How To Sober Up From A Mushroom Trip

Even the best laid plans occasionally go wrong. When taking a psychedelic drug, or any drug for that matter, you should always proceed with some care and planning to make the chances of a good trip more likely. However, for one reason or another, bad experiences can occur, and it’s important to know how to deal with them. In fact, having the knowledge of how to deal with a bad trip is likely to give you a feeling of safety, and reduce the chances of one occurring in the first place.

So, for that reason alone, you should read this article. Below, we’ll explore what a mushroom trip is, what a bad trip is, and how to sober up from a mushroom trip if you feel you’ve had enough and you want to return to normal. Before we begin, it’s worth noting that you can’t go immediately from tripping to sober, but you can ultimately bring yourself down to a level that’s much more comfortable and manageable.

What is a mushroom trip?

A magic mushroom trip is the name given to the effects of a moderate to large dose of psilocybin/psilocin—the active compounds in Psilocybe mushrooms that cause the high. A shroom trip can range from mild, merely tinkering at the edges of reality, to intense and transcendental. However, unless very high doses are taken, most trips remain comfortably in the realm of reality, even if that reality becomes fairly distorted. For this reason, the vast majority of mushroom trips feel safe and manageable, even when they feel a little uncomfortable.

The effects of a mushroom trip may include the following:

• Visual: Warping, saturation of colour, wobbling, objects appear to breathe, tracers, etc.
• Auditory: Sounds are enhanced, it may be difficult to locate the source of a sound, keeping track of speech might be difficult.
• Physical: Most shroom trips often have a physical element, where users feel energy running through their bodies—this is very often pleasant.
• Mental: Thought patterns change and become deeper, people are able to access and interact with thoughts in unusual ways, thought loops may occur in the earlier stages of the high.

How long does a mushroom trip last?

The bulk of a mushroom trip lasts between 3–4 hours, with the effects dwindling in the two hours or so following this period. After this, most people report what is known as an “afterglow”, a comfortable, often sleepy feeling where you don’t quite feel sober but you also don’t feel high.

So the good news is that, before you even try to sober yourself up from a mushroom trip, it really won’t be long before it happens naturally. For those having the time of their lives, this brevity can sometimes be a little disappointing.

How to sober up from a mushroom trip

If, however, you’re having a bad time, or you’ve just taken too much and you find the effects overwhelming, there are steps you can take to bring yourself down and reduce the high to a point that’s manageable and comfortable. From this point, you should feel okay to wait out the remainder of the trip.

Stay calm and patient

Most importantly, if you can stay calm and exercise some patience, you’ll find that the most intense effects abate by themselves. Stress and panic will amplify the worst of the effects, making them seem much worse than they are.

For experienced users, remaining calm becomes second nature, but for those new to these drugs, being told to remain calm can seem like an impossible challenge. So, if you don’t have the techniques at hand to calm yourself, the following steps should help you get there!

Create a safe place

Creating a safe space will give you somewhere to go through your experience, no matter how intense it is. Make your space, wherever it may be, a little more cosy and peaceful. The very act of caring for a space, and by extension yourself, will give you something to focus on and make you feel as though you’re taking control of the situation.

Tip: If you’re reading this before tripping, you can make your experience much richer by preparing a safe place in advance.

Stay hydrated

A drink of water is a godsend for many maladies, including an overly intense shroom trip. Not only is the act of hydrating yourself good for you, but it can work as a welcome distraction. Take the time to focus on the sensation of the water in your mouth, and of it going down your throat. This should take you out of your head and into your body, which is another good way to calm down.

Also, consider drinking something sugary, and this can help to speed up the rate at which your body metabolises the psilocin flowing through your veins, and will actually help you to sober up faster.

And stay away from caffeine! Caffeine will increase feelings of racing thoughts, panic, and anxiety. If you’ve already consumed caffeine, then try eating a banana, which can counteract its effects somewhat.

Trip Stopper 3000

The Trip Stopper 3000 is a natural blend of valerian and maltodextrin—two soothing compounds. This product is specifically designed to relax the mind and help people to sober up from psychedelic drugs. In spite of the name, don’t expect it to fully stop your trip; rather, it will just bring you down a little bit, to a better place.

Trip Stopper 3000

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Distract yourself

Sometimes, we all need a little distraction. This could be music, a conversation with a friend, or a film or series. We suggest getting lost in some of your favourite music, as this can be particularly enjoyable when tripping, and could turn a bad experience into a good one.

Don’t be tempted to distract yourself by browsing the internet or messaging people on your phone. This sort of mental stimulation can be quite destabilising when you’re in the trippy state, and will probably make it worse. Instead, distract yourself with something you can get lost in.

Find support

If you have someone you can be open with and trust, then you could talk to them for support. For many people, this might not be a realistic option when high, but for those who can do this, it can be a big help. Just be sure the person you talk to will not judge you at all, as even the slightest judgement will hurt immensely when high.

Rest

It might seem like the opposite to what you want, but sometimes just lying down somewhere comfortable and letting the experience wash over you is the best course of action. Couple this with your favourite soothing album, and this experience can be really quite incredible. You might be surprised—what feels like an intense and overwhelming experience can suddenly be quite transformative if you can give into it.

Bad trip: How bad is it, really?

If you want to sober up, it’s likely it’s because you’re having a bad trip. Some knowledge you can arm yourself is this: the bad trip that we’re taught about as children and teenagers basically doesn’t exist. Instead, a bad trip is, almost all the time, just a particularly uncomfortable, overly intense experience. You won’t lose your mind!

So, working with our more accurate definition of a bad trip, let’s look at how to avoid one.

How to avoid a bad trip

If you haven’t heard of set and setting, then you should do your due diligence and check it out. Put very simply, set refers to mindset, and setting refers to the environment in which you trip. If you enter a trip with the right mindset and a suitable space, then chances are you’ll have a good time. Equally important is to learn to spot a bad set and setting, so you know when/where not to trip.

In short, if you have a lot of stressful things going on, you’re feeling pressured, or you don’t have somewhere secure and private to trip, then you’re far more likely to find the effects overwhelming.

Avoiding a bad shroom trip comes mostly down to good planning. Make sure you have the time and space to have the full experience—no exceptions! And regarding your mental state, you don’t necessarily need to be happy, but you shouldn’t be in despair. If you enter a trip with a racing mind or very strong emotions, these feelings are likely to intensify.

Sobering up from shrooms: Be patient!

You can by all means reduce negative feelings during a shroom trip, but the best thing you can do for yourself is this: understand that the experience will come to an end by itself, and that you will be okay! If you can truly believe this, you won’t need to bring yourself down, as you will be able to ride out the experience.

If you’re not up to that just yet, fair enough! It takes time to be able to do this. Follow the steps outlined above, and you will most certainly be able to get your mind in a better place until everything returns back to normal.

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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