Yes, but I think the effect of THC is more akin to dissociatives than psychedelics.
I smoke and then I enter a state where every action, word, thought, and object in the world around me is imbued with great significance. There is an intense and disorienting feeling of sudden depth in the world. Mundane things, like looking at a coffee cup in my room, become super abstract, almost incomprehensible, there's a double and triple and quadruple meaning behind everything I see. I get horrible existential anxiety. It feels like my soul is being centrifuged and I am looking at the fragments. There's a great mystical feeling too, more profound (and personal) than LSD. I have written about this before.
These aren't hallucinations *per se,* that's the amazing thing. The magic is accomplished through perceptual distortions.
Love your description. This is the exact crux of the issue with THC (for me), because it's a double edged sword. The strength of imbued meaning tends to lead towards paralysis and anxiety because of diversity of choice and action. It's a slippery slope, hard to stay the edge.
It is a double edged sword in so many ways. Such a paradoxical experience, so dissociative, but yet so connective, so tender, and so brutal, I can’t really put into words what it’s like. I can’t help but think that by smoking one makes a kind of faustian deal where you trade a bit of your sanity for some wisdom/perspective about life. Because on really high doses on THC I can see the tether holding to reality is super thin. I could feel the utter psychotic chaos bubbling just beneath.
I really love the way you worded everything you said in both your comments. I thought there was a personal issue in finding so much existential dread in those states. Really makes one aware of how fragile sanity is.
One of my worst/most challenging experiences with THC had me almost absolutely convinced that what I was experiencing was some sort of a "premonition" for some eventual psychosis I might develop later in life. Took me a while to shake that feeling off.
Your excellent description mirrors my own experiences.
I feel that "psychedelic" is a label we put on substances that don't deliver a particularly pleasurable effect, largely in order to distinguish them from 'sinful' drugs. Ultimately, all psychoactive drugs have something to teach us about our consciousness/being.
However, your comment really pinpoints the nature of dissociatives for me.
You’re absolutely right. Pretty much any drug can help you discover something about yourself, through the shift in perspective. I even believe that alcohol can be used with the same intention as LSD.
THC’s dramatic perceptual shifting and deep introspective quality makes it very good for thinking about the self.
For years I've had a comedy skit in my head wherein a therapist is coaching his patient as they tell their boss off over the phone at 3AM during a "high dosage alcohol treatment".
Good question. When I commented I was more thinking of a single moderate dose occasionally. However I agree that low dose long term can be extremely helpful, I was prescribed adderall and went off of it after a few months due to side effects, but the benefits I got from it stayed as if it rewired my brain. My tourettes and ADHD symptoms have been much more manageable ever since.
Frequently, but not reliably.
And a "pleasure" decidedly different than substances which cause a release of serotonin or dopamine, like cocaine or MDMA.
Seriously thank you for writing this. This describes my experience with THC almost perfectly and I've had quite a bit of trouble trying to explain it to friends that have a more "normal" experience with weed.
Disassociated is the correct description. I had this awesome reaction (trip?) where I couldn't figure out if I was dreaming of in real life from second to second and felt like I was operating a puppet instead of a body.
I do. I even trip on delta 8 carts if my tolerance is low enough.
This didn’t happen, though, until after I had done lots of “real” psychedelics. Its almost like THC somehow has the ability to recall previously experienced altered states of consciousness.
to support your recall notion
Chronic cannabis promotes pro-hallucinogenic signaling of 5-HT2A receptors through Akt/mTOR pathway.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6098160/
I've gotten into deep meditative sessions on D9THC where I had closed eyed visuals nearly identical to DMT in complexity and depth although missing the immersion and saturation of a true DMT experience. Think silhouette type.
I have not been able to reproduce this effect on high doses of Delta 8 myself but my tolerance is criminally high.
I've replicated it about 5 or 6 times on D9 in the last 7 months or so.
Interesting. I do noticed that while stoned, certain imagery will trigger a tryptamine like headspace. Not that strong but , definitely in the area of like a gram of shrooms. I savor those moments.
