I have never had a bad acid trip..but I am sure the only time I actually had LSD was the first time, and I REALLY like it..other 2 times I didn't know the source and wasnt impressed at all. I went really far with morning glories once though and it started to go bad for a bit once some strange and morbid thoughts came up..

Mushrooms can completely annialate me though..reduce me to a drooling, trembling slump of flesh, clawing aimlessly at anything that brings back some shred of sanity. I dont know why, but its SOO hard to just lie back and die with mushrooms sometimes..could be the body load though..which really gives me insentive to try pure psilocybin..I have spent wayyyy to many nights rolling around on the floor feeling like a ballon on the verge of popping!..mushrooms are the worst entheogen to ingest for my stomache(besides yopo)..worse than cactus and aya..I wonder how much the body effects of consuming the plant material can account for the negative experiences?

This is a very interesting point man. Worth exploring further and because of the obvious interactions between body and mind I reckon this may well have a good basis.

I want to mention that I've learnt loads more from the "bad trips" (although I think this is a very reductive way of looking at it because there's ebbs and flows of every trip) than I have from the ones which were all plain sailing.

For me, it all rests on mushrooms. My perspective on the difference between, say, acid and mushrooms, is this: Acid makes me really happy to be alive and filled with wonder and joy at everything and make me think that death doesn't matter, because if I lay down and died where I was then I would eventually return to the earth, but that before that happens I should enjoy me life.

Mushrooms can make me think "I'm alive, therefore I'm going to die and that's a bad thing, why am I here? What should I do with my life? Should I drop out, what if I drop out and it doesn't work out, what if I end up chronically ill, in pain and alone with no-one who cares about me? Oh fuck so much of my life has passed already."

No other entheogen has made me feel that way. I've had wonderful, enlightening, experiences on mushrooms but I always feel with them that they can go either way. Like the way that you can laugh so much and then the next minute you're filled with dread.

I think it was endlessness who mentioned earlier that it's all about set and setting. Well I'm generally a very well balanced individual and I always take care with set, setting, and companions. Mushrooms tend to bring out things I never feel in ordinary life and no other psychs do with me.

Even with acid, when I've been up for a long time and am really drained and I think about something that's difficult in my life at the time, something that 'should depress me because I'm on a psychedelic drug' I generally feel alright about it and the solution generally arrives in my head.

I voted LSD, I have had a bad trip on LSD and the long 12 hour duration doesn't help either. I would of said Salvia but it wasn't on the list. I haven't had anything synthetic for almost three years now (the only synthetic substance that I have had in four years, once was MDMA for new years when I was coming down from cactus for the first time and Wow what a night one of the best nights of my life all at home) and I haven't had a bad journey in four years. Coincidence?


Much Peace

I haven't tried all of that list, but in my experience Shrooms can be the most terrifieng substance.
Surely, depends on the dose as other have said. with 2 grams I guess would be really hard, but with 4 or more...
Personally, the only bad trip in shrooms I had at 3 grams (yeah, I know, low, but I wans't prepare to ego loss, and was one of my first trips).
Shrooms teach a lot, but they don't care to add sugar in what they teach. If you're prepared, ok, otherwise it's your problem.


5-meo too, but it last too little and in a good dose I can't think or fear, I'm just blown off. In more low doses, 'til 12 mg, it's a mystical pleasure (I prefer to snort it than smoke it, actually. too bomb effect in the smoke).

none that are on the list...

SWIM's experience:

My 2 worst trips are tied in a apples vs oranges battle.

1a: 150-175mg of 10x Salvia - I was jumping in a swirling vortex of spinning then disappearing dimensions and despite my typical calmness in all psychedelic situations I freaked the fuck out.

I knew that I did something, then I forgot. My sitter thankful I am he was there, was not very good. He was asking me about my life to try and make me come down faster when all I needed to here was:
"You are on salvia, you are just feeling the effects and they can't hurt you. You will be sober soon, just relax as much as you can."

Long story short: I freaked out for 40-45 minutes and was scared of the feeling coming back for the next 2-3 days

2a: 1g Oral Cannabis: Last 4:20 I ate some hashbrowns (get it?) right after work. I had about 45 minutes before I was home, and when I got there I felt 98% normal.
I put on "Back to the Future" and started watching.

I had only smoked pot 4 times ever and never ate it. It started giving me a familiar feeling after almost 2 hours.

I stopped the movie and made some food. By the time I made the food I had started to feel what I though was REALLY STONED.
I asked my roomie if he was sure it was just a gram. He said yes. That was the last human contact I had in the night.

When I sat down to watch the movie I had a familiar "Bad trip feelng" psychologist might call it intense anxiety, but I don't get it sober, so I call it "Bad trip feeling"

Now on LSD and shroom I would note the feeling and what I was thinking and me and the substance agree that we don't like freaking out and we avoid that feeling

But every though I could think looped to paranoia and the anxiety continued. I tried to take a walk, all I could think was I was dosed too high and the thought that I would ever come down was doubted.

I layed down and tried to sleep, writhing and drooling all over, paranoid thoughts continued for luckily only about an hour when I got to sleep.

It was the next day that really sucked. I woke up about 1/3 as stoned as my peak and had to work for 8 1/2 hours teaching gymnastics. I told the parents and my co-coach (thank god I had one) I was hungover.

It was up there with if not the worst and longest day of my life.

