Akuma said:
Can anyone give me some information on what a bad trip on drugs will do to a person, psychologically?
I'm more interested in the effects after the trip itself, rather than the symptoms of a trip gone wrong.
Do bad trips tend to discourage use of the drug?
I haven't been able to find much--mind helping a bud out?
In college and for some years afterward, I used hallucinogenic drugs occasionally. I also became the bad trip babysitter more than once, and sometimes spoke to the bad tripper many times after the drug had left his or her system. I seemed to be the big sister figure for some, although I certainly wasn't wise. (Although I was wise not to use my real name at a forum where I admit to drug use, yes?) Many seemed to feel they could trust me with their fears, since I'd seen them at their most vulnerable, when they were tripping.
The lasting effects included
- depression and overreaction to anything negative
- unreasonable fear of harm ("What if I fall off my bike? I could die.")
- unreasonable fear of rejection
- unreasonable fear of loss of love from family, parents, etc.
- distrust of people formerly trusted ("Professor Jacobs has it in for me.")
- facing one's own mortality, badly
- facing others' mortality and handling it poorly
- strange thought patterns which frighten and may interfere with normal life
- fear that one is no longer sane
- loss of motivation to succeed (although that could have been the weed, since everybody did that, too)
Of course, many, many of us did such drugs with no lasting effects. The incidence of long-lasting negatives seemed to me to be rare; nobody I 'counseled' (listened to without judgment, mostly) was still in trouble a year later, but of course we all heard about the guy who thought he was a pat of butter and would melt if the sun hit him.
Maryn, as sane as she ever was, but cheerier
