Hi everyone! I am new to the forum and I'm about to do my first extraction, but I feel like I need to talk about this first. About 6 years ago when I was 16 I smoked weed for the first time. Took this huge bong hit, the weed was pretty shitty, and I was very, very stupid. I was waiting for something to happen, as all my friends were laughing and having a good time. I started to notice my heart beats going really fast like I had just ran a mile, but I was just sitting in a couch. Then my nose and limbs started tingling. I had this very unpleasent sensation in my chest, and it was a horrible feeling. That escalated to a panic attack, a bit of depersonalization, and the next hour was pure TERROR. The worst part is that I was not having any bad thoughts or paranoia, the anxiety was irrational. It was like the weed simply turned on the "panic switch" in my brain. I have tried smoking weed after that, sometimes it was fine, sometimes the anxiety started kicking in but in general I was able to handle the situation and avoid panic. The thing is, I am fascinated about psychedelics, I live in Brazil and I have really easy access to safe ayahuasca ceremonies, but since that first episode with cannabis, trying something like acid, shrooms, ayahuasca, or anything that can make you trip for 8+ hours seems unlikely. That's why I got interested in pure DMT, it lasts only a few minutes. So here's my question: has anyone had a bad experience on weed like I had but is able to enjoy psychedelics?

Yeah, you'll probably be OK

I spent my teenage years saturated in cannabis. These days weed will consistently produce paranoia in me so I leave it alone. Psychedelics are powerful medicine and all have the potential to knock you off your center in a negative way, but I enjoy the classics (LSD, Shrooms, DMT and especially Mescaline). They all demand respect. Only way to know is to try them, and be serious about your set and setting and harm reduction practices. Have a sitter if you are inexperienced with a psychedelic.

I did a lot of reading on psychedelics and DMT specially. I'll probably do the extraction at the end of the month, and wait for the right moment to try it. I'm thinking about a small dose first, so that I can have a glimpse of what the psychedelic experience is, since all I've done was 1/4 tab of LSD, which just gave me a little euphoria. I also have clonazepam just in case. I think I can "handle" the experience if it doesn't send me straight into panic for no reason like that first time I did cannabis.
After reading hundreds of trip reports I find that the DMT experience can be similar to sleep paralysis in a way... I have sleep paralysis, that shit can be intense and terrifying. I've experienced buzzing sounds, flashes of colors and shapes with my eyes closed, intense body vibration as if I'm being eletrocuted, heard beings talking crazy languages, had out of body experiences etc. Idk maybe they're different experiences but are connected somehow.. thank you for the replies!

Yes, I tend to have paranoia from excessive cannabis use (i.e. if I use as much as many others typically do), but I enjoy psychedelics and they haven't caused similar problems (as of yet). I had an 'incident' with a potent cannabis edible that caused severe dissociation and depersonalization for more than a week.

I extracted, but chose to use ayahuasca (brew of MHRB + Syrian rue, not traditional plants) and had a combination of positive insights as well as difficult but humbling realizations.

I also frequently had paranoia and anxiety from higher dose of smoked cannabis. But this never occurs to me with edible cannabis, and never with all other psychedelics.

I am not saying that these experiences are easy, but I have never experienced that specific paranoia, induced by smoked cannabis.

Only exception is smoked DMT, which is for me a little bit similar in this aspect of experience.

I definitely prefer oral consumption of anything.

Terpenes like the Cholinergic Alpha-Pinene, the GABAergic Alpha-Pinene and Limonene seem to counteract the Cannabis-related anxiety and paranoia, also cleans up the headspace and makes it feel more like a high than a stone. Also counteracts the memory issues. I usually take the terpenes orally in a capsule, like 10 to 20 drops of each. I was taking Lemon essential oil but now i'm working with the individual terpenes.

Well that's interesting! I've heard something about smoking with an empty stomach can cause
hypoglycemia, which under the circumstances can lead to anxiety and panic but never heard anything about terpenes... Is it something like this: https://br.iherb.com/pr/...vD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds ?

