with todays modern pharmaceuticals we have the ability to hit the eject button if trips and journeys of med to long duration go south. a benzo of various types will pull you out in 20-30 min. this raises some interesting thoughts.

ive been tempted to have some around since i began working with ayahuasca, but something always gave me pause about following through with this notion.
i feel like i don't want to get "whiskey balls" and go big because i know i can pull out if things aren't all bunnies and rainbows. i dont feel that's not being respectful of these plants and concoctions.

i am a tattooist by profession and i get very irritated by people who have the approach of "if i dont like it ill just get it lasered off" screw that!! wrong attitude twords getting a permanent mark on your body. commit or dont do it.
same goes with psychedelics.... if you are not ready to accept what your given then maybe your not ready for that substance.

flip side-
bad ones can be really scary sometimes!!! so for the sake of sanity i can see why some people will make this option available.
much good has come from people pressing the envelope, breaking out of their comfort zone, ext.... so if having a plan B can allow that to happen then maybe its a good thing.

personally my last ayahuasca journey got so difficult im quite sure i would have aborted if i had that option and i that would have been a mistake. the healing i gained from getting through that was huge. if i aborted i would have missed the whole theme of my experience! so...

whats your thoughts?

my thoughts are that there are no rules concerning the approach of the ingestion of psychedelics (except for health and safety issues... like knowing exactly what mushrooms you are taking, knowing the doses, knowing about SSRI's, MAOI's, setting, and others.) but as far as ingestion style goes, I don't think that having the "exit" button available is a bad idea. Some may say that "is not the point" or that "you are doing it wrong". But everyone has the right to explore their mind as they want. I guess some people may just want to experience what they like and not what they need... but still... there is no "guarantee" that a bad trip is what you need. It may only be a defense mechanism to justify the unnecessary suffering. The fact that there are people who benefit from bad trips doesn't mean that everyone does, and therefore, if people want it to stop at any given moment, they are in their right to do so. There is nothing shameful in accepting hedonistic expectations every now and then. Sometimes you may want to heal / be healed... sometimes you may want to explore your mind... sometimes you may want to talk to the "spirits"... sometimes you may want to have a good time. It's your life.

^^^^ great worse from you clouds thanks.
i think your statement about everyone being allowed to explore their minds the way they see fit is very beautiful.

im not approaching the subject from right and wrong. i try to leave those titles and opinions out of matters of the spirit and choices, im more wondering about selling ourselves short by not seeing whats on the other side of the mountain. by not hanging in there when the going gets tough. i guess i worry about this because that was a theme in my younger days. i couldn't handle discomfort and would bail out at the onset of it. my inability to deal with the bad got me more suffering in life. a total emotional cream puff.
so i wonder about the non physical realms. aren't the lessons of everyday life integrate-able into altered states of consciousness?

You both make great points, and olympus mon... couldn't agree with you more on the tattoos. Get one only if you're ready for the commitment.

As for mind altering substances, it should be up to the user if they want to abort, but they take the risk of potentially losing out on something very meaningful. The plant spirits may not agree at first, but in the end they will always understand.

i try keep some seroquil around for friends that fahk out.
if things go hektic - i just stuff my face with foods like bread and milk - brings me down so fast (i cant beleve ppl take entheos without fasting - their missing 90% of what entheos realy are - it totally dilutes things)

For me during a difficult pharma or aya journey there is massive nausea and lots of vomiting. I cant imagine eating anything.

A smoked spice or even changa is too short to bother.

DEAL WITH IT!

My last hard trip my friend gave me the chance to opt out with a xanax,
but i said NO i am having this experience for a REASON.
If you are freaking out then you are SUPPOSED to freak out, and taking a benzo won't solve anything, it will just IGNORE the problem!!!

hello phlux,
is this just your perception or is there science to explain your experience. ive never heard this before and im having a hard time thinking of the how that can even be possible other than placebo. if your on a hellride with something like ayahuasca, lsd, or psyilicybin its already in your system fully how could eating bread change anything physiologically? the bread would take over an hour to even digest.


90%? really? might be a tad exaggerated .

"i cant beleve ppl take entheos without fasting - their missing 90% of what entheos realy are - it totally dilutes things)"

lol ..we are back to THIS?
How the hell do you know what someone else is missing is what id like to know..

I think it is prudent to have something to abort a trip if its heading South in a vertical precipitous fashion-some difficult experiences can be ultimately of value and instructive but if youre using stuff like LSD or mescaline which have good strong legs and the reason for the struggle is not due to some aspect of your own psyche taking the pain can be of little value and unnecessary.

I personally favour 2-4mg of sublingual lorazepam (Ativan brand) for this purpose-kicks in less than 10 minutes via this route.

I went through a patch just over a year back when I'd be getting some mad anxiety just 10 minutes after consuming a brew, so I forced vomiting to stop it kicking in. I did this about 4 times in a row, then on the 5th time I just went for it and powered through a pretty crazy time.

I've been "invincible" ever since.

If an experience is giving you a rough time just shout at it like an angry gangster and threaten to have sex with it. We'll show who whose bad

'Invincible'-I like that!

Never forget, the 'opponent' is resilient; we may have the watches, but it has the time!Eventually you are bound to enter a skirmish which leaves you coming out second-best

YEAH!! Although in my experience, Syrian Rue is an angrier gangster than I could ever hope to be.

As for the topic, I'd just like to comment that although there are rough trips which end giving strength and can heal, there are also rough trips which simply SHOULD END.

He'll just say, "Oh, what? ...SMACK!!" pawned hyper-cosmically.

works well on mu - and cactus and almost anything besides lsd(never tried with aya)
im not here to bitch and go on frac - iv tripped hard with many many people many many times - i dont say shit till iv double blind tested it - thought ud kinda know that by now.

He may come across like a rough sort, but that's because his mother never hugged him. All he needs is a little compassion and understanding, which he will give out in return.

Just my 2 cents on the 'eating bringing you down theory'...this doesn't always work!! I have this to thanks for my most powerful homebrew ayahuasca experience, and the only time I've ever had powerful visions...Syrian Rue and Chaliponga. I had drank earlier in the night and got sedated and fallen asleep by the brew, and I woke up to visions of spirals and vortexes, quite distinct from my other experiences...well I ate a few olives and a banana, and...WHAZAM!! Within about 30 seconds of finishing I was propelled very powerfully into hyperspace...VERY powerful, and very distinct to DMT only, think other alkaloids and possibly 5-Meo-DMT were playing a part. So yeah, thought this might be relevant to people using ayahuasca...eating something may have the distinctly opposite effect of bringing you down!

for the record phlux im not trying to be argumentative i am truly interested in how food accomplishes this if it does. ive read plenty of reports that eating was used for kicking in the ayahuasca if its taking too long to come on.

Same happened to me on pharma (rue extract + spice). At +1.5 hrs I thought it is all over - mild CEV and not much more. A glass of sparkling water launched me into one of the most difficult experiences in my life.

It was not very productive, but so horrible, I begged my sitter to kill me.

So, to summarise, food never worked for me. Though I never tried food at the peak of a particularily bad journey.

But Phlux may be right. Some people reaction could be very different.

quoting myself : "works well on mu - and cactus and almost anything besides lsd(never tried with aya)"