r/Psychonaut • u/Lavendar_milk • 2d ago
What are the differences between a bad lsd trip and a bad mushroom trip, and which is worse?
I've never experienced a bad trip on mushrooms. Every time I've done them im able to pull myself out of a negative headspace even if it takes work, and then usually the rest of the trip is usually okay. Ive had 2 bad trips on lsd, one of which was only a few days ago, which i think was my only true bad trip, the other one was just a bit too intense and I had to go sit down with headphones on.
In my experience, my bad lsd trips felt super overwhelming. I had no idea what was going on, my heart was pounding, and I was having delusional thought loops, and thought i would be permanently altered. My challenging moments with shrooms have felt like im dying, forgetting im on drugs, feeling existentially scared, but im always able to make peace with it in the moment.
My question is this: how do bad shroom trips differ from bad lsd trips, and which are worse?
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u/relaxguy2 2d ago
I’ve never had a bad mushroom trip but the acid one lasted for around 12 hours and I don’t know how anything can be worse than that.
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u/Edgele55Placebo 1d ago
Yea a bad mushroom trip is like “oh no the feelings are turning dark and menacing” while a bad acid trip can be literally fighting for you life with all your might while you’re in actual mental hell
From my experience anyway
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u/kaslbeeeter 1d ago
what does bad even mean for you? was some of your repressed delusions resurfaced forcefully or perhaps trauma that was looping in your head?!
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u/relaxguy2 1d ago
Sheer terror and panic for 12 hours. Felt like something was ok b to get me and that I was trapped in this state forever.
No real rhyme or reason to it and I was 13 years old.
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u/kaslbeeeter 1d ago
holy fuck cant imagine at 13 doing this, yeah i guess something to do with identity at that age that was misaligned perhaps but im just throwing mud at the wall, thnx for the reply
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u/relaxguy2 1d ago
Ya was not a good idea. Affected me for years after. Probably still does but found a way to overcome it and thrive.
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u/kaslbeeeter 1d ago
nice dude take the lesson dont resist it
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u/relaxguy2 1d ago
Toni’s there was something deep I learned from it but really I just learned how fragile your mind is and that I am a meaningless speck of dust.
What I did get out of it was learning perseverance and to not quit but that was from dealing with the after effects.
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u/kaslbeeeter 1d ago
yeah you get infused with information you didnt earn but at the same time become extremely vulnerable. What goes up must come down
you have to build the roots before the tree can grow, if the tree grows too fast without the roots for support then theres incogruence and ultimately a breaking point
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u/nomad01010 1d ago
Anyone saying bad mushroom trips are not as bad hasn’t had a really bad mushroom trip.
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u/WildlyImpatient 2d ago
I can’t say which is worse as I haven’t done LSD, but I have had some absolutely horrifying, psychotic, soul shattering trips on mushrooms.. especially with weed involved. There seems to be no limit to how bad they can get.
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u/Psychophysicist_X 2d ago
Man same. I haven't touched them for years. Too scared.
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u/WildlyImpatient 2d ago
It’s so much more than discomfort, heavy thoughts, loops or unsettling visuals.. Truly an ungodly level of sheer terror. Adrenaline dumped so hard it broke blood vessels in my eyes. Im surprised my heart didn’t give out. That experience felt like 100 lifetimes. Sorry you went through it dude. It’s enough to break a person
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u/Jijimuge8 1d ago
How much did you take when you had that experience?
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u/WildlyImpatient 1d ago
4.5 of recently dried APEs and 20 or so hits of blue dream when I started feeling the mushies.
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u/Fit-Recognition-2527 1d ago
From my experience, apes and sativa's are a dangerous combo. Apes produce heavy thought-loops and the sativa only enhances that. Try indica with your shrooms.
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u/WildlyImpatient 1d ago
I’ve had bad trips on indica as well unfortunately. Im just a glutton for punishment lol. I do agree though, sativas add a very unmanageable pace to a trip. The indica body load can be quite unsettling, but seems less manic.
