Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip: The Night Meaning Collapsed
A terrifying mushroom trip in Hawaii shattered my belief in the heroic dose, leaving me paralyzed by a void of meaning. This crisis ended my shared rituals with Kathleen Harrison and forced me to retreat from frequent psychedelic use, revealing a deep contradiction between my public advocacy and private fear of the unknown.
I consider myself schizophrenic, though I prefer to frame my states anthropologically rather than psychiatrically.
- state_less
I wouldn't know what to tell someone about what entering a (the?) void is like, but the closest i can imagine is a situation where you're 1000 nautical miles out to sea in a small sailboat on a pitch dark cloudy moonless night, far away from anyone. A storm is brewing and the seas are getting large, though you can't see them, it's too dark for your eyes, though you feel the force as it throws your small boat around. It's more than you bargained for, but there isn't anything you can do about it. You're in it now. You're losing control of the boat. You're afraid of what will happen if you lose control, the seas grow larger... The rains and the lightning and thunder are here and it's just too much too bear, so you go down below and lay ahull, surrendering to the sea and forces beyond your control. The sea will make of you what it will, you're fate rests with something larger than yourself. A part of you dies that night, and what emerges the next day is different from what was swallowed by the storm. Your old self at the helm, somewhat unrecognizable. And a part of you never made it out of the storm, remembering that you're always out to sea, and that you needed to come out here to remember that.
- burnto
> A further factor was cannabis. Attempts to quit left him feeling stranded in a “horribly profane” world, with a “tremendous narrowing of consciousness.” Substances that once served exploration soon functioned as psychological maintenance. “He just needed to be high on cannabis,” Harrison said. “That was his medicine… what drove everything,” keeping him from “bouncing off the ceiling.”
Clearly there were a number of factors contributing to his difficulties, but this sounds like it may be an underestimated one, maybe more than the mushrooms even. Cannabis dependency really can sneak up on people, and for some it’s quite difficult to get off it, with real physical and emotional symptoms.
- iammjm
Mixing mushrooms and cannabis can lead to some seriously weird places, just read some reports on erowid.org. And Terrance did that repeatedly.
I did this once and ended up completely languageless for a moment, like unable to write and speak at all. Then I would have very intense visions so I would try to close my eyes but alas! my eyes have been closed this whole time. Then there were black holes eating up my field on vision, like clusters of dead pixels on a computer screen, spreading.
Also, I think Terrance suffered from a brain tumour which eventually killed him - I wonder if his migraines and experiences were influenced by that too.
And then there’s this quote from Leary, I think: “Hang up the phone once you got the message”. Psychedelics are no joke. I do advocate for them as sporadic psychological aide because they truly do loosen up the rigid structures in your mind and allow for a lasting change and improvement. But each session should be treated with utmost respect. There should be an understanding that each has the potential to be the best or the worst experience of your life.
- nowittyusername
Yeah... this made me reflect on my own bad trips decades past. I havent done4 many psychedelics only a handful, but I did have what one could call a bad trip or 2... maybe. It didn't look like it on the outside but internally it was profound. One in particular stood out that had me inhabit this universe but all semblance of emotional ties were cut from that reality, I am sure I would have felt pure terror if i was able to feel anything at the time. odd thing for sure as I am describing a horrible experience from memory but at the time i was unable to feel anything at all. An emotional echo of sorts i guess.... well anyways I do think that experience had a profound affect as the "nothing matters" sentiment stuck around since then. For a long time now I thought I peered in to "the void of reality" but thinking on it objectively now, maybe that was a assumption wrongfully borrowed from a bad trip. After all why should the natural state of things be so bereft of anything. If anything the universe is capable of being witnessed only through the eyes of a subjective observer... Bah anyways ive rambled for long enough. Good read.
- niwtsol
https://web.archive.org/web/20260719160409/https://psychedel...
- cj17382
It's important to have a spiritual practice to go alongside psychedelics to weather the ontological shock.
- sjs382
Don't incapacitate yourself during a major weather event.
- neuralkoi
> Terence told friends, “history’s going to end any day now.” Friends worried they’d “gone off the rails,” and Dennis later conceded they had a point.
I always imagine the recklessness of psychonauts like McKenna as something like dragging a high powered electromagnet across the skull to force altered states while doing who knows what to the membrane.