and harms and risks, and not just the same old HPPD and schizophrenia trigger narratives that we have been throwing around for the past 50 years. We need clear analysis and understanding of cases like the above referenced. This can be done by using qualitative methods and thematic analysis. Thematic analysis allows the researcher to analysis transcriptions for common themes, e.g., thought loops, getting naked and running around outside, government paranoia, etc.

I hope that we will take a rational and sober-minded approach to this work, and that that will legitimize it so that healing can safely be provided to people that need it. I hope that this leveled approach will help governmental funding bodies open up funding for research.

Take care, and please let me know your thoughts if you have any.