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/lit/ - Literature

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2686954 No.2686954 [Reply] [Original]

Any good books that deal with the experience of psychosis? Bukowski is pretty good, his poem "to hell and back" describes my feelings better than I ever could. I'm just lucky that mine was pretty much drug induced and I'll never go crazy again as long as I never smoke weed or take psychedelics.

>> No.2686957

they say that hell is crowded, yet,
when you’re in hell,
you always seem to be alone.
& you can’t tell anyone when you’re in hell
or they’ll think you’re crazy
& being crazy is being in hell
& being sane is hellish too.

those who escape hell, however,
never talk about it
& nothing much bothers them after that.
I mean, things like missing a meal,
going to jail, wrecking your car,
or even the idea of death itself.

when you ask them,
“how are things?”
they’ll always answer, “fine, just fine…”

once you’ve been to hell and back,
that’s enough
it’s the greatest satisfaction known to man.

once you’ve been to hell and back,
you don’t look behind you when the floor creaks
and the sun is always up at midnight
and things like the eyes of mice
or an abandoned tire in a vancant lot
can make you smile
once you’ve been to hell and back.

>> No.2686959

I still talk about it a lot because I literally just got out of a mental hospital like three days ago. It was pretty traumatic.

>> No.2686972

what happened bruh?

don't tell, if it's too much too handle.

>> No.2686979

>>2686972
I'm curious too. The fact that he said about "never going crazy as long as I never smoke weed" makes me think he might be an anti drug troll.

>> No.2686980
File: 85 KB, 640x386, andalusia.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2686980

>>2686954
>implying merely refraining from those drugs closes the gates again
>implying you haven't unlocked your potential for insanity
>implying many people don't suffer from terrifying flashbacks from psychedelic experiences
>implying you shouldn't just stick with fine wine, good food and beautiful women or men like a good European

>> No.2686981

>>2686979
>doesn't think weed make you go crazy.

Been at the huffin' and the puffin' then have you?

>> No.2686983

>>2686981

*citation needed

>> No.2686984

>>2686983
no u

>> No.2686988

>>2686984

Yes, actually. You're making a statement that is blatantly false.

>> No.2686989

>>2686983
No, he's correct in that there is a notable correlation, albeit a slight correlation that is very overplayed. The odds are comparable to those of winning an Olympic medal.

>> No.2686990

>>2686957
Good poem, I think I'm gonna check Bukowski out.

>> No.2686993

>>2686972
>>2686979
not op, but I know a guy who had a latent psychotic tendencies which manifested after some time consuming marihuana with regularity and stopped after he quit it. He can smoke hash eventually without having problems though.

>> No.2686994

Bret Easton Ellis

inb4 pleb tier

>> No.2687002

>>2686980
>implying many people don't suffer from terrifying flashbacks from psychedelic experiences

No, Flashbacks don't exist. The Idea was printed in various magazines and newspapers during the 70's to try and reduce usage when acid was outlawed. Now the myth still exists yet there isn't a shred of evidence to support it.

>implying you shouldn't just stick with fine wine, good food and beautiful women or men like a good European
Alcohol is one of the worst drugs you can take, please don't encourage him to do that. If you need to get high, dont drink. Instead eat a very small amount of cannabis, or a very small amount of MDMA.

>> No.2687004

>>2687002
...b-but HPPD?

>> No.2687006

>>2686988
reminds me of how athiests try to prove that there isn't god, when it should be the theists who prove there is god.

I wouldn't feel too worried if I were you. regardless as to if it causes mental issues, you'd have to be a bit unbalanced to want to smoke weed for recreation anyway.

>> No.2687009

>>2687002
Alchohol doesn't add anything though. That's the good part.

>> No.2687018

>>2687004
HPPD Is a separate disorder. Schizophrenic patients often hallucinate with no drug use at all. There is no evidence (aside from a few anecdotal accounts) linking LSD to HPPD.

