r/RationalPsychonaut

I’m looking for someone who has had the same experience as me - and hopefully understands what is happening.

My S.O. and I had this strange experience with shrooms that altered our life for years since.

We took a strong dose of a strong strain (we were new to shrooms) and we felt like we died and merged into one. Then we felt like we were our higher selves / souls embodied. From this highest high, we slowly came down and I felt like I was experiencing all the pain and suffering in the world, and all the pain and suffering I’d experienced in painful, violent past lives. It was dark, lonely, painful, and traumatizing. The trip was not traumatizing to my S.O.

Ever since, I’ve had what my therapist has labeled as PTSD episodes and panic attacks where random things will remind me of the trip and make me believe I’m still stuck in the trip again for a period of time. Usually it’s when I’m exhausted or stressed.

The strange thing is that my S.O. didn’t have a bad trip and doesn’t always remember it… however, when I get triggered - I call it “looping” where I feel like I’m back in this cycle of experiencing these extreme highs and lows of life - my S.O. does remember and our eyes look like we’re on shrooms again. We also do these strange movements that we’re not in control of - like a dance - that happened on the trip and continue to happen every time we “loop”. Again - it’s like we’re tripping but we have not taken any substances. We’re not on any prescription meds or anything mind-altering. These looping episodes happen to varying degrees every 1-2 years give or take. They were more frequent after our original trip.

It’s hard to describe what we experience. I’m hoping there’s another couple out there who has experienced something similar and understands what I’m attempting to explain. I’m also hoping someone can help me understand these experiences better.

A looping episode feels like this: I start panicking and feeling like I’m in the trip and not in control of my experience/body/mind. I pace and tell him he needs to reminder the trip so I’m not alone remembering it. There’s some back and forth communication that is VERBATIM EXACT WORDS from the trip. Eventually we hit a high point in the looping episodes that feels like we are embodying our all powerful soul selves. This makes it feel like reality and the human experience is false/an illusion. It feels like we got a glimpse of truth behind the curtain of life and were shown the cyclical journey of the evolution of a soul. So when we come down in the looping episode, it feels like life is about to get really really bad, slowly gradually exponentially worse - which triggers panic in me. I also have immense emotional turmoil and some sharp physical pains during the coming down. My S.O. does not experience the suffering or panic as we come out of the episodes. For me, it feels like I’m about to enter a new cycle of life getting even worse in every area of life, and I experience the negative emotional spectrum like a punch in the gut. It feels like I’m being given a flash of what’s ahead in this next cycle where life will get even worse.

It just doesn’t make sense to me, especially that years later we are still having these episodes of tripping and experiencing EXACT words and movements that we had experienced in the orig trip. AND that we’re sober.

So is it truth? Is it brain chemistry? Is it even explainable? Is it the as-of-yet unexplored therefore unknown results of experimenting with shrooms?

I’m very hopeful that I will find someone who has had this same experience and has some insight.

Thank you for reading.

Hi, my name is Rev. Kaleb Graves. I am a progressive, LGBTQ+ Baptist minister and psychedelics researcher. I've been hot on the trail of modern-day psychedelic conversion therapy for the past 6 months. Please check out my latest interview about it with Psymposia. I've met W Bryan Hubbard and many other colorful characters along the way.

I love psychedelics, and I love Christianity. I am also acutely aware of the horrific damage both can cause when misused. Right now, we are in grave danger of such damage. The political climate is creating psychedelic Christian Nationalism and other psychedelic authoritarianisms, with all the bigotry and militarism that entails. 

We cannot afford naivete. We cannot afford compromise. This moment demands moral courage.

We must confront this threat wherever we find it, from the White House to our local orgs.

Is the Quest over?
Is the next to follow?

Does describing and defining everything one experiences end the need or desire for curiosity and exploration into the unknown?

I think the ego gets „wiser“ by building definitions and concepts and starts believing that it knows enough and in the case being with the IT feeling it would somehow believe that it knows enough about it.

Is it better to live a life not wasting too much comprehension onto main quest things in order to not speed run all the important and profound things in life one wants to explore and understand and to keep those longer while channeling the explorative energy elsewhere where it doesn’t speedrun the magic of life?

The thing is on acid, bc of ego loss, I have the reduction of learned experience as a tool or if I am (sober) able to not compare my present experience with my past experience and I feel. But by default it would be harder to enjoy the thing you already labeled as already discovered.

Hi there! We are a group of researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia conducting a study about the emotional experiences people report during psychedelic experiences and whether these are linked to changes in social functioning, wellbeing, and attitudes toward death.

We are looking for individuals aged 18 years or older who have had at least one personally meaningful experience with a classical psychedelic substance within the past 5 years (but not within the past 3 months). Psychedelics include LSD, DMT (N,N-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin (i.e. Magic Mushrooms) or Mescaline/Peyote.