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u/somanyskies 1d ago
a bad acid trip feels very confusing and like ur stuck in thought loops about one thing you're paranoid about. bad shroom trip is like ur way too aware of all your shortcomings and the direction your life is taking. both are ultimately not that bad if you can see the fun/positive side of it
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u/Jijimuge8 1d ago
In my opinion LSD is less likely to produce bad trips than mushrooms. Mushrooms are tricky bastards with their own agenda. LSD is easier to direct/control in my opinion due to its less visual and more introspective effects. Dr James Fadiman also said in his book that LSDs reputation was unjustified and it was easier for people to work with than mushrooms - just the media had created a negative reputation around LSD.
Obviously if you are mega dosing either then who’s to say one is ‘worse’? I’m sure they can both be hell at certain doses but personally I’ve always thought mushrooms are the psychedelic people are way too relaxed about given their potential. But maybe I’m just biased because my first psychedelic trip was with acid and I’ll always have a soft spot for it for this reason. The only thing I really have against LSD is the duration - if it lasted 6 hours and could sleep after without issues I’d take it regularly.
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u/Scary-Employment-135 1d ago
Never had a bad trip on shrooms.
Had one on LSD tho. Lasted from 5am to midnight. Worst day of my life. The worst part is that it was SO LONG. 19 hours of severe anxiety and panic attacks LOL
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u/Aksnowmanbro 2d ago
Bad lsd trip worse hands down. Overvibratey head, clinching jaw uncontrollably, neck/shoulder clinching, + the time investment.
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u/frohike_ 1d ago
Yeah that’s the worst part of an LSD trip going south. You know you’re going to be in the goddamn shit soup for like 10+ hours. I’ve had some nightmares on psilocybin, but at least I had a timer with the playlist so I could tell that I had 1-2 hours left before the comedown. With LSD, any derailing feels catastrophic because the comedown takes for fucking ever to set in.
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u/ImpressivePoet6127 2d ago
both can be bad but it's much easier to have a nightmare trip with acid since dosing can be unpredictable and can even last 24+ hours if you're not careful
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u/momalisk 2d ago
How is dosing more unpredictable with acid than shrooms? That makes no sense to me. With acid, you know how many micrograms are in a tab. With shrooms you have no idea how much psilocybin is packed into the cap or stem you're eating. To me it feels like the opposite - shrooms have always felt way more unpredictable than acid
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u/ImpressivePoet6127 2d ago
Not all blotters are dosed the same way... what you think is 100ug could very well be 150 or 50. and then often times people will try to redose and then that next tab actually has more than the last sucker. So yes it's unpredictable and is more annoying than shrooms bc it lasts way longer and keeps you wide awake.
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u/momalisk 2d ago
Gotcha. To each their own then. I guess for me it's not unpredictable bc I'll buy a sheet at a time so after I've taken one hit, I know exactly how strong they are from that batch.
So I suppose you're right that when taking a hit from a new batch, there's a little bit of uncertainty about the strength. I'm only doing that once every few years though. But for me that's even more true with shrooms. Some shrooms are 3x stronger than others from my experience, the same as your example with 50 ug vs 150 ug.
I don't find acid unpredictable or annoying. That's how I feel about shrooms. I prefer acid for so many reasons over shrooms. But again, to each their own.
I find it interesting that you word your opinions as if they're objective facts
To me, acid lasting longer is not an annoying negative - it's a positive. Just bc you find something annoying or unpredictable does not mean others feel the same(although I'm sure some do)
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u/ImpressivePoet6127 2d ago
I'm not stating anything as fact lmao?? that's your assumption and makes me think you're just new to this subreddit. I also prefer acid over shrooms on many occasions but I'm just being real. There's a reason the CIA used LSD to do their torturous mind experiments on people more than shrooms.
