Undiagnosed Lsd - 1 Bad Trip Changed Everything

[username]

Hello all

First let me say that it is a real comfort for me to have found this forum. After many years, I am finally coming to understand what I live with is most likely PTSD.

Here is my story. Its going to be rather lame, but trust me, the long term effects have been anything but mild.

When I was 20 years old, I was smoking quite a bit of marijuana and having a rather good time of things.

I wanted to try LSD with a friend, so he planned one night to pick up a few hits. We tooko 2 each.

The night started off pretty well. I was having a really good time and enjoying the high.

8 hours later I was not so amused anymore and descending into a state of panic. I couldn't sleep, I was still tripping and I was losing it.

At 12 hours in to the trip, I went home.

I was in such a state of panic that I went to my mother and asked her to take me to the hospital which she did. From there, it just went downhill in a hurry. I was a mess in the ER room. I thought I was going to die. I was in a state of complete panic. I wanted to claw my way out of my own skin.

They were able to sedate me.

A few months later after having been asked to move out of my house for the mishap, getting involved with a girl that was complete trouble, I friend of mine told me she was having trouble sleeping.

The thought stuck with me.

A few nights later was the first night where I couldn't get back to sleep. What followed was a state of complete panic much like I felt in that ER on the LSD.

I have lived for 11 years now with this. It seems to come on and then leave. I have trouble sleeping and I go for days with little sleep and rediculously high anxiety that results in a depression. The feeling that I have during those times is so much like what I felt during my bad trip. It's like that trip opened up a window in my mind to a feeling that no one should have to know.

Thats the condensed version. I sure hope I did an adaquate job conveying the experience.

I welcome your comments and feedback.

 

[Jagged Angel]

Hi username, I am not sure that what you are experiencing is PTSD, but that it is perhaps flashbacks from the LSD. I am only running on what you have said here - you have not mentioned any specific trauma, only that you have had troubles from the LSD and that you experienced panic. Panic is actually quite a common reaction to the effects of LSD (particularly if you have never taken it before). The flashbacks and the panic can happen for various reasons, and can keep occurring over many years. I have known people to be affected by LSD flashbacks 20 years after taking the substance. It might be an idea to Google the effects of LSD (I found a good site called druginfo that is run by the NSW government) as well.

I would also suggest finding a good psychiatrist/psychologist and having a talk to them about what is happening.

 

[Deleted member 4332]

Hello username,

Welcome! I have never tryed LSD but I did see the effects of what you experienced in my partner when he went on one of his occasional binges. I wasn't even experiencing it and to be honest it was truely frightening. The self hatred I witnessed was acute. BUT!.. I saw the MAN! Not the DRUG!

I wont even pretend to know what your flash backs are but please understand that it was the drug making the situation as you saw it, rather than your own person and who you really are.

No body truely knows how a drug is going to effect them until they take it. Its not until we realise that taking that drug was a mistake that we truely start beating our selves up over letting our better judgement lapse. Everybody on this earth makes mistakes at some point. Im sure next time LSD is offered to you, your experience will make you decline it. If you feel it has bought out some issues you dont feel able to understand and move on from then I strongly urge you to take Jagged Angel's advice and seek the help of a professional. I wish you the very best of luck and look forward to hearing how you go.

Take care of your self.

CK.

 

[Ken Haley]

Username, I hope you are still around or will get notification of this response.

I cannot strongly urge you enough to completely ignore Jagged-Angel's opinion as it is completely wrong. My past is exactly like yours except LSD was dropped in my at age 12 because older boys thought it would be funny. Imagine first being a 12 year old boy instead of 20, like you were. Then image you did not know you took a drug as I did not. In these crucial way you were luckier than I. I am 50 and have suffered for 38 years. I do not mean any disrespect to Jagged, but he/she simply doesn't know what she is talking about: Not only can an LSD trip be traumatic, it may be one of the most traumatic things one could ever experience. Again, I did not know I was drugged and thought I died and the world of hallucinations I slipped into was never going to end simply because I believed I WAS dead. In my case I believe there was no end or no escape. Whether your PTSD is from combat or rape, for example, the mind will always entertain the idea that something will save them or they will somehow escape the situation. In non-LSD traumas, no matter how much in danger you are in, not matter how horrible, you can count on your reality, your sight, hearing and other senses working. Under LSD things as basic as reality, your sights, hearing and other senses are taken from you. If the sense of helplessness during combat or rage can cause PTSD, the helplessness of losing your reality and control of your senses can easily cause it as well.

As for seeing a qualified psychologists or psychologist, good luck: I have seen 50 to 75 in my life and consisenttly had to explain the dynamic of the condition to them: Yes even the PTSD experts. They misdiagnosed me from the time I was 12 to at least age 24 and when they finally did diagnose me with PTSD (yes, from LSD) the treatments were nonsensical EMDR and other impotent treatments.

As a footnote keep this in mind. I was molested by my psychologist while in the hospital being treated for PTSD at age 13. While it was awful it was not even noteworthy compared to the LSD trip. A month after getting out of the hospital I was abducted by another molester. Again, after getting away from the second pervert my mind compared that to the LSD trip and said "That was nothing". It was not even important enough to tell my parents about. I have been in a high speed chase and been shot at and actually became calmer during the event. Likewise I became noticeably calmer than usual as I watch the 911 attacks and the building fall because what I was seeing matched what I normally feel inside and that fit seemed to make me feel right. I have experienced a lot of the things that others cited as the cause of their PTSD and those events, nor any other in my 50 years combined compares to the LSD trip.

