There is a point in the come-down from LSD where pot is actively contraindicated. The ... for lack of a better word "slope" of the fading LSD experience coupled with the short-term memory inhibition of pot can cause people to get stuck in a loop where they forget they're tripping, are reminded of that by an altered perception, and then experience increasing anxiety with each cycle of the loop over when it's ever going to end.

Not saying that's what happened to you, or anything like it, but the general wisdom in the psychonaut world is "don't mix things unless you know what you're doing".

EDIT: Phrasing

I have a friend who had that experience. He was coming down from LSD, vaped some THC-heavy pot, and experienced a powerful burst of anxiety which momentarily interrupted his short-term memory. He then had the experience of "coming-to" with his body on full alert, for no apparent reason. As he struggled to understand what it was about the world that made it feel so terribly wrong, but failing to find anything in his safe, cozy environment that might explain it, his anxiety mounted - until it got so bad he experienced another short-term memory interruption and the cycle began again. This went on for close to an hour, a repeated cycle of panicking, blacking out, waking up, looking around, panicking, before he was finally able to communicate with his friends, who helped him take a benzo and end the experience.

While it sounds like it must have been a nightmarish experience, what's remarkable is that my friend doesn't regret it at all. As he worked out what was going on in his mind, he discovered that he had to force himself to remain calm in order to maintain a continuity of consciousness. Every time his focus slipped, he'd black out again - so he spent that entire experience focusing on the physical sensations of anxiety, separating those perceptions from his understanding of reality, and directing his consciousness away from worry and toward calm. After it was all over, he says he came away with a much, much improved ability to maintain awareness of his anxiety and to choose how to respond to it appropriately, instead of just freaking out and reacting.

I think that this is one of the big values of psychedelic experience: by inducing intense, unfamiliar states of mind, we can gain perspective on the inner operation of our cognition, and learn to distinguish between the sensations we experience and the physical realities they respond to. Over time, by bashing your consciousness to and fro in a variety of directions, you can gain more and more insight into its operation, which can help you increase your conscious control over your internal experience and therefore improve your life.

> by inducing intense, unfamiliar states of mind, we can gain perspective on the inner operation of our cognition

Yes, this. I've found, though, that the intensity can often be dialed back significantly, while still achieving comparable, certainly more comfortable, and sometimes even better effects.

I think there's absolutely a time and a place for nuking one's ego psychedelically, but it's broadly better to chip at it — if, to torture the metaphor a bit, with a plasma cutter instead of a chisel...

I've recently read a seminal work on LSD and how it affects human psyche: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196573.Realms_of_the_Hum.... Cannot recommend it enough. I feel it demystified a great deal of uncertainty and unknowns I had about LSD. The book was based on roughly 2500 LSD sessions (mostly high dose, in 150-300mg range) that the author conducted in 70s with different patients, including himself. AFAIK, it is the first book to systematically approach the topic and map psychedelic LSD experiences in roughly 4 categories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof#Encounter_with_....

Each patient would have series of LSD sessions in a regulated environment (usually in a room with an interior that feels secure and comfortable, a psychoanalyst guiding the session included). First sessions were used to test an individual high dose threshold. Once the high dose for a patient was established they would stick to it. According to the book, 'bad' or traumatic LSD experiences are mostly related to the 2nd (BPM II: Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit) and 3rd (BPM III: The Death-Rebirth Struggle), reliving of birth- and prenatal traumas that are suppressed. It takes usually several high dose sessions with a psychoanalytic integration work afterwards in order to 'resolve' traumas. Once they are resolved they don't resurface and the person generally can lead happier life.

Regarding 'bad trips' with lasting consequences in the aftermath: the author mentions that _in some cases_ when a trauma was not resolved or properly addressed in the course of one session the patient could suffer from various psychotic episodes after the sessions was over. As far as I could tell, simplistically speaking, this was attributed mainly to the fact that the traumatic content (normally suppressed) resurfaced and was sort of left uncovered and 'half-processed'. It was stressed in several places in the book how important is that the 'set and setting' is right for an LSD session and how it could be dangerous and counterproductive if LSD is consumed in a wrong environment or not followed up with an appropriate 'psychoanalytic' work after the session is finished.

This is why either having a good grounding in meditation techniques and having a guide on hand during a trip is a very important precaution to take for safe experiences. An experienced guide could have helped you break out of the negative experience. If you had better conscious awareness of your mental state, you could have recognized the slide into a bad state and prevented it.

The flashbacks you were experiencing were very real traumatic flashbacks, like what a victim of violence would experience.

The promising results that psychologists are having with psychedelic drugs all centers around having a trained operator guiding the experience to get a desired effect. It's not just a matter of dropping acid and you immediately see GOD and fix your PTSD.

I knew someone once who took a lot of LSD. Her line was that LSD was the most economical of the drugs, because after a while, the effects would happen even when you weren't taking them. I thought this sounded more similar to "permanent brain damage".

Were you on any other pharmaceuticals at the time?

No.