So sometime in the near future, my buddies and I have been planning on taking some mushrooms. It will be my 8th mushroom trip. However my concern is that having this trip will bring me back to the most disturbing experience of my life while taking LSD. About 6 months ago I had a very disturbing LSD trip.

This was the first and only time taking LSD. I got myself pumped up too much thinking that I was having a great time but ended up going deep into my mind and thinking that I had a mental disorder. I believed that the LSD that I took made me notice this disorder and I was finally able to see what I was really. I saw that I was trapped in this mental prison and that the ordinary reality that I lived in was a contraption of my mind. That I was truly mentally insane (shutter island style) I was having the awakening that leo had during the movie. That is truly the only way I can describe it.

The reality during my trip was that I could see what my mental disorder did to me. That it made me relive my whole life in my head while in the mean time and in real reality I was about to die as an old man. I was re-living my life in my head because I became schizophrenic and because I wanted my life to be something different than it actually became. So as I was re-living my life in my head I took LSD and this made me see the opening of the doorway to what my future would hold if I did not change radically. Change my ways, away from the weed, start to do my studying start to pursue what will make this world a better place for everyone. And that perhaps at the end of the life i was living in my head, the divine (weather it is god or something entirely different) would accept the change that i brought upon myself and that at the end of my life that I was experiencing I would be able to free my mind. Finally be able to be free from my own sick head.

However, this experience forced me to radically change my life for the better. I believe my mind knew how to change itself, what experience would rattle me enough to purse what I truly want in my life which is to be the best of what I can be and to do the best that I can to better this world. I do not smoke anymore and don't feel the necessity to. Going into school I worked hard to improve my grades and now I believe I know what created this utter hell during the LSD trip. . I know what made my trip bad, however I just do not want to experience this mind fuck again. Even now, although I can integrate it to my life, I don't want the mushrooms to open those memories again and make me believe those thoughts is the reality of my enteral life.

What are your guys' thoughts on this matter? I am sure that many of you have had an experience that has rattled you so much that it has questioned the reality in which you thought you live in and the reality of your own sanity? If so, what has helped you get past this very very very very profound thought, that even now frightens me to the core. I really do want to know what you guys have experienced and hopefully you guys can bring me questions that can rattle me enough to have me see some ultimate fallacies of the truths that I came up with during my altered state of consciousness.

I am new to this board and no expert on psychedelics but have known [p]eople [w]ho [a]ren't [m]e who have substantially fucked their head in the past by using these tools in the wrong way. If you go into a trip with the notion that you want to AVOID thinking about something that is constantly bothering you, there is pretty much a 100% chance that it will end up the theme of the trip. Using SWIM'S experiences as a guide, I can formulate this hypothesis: That if you take more of this type of stuff, trying to "party" with "friends", you are going to make your thinking even more cloudy, unless these friends are extremely supportive and the notion of the whole experience (shared by all involved) from the beginning was for healing, self-discovery and support. Go into the experience with the goal that you want to understand yourself on a deeper level and break the anxiety... not to have "fun"... Admit to yourself beforehand that it might be difficult and you will have to be brave. External forces (usually bad set and setting) can cause your brain to get "stuck" in an lsd or mush trip. Usually the only way out of this is to take more... but NOT in a party setting. I think that your body is telling you to take more because your brain needs to become "unlocked" from its position of half-understanding and half-integration of the material that came up. Please read some guides on tripping and lsd psychotherapy.

Is anyone here more eloquent on this subject?

And most importantly don't follow anyones advice until you feel in your heart what is right.

LSD and Mushrooms differ a lot Do not let the thought sink into your psyche too much.

Sounds like you learned from your past experience and are integrating it well..i think you'll be fine. I've had horrifically harsh lessons from both lsd and mushrooms one week.. and then humbling angelic experiences the next week-as long as i strived to learn from those rough experiences and do what needed to be done in this reality before going back in. The bad trips were, more often than not, the ones where i learned a great deal about myself and the world..With these things i feel that you don't get what you want, you get what you need. I totally understand how daunting it can be to trip again after a tough experience, but in the end it is usually very rewarding to be welcomed back with loving arms. To me there is a big difference between facing harsh realities about yourself and learning from it, and dealing with delusions and looping unproductive thoughts

The delusions that can creep up are myriad and hard to decipher if you spend too much time thinking about them..you can't be afraid to just laugh at yourself once in a while.. no reason to blow it out of proportion..worrying about it will only make it worse IMO. A good technique to avoid drifting into the negative thought patterns from previous trips is to ponder all of that just before dosing, or on the come up. I go through all the bad things about the world and myself that might creep in and drive or darken the experience in an unproductive sense. That way, by the time the trip starts you will probably be really bored with it, and can then get on with the experience without being pinned down by them. McKenna suggested this and I've found it to be very helpful