I am not trying to minimize anyone else's trauma or the pain they feel. I am only tying to point out that in a childhood full of mental and physical abuse, including emotion abused after the LSD trip that one shrink characterized as "torture", molestation, gun play, running into a house fire, running into a gas filled building and other potential scarring events, my mind automatically compares all to the LSD trip and all get filed under "not even noteworthy". To this day I am afraid of things others are not and not afraid of what normal people are, all because every danger, especially those that can result in a reasonably quick death, pale in comparison to the terror I felt during the LSD or that I feel during flashbacks. If an LSD trip is not traumatizing and cannot cause PTSD, why do all these other potential traumatic events take such a backseat to the LSD trip and have so little impact on me?

 

[amethist]

Hi ken

You are replying to a very old post, one that goes back to 2009, and that member has not been on the forum since the date it was posted.

 

[Nicolette]

Not only can an LSD trip be traumatic, it may be one of the most traumatic things one could ever experience.

I'm sorry, you can't take drugs, have a bad trip and be diagnosed with PTSD.... criterion 'H' - affects from such are substance related disorders.

 

[Hashi]

Not only can an LSD trip be traumatic, it may be one of the most traumatic things one could ever experience.

Whether your PTSD is from combat or rape, for example, the mind will always entertain the idea that something will save them or they will somehow escape the situation.

Ken, please be mindful and careful of what you say here. How do you know the mind will always entertain the idea that something will save them or they will somehow escape the situation? For your information, the mind doesn't.

While being actually tortured (not a metaphor), I didn't see any salvation or escape.

From what you say, other experiences may have given rise to you having PTSD. I don't know. But please don't interpret a bad LSD trip as worse than the kind of traumas that people here have experienced. Imagine your bad LSD trip but the situation is actually real. That might give you an idea, before you start talking about rape, combat or other things that you haven't been through.

In non-LSD traumas, no matter how much in danger you are in, not matter how horrible, you can count on your reality, your sight, hearing and other senses working

No, in extreme danger, you absolutely can't. What do you think qualifies you to say this? Please don't talk about the experience of things you haven't experienced.

 

[Ken Haley]

I have experienced non-LSD traumas. I listed several. so I am speaking from experience. When I was being shot at repeatedly, tortured and molested, I never stopped imagining a way out. Likewise, the doctor said I was tortured. The second poster said far worse than what I said. She said an LSD trip was not traumatic, I only pointed out ways it could be more traumatic and was for me.

 

[Abstract]

the mind will always entertain the idea that something will save them or they will somehow escape the situation.

. In non-LSD traumas, no matter how much in danger you are in, not matter how horrible, you can count on your reality, your sight, hearing and other senses working.

Totally untrue.

What concerns me is that for someone who is a seasoned PTSD sufferer this shows a very limited understanding of PTSD and possible reactions if you don't mind me saying. You say you do not want to minimise others experiences and yet you do that repeatedly through your post.

I would also have a look around the site a little before continuing to think that most here have had PTSD for a year or two. Long term PTSD and trauma symptoms seems to be more common than not.

The whole point of PTSD is that each person responds individually to a clearly specified type of traumatic experience. Just because you did not have a traumatic reaction to exactly this type of experience does not mean you have the right to discount it for those suffering diagnosed PTSD as a result of them or that you have a right to assume the nature of that experience.

After reading Nicolettes comment I was curious as did not know anything about this criterion or why it is there. I came across Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder

It seems if it is long term it is permanent and is not at all treatable by the means that work for PTSD - or any means. EMDR and other processing of trauma would not work as that is not the mechanism that is keeping it active. I am not saying that is what you have but I wondered if it had ever been suggested to you. Most people with PTSD will find improvements if they get the correct help. It is treatable. A lot of what you are discussing on the site is about how you have tried everything and had zero improvement. I think that is concerning.

 

[Ken Haley]

My purpose was countering the minimizing of the same symptoms I have by the earlier posters. You are trying to tell me that I is wrong to compare my own individual traumas to each other, in an effort to counter someone who says my greatest trauma was no trauma at all? I was trying to educated people who have not experienced an LSD drugging how bad it is compared to common experiences we have both had. Saying I was not traumatized by something they were in no way minimizes there pain, just like people telling me that you did LSD and had no issues minimizes mine.

Thanks for the link, but I will pass: I only hallucinated once in my life, while on LSD. And your suggesting this is not insulting to me? See, it is difficult to say things here isn't it.

The odd thing is my symptoms are much more like the old shell shock victims of WWI than most PTSD sufferers I talk to today and I have never been in combat. I have videos posted by I am not allowed to give out the link here. I have 8 of the most serious criteria for shell shock and almost all for PTSD. Perhaps I don't have HPPD as you suggested. Perhaps it all comes down to the dirty word that everyone is so sensitive about: "magnitude". Some traumas are worse than others and do not respond to treatment. I am sorry if that upsets people, but I assure you no one is more upset by my trauma fallout being unresponsive to treatment than I am.

 

[Nicolette]

May I just point out this is getting a little tit for tat and not the purpose of the forum. One person's trauma is no greater or lesser than another's when it comes from their point of view as to each it still involves suffering. It is not a competition. Let's not try and see who is 'worse' but instead focus on management of symptoms and heading towards healing. Thank you.

 

[Rumors]

Edited out response due to Nicolette's request.