People don’t like to hear it because it sounds like invalidating toxic positivity, but you’re right. Aside from fringe cases, there’s no bad trips- only challenging trips. It may even be traumatic, but that doesn’t make it an inherently bad trip; it’s all about how you respond to it and what you do with it after.
Kind of, yeah. If you think this is dumb (beyond your reductionist take, I mean), I’d genuinely recommend you read Viktor Frankl (I ignore the religious stuff tho, personally, tbc)
It’s a specifically important distinction to make for psychedelics though. If you go into it thinking bad trips are real, you’re more likely to have a challenging trip, and you’re more likely to have a defeatist attitude afterward creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Especially when using psychedelics therapeutically, it’s extremely beneficial to go into it with the mindset that there’s no such thing as a bad trip. It reduces the odds of having a challenging trip in the first place, makes them less challenging when they do happen, and improves successful integration of challenging trips afterward
I think this is detrimental. You can reject the word bad and pretend everything is something good if you handle it right but this is just reductionist and unhelpful.
Even with your examples you speak transformativly. This is a much better framing. Turning something bad into something beneficial. Life and lemons
When you have a bad trip you’re having a bad time. Pretending that it’s impossible for a trip to go bad makes it so when one does your advice is rejected. Framing it as a “challange” puts burden and blame on the individual that is undue. On Shrooms you are not in control pretending you are often is what leads to a bad trip. Acceptance of the mindset, of the trip, is the most common and most effective suggestion one can have for psychedelics. You aren’t in control past set and setting. It’s not your fault if things go south.
Praise be the shroom god allow them to send you as they wish. Go with the water not against it. Float like a log and even though the water is quick you won’t drown.
Bad isn’t a bad word. It’s just a descriptor.
Sure, often (not always) bad can lead to good even great but rejecting the reality of the negative for forced and fictional goodness is delusion. If that trick of the mind helps that’s ok for you but inherently blaming others who recognise bad makes you lesser.
Outside of psychedelics the issue is the same. Blaming, which is exactly what you’re doing, others for the bad positioning it as framing and a failure to realise it’s all actually good hurts people with little chance for help to be given.
To go to the absolute, absurd, worst example. A child sa victim. Should they have rejected the idea of bad? What happened to them was good they failed to create? No. Can they make good out of it? Yes. The experiance was still “bad”
PS. I will read frankl. Thank you for the suggestion. Any suggestion on specific material?
There’s a broad push in the therapeutic psychedelic community to use the term “challenging” instead of “bad” because semantics and framing matter. I know it can be annoying, but some words carry an unfortunate connotation that’s best subverted by using a different word altogether.
I do take issue with the words “bad” and “good” in general, but I wouldn’t say that there are no experiences which can be described as bad. (I’m also an amoralist and believe nothing is inherently “bad,” so at least I’m consistent, however unpopular)
I recommend Frankl because I realize this sounds inherently invalidating, but if anyone is allowed to say it, it’s a holocaust survivor. I’d recommend “Man’s Search for Meaning”, which he wrote shortly after being liberated from a concentration camp.
Alright I apriciate the effort you’ve given here. I’ll see about educating myself more on your stance. Your continued explination here has been quite helpful in making your stance seem more reasonable than I first thought.
Ive been lucky enough to never have a bad trip. Im unlucky in that I’ve only been able to trip a handful of times.
People don’t like to hear it because it sounds like invalidating toxic positivity, but you’re right. Aside from fringe cases, there’s no bad trips- only challenging trips. It may even be traumatic, but that doesn’t make it an inherently bad trip; it’s all about how you respond to it and what you do with it after.
One could make that argument for anything. There’s no bad anything. No bad experiances ever. The word bad is meaningless.
Anything bad that happened to you was actually very much a good thing you just don’t know how to make it so because you responded wrong
Kind of, yeah. If you think this is dumb (beyond your reductionist take, I mean), I’d genuinely recommend you read Viktor Frankl (I ignore the religious stuff tho, personally, tbc)
It’s a specifically important distinction to make for psychedelics though. If you go into it thinking bad trips are real, you’re more likely to have a challenging trip, and you’re more likely to have a defeatist attitude afterward creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Especially when using psychedelics therapeutically, it’s extremely beneficial to go into it with the mindset that there’s no such thing as a bad trip. It reduces the odds of having a challenging trip in the first place, makes them less challenging when they do happen, and improves successful integration of challenging trips afterward
So your issue in actuality the word “bad”
I think this is detrimental. You can reject the word bad and pretend everything is something good if you handle it right but this is just reductionist and unhelpful.
Even with your examples you speak transformativly. This is a much better framing. Turning something bad into something beneficial. Life and lemons
When you have a bad trip you’re having a bad time. Pretending that it’s impossible for a trip to go bad makes it so when one does your advice is rejected. Framing it as a “challange” puts burden and blame on the individual that is undue. On Shrooms you are not in control pretending you are often is what leads to a bad trip. Acceptance of the mindset, of the trip, is the most common and most effective suggestion one can have for psychedelics. You aren’t in control past set and setting. It’s not your fault if things go south.
Praise be the shroom god allow them to send you as they wish. Go with the water not against it. Float like a log and even though the water is quick you won’t drown.
Bad isn’t a bad word. It’s just a descriptor.
Sure, often (not always) bad can lead to good even great but rejecting the reality of the negative for forced and fictional goodness is delusion. If that trick of the mind helps that’s ok for you but inherently blaming others who recognise bad makes you lesser.
Outside of psychedelics the issue is the same. Blaming, which is exactly what you’re doing, others for the bad positioning it as framing and a failure to realise it’s all actually good hurts people with little chance for help to be given.
To go to the absolute, absurd, worst example. A child sa victim. Should they have rejected the idea of bad? What happened to them was good they failed to create? No. Can they make good out of it? Yes. The experiance was still “bad”
PS. I will read frankl. Thank you for the suggestion. Any suggestion on specific material?
There’s a broad push in the therapeutic psychedelic community to use the term “challenging” instead of “bad” because semantics and framing matter. I know it can be annoying, but some words carry an unfortunate connotation that’s best subverted by using a different word altogether.
I do take issue with the words “bad” and “good” in general, but I wouldn’t say that there are no experiences which can be described as bad. (I’m also an amoralist and believe nothing is inherently “bad,” so at least I’m consistent, however unpopular)
I recommend Frankl because I realize this sounds inherently invalidating, but if anyone is allowed to say it, it’s a holocaust survivor. I’d recommend “Man’s Search for Meaning”, which he wrote shortly after being liberated from a concentration camp.
Alright I apriciate the effort you’ve given here. I’ll see about educating myself more on your stance. Your continued explination here has been quite helpful in making your stance seem more reasonable than I first thought.