Possible to avoid "religious trip"?

A friend of mine is planning to trip this weekend on 420-500micrograms of LSD. In readings done he has seen that at this dosage many people report a spiritual or religious experience/rebirth. For his own reasons he is not interested in becoming very existential or spiritual during the trip. He was wondering if anyone out there has experience on this and can offers any insight as to how to possibly avoid a super spiritual/religious experience. Would simply not wanting it to happen allow you to focus on other aspects of the trip? Keeping oneself occupied with nature or exploring?

 

just do a lower dose..

 

It's very strange to me that your friend wants to attempt to avoid the possible spiritual effect from LSD and this is coming from someone who is not particularly spiritually inclined. One of the most profound and interesting aspects of LSD is how it challenges ones notions of reality, so anything that can present a different way to view or understand the world is often some of the most worthwhile reasons to explore LSD.

However If you are set on refusing to explore anything spiritual, it's likely those effects can manifest in a different way which could range from a therapeutic sense of healing to just tripping out on some cool visuals and trippy thoughts.

 

Many questions come to my mind:

1) Has your friend ever tripped before?

2) What form is the LSD he is taking in, and how does he the know the dosage so precisely?

3) What are his reasons for wanting to avoid a spiritual experience, and what are his ideas of "a spiritual experience"?

I ask these questions because the way you ask the question makes it seem like he has never tripped in his life before, and/or he has an extremely undeveloped notion of what "spiritual" entails, and possibly even a maladaptive notion. This then makes me seriously question the accuracy of the dosage, and makes me even question if what he has is LSD at all. In my experience, someone who is familiar with LSD would not ask a question such as this, would not formulate thoughts such as this, and would not be concerned with having a spiritual experience on LSD. They would understand that LSD is about as spiritual of an experience as life can provide.

My true answer to your friend would be twofold: First, if his experience became describable by such words as "religious" and "spiritual", it would not be an interpretation of those words that he is currently aware of. That is, his current conceptions of "spirituality" have nothing whatsoever to do with the spirituality present in a situation such as 500ug of LSD. Secondly, I would say that a spiritual experience on LSD, much less that dose of LSD, is absolutely unavoidable in the least. It would be like asking "My friend wants to go swim in the deep end of the pool, but he doesn't want to get wet, any tips?" Unfortunately there is no SCUBA gear to protect his delicate skin against the rushing onslaught of holy ecstasy that is high dose LSD. I would let him know that the spirituality present on LSD is infinitely genuine, is infinitely true, is infinitely knowable as true without any texts or teachings, and is life-changing. It is not the religion of churches. It is not the religion of most organized religions. It is knowing, for yourself, more than you know that you are even able to know, that (...........) <- he will have to find out himself

 

Agh this sounds very... condescending... but... why would he not want to? Psychedelics were one of the most mind opening, insightful things I'd ever experienced. To try to cancel out one of these things, well, is also contradictory to doing it.... to me at least. Spiritualism along with the trip actually harmonizes quite well; has he ever done a psychedelic before? Is he atheist?

While it may be "closed-ended" of me/not adding much for me to say this... I agree with everything Guerillabedlam said. :sunny:

 

He will be taking it in the form of 4 120microgram papers from a reliable source. He has tripped before, several times, and on several substances. I understand the question is strange, and some of the fault rests on me and how I asked. His reasoning behind not wanting to have an overly religious experience comes from reading up on the experiences people have described at such dosages of LSD. LSD has, and will be, and therapeutic drug for him, one that is taken to slow down and view his own life and figure his own problems and self out. While he understands that there can be a spiritual perspective of this, he does not view it as such. To simply put it, he wants to be able to do high dosages of LSD without the fear that he will have visions of a god or angels or anything that one could describe as religious. He has never had anything like this happen before on 300ug doses.

 

if he is gonna eat 4 hits of good lsd...he should be open to seeing god

 

His views on what constitutes a "spiritual perspective" are erroneous and will be inapplicable to his current dilemma. Should he experience a "mystical state", which he most likely will, it will be in a therapeutic context and will be extremely appreciated by him, I can quite confidently guarantee.

