Hey hello,
I would like to share a topic - maybe there are others who have similar experiences.

My big issue with taking psychoactive substances is guilt.

With cannabis, for example, it's like there's an inner voice that incessantly criticizes the life I've lived. And incessantly points out all the things I am doing wrong. This trip is accompanied by feelings of guilt and a tendency to be a bad person.
Some people tell me they can watch a movie on weed or play video. When I want to do something like that, the weed "forbids" me in a way, in that the voice inside me gets so loud saying how bad movies are and playing video, etc.

Something similar happens with magic mushrooms and LSD. Again, the mushroom points out my shadow side. And many trips ended in a bad trip because then I couldn't get out of that coil and felt guilty and bad all the time.

On my last mushroom trip, I was able to go through that for the first time and experience a transformation that had a lot to do with forgiveness.

However, when I smoked something again some time after (I very very rarely smoke anything), it was right back.

Do any of you know this?

I would like to dive deeper with ayahuasca and iboga in the next few years and wonder if my guardian or inner critic is just so strict and overpowering - and it's about overcoming those voices. Or if these voices tend to be right in what they say?

Thank you! Ishmael

Hi Ismael and welcome to Nexus!

I believe the feelings of guilt and the voice of the inner critic is something that can only be overcome by feeling the feelings and taking the time to listen. Don't drink it away, don't smoke it away. Sit with it.

Guilt is a feeling that can help us in small doses if we learn how to mature it. In excessive guilt there may be some truth in our feelings that get mixed up with unhealthy conceptions of self-worth. If you learn to pay attention to what you are actually feeling and what parts does it consist of, you get more freedom to decide on how you should act.

Usually there is something that is worth paying attention to, but exaggerated tone of the feeling often leads to just ignoring it all together, which in turn results in the guilt just getting stronger the next time.

Best of luck! You are on a good path!

Hi Ishmael



How did you feel after that trip? Were you still able to forgive yourself?
Sometimes it's not easy to bring back to our day-to-day lives the realizations we have while tripping. I often felt like I had finally overcome negative feelings on psychedelics, but then I didn't continue to work on them while sober and they slowly came back.

And on top of this I find that weed brings buried negative feelings to the surface very easily. I mean on weed it's easier for me to have paranoid thoughts. So maybe weed magnified the little percentage of guilt you still feel and don't notice when you're sober.



As I said before I often felt guilty after smoking weed. I sometimes felt that way while tripping, but it was different, more of a "what can I do to fix this thing I done?" kind of feeling.
Only once at the end of a mescaline trip I smoked some weed and I heard many voices yelling at me all sorts of negative things about me (how worthless I were, how I had done everything wrong), but as soon as I stopped believing the things they were saying, they went silent.


I don't know what they say and what you feel guilty about, but often these voices are just manifestations of our insecurities. They can be right sometimes, but it's never right to let them control or ruin our lives. I'm sure the guilt they make you feel is out of proportion, or maybe you shouldn't feel guilt at all.

Has that criticising voice ever come from the outside world?

Sometimes its hard to accept who we are and what we do, especially if that was never instilled in us from an early age, I would bet that the voice is not really yours, but was learned and interiorized at some point, for some reason.

Its not that the voice is wrong, I mean, the voice tells you that everything that you do is wrong, but you telling to the voice that they are wrong is you becoming the voice, if that makes any sense.
Its not that the voice is right either, its just a voice, a feeling.

Apart from finding the origin of this feelings, one can just sit with them, be a bit compassionate towards that voice, "Hey, I know you think this is wrong, but I kinda wanna do it anyways, we can do it together", and sometimes the voice will just be overpowering, and thats fine too.
It probably has its reasons to exist, you can develop a healthier relationship with it.

What you are describing reminds me a bit to Counterfactual Thinking, its not the same as this I dont think, but the point is that it is some sort of self criticising mechanism, and in the righ dose, not too much not too little, can be beneficial, lets us improve without judment.