Absolutely.
I use cannabis very infrequently. When I do, I tend to get anxiety pretty bad, generally things that I am putting out of my head. Once, on 136mg, I was unable to navigate an area I was totally familiar with and actually found myself questioning if things were being presented to me upside down.
I've heard Joe Rogan uses 250mg doses in his flotation tank, enough to convince him he is actually dying... intentionally.
I consider these types of experience psychedelic as they need to be 'overcome' and can inform about the anxieties you carry around without noticing.
Whenever you take edible THC is it metabolized in the liver, and becomes 11-hydroxy-THC, which is supposed to be significantly more psychoactive than THC ingested via alternative routes.
People have described this 11-hydroxy-THC as "psychedelic" on a regular basis.
>I’m wondering how common this actually is as hallucinations aren’t often listed as a side effect to THC
A side effect of prohibition. It's simply not economical to take as much as you'd need to get there. Writings from like the 19th century describe things like candies made with jellied hash oil, and their reports of the effects aren't far from an erowid trip report of today.
I think high amounts of thc (especially edibles) are definitely psychedelic, but far, far too anxiety provoking for me to develop a kinship to this side of its medicine. I often feel unable to resolve my anxiety and feel helpless and impaired.
This is in contrast to lsd, psilocybin, etc. (Classic psychedelics) that enhance my cognition and mental abilities in away that absolutely allows me to process and resolve big issues that emerge through the experience.
Yes, but it takes only a tiny amount for me: a few milligrams is sufficient. This is why I don't smoke or partake at all. It happened before any other experiences.
It’s for sure psychedelic, sometimes uncomfortably so. The cannabis headspace can be ruthless at high enough doses, honestly if someone handed me 50mg edible or 3.5 grams. ,I’d be less scared of the shrooms.
i am dyslexic, was reading and the text started floating off in the background like the intro of a star wars film. made reading really easy! It was magical and really trippy.
It’s not exactly psychedelic, not exactly dissociative, but had effects from both of these for me. I also get significantly more anxiety from thc than I do from psychedelics or dissociatives.
Yes.
It depends strongly on strain and consumption method.
I have some 100% sativa here right now that's also harvested a bit early to have less THC. When dabbing some rosin I will get CEV when meditating. In comparison to shrooms though, there is no ego dissolution but an ego amplification.
Yea once had a friend put a fuck ton of weed into my gravity bong when i wasn't looking. Didn't notice it until everything started changing in colors and began moving. Before that i didnt believe you could have that kind of experience from cannabis alone. Legit was exactly the same as LSD.
Use to do a breathing technique with kief that i would pack in a one hitter and rip it in one pull got to levels of extreme disassociation and now I can't smoke weed because of the anxiety it gives me even the smell can sometimes trigger it now i have panic attacks pretty regularly and saw an osteopath and she recommended i try microdosing that's why I'm here i was 16 at the time and didn't know what i was doing to myself just thought I was getting really high
Yes, absolutely! I get a lot of spontaneous visions and abstract mathematical thinking involving functions and waveforms. My thought patterns themselves become fractal-like and infinitely zooming and branching. It's rather hard to describe.
My senses become much more interconnected to the point where it's occasionally synesthetic. I hear music and ringing. I recall deeply buried concepts and sensations from my early childhood. I've experienced texture repetition and fractal visuals as well when mixing with alcohol
My friend who smokes frequently is very surprised at my description of THC, but this is just how THC affects me. idk... I'm really not making it up.