>>2687009
>Alchohol doesn't add anything though
I don't know what you mean by add. It can add things live liver cancer, bowel and colon cancer, brain damage, long term speech difficulties. Alcohol kills 75,000 people every year in the US. It is a very dangerous drug.

>> No.2687024

>>2687018
Sucking smoke is better than sucking alcohols? Well pick your cancer I suppose.

>> No.2687032

>>2687024
I don't "suck smoke" I wouldn't recommend it to anybody either.

>> No.2687034
File: 544 KB, 900x1290, imgcarl sagan2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2687034

>>2687006
>you'd have to be a bit unbalanced to want to smoke weed for recreation anyway.
0/10

btw the man in the pic is Carl Sagan. A brilliant physicist who smoked weed everyday

>> No.2687041

>>2687034
*citation needed

Why smoke weed? Bit of fun? Strange form of fun if you ask me. Feels good? Have a wank and save yourself the expense.

>> No.2687045
File: 19 KB, 250x250, 9303171.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2687045

>>2687034

>> No.2687047

>>2687032
>>2687041
You don't have to smoke it. You can just as easily eat it, which negates all negative health effects associated with inhaling a burning herb.

>> No.2687055

>>2687047
What if the food is unhealthy? Gives me cancer?

What if the weed makes me go loco? Is it my fault or the weeds?

>> No.2687056

>>2687041

… I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs…

When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time…

… If you're high and your child is calling, you can respond about as capably as you usually do. I don't advocate driving when high on cannabis, but I can tell you from personal experience that it certainly can be done. My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover…

"Carl Sagan - Marihuana Reconsidered. (1971)

>> No.2687059

Thread destroyed, bukowski to sagan and trolls.

sage

>> No.2687063

>>2687034
I knew Sagan did. Did you know Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George Bush and John F Kennedy have all smoked weed.

As has pretty much everybody, From intellectuals like Steve Jobs, Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Beaudelaire to the Jennifer Anistons and Mike Tysons

>> No.2687061

nog - wurlitzer

>> No.2687079

>>2687063
>implying they inhaled

>> No.2687085

>>2686979

Not an antidrug troll just someone with schizophrenia in the family. If I'd stuck to just smoking pot it's quite possible this wouldn't have happened but I was also smoking lots of K2 stuff, taking methoxetamine, ketamine, lots of mushrooms, occasionally LSD.

>> No.2687086

>>2687063
Dude their very being IS the weed.

#upvote

>> No.2687091

It's pretty weird how people flip out online when I talk about how I experienced a drug induced psychosis from psychedelics. You all defend that shit more than it deserves, tripping is great sometimes, but don't idolize the drugs too much or you may end up in a psych ward like me.

Just pay attention to your body and mind and notice when you're becoming weird and dissociated. This can be especially difficult to do if you're tripping with a group of people and you're all becoming weird and dissociated together, you can feed off each other.

Me and a close friend were having very similar delusional beliefs about ourselves. I have half a mind to copy-pasta the essay I wrote to him, y'all might find it interesting.

My psychiatrist is taking me off the antipsychotic medications which were making me a zombie, so that's awesome.

>> No.2687094

>>2687091
do it mate, we're scant on content in here

>> No.2687095

Clearly what I said struck a chord so I wanted to write out what happened, both for my sake and yours; I don't know if it's what you “should hear”, the journey out of insanity is one of realizing that there is no “should”, the universe is not talking to you, me and you are just a couple of overly-intelligent truly unique individuals who have managed to think themselves into a box by thinking outside the box.

After that “big trip” I lost all connection with my previous memories and habits. This is something psychedelic drugs can do through some kind of brain-change or brain-damage or whatever. This is precisely the experience psychiatrists were trying to induce with LSD in the 1960s, people would have a crazy trip that made them realize the insubstantiality of mind and they would use that knowledge to empower themselves.

