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How to Avoid a Bad Mushroom Trip

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How to avoid a bad mushroom trip?

 

Almost every serious psychonaut knows that bad trips can occasionally occur whether you’re new to a psychedelic experience or have tripped countless times. Bad mushroom trips can be difficult to live through and it may feel like you’re going crazy, losing a sense of reality, or cannot seem to function the same way you normally could. When your goal with psychedelics may be to have a good and blissful time exploring your mind and the depths of existence, a bad trip can take you by surprise and feel like everything has taken, well, a bad turn, and there is no way back to normality. However, that’s rarely true and thankfully, there are multiple things that can help you to either avoid a bad trip altogether, deal with it effectively, or process and integrate it if it did occur.

 

Preparation: The Mother of All Success

When it comes to having a psychedelic trip, you can certainly avoid a lot of unpleasant surprises and challenges by making sure you are well-prepared, researched, and equipped with everything necessary to ensure the best possible experience. Let’s get into it!

 

Meditation Brings a Practical Value

A suggestion to practice meditation may sound oversimplified, and overused, and you may shrug it off thinking, ‘Really? How is meditation going to help avoid a bad mushroom trip?’ However, skills learned during meditation can greatly help with going through a difficult experience during a mushroom trip. Skills like the ability to sit and breathe through difficult emotions and thoughts will come in handy. You will learn to observe your own mind instead of reacting to it and see emotions as passing by visitors that can be safely felt, observed, and eventually let go of.

 Meditation during magic mushroom trip

 

Know What’s Coming

What helped me personally to soothe and calm myself during a challenging mushroom trip was the awareness of what potential experiences may come up. Although each psychedelic experience is different, there are some common themes that most people seem to go through. Knowing that your sense of time may be greatly altered, things will probably move, walls will ‘breathe’, colours may appear more intense, and the general feeling of going ‘crazy’ can occur when experiencing ego dissolution can help you understand that these occurrences are a normal part of the experience and help you embrace them better. In a sense, you can say to yourself, ‘oh, this was supposed to happen. There is no way I could have known or imagined how it would actually feel like, but here it is. There is no need to panic, this was to be expected.’ Not being aware of some possible effects can feel like things are going wrong, while in fact, they most likely aren’t and are a normal part of the experience. Research, and then research some more is the advice here!

 

Think of ‘Set and Setting”

Magic mushrooms or psilocybin mushrooms greatly differ from other substances, and the experience or trip largely depends on the so-called ‘set and setting’. In simple words, a ‘set’ is the mindset and emotional state you bring into a psychedelic experience. Ideally, give yourself enough time to prepare your inner world for what’s to come. Make sure you feel good, stable, and ready to embrace the unknown on the day of the trip.

 

A ‘setting’ refers to the outside environment during your trip. While some people can have a great time having a psychedelic trip in large crowds, at loud parties or at festivals, this generally goes against typical advice, especially if this will be your first psychedelic experience, or if you will be taking a high dose. For your own safety and comfort, it is best to trip in a controlled environment with limited noise, plenty of privacy, easy access to the bathroom, clean water, and a warm space or a fuzzy blanket to wrap yourself in if you get cold. If you are having your trip with other people in the space, make sure these are people you know well, trust fully, and feel comfortable with. For music recommendations check out our blog post: The ultimate music playlist guide for magic mushroom journeys.

 

Arrange a Trip Sitter

How to avoid a bad mushroom trip

 

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to organize having a ‘trip sitter’. A trip sitter is a person who stays sober and can take care of your needs as well as make sure you are 100% safe during your experience. This person can be your friend or a professional trip sitter that you feel safe and comfortable with. Ideally, they will have at least a few magic mushroom experiences themselves, so they can know and feel what you may be experiencing and respond accordingly. If that's not possible, find the most non-judgemental and 'chill' person in your life that you can. Having someone there to take care of you when you perhaps cannot take care of yourself can make a world of the difference so you can fully surrender to the magic of mushrooms and go deeper into your experience without having to worry about the outside world or taking care of the physical things. It can be also valuable to have someone listen to you and respond to any worries or concerns that may come up during the trip, or even just listen to your insights during your experience or afterwards. Having someone there you feel safe with can certainly help you avoid a potentially bad mushroom trip.