If you are 18 years and over and can read English, we invite you to take part in an online, 30-minute survey. This survey asks about the emotions you experienced during a psychedelic experience and any changes you may have noticed in how you relate to others, your general wellbeing, and your outlook on life afterward. Please note that the survey includes questions about challenging emotions that may have arisen during the experience.

Your responses will be completely anonymous and your involvement will remain confidential. No identifying information (including IP addresses) will be collected.

Participants will have the chance to enter a draw to win one of two $100 AUD Visa vouchers. Entry into the draw is completely optional and is completed via a separate form that is not connected to, and cannot be linked with, participant survey responses.

To participate or learn more, follow this link: https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6nuJn8BNBgWFYrk

For questions, contact: smoreton@uow.edu.au Thank you very much for your consideration in participating. The following researchers are conducting the study:
Dr. Sam Moreton - Lecturer, School of Psychology University of Wollongong smoreton@uow.edu.au.
Alex Shuttleworth - Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Mimi Han Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong

Study Reference Number: H2026-0104

 

An article on the Western tendency to romanticise Amazonian shamanism. It draws on John Urry's concept of the 'tourist gaze' and the work of anthropologists Alice Beck Kehoe and Evgenia Fotiou, who examine issues with how Westerners view indigenous shamanic cultures.

David Bronner and Dr. Bronner’s contributed more than $2 million to pass Oregon Measure 109. Bronner advocates “multistakeholder capitalism,” where businesses account for workers, customers, and communities rather than extracting value from them.

He has also said entheogenic churches and community healing circles may provide the most affordable psychedelic access and should be allowed to flourish.

Yet the system his money helped Eckert and the Healing Advocacy Fund establish has produced:

- Prohibitive costs driven by mandatory commercial infrastructure.

- No functional pathway for religious, Indigenous, or noncommercial community models.

- Rules obstructing donated psilocybin, mutual aid, and bundled nonprofit services.

I am not suggesting Bronner personally designed these rules or intended these outcomes. I am asking whether he knows what was built with his funding.

At what point does funding a system create a responsibility to examine whether its consequences violate the principles used to promote it?

Hi all, I am not sure if I am allowed to post this here, so apologies and I will delete it if so.

I am dealing with pretty severe depression. I've been through therapy, the antidepressants. Nothing has worked.

I'm pretty scared of a full on trip, especially because the set and the setting and also a trip guide isn't really something I have proper access to right now.

I don't know if micro dosing is seen as a pseudoscience but, it seems like something much more accessible to at least try.

Many thanks in advance. I love in a country where this is illegal so, please bare that in mind with recommendations on treatment.

I'm hoping to hear from people who have experienced something similar or who have backgrounds in psychedelic therapy, psychology, neuroscience, meditation, or philosophy. I'm trying to understand why this same experience keeps recurring and how to make sense of it.

Some background

I'm 26 and have had psychedelic experiences since I was 14. Over the years I've used psilocybin, LSD, MDA, ketamine, cannabis, and others, and they have all produced the same or similar experience that I explain here. 

My first several psychedelic experiences were not like this. However, after my first major experience at 15, whenever I take a sufficiently large dose, I often end up entering what feels like the exact same psychological landscape.

The experience is remarkably consistent regardless of the substance.

The recurring themes are:

• I've actually died.
• This reality isn't real.
• I'm trapped in some kind of hell or purgatory.
• My life has been some kind of test that I failed.
• Everyone around me is part of the illusion.
• There is something I need to realize or do in order to escape.

While I'm in these states they often feel more real than ordinary reality. Afterward I gradually return to baseline, but the experiences leave me shaken for days or weeks.

I'm not religious. I'd describe myself spiritual, so I'm not entering these experiences with strong beliefs about hell or demons.

The first experience (age 15)

I took 3.5 g of mushrooms with two friends.

During the peak it felt like I had suddenly awakened inside a dream. I "knew" I had overdosed on heroin, my physical body was in a hospital, and my consciousness was trapped in hell.

I also became convinced that my best friend was actually the devil, placed in my life as a kind of test that I had failed.

The strange thing was that none of this felt like reasoning—it felt like immediate knowledge, the same way things simply make sense within a dream.

At one point I believed the only way to escape hell was to have sex, so I woke up my friend's mother and asked her to have sex with me. Obviously she refused.

It took several days afterward before I fully accepted that I hadn't actually died.

The experience was profoundly traumatic and became the template for almost every difficult psychedelic experience that followed.

The second experience

Later that same year I took one tab of LSD at a music festival.

I experienced what felt like an out-of-body experience, seeing my own dead body while imagining news reports saying I had overdosed.

Eventually I woke up in the medical tent with multiple people holding me down. Once again I became convinced I had died—this time believing I was in heaven, which manifested as an endless music festival.

