How to write a character who is having a bad trip on LSD...

How to write a character who is having a bad trip on LSD? I've never taken it - is it always going to be cringey to attempt to depict drug use that you've never personally encountered?

Other urls found in this thread:

tripsafe.org/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

try LSD, you fucking square

I'd rather not, considering I suffer from extremely paranoid thoughts on a daily basis, and lose my shit even on weed.

>is it always going to be cringey to attempt to depict drug use that you've never personally encountered

Not "always". But with LSD, yes it always will be. Just take LSD or don't talk about. Even if you take LSD I think you'll find you won't want to write about it.

Get a fucking grip, you pussy

Just ask some people who have actually had bad trips on LSD you stupid nigger

LSD is very impressionistic and hard to describe, and everybody's experience is different

chances are if you actually took LSD and had a bad trip and wrote about it, I would still find it cringey to read

just don't make it blatantly obvious you have no idea what you're talking about, shit like "AND THEN HE SAW A FIFTY FOOD DRAGON"

Do research, try the trip report section at erowid.org, you can also lurk the psy board at 420 for a while but its very reliable

I'm writing a short dialogue between Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, in which they're tripping at Brian's house and they hear about the Apollo 1 fire on the radio. Brian then starts to associate the disaster with his own, spooky "Fire" song from SMiLE, and starts manically screaming to Parkes that the song is witchcraft and that he caused it. Does this sound at least vaguely consistent with a bad trip?

*not reliable

There is so much written on this subject, you should have no problem finding adequate non-fiction fodder for your fiction.

It's really no different than writing about being a race car driver or a mom. You likely haven't been behind the wheel in a professional race or squeezed another human out of your vagina, but it's not weird to write about it.

Too many people have first-hand experience of tripping nowadays. It's a ritual every college kid goes through. Your writing will be revealed as bogus to most of your audience.

Write what you know, or you'll be found out.

Is the LSD trip central to your character? I had a number of friends writing characters addicted to opiates and it was always a trainwreck. Articulate and intelligent people have a very tough time putting into words what a withdrawal is like. It's disgusting to see someone who's taken two hydrocodones try to make it up on the spot.

Take psychedelics and actually get a grip on what the experience is. As far as literary examples of LSD go, I'm not a huge fan but HST is probably the best. Everybody else sells it as too 'pie-in-the-sky' without referencing the absolute depravity that ensues after realizing you can no longer speak and can only rely on base pattern recognition.

Huxley and the Beats are worth it as they paved the way for psychedelics in literature.

Don't write anything trying to replicate Brian Wilson's mind in prose. Are you just arrogant or a fucking idiot?

I'm usually not critical on Veeky Forums, but just throw that story out.

Bad trips come in all shape and form, but there is alwyas a constant: you're stuck in your head.

You will get lots of paranoid thoughts, wich will feel intense and "real", impending doom will dominate your thoughts and feelings, and there is no way out.
If you keep your eyes open it may be too freaky to handle, if you close your eyes it will be even worse. Your thoughts are not normal thoughts anymore, instead they sound more like a single voice in your head, that you can actually hear. No sensation makes sense (you will feel buzzes on your skin, hear non-existing sounds, etc.).

Remember: there is no way out, you're stuck in your head for 12 hours and nothing (well, apart from Xanax) will change that.

I would make sure you do plenty of research about Brian Wilson. Most of what I come into contact with are past experiences occupying my mental space rather than something supernatural or other worldly. I go back to mountains I've climbed or the beach I used to go to. I remember the love from my mother and greet my fears of being irreparably lonely.

Does Brian Wilson have a history with witchcraft?

This.

If you're unwilling to try LSD for yourself, check out erowid's experience vault. Your writing will still probably be pretty unrealistic, but this will likely give you your best shot.

Are you sure? What specifically is wrong with the premise?