Due to my own mental health issues, I too deal with this as well. Depression has a method for initiating and driving feelings of guilt and shame.

For me, it usually happens when considering going for a journey, but rarely in the journey unless it's guilt directed at something specific like a trauamatic life experience.

Nothing is all good and nothing is all bad, and so, depending on our frame of mind, we can be made to feel guilty about almost anything. Guilt and shame can be tools for changes that we can make to ourselves and our lives, but when magnified passed a certain degree no longer serve us and become inaccurate based off the feeling's relative intensity.

This could also be a byproduct of something residing in your subconscious. Myself as an example, I know some of my guilt and shame stem from my upbringing and certain ways in which I was treated at that time. Some of it is also inextricably linked to who and how I try to be and my thick moral fiber, which may be too tall of an order to fill. Have grace with yourself.

As for if they're right or not, I think the question is too binary. It may serve you more to ask how accurate are the voices. There are things that you should perhaps be aware of or that you'd like to do or complete, and perhaps you've dropped the ball by procrastinating or forgetting about them and so these voices occur. But should you be debilitated by them and the guilt they induce? Probably not. Get to know these feelings, allow it to bring understanding to yourself, and be honest with yourself in the process. Learning inner validation can also help you assess these voices.

One love

Thank you very much for the suggestions and answers.

I am currently confused by the following: Sometimes the experience of guilt and shame makes sense. The voice of the mushroom leads me to a point of repentance, conversion and forgiveness.

But sometimes this voice is too harsh. And I cannot imagine that this is then the divine voice, or the voice of the mushroom. For example, when this voice says everything I do is bad.

In the overwhelming experience of a psychedelic journey, I then find it hard to figure out what is true and what is not. What I should believe and what I should not. And it's hard to live when you don't know what to believe anymore.

I think, Ismael, that you have reached a very important point at your path. That is, you are developing your own voice. If you have seen the Disney Pixar film Inside out, there is the idea that different emotions are like different actors in your head who take control at times, but none of them has the final say what is right. They might be misguided and overreacting for various reasons and by developing mindfulness you can help them grow. It may be useful to just take your time to focus on the feeling and not to rush to resolve the issue rationally. Often some part of the feeling is right and other is wrong and learning the difference may be painful and take time as you cannot escape the uncertainty. Sometimes you just need to exercise taking action without knowing if the action you are about to take is right. That strengthens your own voice.

With psychedelics we see people who are astounded by the insights and maybe entity encounters they have and lack the ability to be critical of these experiences. The insights we get are not either totally false or totally true. The same goes for all inner voices and sensations. Learning discretion is the key in getting further on the path.

I also will tend to beat myself up on weed, even weed all by itself.
Even when I'm in a period of smoking a lot, I can't smoke much if there are bad things going on which I have responsibilities to.

On psychedelics, I can't smoke pot on the higher doses. The only way I enjoy pot on a psychedelic is if the dose is low or moderate and I then smoke a lot.
That makes it just getting wasted really. And I risk a bad experience even then.

Smoking on a larger dose makes me uncomfortable at the very least. Never a good idea.

I actually prefer to not smoke on psychedelics at all until after the peak.
The I have a hugely greater chance of a joyful experience.
Now, smoking after the peak as I begin to come down is magical.

I have heard of a lot of folks who are that way.

Has there been any correlation between smoking de reefer while tripping and the negativity?

I feel you on this very deeply. I too am undergoing some transformation of mind and thought. I have no idea if it is the right path, but all I can do is continue down the river. I have been trying to devour ever more philosophy in an attempt to seek a more fundamental truth. It could be argued that there is no "real" truth to be had, but that's a whole different post.

I guess what I'm trying to get to in a roundabout way is that asking those questions are an important part of the journey. I hope that you find something firm, and that makes sense to you. It's going to be something different for everyone, and if we're lucky, we'll stumble upon ours some day.