Different setting, same underlying certainty that I had died.

Subsequent experiences

Over the following years similar experiences occurred on multiple substances.

One MDA and cannabis experience began with overwhelming shame, as though everyone knew I had done something unforgivable. I then encountered what felt like a bizarre alien voice (something I've encountered multiple times on psychedelics) saying disturbing, nonsensical things. Eventually the experience culminated in the familiar feeling of dying and spending what felt like eternity trapped in a kind of purgatory.

On ketamine at a festival I again felt that reality itself was a test. I believed I was the only conscious being that actually existed, that this universe was an illusion, and that there was some realization I needed to have in order to escape. The lesson that night was that I needed to stop taking drugs, so I spent the rest of the night sober. 

My psilocybin-assisted therapy session

Years later I participated in a psilocybin therapy session with two trained therapists.

This experience was significantly different in one respect.

I encountered what felt like a young, shame-filled part of myself and experienced what I would describe as a profound release of that shame. It was one of the most healing experiences of my life.

However, the familiar pattern still emerged.

The strange "alien voice" returned. Then the shame.

Then came the overwhelming certainty that I had created this reality and had been trapped in it for eternity.

I believed I was being asked whether I was ready to leave this reality behind and move into the "real" one.

I said yes.

Then I believed I had somehow missed my opportunity and was once again trapped in hell.

For nearly an hour I tried to convince the therapists to help me "escape."

Only afterward did I realize we were talking about completely different things. They were speaking metaphorically about shame creating a kind of psychological hell. I literally believed I was trapped in one.

Most recent experience

Most recently I took a large amount of ketamine at a music festival.

Until then ketamine had been the one substance that usually didn't produce these experiences.

This time it did.

It was probably the most frightening experience I've had.

The familiar narrative returned almost immediately: reality was fake, I was trapped, everyone around me—including close friends and my girlfriend—was part of the illusion, and they were luring me back into it.

When I started coming down I felt as though I had a choice: either accept ordinary reality or reject it entirely.

Part of me feared that if I rejected it, everyone would conclude I had become psychotic and I'd end up hospitalized.

Eventually I returned to baseline.

How I currently understand these experiences

I genuinely don't know what these experiences mean.

Perhaps "hell," "the devil," and "being dead" are simply the symbolic language my mind uses to interpret overwhelming ego dissolution.

Perhaps they reflect unresolved shame or trauma.

Perhaps they're manifestations of obsessive thinking or psychotic-like states that only emerge under psychedelics.

I don't know.

What I do know is that the narrative is remarkably consistent across substances and across more than a decade.

What worries me

I often find myself ruminating over the content, what to make of it, what to believe…

Each time it feels absolutely, unquestionably true.

I'm afraid that one day I might not come back from one of these experiences and might permanently lose the ability to distinguish the psychedelic narrative from ordinary reality.

My questions

• Has anyone experienced a recurring psychedelic narrative like this over many years?
• Why might the same themes keep emerging across completely different substances?
• Has anyone successfully worked through or integrated something similar?
• From psychological, neuroscientific, contemplative, or therapeutic perspectives, how would you understand these experiences?

I know one obvious response is simply, "Stop taking psychedelics."

That's a reasonable answer, and I've thought about it a lot.

I struggled with addiction when I was younger, and there may well be an important lesson there (although I now only use substances recreationally or therapeutically). 

At the same time, I'm pursuing a career in psychedelic-assisted therapy and have spent years trying to understand these experiences rather than simply dismiss them. I'm less interested in whether I should continue using psychedelics and more interested in understanding why my mind repeatedly returns to this exact psychological landscape.

I'd genuinely appreciate any thoughtful perspectives.

Thanks for reading.

This observation is shared strictly in the interest of expanding broader consciousness.

The Setup: A cold extraction of Ipomoea tricolor seeds (containing LSA) mixed into a dairy suspension. Administered to a cohort of 5 adult stray cats with established territorial behaviors. Conducted entirely within a secure, paved, and enclosed courtyard under continuous, rigorous monitoring from onset to total baseline return to ensure complete safety.

Observations & Behavioral Outcomes: A total dissolution of aversion, fear, and aggressive dominance. The territorial ego completely collapsed. The subjects abandoned their guarded, solitary adult stances, clustered together, and began rolling and playing on the ground. The group dynamics precisely mirrored a litter of young kittens resting in absolute security beneath their mother. No physical harm occurred, and all subjects returned to normal functioning once the compound wore off.

Conclusion: Solitude and hostility in the adult cat are not core essences, but rather acquired protective layers. Once the LSA molecule dissolved the territorial wall, it became evident that the maternal memory and the primordial drive for unity were never erased—merely buried beneath layers of survival conditioning. Removing the barrier allowed the psyche to return effortlessly to its native state of shared existence.