>> No.2687097

At first I thought this was fucking awesome, and in a way it is. I started meditating, just like you did. I had lost my self and I liked that. I could space myself out by focusing on my breathing. Colors were becoming brighter, sounds sounded like they did on LSD (which is to say, exactly as they would to a normal person, but it sounds like you're hearing it for the first time and can pick out how each sound is composed of a billion tiny sounds).

And shit just kept getting “better”. Because I truly did not care about myself, didn't care whether this stream of consciousness lived or died, loved my family more than I ever had and simultaneously felt like they could die and it would not bother me, etc. I was walking around with this look and attitude like I didn't give a fuck, because I truly didn't, and that caused people to be nicer to me, girls to pay more attention to me, etc. Of course that's just how I responded, it could have gone the other way, or have had no impact at all on my behavior towards others, because that's how schizophrenia is [note to will: clearly I'm not schizophrenic, I know you know I'm not schizophrenic, the interesting thing is when I wrote this I really thought I sounded extremely schizophrenic, but that's because I was overly sensitive to how different my internal reality was, and couldn't see that my external behaviors were really not all that bizarre]

>> No.2687100

Then I started reading all this mystic shit. I was convinced I was on the path of the mystic, in fact I still am, that conviction is what's getting me through this, because the true mystic must experience insanity to understand sanity. I thought I was a Bodhisattva. There's nothing wrong with that idea in and of itself, but listen to what happened to me when I became too attached to that idea:

I was walking down the street on a sunny day and felt water hitting the back of my neck. “What the fuck?” I thought. I turned around and looked at the sky. It was raining out of a clear blue sky right on my head. But there was a rain-cloud kind of nearby, so I realized it could have been a coincidence. My instinctive response was “that was just a coincidence don't trip yourself out, that wasn't the universe talking to you.” So I go back to my friend's house and say “hey did anyone see it raining out of the blue sky?” and they all had.

>> No.2687103

The next day I was wandering around doing my “meditation” (which is to say running away from reality). An insane homeless person said to me in a gravely voice, “it all makes perfect sense.” I ignored it. Another weird coincidence. Then I was in the library sitting there reading Greek philosophy and this old black dude comes up to me and starts talking to me. It was a very real conversation, he mentioned suicide, talked about his life in the projects, how he was fighting the “system”. I told him that it's our attempt to fight the system that gives the system power. I thought he was also a crack-dealer selling crack in the library and that he was feeling me out for a cop (that could be true, I just don't know), and that there was this whole subtext to the conversation, and we both knew we were drug dealers, and were both helping each other on the way to enlightenment, I believed I had helped him get away from suicide (maybe I did I really don't know) and that he was another lost soul in samsara who it was my job to help. Shit like that happened all the time, because I interpreted everything as part of my task as a bodhisattva, so everything confirmed it.

I came back to the library later that day. I was reading Lao Tzu. A crazy homeless man walked by carrying another Taoist book and he walked by in such a way that I could see the title and he clicked his tongue (he might've been a homeless guy attracted to some kid reading a Taoist book, or for all I know it was a hallucination). I fell into my meditation for a moment, then put the Lao Tzu back on the shelf. I didn't need to read it. I already knew. I could have written it myself. I still believe that.

>> No.2687105

All of this had been a test, I thought. The rain thing, the first homeless guy, and the second homeless guy. I had been tempted three times to in some way embrace or declare my status as a Bodhisattva, and I had rejected them, so I must be a Bodhisattva, because that's what a real Bodhisattva would do. All homeless crazy guys, well maybe not all but some, were advanced Tantric practitioners just around the corner of enlightenment who had chosen to come back as crazy people to cut through the final veil, and two of them had taken a moment out of their insanity to test this ancient saint who had chosen to inhabit the body and mind-stream of Ian Bartels. But I couldn't tell anyone, that would prove I wasn't a real Bodhisattva (and at the same time I could have; see how this shit is totally unfalsifiable?)