1. Brian Wilson is extremely intelligent and also affected by mental disorder, so you'll never accurately capture his thought process, especially influenced by LSD.
2. You've never done LSD, and you'll be writing about something so severely important to people who have done LSD that you'll just come across as a joke at best and downright offensive at worst. as said, people who have done LSD will find you out immediately. It's like when shitty sitcoms have people hallucinate after getting stoned, or movies that show a mushroom trip as seeing unicorns and rainbows. The dimmest portion of the population that is numbed by alcohol will find it pleasant, but anyone who has any vague experience at all of psychedelics will be disgusted.
3. The LSD trip is central to your plot, you can't get rid of it.
4. Generally, the plot you outlined in is silly and boring.

Like I said, I'm usually not this critical or mean, but you seem like somebody I really wouldn't like. You want to write about LSD, but you absolutely rule out the possibility of taking it? That's stupid. You should know better.

Ive actually had multiple bad trips, one ended in a seizure and a coma. Thought about writing about it but honestly it's beyond my limits do describe.

Best is to hint on it via it's effects on the character , or from the perspective of a sitter

Write what you know.

If you have never experienced a LSD trip, do not write about one.

From the outside. Trying to describe altered mental states is a fixation of the young and artless. The guy by the campfire waving flaming logs around in big Townshend pinwheels, who drops the logs, rips his clothes off, then climbs the nearest tree, hangs upside down by his knees, hoots like a chimp, loses his grip, falls nine feet on his head then throws up green slime; wakes up the next day and thinks he was a majorette at the super bowl who transformed into Caesar from Planet of the Apes and defeated the force of gravity - by the way where did all these stiches come from and why are there staples in my skull?

- now that has potential.

just pull out the old
"undescribable horror" lovecraft loved

This is pretty on point. I have just finished his ghostwritten autobiography and Brian is pretty random and a little damaged. I hesitate to say acid casualty because I have never seen young Brian on video interview.

I DO however think your plot is pretty OK. Brian does have a lot of magical thinking to him, and also you must know a little about the BOYS to write about Van Dyke who tried to help Brian craft his majestic epics before his self-described "breakdown"

Also, read that book: "I am Brian Wilson" The structure is so simple and the sentences are so short but sometimes it's real sad cringey. Brian talking about voices in his head, his brothers being dead, and getting yelled at by asshole father figures in general.

Also, if you can, do some acid. JUst make sure you have at least four or five hours worth of music / albums that you can be connected to to take your mind of your mind. And be prepared to delve far into your mind.

Your point undoes itself so many times in your own post it's laughable.

there's your perfect fucking inspiration. Make an authentic point of reference. Bang down some cid matey.

>advising self-described "extremely paranoid" person to drop acid

Time for some of you to learn the ABC of psychedelics. Try Googling "set and setting" for starters.

And OP: don't drop acid, unless you want to experience paranoia to the power of ten for twelve straight hours, and possibly wind up in a hospital.

erowid.org

Brian Wilson is an idiot, why does it matter?

It's cheap as fuck just do it before you write about it?

I've recently sent some out to friends and I do it all the time....you'll be fine

tripsafe.org/

Try it you coward. Or shut the fuck up about it.

It will be painfully unrealistic to anyone who has actually taken LSD, and probably full of cliche.

Even if you had experience with acid, it's probably best to just describe the details of what actually happens from the outside, not internal conscious experience. So you can just observe people, and describe objectively what they do. I think that's the best way to write about an acid trip. Let the reader inject their own assumptions about what the character is going through.

Any just as a side note, I don't recommend that you take acid, considering you're proclivity to paranoia, but it won't necessarily affect you the same as weed does. I'm highly socially anxious and prone to neuroticism. Weed wrecks me and makes me have suicidal thoughts, but on acid I'm fine, anxiety free actually, and I'm one of the few people I've known who finds it difficult to have a bad trip. So it doesn't always work as you'd expect. You could always try mushrooms at a small dose, see how it affects you, then try working up to a half/quarter tab of acid.

Just make sure you're around people you trust and in a nice setting.

>observe objective
top kek

kek this hero worship

>tfw no good drug dealers at college and just had to smoke shitty weed and drink

Ignore the other fuckers OP and listen to this guy.

You're story will be filled with more nuance if you mention the effect of LSD on Brian, more so than the trip. Describing a trip will come across and cheesy and won't describe the situation well, especially if you haven't done LSD. Write about his body language. His mood. His conversations.

