After a long, difficult, and mostly solitary personal journey to recovery from a bad trip and the intense anxiety it caused me, I decided to create this site. My goal is to help others understand their bad trips and recover from them more quickly and directly than I did. I believe that the perspective, insights, wisdom, and experience that I gained throughout my own journey can help others.
This site is a haven for you. My aim is to provide exactly the resources and answers that I would’ve wanted when I set out to heal myself.
A holistic perspective
My perspective on psychedelics and bad trips is that they are here to teach us profound lessons about the ourselves, humanity, consciousness, and the world. Often, these lessons are ones that have presented themselves to us in other ways but have been ignored. This is because they are difficult or “not what we want to hear.” In our society, we’re used to having things the easy way. Having it so easy causes us to shy away from the difficult lessons, which are often the ones we need the most. When we do this too much, sometimes, life will slap us in the face in order to make us listen – this is one of the reasons a bad trip can happen to you. There are other reasons, though, too.
No matter what the reason for your bad trip was, I believe that it has happened to you for a purpose that is ultimately good. That may be hard to wrap your head around right now. Especially if you’re experiencing the kind of troubles that I did. Right now, I’ll guess that you want more than anything to go back in time, back to your old self, the “before-you,” who didn’t have this confusion, anxiety, and even insomnia.
I want you to know that you will get back to a state of normalcy, you WILL find peace, but you won’t be the old you – you’ll be so much better, stronger, and wiser. The sooner you can release your attachment to getting back to the “before-you,” the sooner you can start to heal. Often, the hardest lessons in life, those slaps-in-the-face, will turn out to be the biggest blessings you ever receive. For now, just trust me on that one.
A spiritual vs. secular perspective on psychedelics
Before I tried LSD for the first time, I was an extremely staunch atheist. After that first trip, I was no longer an atheist – far from it. To me, there was no way that, considering what I had experienced, we weren’t created by some sort of consciousness. LSD, DMT, mushrooms, and other psychedelics are often associated with spirituality. They have been used as sacraments for thousands of years. Does that mean they are inherently “spiritual drugs”? No, but for some people, the psychedelic experience is undeniably spiritual. For others, it’s undeniably secular.
Either way, psychedelics will change you, whether it’s a new understanding of yourself or a radically different perspective on life as a whole. Going into my first trip, I had no idea that I would become a spiritual person. When I say spiritual, I don’t mean religious. My perspective is not based on any formal religion or god. While this site takes a more spiritual perspective on psychedelics than a clinical psychologist might, I am equally supportive of secular perspectives.
What you won’t find on this site
If you read a site that says “psychedelics are bad because…” or makes blanket statements about whether or not you should try them (i.e. “Why you never should do LSD” or “Why everyone should try mushrooms”). Understand that those sites have a specific agenda, often to promote a drug-free world or a world in which everyone does psychedelics. In those cases, they think of you more as a statistic than they think of you as you. You must remember that you are a unique, complex, beautiful person with the capability of making decisions for yourself.
On this site, you will never find those kinds of blanket statements, because psychedelics are extremely nuanced and personal. That means that I will heavily emphasize your right and responsibility to make decisions for yourself. The information I provide only serve to help you make informed decisions.
Another thing you won’t find on this site is a heavy, scientific research perspective, because I’m focused on the “real life” things you need to know about psychedelics and bad trips.
Why this matters
Above all, this site is for people who are struggling with understanding and coping with their bad trips. This is normal. You are both entirely unique and entirely normal, and you are not the only one struggling with this. I am here to help you, because I have gone through this and made it to the other side.
Love always,
Olivia