Hi guys. Last night I had what might be called a 'bad trip' on some cannabis and found it very difficult the deal with, and am wondering how one would 1) go about dealing with that and 2) learn how to 'let go,' during a trip on one of the more intense psychedelics.

I had been hoping to sure some cannabis to meditate and explore my consciousness and so opted to do it alone, in my dorm room where I felt comfortable and safe.
Going into it I felt very calm, almost no anxiety to speak of whatsoever.
I smoked 1 full bowl of some very high quality stuff and absolutely lost my mind.

The only qualitative way I can describe it is that things began turning into other things: my mind would look at my bedside table but the 2ft surface would look hundreds of miles wide, like a landscape. My curtains became a cliff hundreds of feet high, and also frog-like creatures.
The trees outside turned alternatively into tentacled monsters, and the night sky.

I wasn't seeing things that weren't there, I was just interpreting things totally differently.

It rapidly began to get out of hand: I tried to put in some enjoyable music to facilitate my trip, but instead of being uplifting and enjoyable, it was driving, intense and unpleasant.
I began having the most terrible audio hallucinations: there was a screaming noise in my head that I could feel behind my eyes.

Eventually I realized that I was no longer enjoying the trip, but rather, enduring it. I felt like my ego was being assaulted by the experience. It was like I had been dragged into some kind of alien universe. It didn't matter how I lay down, I couldn't escape the screaming in my ears, or the sense that I was stuck in an alien world.

Time seemed to cease to exist: one minute of real time seemed to stretch out indefinitely. I felt like the experience would never end. My room was changing in ways we don't have words to describe. I could imagine and feel things in my head, as if I had two bodies: my 'real' one and the imagined one, which felt very much real, just in a different sort of mental world.

I couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was I was afraid of, I kept telling myself that I had taken a drug and that I would be okay, and that people had gotten a lot higher, but the experience was overwhelming. I wasn't worried that someone would find me, or anything that might be called 'classical paranoia,' but rather, the new dimension I was in was so alien and overwhelming. I wasn't afraid I would be stuck like that forever, but rather, the subjective experience might seem endless.

I tried very hard to let go and see what I could learn, but it was too alien and chaotic that I couldn't seem to do it. Either I instinctively couldn't do it, or maybe there was no place else to go, or nothing to learn and I was just psychotic.

The whole thing felt like of like a fever-induced delirium.

And so, if I found a high dose of cannabis to be that overwhelming, how should I go about dealing with a real psychedelic experience? Are there any techniques to deal with these overwhelming feelings. I did the mantra, I did the breathing, but time was so distorted I couldn't tell if I was breathing too fast, slow, or if I was even remembering to breathe.

Today I just feel really burnt out and weirdly emotional.
Any advice?

Learn to love the alien experience.
Realize you are exploring your consciousness.
You can always use something else to take your mind off it.
Meditate.
I believe part of letting go is acceptance, so just accept the state of mind and try to learn from it.
You have to really learn how to "let go". I'm sure you've read about "Ego Death".
It's all up to you tho.

Could you provide further information? Consumption of cannabis use, if this has ever occured before with or without cannabis or other psychoactive substance etc. would be tremendously useful!

The Neural: I have smoked cannabis many times, and never had an experience as overwhelming as this one.
When I smoke, I usually get some kind of change in my visual processing: seeing patterns and the like. Normally I enjoy looking at these.
Cannabis is usually something of a dissociative for me, I like to sit back and just let my mind flow.

I have heard of cannabis being treated as an entheogen, but this experience was not really spiritual in any way. Maybe it was just my panic. I do feel like I understand more about the nature of the 'self,' and the ego, especially how my perception relates to the rest of the world.

Last night was the first time I felt this incredibly overwhelmed by cannabis use. I had been clean of all drugs for about a month, smoked once the night before last to great effect, and then decided to do a high dose alone.

I have done low doses of acid, which were not very visual, more of a mental thing.
DMT caused me to have a sort of out-of-body experience where I entered a void once, and once it induced a sort of mental psychosis.

This cannabis experience was most extreme distortion of location and visual perception I have ever lived through. I don't know if it was a 'panic' attack, as I wasn't afraid of anything, just feeling like my brain had been plunged into a universe hostile to my human mental processes.

It is very, very had to describe. Given how different everything was and how I experienced time distortion, aural hallucinations, I would defiantly qualify this as a bad 'trip.'