Everyone has a different experience, but for me a bad trip is like an endless stream of circular logic. You are aware of circular and irrational nature of your thoughts, but their onslaught is nevertheless relentless.

Oh look, another one of you fucking people ruining tryptamines for everyone.

describe your paranoia, exaggerated. don't get too into what he's seeing. that's usually the cringy part.

MY EXPERIENCE:

Everything was moving like a kaleidoscope while remaining "smooth" as in there was no apparent line and no "disgusting" colors like in an actual kaleidoscope. I was thinking a lot during the peak as in I would reflect upon everything I would see. Also, when drawing I would confuse line with one another and see drawings which would then quickly disappear because the lines moved and I couldn't remember what the drawing was.

Ask for more.

Tedium.

Years ago,I was working my way through a sheet of blotter. Young and foolish,some days it was a question of Sleep or Trip,then catch a few hours before work. It made my brain tired,and like that famed Warner Bros cartoon trope of the song played on the piano that just misses the booby trapped note,it felt tedious to be in that state. The jokes were stale,the scene tiring,the joy spent,and only the urge for Reality to Get On With It permeated my being. The Cosmic All droned on like elevator muzak, and I just wanted the experience to end.

Hope this helps.

Write dense stream-of-consciousness prose depicting extreme paranoia, thought spirals and loops, constantly doubting and contradicting oneself and non-sequiturs. I wouldn't bother writing about visuals but if you do just describe distortion of the protagonist's immediate surroundings, objects lengthening, shrinking, melting shifting position etc. If your character has taken a really high dose you could go the "drowning in a sea of fractals" route.

They'd probably be very paranoid, possibly aggro, and very pre-occupied by shifting sensations and hallucinations

My least favourite thing about LSD is how long the effects last. Like yeah it's fun for a while but who wants to trip for over 12 hours? It's just tiring. My first acid experience turned into a bad trip because after a certain point I just wanted it to end and eventually I started to believe it was never going to.

If you have not taken LSD than even correctly attempting to describe its effects in an intimate way will be impossible.

Even as someone who has taken LSD a dozen times, I am unable to articulate many sensations thereof.

>than

then*. Sorry, I'm pretty hammered rn.

>Brian Wilson is an idiot
leave

Its not that hard to described withdrawals - runny nose, you wake up really late and still feel tired, you feel tired throughout the day but can't sleep, you don't have the energy or desire to do anything, you feel depressed, you feel cold, you feel nauseous.

i've taken lsd and i can articulate it.

there were colours that weren't there. colours that were there were stronger. people could articulate things without saying anything. everything was much funnier and held significance in all kinds of strange ways. mostly, it was like being a child again, when everything had meaning, and every place was a new miniature adventure.

REE LEAVE FOR INSULTING MY FAVORITE TALENTLESS HACK

>' without referencing the absolute depravity that ensues after realizing you can no longer speak and can only rely on base pattern recognition.
this has never happened to me, so YMMV on this one guys

It's the sepsis setting maxed out on you ur brain
Interpret this however you want

Despair*

I think I'll write it from VDP's perspective. It's for a creative writing module at uni - is there a chance my lecturer will find the use of Brian as a protagonist to be disrespectful?

Why write about something directly if you've never experienced it before? If you don't know what a bad trip is like, or lsd for that matter, then whatever you write will be way off. Even if you did, you wouldn't do it justice.

Write about it indirectly. Imply a bad trip. Write about the aftermath, or what other people saw. Writing about it directly, and trying to be realistic, without knowing what it's life, is a waste.

just look around on bluelight and experienceproject

What if I were to base it on the paranoid thoughts I've experienced on weed, instead? Brian famously had a hotboxing tent in his house.

I mean I get pretty paranoid on weed myself. It's a pretty awful experience. I've had much worse experience with weed than with acid, personally. Should be fun to write about.

>i can articulate it
like a child maybe

Completely different to the "paranoia" you experience on acid, if you experience any.