It took about 65 hours to reach baseline, from 6pm on Monday to 12 noon on Wednesday



Funny thing, I smoked pot twice (seperated by over a month) pushed by my more-than-once-daily stoner roomie that I just have to change my mindset, both were annoying both got me paranoid, albeit controllably yet still paranoid. I never want to do any cannabis again

I plan to start at very low doses and see if I can appreciate salvia.

In my opinion, shrooms can take your further down the rabbit hole than anything ive ever done. With that being said, I think LSD bad trips would be worse (never had one) than bad mushroom trips (have had quite a few), but it is easier to think negativly on mushrooms.

These are just effects that I've seen, and shouldn't be taken as a comprehensive review of any of these drugs.

Salvia seems to be the most likely to be unpleasant, but it's fairly sedating and so any difficulties are pretty manageable. Shrooms can be very scary if the user clings to their ego and resists the mushrooms, but they are also somewhat sedating and difficulties seem to manifest more as nausea and depression. LSD has never caused a bad trip for me, but I have seen a few people absolutely lose it, pacing, yelling, totally deluded. Very scary and can be difficult to managed for several hours until the person calms down.

Wow. I'm really suprised shrooms is higher than acid. Really really suprised. Thats all i have to say I voted acid.

I've just finish a small book titled "conversation with A.Hoffman". He said that studies shows that LSD was mainly aiming at the hypothalamus neurons.
Hypothalamus is our 'emotional' brain so that's not surprising that LSD can cause bad trips.
SWIM never tried LSD but he had bad trips with shrooms, salvia and cannabis. I guess that as long as a drug can 'hit' your hypothalamus neurons, you can have a bad trip.
Then the issue is : how long and how hard does it hit ! Cannabis last a while in the body/brain. LSD also, while salvia or smoked DMT is very short.
I would define a bad trip as a kind of emotional loop. The neocortex can not do anything against hypothalamus neurons firing. And beeing aware about that just increase the anxiety.
Thinking is useless (like "everything will going well " .
Solution : take a walk, watch a comedy, talk... and/or take a xanax
The poll can not be accurate because it does not show the proportion of users for a given substance. Shrooms are much easier to find than LSD so it's no wonder that it wins.

Yeah exacly. I doubt many here have tried every substance on the list. I've used most of the classics but when it comes to RC's I have only tried 2CB

you've got to be kidding

acid is just about everywhere, you just need to know the right people.
seasoned LSD users learn how to 'drive' their experience.
that's not always the case with psilocin.

and the hypothalamus is the center for lots of functions, not just emotions; but fear comes from one place..the amygdala.

When you do not know the right people... no LSD. But it's still very easy to get shrooms from web vendors.

mushrooms are WAY WAY easier to get here in vancouver..they are everywhere. Tons of people here eat mushrooms...If you know the right people sure you can find LSD..so many random people here eat mushooms and smoke weed though you dont need to look far..

ok
but it's not because mushrooms are more available to some than others that this poll favors them.
it's usually psilocin causing the fear, not psilocybin or baeocystin. those are more responsible for the somatic/visceral side effects. it takes control, like dmt, especially in high doses.

swim's had an odd experience on a ten of white fluff, but was always in control.
two fresh cubes pushed him to the brink.

Yea, it can't be accurate for that reason and many other reasons.

One thing, I should have defined "BAD TRIP" better. People are taking it to mean paranoia, being scared, and other things like that when I actually meant it to mean getting stuck in a negative mental loop that you can't get out of, where the same negative thoughts keep pounding into your brain and you can't stop it. It's not frightful, but simply a bad mental state you can't shake lose.

That type of bad trip for SWIM is not at all possible with anything other than LSD and LSH. While 5-MeO-DMT can scare the crap out of you, it can't cause the typical "BAD TRIP" LSD is known for, at least not for SWIM. Nothing can for SWIM except for LSD and LSH.

I think it is far more likely to get a bad experience from LSD than from shrooms.

The first reason is because LSD, is often of poor quality.
Most of the LSD is not very clean.
With very clean LSD, the chance of a bad trip is far less than with very clean LSD.

The second reason is that LSD has besides a normal psychedelic effect, a very stimulating effect that causes your mind to start working realy fast. It's the effect of your thoughts spinning out of control, that can cause typical LSD bad-trips. 69ron is right about that.

I find 5-MeO-DMT to be very capable of doing the same thing though.

Many RC's that are sold as LSD, actually are a 5-MeO- tryptamine compound. I think this must be because of the simmilarity between 5-MeO-tryptamine's and LSD.

O god. In my bad trip i lost track of how many times i was just pacing around saying "Round and round, round and round, it just goes round and round in a big circle!". Still, only happend once but it was easily my most distressing experience.

Cannabis is one of the worst for thought loops in my experience..5meo and LSD as well..though I have limited experience with LSD but i did get those feeling with LSH..

I have gotten into panick states with mushrooms many time but it almost always is from cannabis..I would even bet that 50% of the freakouts while on psychedelics are instigated when people smoke cannabis while on muchrooms, lsd mescaline etc...

I think that's pretty accurate. The combination can really freak people out, even experienced users have been known to get panic attacks from it.

For me, that's not really a “bad trip”, but rather a panic attack which isn’t really the same thing to me.

The only thing that drags me down the loop is cannabis and it does it more often then not unless it's an afghan/charas kind of hash. Never happened on any other psychedelic.
I have been scared shitless on acid but never stuck in the loop.

Another drug that has left me in that state many times is alcohol.