I get the impression he thinks of tripping as "watching a movie", and he wants to be sure that by pressing "Channel 500ug", he will not accidently get stuck on a 700 Club special. This is not at all how it works. If he will have visions of angels and God, then that will be the content of his own mind being at work and displayed for him to work with for a reason. I will tell you that many people who take LSD, people who normally are used to thinking of "religious" as equaling "god and angels", have taken LSD only to be confronted with elephant-headed avatars of serenity and ability, or ecstatic experiences bearing no resemblance to judaeo-christian iconography in the least. What I am trying to tell you is that if your friend has a religious experience, it will not be the kind of "religious" that he thinks it's going to be. If he doesn't want to have visions of angels and "god", that's fine, neither do I. And I don't. And your friend hasn't either, on 300ug. And he probably won't on 500ug either. But what he will likely have, is a mystical experience, and it will be up to him to decide if this experience is incongruous with his therapeutic goals of dosing and with his worldviews of what constitutes "secular" and what constitutes "religious", as well as "divine", and other such culturally-loaded terms. All this will be shattered, I promise you, and his preconceptions about these things will be shown to be flimsy houses of cards. It is one of the most predictable clinical effects of LSD; the mystical experience.

 

Good luck mate. That dose will take him where it takes him. Some experienced trippers on this forum are questioning the wisdom of saying he wants to view his own life and figure his own problems and self out, while excluding spirituality (As part of the problem? The solution? The Potential?). I'd recommend paying attention to what people are saying. Maybe a question for the trip would be why on earth would anyone want to exclude a transcendental spiritual experience (which may or may not occur)?

 

It won't be spiritual if he doesn't want it. It is just really one of the ways of describing this experience. He can focus on scientific aspect, on what he sees or whatever.

Let us know how it went.

 

Lol ok slug you got 2 whole posts, so right off I think this is a bogus thread posted by a kid that wants totry LSD for the first time and has been reading plenty of trip reports saying that 5 hits makes you "see God" or whatever.

But but unfortunately due to some bad experiences with organized religion you have closed your mind and your heart to accepting possibility that there maybe something correct about what they say. You do not want your atheism to possibly be proven wrong.

But the thing is, ( Writer was spot on with that scuba analogy) you are saying "I want to trip but I don't want to get anything out of it" to that I say- do not eat 4 hits of acid or you will be in for the fight of your life trying not be tripping. This is what's called "A BAD TRIP"

consider this. You are wrong. God exists. You trip and find that he is in fact already inside of you and you are inside of God. You consider the concept of "infinity" and realize that God is an inevitably if you believe infinity exists. You find that all the atheistic stuff you thought you really believed in is as much BS as thinking God was some Santa like old man sitting on cloud somewhere.

You can't un-know the truth so now you have to rebuild your conception of reality from scratch. Wow omg there are things that exist but I can't prove exist, but I know it for sure! ( hey isn't that the definition of having Faith?) So you reconcile this knowledge and NOW your mind is free from the ignorance you were holding onto.

The question I have to ask is "Why Would you close your eyes and claim there is only darkness while the sun is shining on your face?"

 

Their isn't really any way to avoid anything on lsd, and when you do try to avoid something it usually goes wrong.

Like what Writer and the others were saying, you ideas of a spiritual trip and actual spiritual trip are most likely too separate ideas.

If you thinking Jesus is going to come and show the you lives of all the saints, and tell you how you can be like them, then probably not gonna happen.

Spiritual in the sense of lsd is opening up to parts of reality you didn't realize existed. So the first lsd trip you take and things first start moving, you have expanded your grasp of reality, you now realize you create the images of life inside you head and project them outwards.

But you said if go in nature, can I avoid spirituality? Probably not, because nature is spiritual, by going in nature you be even more attuned to having these reality expanding experiences.

And it goes from that just simple attunement with nature, all the way into reuniting with the primordial ooze of life. It can get deep, and there is no real way to stop it.

But you shouldn't want to. Its not something imposed on you, its you, its your insides turned inside out. So whatever is your heavens or your hells or watever inbetween, is a part of you and your experiences as a soul. Their is no reason to avoid it, just let the lsd take you wherever it wants to take you. If you find your real spirituality there will be no regret. For its the only thing we've ever really needed, yet no one seems to realize it.