I posted this once before but it disappeared. This is my intended welcome essay. If it crosses any lines and is to be removed please let me know why. Thank you and I hope you enjoy.

Too Far Down The Rabbit Hole

Having severe major depressive disorder along with multiple anxiety disorders and a overall disdain for the pharmaceutical industry, I'm not one who wants to pop a pill prescribed by a puppet of Big Pharma that really is more of a band-aid than an actual remedy. I have been doing research on microdosing with LSD and psilocybin, which is mostly anecdotal and necessitates self experimentation. I happened to have several hits of degraded LSD that I got a few years ago. I was taking one hit every other week to see how it affected my mood, energy, depression and anxiety. On Tuesday, the 10th of January, 2017, I continued my experimentation.

During the day, I had gone to the gym and lifted heavy (I powerlift and am a certified personal trainer). I did the same the day before. I mention this because I feel the fatigue in my body led to the type of experience to come. I made sure that I ate healthy and drank plenty of water throughout the day. When I finally took my hit, it was around 20:00, and I had already been feeling rushed, trying to get everything done that I felt I needed to before a night of therapy. As many of us are aware, the starting mindset for a trip greatly impacts the experience. Feeling rushed is a feeling attached to anxiety and pressure.

After taking the hit, I started playing Wipeout HD, a favorite way for me to start a trip. I began noticing slight effects about 45 minutes in. I continued to play, anticipating to feel more of the effects as time went on. However, by 21:30 I wasn't feeling as much as I anticipated and took another degraded hit. This is when the torrent encompassed me.

Maybe 15 minutes or so after the second hit was dropped, I began feeling the effects. I do consider myself somewhat of a veteran and experienced with psychedelics, and have never had any sort of trouble handling and facilitating myself while tripping, even when I am alone. There's a first time for everything. The trip ended up being far greater in intensity than planned for or expected.

At one point, while still playing the game, I noticed I was having some rather peculiar thought processes; rather negative and focused on suicide. Not me committing suicide, I wasn't even thinking negatively about myself necessarily. But there was just this incessant and nagging obsession with suicide. The only symbolic explanation that I could muster, after the fact, was that I am in a constant state of becoming (and tripping, to a degree, rewires me), and to become means that something else must be left behind; the former shell of the experiential existence. That shell dies so that I can be reborn, and if I'm constantly becoming, then parts of me are constantly dying (or changing, since that's what death seems to be; a metamorphosis). And if I am constantly in a state of becoming by choice, then that means I am willingly destroying the parts I leave behind, hence being considered suicide.

I was in a state where it felt like my soul was splitting, and my mind/consciousness was doing the same; as if I was experiencing entropy deep within. I was torn about how I felt about this, because while it was pretty cool to have my purview and perspective in multiple points at once, in a very literal fashion, it was also endemic of pure chaos and oblivion. I was in a limbo state, possessing ultimate control and none at all, all at the same time. I often see things in terms of paradoxes, and this one was vicious; tossing me around without mercy, but teaching me so much.

I have various thought structures that I have built to help me see things in a beneficial and honest perspective. Many of these helped me along the way. However, this time they only did so much. One of them is meditation, but because of the types of thoughts I was having and the foreign nature of the experience, I was apprehensive about meditating. As negative thoughts kept bombarding me, my anxiety rose and I began to feel agitated and thought I was overstimulated. So I turned off the game and music, turned on Avatar, and tried to just smoke and chill in my bed. Not much changed in my mental state after these changes, and things gradually got worse. My whole body began shaking and convulsing and I couldn't control it. I had to stick to just smoking my bowl because I was shaking too hard to hold the torch to take dabs. My body started to hurt and I thought I may need medical attention. I was having an experience with psychedelics that I had never had before. I started to worry, which increased my anxiety (and I had already been anxious about being anxious!). I tried stepping outside for some fresh air which brought very little relief, but I was in no position to not take and appreciate what I could get. I started feeling paranoid outside and came back into my home.

A friend, who is also a psychedelic veteran in my opinion, had been texting me during the night, and when my situation got to its apex, I decided to let him know. As soon as he informed that what I was experiencing was somewhat normal, and that he too had had similar experiences, I immediately started to calm down. The fact that I had never experienced these side-effects before had made my mindset exponentially worse. Fortunately he was able to help save the day. I would like to mention that at no point did I start to consider this experience to be a "bad trip," just extremely intense, and that intensity was unexpected.

My friend continued talking to me on the phone for a few hours and every suggestion he had made to pull me out of the rabbit hole helped. I brought my dog into my room, turned off the movie, turned on some chill music, eliminated some of the stimulation,brought my focus to my breath and focused on the conversation. Having my dog in my room with me made a world of difference. As my buddy put it, animals help you feel less alone in situations like that. In the past, I was always able to count on myself to fix my situation without necessitating any external factors for assistance. This was one time outside of the usual framework. He also explained that my "body was trying to catch up to what my mind was doing." I think that my body had been too taxed to handle two hits and that put me in such a deep, dark rut. At one point he had to pause our conversation to make another call. I was slightly nervous about this because he had symbolically become my anchor. However, I am a hard-headed son-of-a-bitch, and love my autonomy, so I did what was necessary mentally to remain strong in my resolve.

I ended the night after talking to my friend again, relaxing and watching Pirates of the Caribbean. I felt so much better; my confidence increased, my self esteem and confidence were grounded and strong. I was more humble after this experience seeing as I had to request some sort of assistance (which I am not good at asking for help) to get me to a better place. I am writing this several days after the experience, and I feel wonderful. I have had energy throughout my days, have had more overall drive which has given more results in productivity. I feel more eager in general, and more of sense of self. That was one of the roughest experiences I have had and because I conquered it, I feel like a new person. Overall, as difficult as it was, I came out of it a better being.

I do want to say that I don't feel that my depression has been cured or anything like that, but that the experience I have detailed had a beneficial conclusion; instead of one that left me devoid of life, detached from this reality, or down some other psychotic path.

It's possible for any one of us to fall too far down the proverbial rabbit hole, but that should not instill fear within us. I write this for those who have had similar experiences and were discouraged by them, for those that have never had this experience (so they too can be prepared if this happens to them), to get in the habit of documenting my journeys, and to contribute to this invaluable community. I hope that this has been enjoyable and helpful to many of you.

I'm sorry dude, but you're gonna have to break that text up into paragraphs. No one's gonna want to read that wall of text you have there.

Anyway, welcome to the Nexus.

@JustAnotherHuman Thank you! Sorry about that, I just wasn't thinking lol. Thank you for the warm welcome and I hope that my edit makes the read more appealing.

No probz dude, happy to help.

Enjoyed reading your trip report.

its been couple years since you posted this but still if something has precious contents for us,it can get attention again.
you didn't write exact time of the trip and how much time is passed.
and you didn't explain those negative thoughts,its a problem of many reports i read,
people don't or maybe can't explain what they have been thinking.and therefore its hard for the reader to understand that situation.
and what exactly was that suicide subject?your words was so vague to me.
but anyway thanks for sharing

Apologies for that which you feel is missing. This was one of the first trip reports I had ever written, and as such was in the early stages of exploring how to express myself in said manner.

When I get some down time today I will try to better address your queries.

I should probably add a note at the top that this trip is from an LSD experience.

One love