Letting go is something that every tripper needs to learn. The biggest key is to become ok with the madness, sounds hard but not so much. You should take any psychedelic with a open mind, it is a trip after all, just one with no destination only a end, no stops or breaks.(i dont condone wandering around while tripping) Remember you took the trip to have the experience or learn a lesson, and the only way to reach the end happily is to remember YOU WILL COME BACK. Doubting this thought is the 1# cause for a bad trip. I forgot it on a 5g shroom trip and ended up in jail, a level 5 trip you didnt want out is hard to deal with for your 2ed trip. Also why I dont condone tripping out on the town. Make sure your taking the trip for the right reasons, have nothing to worry about for the duration, and remember YOU WILL COME BACK.

Now I dont get where people have such crazy experiences with cannabis. Is is just that some peoples chemistry is so different they are able to trip off this plant? Im a daily smot poker but I didnt start till I was 19 20, which is old compared to all my friends, and I have never had pot be that intense. There was a time when I quit and had a rather intense experience, but it was more of a super hard uncomfortable body high i thought might rip me apart, at some food and was fine in 20. also when Im rather stoned dark areas, like almost pitch black look a purple or bluish hue but that did not occur untill after a the bad shroom trip. SO is it a next to no tolerance and super good nugs that do it ? or are some people a lil different?

I wonder how someone who finds cannabis this trippy would take real psychs ?

Rsmokes: I don't know. I've never come across anyone, either in life or on the web who had an experience quite like that one.

Of course, it's hard to know, because it's really impossible to qualitatively describe an experience like that.
But I always get visual disturbances of some sort or another from cannabis. Maybe you've never smoked a high enough dose?

I've never been a regular smoker, so my tolerance is still comparatively low, I only started in the last six months or so, and usually with breaks of at least a few weeks in between each session.

Yeah you described a rough cannabis trip well. Weed has always been a very intense psychedelic for me. I've had so many mind blowing insights and experiences on it, but i've also had many many rough and insane paranoid ones as well

For me theres a number of things that help me go into it in a way that blooms a positive experience, the most important being to smoke lower amounts every 10-20 minutes or so instead of just smoking an entire bowl at once. This eases my mind into it and there is usually very little if any anxiety, and after a few times i can start smoking more and more

another thing is just preparing your mind before hand, and reassuring yourself that it will be a positive experience, that you will aknowledge fear but not let it take the helm, and to just smile, laugh, and say "F IT" and use your willpower to bring on a positive experience, since there is nothing to really fear anyways. Set/setting is so important.. Just a few minutes of yoga/stretching and some meditation, or thought/intention-setting beforehand can be enough. Besides prep, yoga or even laughter can also help get a bad experience back on track

oddly by far the most useful way for me to assure a positive cannabis experience is to simply smoke it after a dmt trip, or during the comedown. i feel so happy and blissful and have already pushed through that barrier of fear on the dmt, so it is virtually always an enjoyable and expansive experience. its also not like weed on its own and enhanced a bit

"
The only qualitative way I can describe it is that things began turning into other things: my mind would look at my bedside table but the 2ft surface would look hundreds of miles wide, like a landscape. My curtains became a cliff hundreds of feet high, and also frog-like creatures.
The trees outside turned alternatively into tentacled monsters, and the night sky.

I wasn't seeing things that weren't there, I was just interpreting things totally differently."

Good description. It really does look just as real as if it were actually something else, and it can constantly morph into new forms that look just as real as what it looks like sober. I've looked at my maine coon I used to have and seen it turn into a portal made entirely of wolves, all shifting in that hyperspace-way constantly. I always get that sort of thing on cannabis (and psychedelics. and sober if i focus but sometimes spontaneously) and its a baffling and wonderful thing, like a doorway to the hyperdimensional imaginatrix...like the alchemists projecting their minds into the outter objects.

but if the experience is already anxiety/paranoid-oriented to begin with then that sort of thing can be twisted into a negative and frightening experience

From what you described, I can only urge you to pay close attention to your perception when sober. If you notice anything unusual while clear minded, at any time during the day or night, please report it immediately.

If not, I caertainly suggest you don't touch that same batch, lots of possibilities there, from "laced with something", or just an incredibly high amount of THC in proportion to CBD. Or it could have been just a very large dose for your low tolerance.

Bottom line, try a milder strain and see how it goes. Not all strains are for everyone's preferences.

Hey there OP.......

Are you sure you didn't end up with some pot infused with something?

I have a hard time believing that one could get to that state and intensity, strictly from a few hits of pot?

Just wondering if you got it from someone that may have been trying to fuck with you?!

I know a few people that think it would be funny to unknowingly slip a mind altering substance into an unwitting persons stuff........

I couldn't seem to convince them, just how fxxked up that idea really is.......especially when they were suggesting they were going to do that with spice.........

Humans never cease to amaze me!!