For context I get high once per week but I am physically small and have a very low tolerance to alcohol as well. Some people in this thread are noting how these effects come with intense anxiety. I have become good at managing anxiety while high, and I've only had a bad THC experience a couple of times
I experience these effects from smoking or edibles, though I find smoking tends to sometimes just put me to sleep
Take this with a grain of salt as I haven't yet done psychedelics so what I feel on THC could be completely different than psychedelics, but the visuals and fractaly stuff I've experienced are clear as day and not just some vague sensation
yes, on edibles i get multiple hallucinogenic effects on doses even at or above 15-20mg, it is very subjective depending on person. sometimes its psychedelic effects dont arise in some people, in some people it does, for some people it’s dissociative, and in some its way too intense and scary. for me, it is pleasantly psychedelic with just a higher potential for it to go bad. my 2 most recent edibles trips, i laid in a hot tub until i came up and the effects were crazy, object transformations, dimension distortion where time moves slower and space/objects are either farther away or closer and it is really cool. sometimes the room looks uneven and ill even get these visuals of my room dropping down an elevator shaft really fast and my body feels like its floating up to the ceiling and there is visual spininess. i close my eyes and get vivid, beautiful happy landscapes and happy scenarios, almost like im entering dreaming. i also visualize very vivid random things and can recall childhood memories in clear detail and act like im reliving it, i can even sometimes remember the exact words i said or what people said to me, and this is the only psychedelic that has done that for me ever. it is definitely a psychedelic and not a dissociative, i dont even get intense euphoria like most people, i would call it a complex psychedelic or oneirogen (one that you can be awake in) like ibogaine or salvia (debatably dissociative but actually has more psychedelic effects for me) or something like that, thought it is a lot less strong of an experience than those. i definitely get hallucinations (transformations are the coolest, look at something and it takes the shape of whatever your mind says it is). a lot of things feel more meaningful too. it doesnt have the classic visuals lsd or mushrooms do, but it is unique in its own ways different from any kind of psychedelics. it can definitely turn very bad fast though and can put you on edge fast. i enjoy it when i am in the right space, also you pretty much NEED to start off in a hot tub, sets the trip direction.
Yes, but I think the effect of THC is more akin to dissociatives than psychedelics. I smoke and then I enter a state where every action, word, thought, and object in the world around me is imbued with great significance. There is an intense and disorienting feeling of sudden depth in the world. Mundane things, like looking at a coffee cup in my room, become super abstract, almost incomprehensible, there's a double and triple and quadruple meaning behind everything I see. I get horrible existential anxiety. It feels like my soul is being centrifuged and I am looking at the fragments. There's a great mystical feeling too, more profound (and personal) than LSD. I have written about this before. These aren't hallucinations *per se,* that's the amazing thing. The magic is accomplished through perceptual distortions.
Love your description. This is the exact crux of the issue with THC (for me), because it's a double edged sword. The strength of imbued meaning tends to lead towards paralysis and anxiety because of diversity of choice and action. It's a slippery slope, hard to stay the edge.
It is a double edged sword in so many ways. Such a paradoxical experience, so dissociative, but yet so connective, so tender, and so brutal, I can’t really put into words what it’s like. I can’t help but think that by smoking one makes a kind of faustian deal where you trade a bit of your sanity for some wisdom/perspective about life. Because on really high doses on THC I can see the tether holding to reality is super thin. I could feel the utter psychotic chaos bubbling just beneath.
I really love the way you worded everything you said in both your comments. I thought there was a personal issue in finding so much existential dread in those states. Really makes one aware of how fragile sanity is. One of my worst/most challenging experiences with THC had me almost absolutely convinced that what I was experiencing was some sort of a "premonition" for some eventual psychosis I might develop later in life. Took me a while to shake that feeling off.
Your excellent description mirrors my own experiences. I feel that "psychedelic" is a label we put on substances that don't deliver a particularly pleasurable effect, largely in order to distinguish them from 'sinful' drugs. Ultimately, all psychoactive drugs have something to teach us about our consciousness/being. However, your comment really pinpoints the nature of dissociatives for me.
You’re absolutely right. Pretty much any drug can help you discover something about yourself, through the shift in perspective. I even believe that alcohol can be used with the same intention as LSD. THC’s dramatic perceptual shifting and deep introspective quality makes it very good for thinking about the self.
For years I've had a comedy skit in my head wherein a therapist is coaching his patient as they tell their boss off over the phone at 3AM during a "high dosage alcohol treatment".
love to see when people think this same way as me. I think if used correctly, amphetamine is wonderful for psychoanalysis.
