How to prepare for a safe psychedelic trip

Psychedelic drugs are endlessly novel. Regardless of the drugs you take and your experience taking them, tripping with psychedelics can be extremely profound in any number of ways.

While we can never fully control a trip, we can lay the groundwork to make a positive one more likely. Preparing for a psychedelic trip is key as it can help you get in the right mental and physical space to ensure an enjoyable experience. Keep reading for clear tips on how to properly prepare for your next (or first) trip with psychedelics.

Understanding the importance of set and setting

Set and setting are crucial concepts to understand when embarking on a psychedelic trip. In fact, though most often invoked regarding psychedelics, these fundamental concepts are relevant for all drugs, and even sober activities.

Set refers to mindset, or the state you are in when entering the trip. Most simply, this can be understood as your mood. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you happy or sad? Stressed or relaxed?
• How has life been treating you lately? Have you been juggling many different things, or is there little weighing you down?
• Have you been facing any personal hardships lately?

These sorts of considerations encapsulate the idea of “set”.

Setting, on the other hand, refers to the environment in which you’ll trip. There's a big difference between tripping at home with a friend versus inside a busy shopping mall. Clearly, one environment is more conducive to an enjoyable trip than the other.

To better understand the nuances of your setting, ask yourself:

• Are you likely to be disturbed?
• Do you have access to a quiet and safe place in case you become overwhelmed?
• Can you easily find food and water?

Generally speaking, taking the time to get in the right set and setting is a sound way to ensure an enjoyable psychedelic trip. By truly understanding these concepts, you’ll intuitively come to understand what does and doesn’t make you comfortable. Over time, achieving the right set and setting will become second nature.

Choosing the right psychedelic and dosage

Psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, and DMT can be considered the “big 4” of the psychedelics world. Knowing how to dose these substances is essential for a safe trip.

Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms and truffles, is generally considered the gentlest of these psychedelics and a good starting point for beginners—though it can still produce very profound effects at higher doses. Some basic dosages for psilocybin are:

• 1 gram: For light trips with mild effects
• 2 grams: For moderate trips with psychedelic effects
• 3+ grams: For heavy trips with intense effects

Mescaline is similar to psilocybin, though most users find it slightly more intense and better suited to tripping out in nature—particularly in wide, open spaces. Mescaline doses can range from 200–500 mg, which can be equivalent to 12–30 buttons of peyote or 250–700 grams of fresh San Pedro.

San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi)

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San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi)

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LSD is a step up from mescaline and psilocybin—partly because it’s more potent and also because its effects can last for over 12 hours. The effects of a standard LSD trip are intense and, whilst usually enjoyable, are more likely to induce feelings of anxiety or confusion compared to mescaline and shrooms. Researchers have loosely defined an average dose of LSD to be around 100 micrograms (0.1 mg), but doses as small as 25 micrograms are enough to induce psychoactive effects.

N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the main active compound in ayahuasca, is a world (or universe) apart from all other drugs. It is not typically considered recreational—because it tends to leave users completely inhibited for the duration of the trip. Only take DMT in controlled settings, preferably under the guidance of someone experienced and responsible. Ayahuasca is a traditional tribal beverage and doses tend to range from 20-200 ml, depending on the specific traditions of the tribe in question.

Preparing your mindset and body

Preparation will improve the quality of a trip. This doesn’t need to be excessive or obsessive—it can be as simple as setting up some mood lighting or making yourself a tasty sandwich for when you start to sober up. The key is to honour the experience by preparing in some way. Don’t just lurch into a trip without thinking, as you’ll likely find it hard to settle.

There are some specific steps you can take to prepare for your trip. Whilst they are by no means prescriptive, it can be helpful to:

• Exercise: Doing some light exercise before your trip can help your body and mind connect and improve your high. Ensure you have time to relax after exercising and before consuming your drug of choice.
• Sleep well the night before: This is hardly ever mentioned, but is one of the most beneficial steps you can take to prepare for a psychedelic trip. A tired mind is not one that is particularly conducive to tripping. A rested, energised mind, on the other hand, is.
• Do yoga or meditate: Some simple breathing and stretching before you trip can help you relax, be present and return to yourself. These techniques are also great whilst tripping.
• Eat well: Try to eat healthily leading up to the trip. Once high, you’ll notice exactly how your body feels, and if it feels well-nourished, you’ll be happier.
• Stay sober the night (or week) before: Likewise, try to go into your trip with a sober (and non-hungover) brain.
• Clear your schedule: Complete any pressing tasks before your trip so that nothing is weighing on you. Anything left to do—push it into the future. Your trip is all about the present.

