I have extensive experience with pharmaceutical anti-depressants and with psilocybin.

It's not the introspection that causes psilocybin's anti-depressant quality. Mood and improves, and phantom pain diminishes by about 12-24 hours, regardless of the qualities of the trip, and continues to rise for a couple of days. Even if the trip is relatively non-descript, or is difficult, the internal change is still very clear.

A euphoric trip overshadows this change, obviously.

I’ve used micro doses of psilocybin as a depression treatment and found it effective. Be definition the microdose meant I never had a “trip”, let alone a strong one with lots of introspection. It improves mood and increases energy even at low doses.

I've begun to prefer the term "experience" anyway.

"Trip" is outdated, and harmful to public opinion, I think.

Ok but irrelevant to my point. The experience isn’t always necessary to have positive effects.

I've used an array of psychedelics for spiritual experiences and would be really keen to try Ayahuasca when I'm in Peru later this year. Do you have any pointers on how to find a place to have a Ayahuasca ceremony in Peru? Can I send you an email about it?

I firmly believe that psychedelics were possibly what laid the foundations for humans forming society. They were what helped us to form the abstract thought of working together towards a greater goal than simply survival. I've never felt more at one with humanity than after smoking changa with a group of friends and just standing there silently in a group hug for the trip. It was an incredible experience and really helped me come to terms with myself.

Please do - public[at]goodroot.ca.

The "pills" like SSRIs also change the actual function of the brain, not simply flooding it with a certain molecule that mimics; the two honestly shouldn't compared to as equals, though I understand the desire to as one is heavily legal because of the pharma. industrial complex, and the others have been struggling for their place for far too long now.

Context of course is important too, like having a ceremony with a group of people or with things like MDMA - outside of a therapeutic setting with a therapist - of positive environment with dance music, etc of course will prime the brain in certain ways, and trigger certain pathways that won't otherwise be triggered if simply taking a pill that forces a function change (vs. using existing flows and function); contrast a ceremony taking a medicine vs. going to doctor who only sees you in the context of a clinic, speaks with you for maybe 15 minutes, prescribes you a pill, and sends you on your way to maybe check back in a week to see how their experiment is going.

> These profoundly "real" experiences appear to be essential to the healing process.

Careful now. Surely you don't mean that no healing can take place in the absence of ayahuasca.

How bad are the bad trips? And how often they appear?

Trips often elevate beyond dualistic thinking. Common dualistic spectrums include good and bad, light and dark, heaven and hell, wet or dry, dead or alive, human and non-human, space or time...

The experiences are ineffable and unlike anything perceived by prior physical sense. The integrative aspect - taking the ecstatic vision and letting it into daily life - is an ongoing process which often takes up to a year. And so good or bad is too simplistic a lens in which to judge the psychedelic experience.

Moments of sheer terror, perceiving the blackest of black, are common. So too are moments of pure bliss and the sensation of limitless loving grace. These become trivialized by the overall experience, which is powerful enough to fully reorient a person's understanding of what it means to be a human being.

The result depends heavily on the pre-existing mental framework that engages with the medicine. For example, people from traditional western religious backgrounds may manifest demons, angels, and heaven and hell within their experiences -- if that is what _they feel they need to experience_ in order to realize the intention that they have brought with them into the ceremony.

My personal view revolves around the entrenchment of an individual's ego. Those who meditate and who have comfort with nondualistic thinking tend to ride the wave better than those who have very rigid conceptions of their self identity and its resultant patterning.

A rewarding read was the academic 'Antipodes of the Mind', a phenomenological study from cognitive scientist Benny Shannon. It is the most rigourous resource that addresses the wondrous weirdness of the Ayahuasca experience.

Your first two paragraphs really stand out to me. It can be very difficult to piece these experiences into tangible sentences. It truly is ineffable. Yet, when you’re there it’s so trivially effable. It’s at times comical and yet sad when you become aware you are experiencing something ineffable and won’t be able to bring it back to convey to the world. It can only be experienced.

Once back, it can easily take a year to unpack the experience, and find the right metaphors to attempt to, almost, but not quite really, slightly describe an infinitesimal part of the experience, maybe. :)

Could you describe what you mean by "....-- if that is what _they feel they need to experience_ in order to realize the intention that they have brought with them into the ceremony", perhaps with an example intention?

With mood disorders, there is a moment where an individual decides: "yes, I am going to get better." For many reasons, getting to this pivotal choice is very difficult.

In metaphor, each person keeps their affliction locked within a box. And each person must be the one to create their own key. A person must be willing to open this dark box and release whatever is in it -- the sexual abuse, the long lived depression, or the significant trauma --- and _decide_ to become healthy.

An intention is saying: "This is what I have locked in my box. I want to get rid of it. I want to get better."

Real examples are:

* I no longer want to be depressed.

* I want to get over past sexual, emotional, or physical abuses.

* I want to become sober.

Through the ritualistic component of the ceremony, individuals then go deep within themselves to find and create the narrative, the key, to open the box. The contents of the journey will be unique to each individual. For some, it is getting out of hell or exorcizing a demon within themselves. For others, it is going back to their younger selves to give them love, strength, and support to get over what almost destroyed them. Or, perhaps just catch a glimpse into the delightful madness that is beyond self.

Do you have any kind of a feel (from direct observations, or hearing through the grapevine) for how much more effective going in with an explicit, conscious intent to meditate on a particular topic or problem is, versus going in with no specific intent but rather to just "catch a glimpse into the delightful madness that is beyond self"?

Of course, there's no way of doing a direct comparison, but curious if you have a feel or opinion on it, or might know of anyone who writes on that topic.

When I say bad trip I mean a psychotic breakdown, new acute/persistent anxiety, PTSD, this kind of thing.

The team that I work with is very diligent. No one has ever had a breakdown, acute/persistent anxiety, PTSD, or anything similar as a result of what has happened in the ceremonies. We are careful with screening candidates that might be susceptible to these issues.

However, there have been very nasty experiences that have happened as a result of not following the very strict guidelines of pre and post ceremony care. It is recommended that you abstain from alcohol, sugar, sexual conduct for varying time periods. It is also required that all medication - within reason and with a long list of disallowed contraindications - be weened off of prior to partaking.

The medicine is serious stuff. It is beautiful stuff. And it should be approached with great care. If you take it with a reputable group, prepare appropriately, and follow the post-ceremony guidelines, there is a high likely hood of a net positive experience. If you do not, well...

Thanks, that’s the kind of answer I was looking for.

You are welcome, take care DenisM.

This is the main reason why psychedelics are so high risk - the variation of the experience makes them hard to recommend in any serious way.

It's not even a bad trip necessarily, a positive trip can still cause after affects, increased risk of psychotic episodes, or pretty severe anxiety and it's very hard to predict whether or not you'll be unlucky.

Calling something high risk I think suggests some combination of likelihood and magnitude of harm - can you possibly speak to these two aspects, so we might have some idea of how high risk they are?

I can on the bad side from personal experience, but prefer not to talk about it publicly. I’d be ok to say in private, feel free to mail me sheldon.els+psy[at]gmail.com

While I have never had a bad trip, I tend to argue that a bad trip is more likely to occur if you are in a unstable inner state and or your projection of the drug or the possible experience of using the drug is unstable.

Then again, I think your question comes down to semantics. I have heard friends say a bad trip is their best trip. But anyways and above all, I want to say, don't use labels of good, bad, etc, and just experience the experience.

Your best resource here is probably https://erowid.org/experiences/