Then shit just got weirder. I went from being a kid who was experimenting with meditation and honestly trying to be compassionate to a kid who interpreted everything that happened as a confirmation of his sainthood. And I'm laying all of this out in chronological order but there was all sorts of crazy shit going on, and the further I come out of it, the foggier my memory of it becomes, which is one of the reasons I'm writing this. I was going to see the Trailer Park Boys live. Before the show me my uncle and his friends and his one friend's wife were smoking pot and drinking. I thought the wife was hitting on me as a way to get her husband to have sex with her, that everything she said was either a hidden way of insulting him or a hidden way of praising me, and that everyone else knew too, and nobody was saying anything because it was just so fucking awkward. I fell into my meditation. I realized there was nothing I could do.

>> No.2687106

“Aha! There is nothing I can do. This is the last test. Now I know I can really be a saint. I know this is bullshit, but it's not bullshit, I've been reborn a million times, and at my last death I chose to test myself in these ways to prove to myself that my karmic power was still sufficient to maintain my necessary place between samsara and nirvana. All I can do now is meditate. There's nothing I can say to make this situation less awkward. I learned these meditation techniques over the course of several lifetimes and I don't need to practice them, that's an attachment, I'll just use them when I need to space out, when there's nothing I can do, like now.”

We were watching the show. The man with the wife would laugh - “ah! Poor guy, he feels awkward for my awkwardness at being an instrument of his emasculation, I'll laugh with him to make him feel better.” And the guy next to me would have his arms folded “ah! Poor guy, he feels awkward for my awkwardness, I'll mimic his body language to make him feel better. But by imitating him, I'm making the man of whose emasculation I was an instrument uncomfortable, I need to laugh to make him less uncomfortable, but I need to sit here with my arms crossed to make HIM uncomfortable, everytime I try to do something one of them is made uncomfortable, so I'll meditate” I thought I was somehow controlling both people. I fell into my meditation, things got more colorful and when the TPB moved around on stage I could see tracers (of course I was also really high lol).

>> No.2687110

And then I mentioned something about this to my uncle after everyone else was gone. And he didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. “What? Awkwardness? No that wasn't the best TPB show but there was nothing weird going on.” Ah! Another test, he is testing me even though he doesn't realize it. But luckily something told me to push the point, and I told him everything I thought had been happening, and none of it was actually happening for any of the people around me. And I realized I was going insane. I went to his house and ate some food. My appetite has gone down a lot, I was eating very slowly when before that trip I was a voracious eater. “well... that's because I'm a Buddhist monk who's chosen to be reincarnated here... my appetite is low because I've rediscovered my true mind-stream, which is one of asceticism and renunciation.” My aunt said something about what it was like to wait in line and how she'd just want to get out. “Exactly,” I said, because I thought it had a secret meaning; I was stuck in the “line” of a Buddhist monk, this experience of insanity was one I had chosen to make me realize my distance from enlightenment, and it was time to get out of the line.

So now I'm getting the fuck out of the line. Tripping made me see that I should let compassion motivating my actions. And the more I distance myself from that whole crazy way of thinking, the more I see it as a bar to my compassion. I was getting paranoid, and confused, and I thought I was helping everyone (in some ways I really was, my attitude truly was very positive and it really was rubbing off on people, and I'll maintain that).

>> No.2687113

I know everything is in the mind. If I (and I suspect you too) were born in an Amazonian village, I would be the shaman. If I were born in medieval Europe, I would be the Capuchin. If I were born in China, I'd be a sage. But I wasn't born in any of those places. Every culture has its own ways, or lacks of ways, for dealing with deviant mental states. They are evolutionarily advantageous. As a species it is necessary for somebody, the mystic, to transcend everything, to truly “drop out”, and through his behavior make people think about their society. In this culture we do not have a good place set out. If I pursued that state of mind to the end in this culture, I would end up unhappy and isolated at best and in a mental institution at worst. (and even now dude, as I'm writing this, the crazy part of my brain is interpreting it as a confirmation of my sainthood: isn't this just what a saint would do? Choose to come back, and experience insanity, and then think his way back to sanity to show people what they need to see? But fuck it those ideas are there, I can choose not to engage with them because I can now see they are unhealthy).