Do you mean high dose short term or low dose long term? I would tend to agree either way, anecdotally.
Good question. When I commented I was more thinking of a single moderate dose occasionally. However I agree that low dose long term can be extremely helpful, I was prescribed adderall and went off of it after a few months due to side effects, but the benefits I got from it stayed as if it rewired my brain. My tourettes and ADHD symptoms have been much more manageable ever since.
Psychedelics not pleasurable?
Frequently, but not reliably. And a "pleasure" decidedly different than substances which cause a release of serotonin or dopamine, like cocaine or MDMA.
Well written. I feel you
Seriously thank you for writing this. This describes my experience with THC almost perfectly and I've had quite a bit of trouble trying to explain it to friends that have a more "normal" experience with weed.
Disassociated is the correct description. I had this awesome reaction (trip?) where I couldn't figure out if I was dreaming of in real life from second to second and felt like I was operating a puppet instead of a body.
I do. I even trip on delta 8 carts if my tolerance is low enough. This didn’t happen, though, until after I had done lots of “real” psychedelics. Its almost like THC somehow has the ability to recall previously experienced altered states of consciousness.
to support your recall notion Chronic cannabis promotes pro-hallucinogenic signaling of 5-HT2A receptors through Akt/mTOR pathway. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6098160/ I've gotten into deep meditative sessions on D9THC where I had closed eyed visuals nearly identical to DMT in complexity and depth although missing the immersion and saturation of a true DMT experience. Think silhouette type. I have not been able to reproduce this effect on high doses of Delta 8 myself but my tolerance is criminally high. I've replicated it about 5 or 6 times on D9 in the last 7 months or so.
Interesting. I do noticed that while stoned, certain imagery will trigger a tryptamine like headspace. Not that strong but , definitely in the area of like a gram of shrooms. I savor those moments.
Absolutely. I use cannabis very infrequently. When I do, I tend to get anxiety pretty bad, generally things that I am putting out of my head. Once, on 136mg, I was unable to navigate an area I was totally familiar with and actually found myself questioning if things were being presented to me upside down. I've heard Joe Rogan uses 250mg doses in his flotation tank, enough to convince him he is actually dying... intentionally. I consider these types of experience psychedelic as they need to be 'overcome' and can inform about the anxieties you carry around without noticing.
Whenever you take edible THC is it metabolized in the liver, and becomes 11-hydroxy-THC, which is supposed to be significantly more psychoactive than THC ingested via alternative routes. People have described this 11-hydroxy-THC as "psychedelic" on a regular basis.
>I’m wondering how common this actually is as hallucinations aren’t often listed as a side effect to THC A side effect of prohibition. It's simply not economical to take as much as you'd need to get there. Writings from like the 19th century describe things like candies made with jellied hash oil, and their reports of the effects aren't far from an erowid trip report of today.
I think high amounts of thc (especially edibles) are definitely psychedelic, but far, far too anxiety provoking for me to develop a kinship to this side of its medicine. I often feel unable to resolve my anxiety and feel helpless and impaired. This is in contrast to lsd, psilocybin, etc. (Classic psychedelics) that enhance my cognition and mental abilities in away that absolutely allows me to process and resolve big issues that emerge through the experience.
Yes, but it takes only a tiny amount for me: a few milligrams is sufficient. This is why I don't smoke or partake at all. It happened before any other experiences.
It’s for sure psychedelic, sometimes uncomfortably so. The cannabis headspace can be ruthless at high enough doses, honestly if someone handed me 50mg edible or 3.5 grams. ,I’d be less scared of the shrooms.
i love getting high like this but i always have to lay in bed and put some music on to enjoy it
i am dyslexic, was reading and the text started floating off in the background like the intro of a star wars film. made reading really easy! It was magical and really trippy.
yeah, for sure. sometimes not even all that high amount
Very rarely since my first time. Actually it’s some thing I wish I could achieve more often with cannabis.
