Hey all,

Just wondering what your perspective is on this. I've heard people having bad trips and that they would never touch the stuff again. I was thinking, aren't bad-trips envitable to a degree? And if so, wouldn't the solution, after stabalizing emotionally, would be to dive back in and experience the good side of the trip?

If the good trips didn't make up for the bad ones, I would have stopped a loooong time ago...

imo the bad trips make up for the bad trips.

Well, imo, a more reliable solution to bypass the (actually not so inevitable) bad trip is to Cultivate Presence of Mind. Having firmer control over ones thoughts, using breath as the control lever, coupled with an actively open heart, kinda like being stuck in a state of feeling gratitude, will equip one with the power to navigate inner realms with little to no fear.

I've found a variety of things "make up" for bad trips. One essential is if you've completed a trip and have negative feelings about it -- take a significant break from psychedelics/or psycho-actives completely -- no specific number, just whatever is "significant" to you.


Sometimes it's a "good trip" with the same/different material which puts the previously negative feelings into perspective. Other times I'm having a shower and suddenly *LIGHTBULB* the negative experiences are integrated into my life with sober thought processes alone.

This sort of kills the term bad trip, but often later in the "bad trip" you come to terms with the feelings and your afterglow will bring you a feeling of realization that is very much a "good" trip. Even though you're not "tripping" anymore.

PS-Good & Bad are actually fairly meaningless descriptors for a trip. Neutral trips have been some of my most enjoyable, and bad trips have brought some of the greatest teachings, but so have good trips. It's all about integrating and growing from your experience regardless of enjoyment/classification - hence use of quotes^

Safe travels!

PLUS THIS:

may just be semantics but I dont like the term "bad trip"
although I have had a few rough experiences, I did learn a lot from them, if the possibility existed to push a button and I would forget all the rough experiences, I would never press it, but I hope to never go there again.

for me most are good and the rough ones give me time to integrate because Ill scare myself enough to calm the urge for some time.

Honestly some of the trips I've gotten the most out of we're the dark scary ones. I hesitate to call them bad trip because by the end I normally feel incredible. It kind of takes everything down a notch. I realize the things I was stressing about really aren't that bad. I'll feel refreshed and ready to take on anything. It's that whole what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger thing.

I concur with my colleagues above.

I especially have issues with trying to classify our trips as tritely as "good" or "bad." Those terms are inadequate to talk about cinema... how much less adequate to classify journeys into hyperspace.

Hyperspace can be challenging. It is not a place you should visit if you are faint of heart.

But, there are heavy experiences that leave you panting... and there are horror trips where you are trapped for ages by parasitic entities who cruelly abuse you. Hard to find the bright side of the later.

Psychonauts tend to realize eventually that this is not an activity for people who are gonna turn on the waterworks every time they get a hypersplap, though.

We all do our best to be prepared and err on the side of caution... many of us use adjacent practices of meditation and dreamwork to help out... but you can never really be ready for DMT.

I find that our memories of our journeys are so tenuous and incomplete that what you think might have been a "good" trip, could have included an eternity of torture in there that you simply blanked.

For instance, I thought I actually enjoyed the potent Salvia Extracts I was making until one super deep trip with a sitter that helped me to remember all of my previous journeys... and realize that those trips had all included lengthy periods of being abused by some very unfriendly entities... and that I actually hated salvia. Things become rather tricky when you realize you are dealing with telepathic entities who can alter your memory of things after the fact with relative ease.

I suppose the answer to the OP is yes. The soaring illumination and bliss that I have been lucky enough to experience more than make up for my rather meager list of complaints.

I've been on a bit of a break for many months now. Had a difficult to integrate experience. Hyperspace fool basically said it--"trapped for ages by parasitic entities who cruelly abuse you".

Now I've never been one to label a trip "bad", but I can't call my last breakthrough "good" either. But, sticking to the ops question, I can say that, opposite from my darkest experience, there was the Pure Light, the Full-Being Orgasm. That stuff is so good I smile even now and my eyes are wet, though it was over a year ago, and I will indeed call that trip good, without quotations!

I had a lot of "bad" trips (mostly with shrooms) but everytime i got one i felt better afterwards. So the good coming from the bad trips, outweight the bad coming from the good trips.

Life needs duality (good/bad, up/down, hot/cold).

For example how would we appreciate feeling good if we never felt bad?

Personally I feel psychedelics just ramp up the feeling good/bad roller-coaster.

What goes up must come down!

X2. I usually appreciate something bad once it's done, as I learn from it.
Be it a journey, relationship, or a lost fight