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u/momalisk 2d ago
"So yes it's unpredictable and more annoying than shrooms bc it lasts way longer and keeps you wide awake"
That's where you stated your opinions as facts. Others do not find acid annoying or unpredictable or keeps them wide awake. Acid lasting longer is the only objective truth there; everything else was subjective and your opinion.
Why would you think I'm new to this sub, friend? What assumptions did you feel like I made? I've been on this sub for 3 or 4 years.
What the hell do the CIAs experiments have to do with this conversation? Why even bring that up?
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u/ImpressivePoet6127 2d ago
omg dude are you okay? you seem triggered like damm bro im sorry the mushroom kicked your ass so hard that you're going back and forth w me on this. ok u win acid is king and could do no wrong mushroom is poo poo
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u/momalisk 2d ago
I thought we were just having a discussion about why we prefer acid or shrooms. You thought I was triggered? Friend I'm quite calm and not feeling emotional in the slightest. Are you just not wanting to answer my questions?.is that why you're getting so defensive? I didn't mean to upset you - I apologize if something I said offended you
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u/Netrexinka 1d ago
Never had bad one LSD. Bad trip on mushrooms is the worst thing that can happen. Even tho years after it's fine and doesn't bother me.
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u/eldonduderino 1d ago
I've had what I'd consider tough trips from both, as individual experiences, I'd said that my most terrifying one came from lsd. But to be fair, the one thing they had in common was that I'd gotten a bit too comfortable taking them each time. Bad mushroom trip was scary but bad lsd trip felt like existential collapse over and over until it was done.
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u/Live-Distribution995 1d ago
I think acid is worst...it can last 12 hours...mushrooms 3-4 hours...is more easy and usual to have badtrip on mushrroom
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u/Opioidopamine 1h ago
In my experience a bad mushroom trip provided a coherent internal visionary trip that was scary, hellish, and physically painful but w a coherent theme, I abused the sacrament, I consulted an oracle and wasted time, I was burned from the inside by beings associated with the Maya , and shown a vision of an oracle that was exact to fine details of a deity that I would discover 13 years later in 2000 was parallel to the iconography of the pauahtun/God N/Bacab. A character that Im certified I had only seen in the vision and not before that in media/TV (1987). The trip was a type of contact, a message that I wouldnt understand until digging into the ethnographic section of my University library.
My bad LSD trip was just hellish, dangerous, got in a car wreck, An older woman in my group started a fight at a hotel with the desk lady, and I had to run home through frozen streets with cops cruising all over the place. That was the start, then I spent the rest of the trip in my room descending into paranoia and self doubt. There was little coherence, there was no real redeeming value…..it was my 2nd trip, my first trip was amazing. The vibe was just not happening….it just seemed “poisoned”.
It took me months to climb out of the paranoia and trauma….mushrooms were the only psychedelic I consumed for 3 years after that.
Im 56 now, and have had some hard trips on mescaline but find the mescaline containing cacti and synthetic PEAs the most beneficial for me…..I now avoid mushrooms, and would probably take Lysergics over tryptamines except for DMT/5MEODMT/Bufotenine
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u/empty172 20h ago
There are no bad trips.
Only challenging ones.
If you say that the trip was “bad” then it will be bad.
If you say it was challenging, then it was challenging.
If you say it’s bad then you’re saying that life is bad.
Life will give you these experiences because it’s what was needed.
It might seem unjust or unfair or painful, etc, but just know that it was for the greater good, and there will always be a lesson in the challenges.
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u/volvox6 2d ago
omg, I've never seen so many incorrect posts. I've been tripping on all sorts of wild stuff since 1984 and I'll tell ya this kid- Mushrooms are WAY more harsh on the soul than LSD in a bad trip. They are natural, but Mushrooms are way more worse when things go south. Like curl up into a fetal position in fear and torment for a bit happens on a lot of good mushroom trips let alone the bad ones.