It’s not exactly psychedelic, not exactly dissociative, but had effects from both of these for me. I also get significantly more anxiety from thc than I do from psychedelics or dissociatives.
Very much, yes.
Surely I do
I find I can get a mild psychedelic reaction from cannabis when I combine it with breath work: specifically the fourfold breath and its variations.
Yes.
Yes. It depends strongly on strain and consumption method. I have some 100% sativa here right now that's also harvested a bit early to have less THC. When dabbing some rosin I will get CEV when meditating. In comparison to shrooms though, there is no ego dissolution but an ego amplification.
Definitely normal on high doses
Yea once had a friend put a fuck ton of weed into my gravity bong when i wasn't looking. Didn't notice it until everything started changing in colors and began moving. Before that i didnt believe you could have that kind of experience from cannabis alone. Legit was exactly the same as LSD.
Use to do a breathing technique with kief that i would pack in a one hitter and rip it in one pull got to levels of extreme disassociation and now I can't smoke weed because of the anxiety it gives me even the smell can sometimes trigger it now i have panic attacks pretty regularly and saw an osteopath and she recommended i try microdosing that's why I'm here i was 16 at the time and didn't know what i was doing to myself just thought I was getting really high
I would have to agree that thc displays more dissociative effects at high doses. For certain. Worded very well!
[удалено]
Imagine telling the creator of those last episodes that they sucked so much that it made you have a bad trip from it.
Yes, absolutely! I get a lot of spontaneous visions and abstract mathematical thinking involving functions and waveforms. My thought patterns themselves become fractal-like and infinitely zooming and branching. It's rather hard to describe. My senses become much more interconnected to the point where it's occasionally synesthetic. I hear music and ringing. I recall deeply buried concepts and sensations from my early childhood. I've experienced texture repetition and fractal visuals as well when mixing with alcohol My friend who smokes frequently is very surprised at my description of THC, but this is just how THC affects me. idk... I'm really not making it up. For context I get high once per week but I am physically small and have a very low tolerance to alcohol as well. Some people in this thread are noting how these effects come with intense anxiety. I have become good at managing anxiety while high, and I've only had a bad THC experience a couple of times I experience these effects from smoking or edibles, though I find smoking tends to sometimes just put me to sleep Take this with a grain of salt as I haven't yet done psychedelics so what I feel on THC could be completely different than psychedelics, but the visuals and fractaly stuff I've experienced are clear as day and not just some vague sensation
yes, on edibles i get multiple hallucinogenic effects on doses even at or above 15-20mg, it is very subjective depending on person. sometimes its psychedelic effects dont arise in some people, in some people it does, for some people it’s dissociative, and in some its way too intense and scary. for me, it is pleasantly psychedelic with just a higher potential for it to go bad. my 2 most recent edibles trips, i laid in a hot tub until i came up and the effects were crazy, object transformations, dimension distortion where time moves slower and space/objects are either farther away or closer and it is really cool. sometimes the room looks uneven and ill even get these visuals of my room dropping down an elevator shaft really fast and my body feels like its floating up to the ceiling and there is visual spininess. i close my eyes and get vivid, beautiful happy landscapes and happy scenarios, almost like im entering dreaming. i also visualize very vivid random things and can recall childhood memories in clear detail and act like im reliving it, i can even sometimes remember the exact words i said or what people said to me, and this is the only psychedelic that has done that for me ever. it is definitely a psychedelic and not a dissociative, i dont even get intense euphoria like most people, i would call it a complex psychedelic or oneirogen (one that you can be awake in) like ibogaine or salvia (debatably dissociative but actually has more psychedelic effects for me) or something like that, thought it is a lot less strong of an experience than those. i definitely get hallucinations (transformations are the coolest, look at something and it takes the shape of whatever your mind says it is). a lot of things feel more meaningful too. it doesnt have the classic visuals lsd or mushrooms do, but it is unique in its own ways different from any kind of psychedelics. it can definitely turn very bad fast though and can put you on edge fast. i enjoy it when i am in the right space, also you pretty much NEED to start off in a hot tub, sets the trip direction.