>> No.2687116

I can't read your mind. I don't know what you're doing. I don't know if this is relevant to you. I'm just a scared white kid who tripped himself out a bit too much and is now finding his way back to reality by engaging with it in the most honest way possible. The crazy part of my brain says “John needs to hear this!” But the sane part says, “I've talked to John a lot; I think I'm going crazy, and now I think I'm going sane, and he's my good friend who I love, and I really do think he's going through something similar because he says all this crazy shit about aliens and auras lol, but maybe he's not, because some people do experience those things, I just honestly don't know, that's what this has taught me, when you think you know everything, you know nothing, that's an ego defense.”

I'll leave this be for now. I'll try not to edit it too much. I can look at all this shit I've written and there are literally “signs of schizophrenia” in this essay. If I wrote an ordinary essay and showed it to a psychiatrist he'd be able to tell there was something “wrong” just by the way I wrote. The way I write demonstrates that I'm becoming disconnected from reality and becoming bad at legitimately understanding how other people think, it's very autistic. This is why I “see more colors” - my ego got fucked up by a psychedelic trip and got lost and started believing all this useless shit because it didn't know what to do. I can consciously choose to build it back to the way it was though, and it will be better for it, coming through suicidal depression was very important because I now feel I will never become depressed again, and if I can come through insanity I will never become insane again.

>> No.2687120

Honestly though dude if this essay freaked you out as much as it would have freaked me out yesterday, take it as a wake-up call. The universe ain't talking to you. Stop smoking so much pot because it's fucking with your head in ways you can't see. (and maybe I'm completely wrong about you, I wrote this mostly for my sake, I need to accept that I can't read minds and don't actually know what the fuck is up with people and that will help my compassion). Only you can know whether the ideas you have are useful or useless, I'm just letting you know you don't have to hold on to them if you don't want to, and as someone who is returning to sanity, I'm telling you it is much better than insanity. Psychosis and delusion are learning experiences, just like depression and isolation were. I can literally look at this entire fucking thing in two ways, I'll just lay them out in black and white:

>> No.2687126

“I am a Buddhist monk who sat and meditated for a long time, and is a Bodhisattva, and has chosen all of these things to happen to him so that he can escape from his attachment to his own holiness and embrace a life of compassion.”

AND

“I am Ian, a highly intelligent, creative, kind human being who took a few too many drugs and created this weird delusional universe to escape from reality, just as he had once done with depression and self-loathing. Neither state is “true”, and they're both “true”, and they're neither true nor not-true, and they're both true and not-true. Which is a schizophrenic's way of saying “lol idk”. But I am going to choose to be an ordinary person, because that's what will make me happier, I don't want to go down that road because I went down it a little bit and bad things happened, and the further I get away from it the more I realize how fucked up my life was becoming, like I was on the verge of dropping out of college and I thought that was all part of my mystic quest. If I really want to help other people and be compassionate, which truly is my motivating force right now, I need to be more like them.”

>> No.2687128

And I'll leave you with this, because it's very meaningful to me, the Tao Teh Ching is a very meaningful book to schizophrenic/mystic/whatthefuckever people because it doesn't make any sense so we can read whatever we like into it that fits our internal reality:

If we could renounce our sageness and discard our wisdom, it
would be better for the people a hundredfold.
If we could renounce our benevolence and discard our righteousness, the people would again
become filial and kindly.
If we could renounce our artful contrivances and discard our (scheming for) gain, there would be no
thieves nor robbers.

Those three methods (of government)
Thought olden ways failed in elegance
And made these names to hide their want of worth;
But simple views, and courses plain and true
Would selfish ends and many lusts eschew.