 

Pick The Right Dose

Although no matter what dose you take, it is highly unlikely to overdose on psilocybin (magic) mushrooms that could harm your physical body, however, the high dose can bring a very unpleasant experience mentally and emotionally if you are unprepared. This is something many people experience as a ‘bad trip’. To avoid that, it’s important to research your mushrooms and find the right dosage.

Generally speaking, a low or medium dose is considered 1-1,5 grams, a medium to normal dose around 2-3 grams, and a high dose is anything after 3,5 grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms.

 

This advice will change if you’re going to use magic truffles. In this case, you can multiply the dosage 3 to 4 times to achieve a similar effect. It’s good to also keep in mind that certain types of magic mushrooms or truffles can be stronger than the other kind. For example, if you consider taking Copelandia dried mushrooms, even 1 gram of those ones will be ‘too much' for most people. Therefore, it’s important to know and research the kind of psilocybin mushrooms you’ll be taking and adjust your dosage accordingly. For the first time use it’s best to go with a low or normal dose and leave the high doses for later.

 

What To Do When You're Having a Bad Mushroom Trip

How to avoid a bad mushroom trip?

 

Approach The Experience with Curiosity, Trust, Openness, and Surrender

It seems that one of the most important things that will determine whether you have a good or a bad trip is your ability to trust and remain open and surrender to the medicine of magic mushrooms. While the trip may bring up uncomfortable or difficult emotions, thoughts, or images, how you deal with them is key. If you panic and label whatever is happening as ‘bad’, this can cause a downward spiral effect where everything seems to get worse and worse. But, if you see this experience as a challenge (and a challenge is something that can be overcome), you can surrender and trust that your experience will unfold just as it needs, and you will relax and accept the thoughts, images, or feelings that surround you. If you struggle with it, it can be helpful to ask for help and reassurance from your trip sitter or a friend and to have them affirm to you that you are safe and sound, and help you find the trust in yourself and the medicine. You can do this!

 

A Change of Setting or Focus Can Help Turn a Bad Trip Around

While this may not work in all instances, sometimes changing the place of a trip can help to turn a bad mushroom trip into a good one. For example, if you feel unsafe and overexposed in one environment, finding a safe, quiet place can really help you turn this whole experience around. It happens quite often with magic mushrooms that anything you see, hear, smell, or sense can directly influence your experience. Taking your attention away from that, changing the music, the room, or simply looking elsewhere can redirect your thoughts and inner experience to a much more positive one.

 

Communicate and Take Care of Your Needs

Even though this advice seems so simple, sometimes it can be difficult to communicate what you need on a mushroom trip. You may think that what you’re asking for is too much or even ridiculous, but that’s the reason a friend or trip sitter is there – to help you. If you’re concerned about anything, let them know and let them be there for you!

 

If Nothing Else Helps…

There are products available called ‘trip stoppers’, and they can reduce the intensity of the trip if it gets too heavy or intense. If you feel better having them around when you have your trip, you can buy them online here. If that doesn’t work and the person having a bad experience is looking like they may potentially harm themselves and cannot calm down despite of having tried everything above, it may be a good idea to call an ambulance and receive some help to at least keep this person physically safe.

 

If You Had a Bad Trip… What to Do Afterwards?

If you had a bad experience with magic mushrooms already, that sucks. However, not all is lost. Interestingly enough, many people find value in their bad mushroom experiences afterwards, even though they absolutely didn’t enjoy what they were going through at the time. For some, certain themes were brought up that turned out to be worth exploring and integrating into their lives, and for others, the sheer experience of getting back to a normal state when they thought they never would, gave them such a great appreciation for their lives that allowed them to no longer take things for granted. They often felt like they were given a second life or a second chance, and they chose to spend it on making better choices, appreciating the little things more, spending quality time with their friends and family, and sometimes exploring a different life path because… why waste time? Quite often, a magic mushroom experience, good or bad, can show us how temporary this life is and yet, how infinite the universal consciousness can be. We get a glimpse into a vastly different perspective and reality, and there is a lot we can learn from that.

 

Spend some time integrating your ‘bad’ experiences. Perhaps there was something good that came out of it in the end? And if not, then it’s possible this experience served as a lesson that psychedelics are powerful tools and should not be taken lightly without giving it much thought. Preparation before a mushroom trip is key to making it a success!

 
Tags : Cubensis, Truffle
Posted in: News