What I get sometimes when smoking weed is like a feeling of nausea except it's in my chest (does that make sense??), like an emptiness, combined with despair and anguish. Besides the tachycardia of course. It's awful. All I can think about is how terrible it feels and how much I want it to be over. That first time when I had the panic attack, I smoked at about 6pm. 1am I went to the hospital because I was still feeling weird and anxious. I've heard people with experience in psychedelics saying that this kind of cannabis induced anxious/paranoid/panic state it's the worst amongst psychoactive substances. I guess some people can have this adverse reaction to THC...

It's something like that, yeah, but those contain too much Limonene, you'd want something like this for Limonene - https://www.amazon.com/d...encoding=UTF8&psc=1

For the Cholinergic Alpha-Pinene, i use this - https://www.amazon.com/g...0_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 or this - https://www.ebay.com/itm...=p2047675.c100752.m1982

For the GABAergic Alpha-Pinene i use this - https://www.ebay.com/itm...mdcVA:sc:USPSFirstClass!36360!US!-1:rk:1f:1

Typically i use about 10 drops of Limonene in a capsule, 10 to 15 drops of the Cholinergic Alpha-Pinene in a capsule, and 10 to 20 drops of the GABAergic Alpha-Pinene in a capsule.

I used to not have anxiety or paranoia or anything like that from Cannabis until like 3 years into my Aya experimentation, Cannabis just changed up on me and the terpenes really really really helped out, i highly recommend them. Terpenes are fat soluble so they may require getting them built up in the body for a bit for best results, but if you try em' out you should definitely notice the difference. I definitely recommend the Cholinergic Alpha-Pinene first and foremost, and then the GABAergic Alpha-Pinene, Limonene may or may not be useful for you but it's also worth checking out imo.

I don't understand your distinction between cholinergic pinene and GABAergic pinene. They're both just alpha-pinene..?

I feel like I'm missing something obvious...

Alpha-Pinene has two enantiomers, one is Cholinergic, the other is GABAergic, they're both very similar in structure, just a little different with different actions.

Oh, interesting. So are these products not racemic? Both the cholinergic and GABAergic products you linked are just called natural alpha-pinene... how do you know which enantiomer is present/dominant?

Tangent: I find it really strange that there are studies reporting that alpha-pinene isomers are differentiated by smell about as consistently as limonene (despite D-limonene and L-limonene smelling so differently... the study reports both alpha-pinene enantiomers as pine-like). Any thoughts on the smell of different alpha-pinene enantiomers?

You can tell by the effects it has, or at least i can, i just ordered a few different products to see what they did/how they felt. Lemon essential oil and other citrus oils for example are racemic, but so far these individual terpenes i've been taking seem to be rather pure.

With the Cholinergic Alpha-Pinene, you can definitely tell it's Cholinergic and seems to lack GABAergic properties, whereas with the GABAergic Alpha-Pinene, it lacks the Cholinergic properties and feels a good bit GABAergic like a benzo.

As for the smell, i can notice a slight difference in smell between the two Alpha-Pinenes, the Cholinergic one seems to smell a bit stinkier than the GABAergic one, but they share very similar smells.

Insane in the membrane!!

I would have never thought that you could have such strong experiences with weed?! This seems so odd to me as I never had anything but a good time when smoking or eating weed. I would admit that dabs can bring about some anxiety but that is due to the fact that I have been coughing for 45 mins straight, and not entirely sure if I will ever breathe correctly ever again in the moment.

I dunno… maybe I am just saturated or something. Been smoking weed for well over 30 years at this point. I take breaks every now and again to reduce tolerance and enjoy being sober minded. My first thought is that if you are having a strong negative reaction to marijuana, you would likely have a similar reaction to other psychedelics. Hard to say.

My thinking is that you may have some problems losing control and letting go of the sober mind. You are already making plans to have a clonazepam as a way out. Sometimes these experiences can induce a fair amount of anxiety and fear and it can pass or you can push through it. These emotions are healthy if you can handle the experience of it all. They can teach you quite a bit about yourself. Planning and having this way out of the experience seem to me to take away from the experience.