>> No.2687132

You might like to check out the confessional poets, who like to write a lot about how horrible life is. John Berryman's father, for example, shot himself in the head beneath his son's bedroom window, and this haunted him for the rest of his life and is a motif in his long poem The Dream Songs. He went on to struggle with alcoholism and depression, and eventually threw himself off a bridge. Also, look into Sylvia Plath (though I've not read her myself, she seems relevant.)

Dream Song 76

Nothin very bad happen to me lately.
How you explain that? —I explain that, Mr Bones,
terms o' your bafflin odd sobriety.
Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,
what could happen bad to Mr Bones?
—If life is a handkerchief sandwich,

in a modesty of death I join my father
who dared so long agone leave me.
A bullet on a concrete stoop
close by a smothering southern sea
spreadeagled on an island, by my knee.
—You is from hunger, Mr Bones,

I offers you this handkerchief, now set
your left foot by my right foot,
shoulder to shoulder, all that jazz,
arm in arm, by the beautiful sea,
hum a little, Mr Bones.
—I saw nobody coming, so I went instead.

>> No.2687133

what did you even do during this time OP?

You were all sorts of scrambled and sunny sided.

>> No.2687134

After writing that essay I did get pretty bad, I was panicing about how dissociated I was and this prevented me from sleeping, so by the time my parents saw me to watch me graduate (which I did do!) I was an absolute mess and went to the ER for emergency psychiatric treatment, I'm still not ready to write about that very much, it was awful.

>> No.2687143
File: 97 KB, 453x575, reinaert.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2687143

>>2687002
>No, Flashbacks don't exist. The Idea was printed in various magazines and newspapers during the 70's to try and reduce usage when acid was outlawed. Now the myth still exists yet there isn't a shred of evidence to support it.

Flashbacks as a psychological phenomenon do exist and aren't limited to any particular sort of experience, but traumatic experiences are amongst them. Chemically induced psychoses would be amongst them. I've seen it happen to people, it's not a pretty sight. A bit like watching a rape victim conjure up memories of those experiences.

>Alcohol is one of the worst drugs you can take, please don't encourage him to do that. If you need to get high, dont drink. Instead eat a very small amount of cannabis, or a very small amount of MDMA.
The drugs a people uses are directly tied to its culture. Volatile emotions, passion, energy and boldness in a certain way are all connected to alcohol. One could say alcohol is the warrior drug. It's always been linked to fighting and fucking. It brings out something primal in us. It dissolves boundaries and inspires us to leap into the unknown.

The narcotics of choice of parts of the east, hashish and opium, make their users more reminiscent of the plant kingdom. This tendency to sit still, to exist quietly, to observe, is observable in many aspects of their cultures.

On a larger scale, the former is more beneficial to life and more representative of what makes humans what defines them as a species, which is mainly a highly mischievous, smart, daring ape. After a few mugs of wine one might feel inclined to steal fire from the gods. A bit of hashish and you might take a nap.

>> No.2687146

>>2687133

Went to classes and made drugs (shrooms) in my closet as a full-time job, I can safely talk about that to some extent because I'm never going to try to be a drug dealer again I cannot handle the stress. Demand for mushrooms exceeds supply and I knew the right/wrong crowd such that I could grow as much as I wanted and convert it to cash immediately.

>> No.2687172

>>2687134
That's awful to hear. you did manage to grad though, right?

Here's to your recovery.

>> No.2687176

>>2687143
Some give you what you want. Alcohol makes you want.

>> No.2687183

>>2687176

I dunno, when I smoked a lot of pot I really wanted more pot when I ran out, I was a very compulsive smoker.

I mean don't get me in some ways you're right. But I think drugs in general make you want, they're all inherently escapist, even drugs like weed and psychedelics which force you to confront things. You could confront those things without them, I'm doing it right now.