Creating a comfortable environment

When you trip, it really helps to be in a comfortable environment. What this looks like will depend on your preferences. Some people want a cosy, dimly lit house; others a forest; and still others are happy amid a crowd at a rave or festival.

Don’t let anyone else dictate to you what feels comfortable. Ideally, you should prepare somewhere safe and cosy to slink off to in case everything gets too much or you just want to get away from stimuli and go inward. If in doubt, make yourself a den.

Otherwise, prepare sensory adventures for yourself. This could be music, physical activities—or something else entirely. Try to keep away from screens and, in most cases, people who aren’t also tripping with you! The exception to this rule being, of course, a trip sitter.

The role of a trip sitter

A trip sitter is someone who remains sober but accompanies you on your trip. Their role is basically to support and care for you whilst you let go. In theory, their comforting presence should help keep you safe and, in doing so, give you the ability to fully give in to the trip. Whether this works or not comes down to how safe a presence the trip sitter actually is.

In order to make the tripping person feel safe and comfortable, the trip sitter must be totally free of judgement and completely selfless. If they become bored or expect to be entertained, they will ruin the experience for the tripping person. So a trip sitter must understand and embrace their role and preferably be experienced with psychedelics.

Whether or not you choose to have a trip sitter is up to you. Some people love the caring presence of a sitter, while others find that it distracts them. Again, there’s no right or wrong here—go with what feels best to you.

Handling difficult experiences and bad trips

Truly bad trips are very rare. However, uncomfortable trips do occur and are part of the psychedelic experience. What’s important is how you deal with them. Avoiding all discomfort is not possible—just as it’s not possible in day-to-day life. A bad trip almost always happens when a natural anxiety is fought against rather than allowed.

Trip Stopper 3000

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Trip Stopper 3000

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So this is the key to handling difficult experiences: allow them. Of course, this can be a difficult thing to do and certainly scary. However, letting bad experiences wash over and through you is key to letting them pass. Some ways to embrace negative experiences during a psychedelic trip include:

• Breathe: It sounds overly simple, but it does help. You don’t need to do any fancy breathing—just try to deepen your breath a little and focus on it as it rises and falls. Try to elongate and focus on the exhale; this will calm you.
• Walk or stretch: Movement is better than inertia when you feel anxious, so go for a walk or gently stretch. Moving will get you out of your brain and into your body, and your nervous system will begin to calm down. What’s more, as you move, your breathing and heart rate will adapt to the movement, which can help calm feelings of anxiety.
• Drink water: Hydrate yourself but avoid caffeine or stimulating substances. Water is best, but you could also opt for an herbal tea.
• Tell someone: Admitting your discomfort shares the problem. And a problem shared is a problem halved. Tell someone that you’re feeling uncomfortable and you may feel less pent up and trapped—especially if you talk it over with a solid trip sitter!
• Eat something: Though not well researched, the psychedelic community reports that eating can help to reduce the effects of psychedelics. This especially seems to be the case for ingested psychedelics, such as magic mushrooms.

Post-trip reflection

Even seemingly shallow trips still have some profundity to them. Regardless of whether a trip feels totally life-changing or not, it’s worth reflecting on. This reflection is especially important as the feelings you have while tripping may make total sense at the time (requiring no verbal comprehension) but might begin to slip away once you start to sober up. As such, sitting, reflecting, and trying to verbalise these thoughts (either out loud or via writing) can help to make sense of them and integrate them into the rest of your life.

You can write in a notebook, talk to friends or record yourself talking. If words aren’t your thing, then you can draw, paint, sing, dance or anything else that comes to you.

Bringing it all together: Safe psychedelic use

Psychedelic experiences range from purely recreational to deeply spiritual, often blending elements of both. To get the most out of them, whatever your intentions, preparation is key. As we saw above, this doesn’t need to be akin to military planning. Instead, just create some kind of ritual that creates a border between “normal” life and the psychedelic experience. Reflecting on the trip can create a border on the other side and help you integrate your trip into the rest of your life, too.

Max Sargent

Max has been writing for over a decade, and has come into cannabis and psychedelic journalism in the last few years. Writing for companies such as Zamnesia, Royal Queen Seeds, Cannaconnection, Gorilla Seeds, MushMagic and more, he has experience in a broad spectrum of the industry.

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