Each to their own but I have never had a clonazepam for a way out. I have had fears and have dealt with them. Long ago I would eat strips of LSD and after about 10 hours of hard core tripping I would want out. Back then I thought drinking milk would reduce the effects and would chug milk. I later found out this milk thing was a myth. So I can understand wanting out of a difficult trip. I get that. I don't want to dissuade anyone from having something to fall back on if that is what makes you feel better. I just don't understand the mentality I guess.

Psychedelics are not for the faint of heart. It takes courage to go into these experiences. If you do decide to go down this road I suggest just starting very small dosages no matter what substance you are trying out. Slow and easy. Work your way up. Expect to have some difficult emotions and do what you can to calm yourself.

It is all in your mind. You are stronger than you think you are. I feel that way about everyone. I think sometimes you don't find this out about yourself until you have survived something terrible or difficult, be it in real life or a strong psychedelic experience. Part of me thinks that is where the rubber meets the road. Just so much friction there to observe and learn from.

Smoke some moar weed I say. Smoke just a little bit, like a hit. Get used to it. Get used to the feelings and try and relax and calm yourself. If you overcome your fears with weed, I say move on to LSD, shrooms or mescaline. Save DMT for last is my opinion.

Either which way you choose to approach all of this psychedelic stuff, I wish you the best and hope you enjoy the journey!

I guess it's something like that... My first experience with cannabis traumatized me in a way, but it was the only time I actually panicked. Mostly because of misinterpretation of physical symptoms. The unpleasant feeling and anxiety came up, I had just used a drug for the first time, I didn't know much about it, so I started freaking out. I remember searching for "weed and heart attack" online. Although I found that nobody ever died directly from smoking cannabis, all I could think was "OMG I'll be the first one". I had other bad experiences with weed after that. I understand that psychoactive drugs can induce bad feelings, and that it is actually our choice to freak out about it or just be ok with it. There were other times that I smoked, anxiety came up, but I already knew what that was so I just waited for it to pass. Sometimes I could actually enjoy it. When I was in Amsterdam a few years ago, I smoked the most potent strain in the coffee shop (allegedly 19% THC). I was very scared. Surprisingly I had a good time, no anxiety at all.



I thought a lot about that.. but 8 hour trips don't seem very attractive for me right now. From what I have read, low doses of DMT can feel like a high dose of LSD/shrooms but only lasts a few minutes. That looks a lot more interesting to me. That way I can experience what it's like to be on psychedelics but for a really short period of time. It would make me feel safer and if all goes well it may also help with my fear.


Changing the subject, something very interesting happened tonight. I heard Terrence McKenna talking about this once, that IF DMT is really produced in our brain, maybe if we dream about the DMT experience, it may actually happen for real. I had a dream tonight that I was sitting in my bed and lit a plastic pipe (wtf) with DMT. I took 1 very small hit and a few seconds later I felt this sudden burst of energy flowing through my body, like I was being electrocuted, and the source of this energy was in my chest, my heart was pounding in a weird way and I felt a mixture of excitement and fear.. I also had closed eye visuals, I remember seeing this orb, it looked like a Rasengan (from Naruto) but it was purple. This could be a result of reading dozens of trip reports + experiencing sleep paralysis hundreds of times..

I have been anxious and paranoid on cannabis and i can say that, for me personally, the DMT flash does not give me time to over analyse and send myself down mentally self destructive alley ways. With your particular brand of anxiety, from what i understand of it, you are stressing about having a heart attack or other physical symptoms, which is leading to panic.
With DMT there is a very good chance that these worries can surface. EG your heart feeling like it is going to hammer itself out of your chest, worrying about breathing and forgetting that you have a mouth to breathe. Knowing that no one has died from doing DMT has little use when in this state as, for me, logic and rationality have upped sticks, left the building and gone for a quick beer together back in meatspace land, leaving me on my lonesome to deal with the maelstrom.

I agree about the letting go. If you think you are having a heart attack or can't breathe, just don't bother breathing. Give in.