I'm not telling people not to use drugs. Maybe some people really should. But I like to think that nobody needs to.

>> No.2687184
File: 4 KB, 102x153, eden.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2687184

This is a pretty good book about going nuts.
His second book is good, too.

Pic related: Mark Vonnegut is Kurt Vonnegut's son

>> No.2687203

>>2687085
acid is not as strong as its made out to be, but will still fuck you sideways. Your ego can break down allowing you a view of reality that you have never seen before. One without bias, and defense mechanisms, and buzzwords used to describe yourself. You can see things, not necessarily as they really are, but from a perspective so unique that it could almost belong to somebody else.

This can allow you to realize a lot about yourself. From things you're in denial about, to negative personality traits. it can really help you to become a better person. Occasionally some negativity you may be harboring can manifest itself in the form of a bad trip, but ultimately this is you facing your demons, and being forced to confront your problems.

On top of all this you have some fantastic visuals; reality seems to breathe, and inanimate objects blossom into life, swirling and fractaling before you. Your perception of sound and Colour is heightened to a level you cant fathom. Even a piece of music you have heard a thousand times seems new as you feel emotion in every note.

It can be an amazing experience if done with the right people in the right setting, and will leave you with a wonderful memory that that will stay with you forever.

>> No.2687213

>>2687203

The OP agrees, I've used LSD dude I know what you mean. But just be careful, watch yourself, it's possible for the transcending of ego-games to take you so far outside yourself that it's frightening even for weeks after you stop tripping.

>> No.2687217

>>2687183
>Maybe some people really should.
Yeah. Drugs have been very beneficial to me. I used to suffer from anxiety and depression until a friend suggested cannabis. I had never tried anything before but found weed really relaxed me and would, for a short period of time, completely stop the symptoms, though they usually returned to normal afterwards. The doctors had put me on xanax, vallium and were considering Lithium, but all they did was sedate me, turned me into a zombie. With weed I could function like a normal person so I spend nearly 2 years stoned. I would smoke a small hit when I woke up and another around lunch and I was good.

This didn't cure anything though as every attempt to get of weed would result in anxiety. One could always argue that this was placebo, but the anxiety attacks and depression felt very much real. The same friend who gave me weed suggested trying mushrooms, so I took a heroic dose and spent nearly a day tripping. After that I was cured. I had found some kind of piece within myself and had learned to let go of whatever it was that was troubling me. I had no anxiety and no depression. I e't touched a drug since. I don't want to jinx it.

>> No.2687219

>>2687213

And I've never even had a bad trip, the fright developed after I hadn't tripped for a while.

My dad ate mushrooms five times. His last time he found himself up all night hearing voices after the trip ended. He says he still hears voices sometimes but they're "his" voice. I will never be the same either, but I can accept that, I need to stop being frightened of how changed I've become. I feel a lot of compassion for everybody but I'm also more paranoid than I should be and everything will start going back to baseline as I continue to abstain.

>> No.2687221

>>2687217

>I don't want to jinx it

Exactly man! Once you have had that experience, don't keep pushing your limits, you'll just get dissociated from normal people and become wrapped up in psychedelics and psychedelic-users. I'm still good friends with psychedelic-users but the longer I go without tripping the more I see how they can do harm as well as good.

>> No.2688086

bump, thanks for the recommendations so far

>> No.2688090

can someone recap the books recommended so I don't have to go through this whole threadf?

>> No.2688152

>>2688090
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

>> No.2688163

>>2688152
This times a million. dHST is a god.

>> No.2688365

Philip K. Dick's "Valis" is an incredibly accurate portrayal of what it's like to go crazy.

>> No.2688489

On the Road isn't about going crazy per se but it's full of crazy manic energy.

>> No.2689470

>>2688489
In that case it's better to read Big Sur, in which Kerouac actually drinks himself into a deliriant mess.

It's a glorious work. Kerouac at his most honest and serious.