A bad trip on magic mushrooms is, well, bad.
Really, horrendously bloody bad.
It can make your face feel numb, prompt you to chunder up your breakfast and in the worst cases, lead to enduring psychotic symptoms.
You’ve no doubt heard the horror stories (the one that circulated through my high school featured a senior who took too many mushy shakes on his first trip to Bali and came back with a new personality).
Today, new research has provided some counterintuitive findings – that experiencing the personal hell that is a bad trip can actually lead to an improved state of wellbeing, longterm.
mmmm
Published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, 84% of the 2000 men and women surveyed who had experienced a “bad trip” from hallucinogenic mushrooms say they eventually benefited from the psychologically difficult situation.
And this wasn’t after any old shithouse trip – A whopping 62% of respondents said their bad trip was among the top ten most psychologically difficult situations of their entire lives.
It’s interesting to note that the degree of psychological difficulty was statistically associated with beneficial outcomes, as more difficult experiences tended to be interpreted as more meaningful to participants.
So the furrier the walls felt in that moment, the better. Supposedly.
While the study was lead by legit Professor Roland Griffiths of John Hopkins University, the sample of people used for his study were recruited from psychedelic-focused online forums – not exactly a cross-section of society, me thinks.
Still – food for thought. If you can keep it down long enough.
Source: Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Photo: The Simpsons.