If you have weed induced anxiety i do not think that it is a good idea to smoke more weed.

So I tried acid yesterday for the first time, I did 1/2 tab of what was supposedly 120ug. I was at a friend's house, the day was beautiful, setting was perfect. I'm not going to describe the experience, I'll just list the things I felt. I cut the piece of paper in half and put it under my tongue at about 2:10pm. The effects kicked in at about 3:30pm and and lasted until around 12am. It was basicaly:
jitteriness
anxiety
anguish
purge, like I had something inside my chest that I needed to expel - this led to an urge to cry or vomit, but I couldn't do neither
shivers
body tremors
depression
chest tightness
tingling
cold
No euphoria, no happiness, no empathy, no visuals, no colors, no patterns, no walls breathing. Just unpleasant feelings.
It was terrible. I didn't feel ANYTHING good at all. If I had this symptoms when sober my first thought would have been "I don't feel so good".
During the entire time I was just trying to keep myself calm and be ok with whatever I was experiencing. I mean, it was very easy to let myself be consumed by these sensations and freak out. I had clonazepam, it was so tempting to take a few drops to make myself feel better, but I felt like I needed to go through this. The set and setting yesterday was perfect, and all I got was bad feelings. One could easily freak out under those circumstances. Somehow I think I needed that. I needed to put myself in that same situation that made me panic several years ago. I had to go through it and just be ok with it, I had to face my anxiety without freaking out. It's was almost like a therapy session. I think I should have gone for the whole tab.

That's me during the peak, trying to cry or puke, but all I got was weird body tremors. And I was cold. What the fuck was that..

Well... I feel like we warned you about this. Seems like you have some anxiety problems in your life at the moment. No worries. Just try and work on that stuff before you do any more psychedelics. Give it some time.

"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone." -Alan Watts

DmnStr8 gave you great advice, take your time and don't use psychedelics until your everyday life is in better place. My advice is try to eat as much healthy as you can, meditate, read some good books, and most importantly exercise. In my opinion exercise is most important part because it gives you the strength both mentally and physically. Only doing 20 minutes of stretching every morning can be super boost to overall mood.

There are many herbs and medicinal mushrooms that can help you fight anxiety, they won't cure it for good because you are only one who can defeat it completely by yourself, but they will give you motivation and relief from constant stress. Ashwagandha does wonders for my mind and body, also Lion's Mane mushroom is great, maybe they wont work on you, if so don't worry you need to find ones that are most suitable for your body. I bet that mother nature has some remedy for you that would fit perfectly

Like DmnStr8 said it is all in your head, you need to be strong for such experiences. Even experienced explorers have sometimes challenging experiences. Entheogens aren't all rainbow and love, they are serious tools that can confront us with our deepest fears and issues. Therefore if you decide to go into this again prepare yourself better and don't try to control it to be positive so much, just accept it as it is and let go. It is like lessons in school sometimes you get some very hard lessons and sometimes there are those lessons that are very easy which you understand better. Most important thing is - trust the teacher, no matter which lesson is presented to you. IMO if you don't trust the medicine there will be no healing.

Wish you all the best and all you wish for to come true, stay safe

After I freaked out and panicked on weed years ago, anxiety became a part of my life, although I don't have any panic attacks and I don't take any prescription medicine. But that episode with cannabis traumatized me in a way, and it made me scared to take other psychedelics and feel that same terror again. Therefore, I woke up nervous on saturday just by knowing I was going to take LSD that day. The moment I put the piece of paper under my tongue my nervousness just got worse, it was that kind of feeling you get before an important test or job interview. Maybe that influenced the whole experience in a negative way. The setting was perfect, I didn't have any paranoia or anything like that at all. All I had was unpleasant feelings, especially in the chest area, it was very uncomfortable. But in a way I'm proud of myself for going through it without losing my shit. All I could think was "this is very weird and uncomfortable, but it's OK, it's just a feeling and it will go away". I do think of this whole experience as a lesson. I needed to face these fears, I needed to feel uncomfortable and be OK with it.