Why does the character have to take lsd specifically? Why do you have to write about it directly? Your plot can change to suit your personal experiences. Why can't it be, 'I smoked too much weed and got paranoid.' Then you can write from personal experience.

This is about as good a description as you will get OP without it being extremely long or specific anecdotes.

Girl With Curious Hair

What's the difference? I'd have thought paranoia is paranoia.

mate your brain on drugs is very different
with psychedelics like lsd it's similar to entering a different state of mind, and a "bad trip" is your brain not understanding this and trying to leave it in a sense

the gist of it is that it's very different to how we normally think hence why it's difficult to explain, not enough people have experienced these kind of things so our language isn't adapted to it and we don't have words accurate enough to describe what it's like

I suggest you either take it or do like other anons have suggested which is describing what you can to let the reader interpret what your character is feeling

Mfw I am writing this book and you just gave away the ending.

tbf, I think if you've ever really lost your shit on weed, as in had minor psychotic episodes, it's comparable to acid.
The only difference being that if you've ripped a few cones you can still go to sleep. Acid is a lot speedier and'll keep you up for like 15 hours.

Acid thoughts are *acidier* but it's all subjective anyway. people won't know you're faking it unless you over do it.

In my experience I can't actually remember that much from when I was peaking. I remember being on the come up and at one point I couldn't tell if I was talking to my friends in my backyard or If I was imagining it all and I was still on my trampoline. We went inside and I must have taken all my clothes off although I can't remember because I blacked out for about an hour and a half. at one point I remember one of my mates trying to feed me and wondering why the fuck he thought I wanted to eat. From what I learnt later this same scenario repeated itself about seven times.

>thanks for reading my diary desu

Because then he can't safely hide behind fiction.

This, the most intense thing about acid is how psychoanalytic it can feel. The visuals are silly at best.

>Like I said, I'm usually not this critical or mean,
>but you seem like somebody I really wouldn't like
>You want to write about LSD, but you absolutely rule out the possibility of taking it? That's stupid. You should know better.

w e w l a d

>The visuals are silly at best
m8 you're retarded

No, he's absolutely right. Go watch cartoons if you want visuals.

>taking a drug known for its ability to distort both visual and mental processes simultaneously thus allowing the user to reflect on the state of their own consciousness
>dismiss visuals as "silly"
I think you're the one who doesn't properly appreciate the drug

Go take bath salts if you want a brain fuck

>muh kaleidoscopes
eat a dick cunt

It's not generally a good idea to write about a drug you've not taken but OP's example description isn't too far off.
OP's reason for not trying it is also sensible.
No need to be so flipping angry about it.

Also it doesn't matter if OP writes it and gets it wrong. It's just a story.

You're an idiot though.

It's not about brainfuck, the other user said psychoanalytic. The implication is that it can make your unconsious processes conscious and provide insight into onself. You do know that psychedelic means the psyche made manifest, right?

You're stuck on an early bardo, desu.

Kapppppa

Do you even know what psychoanalytic means you fucking nigger, it's not even how the drug works you're not bringing out this mystical "unconscious" that Freud was talking about

you're also retarded


If you take LSD for only the mental effects you're just as stupid as those who take it only for the visual effects

Wew, lad, please tell me how you are so knowledgeable about what the LSD experience is and isn't capable of.

Or, since this is lit, why don't you actually go and read a fucking book on the subject. I recommend The Transpersonal Vision, or Psychedelic Explorers Guide.

Why bother reading about something you can easily experience and learn the science behind

those books sound a lot like pseudo science 2bh but I'll have a look

Listen to what people say who have taken it. Read what they wrote about it. Don't copy it, try to understand the underlying principles.

Just look through a kaleidoscope and drink some rancid milk, you'll soon know what its all about without ever having to take actual drugs.

t. never taken acid

Nah

Take your regular paranoid thoughts and blend them together with the feeling in your brain that comes from a deep yawn. Then also make the character create catagories that describe concepts from only one example for instance a leaf might be leaftown or a place that is around the corner might be the land of the snakes.

t. never took actual drugs

If you manage to give yourself a really bad fever that's not totally unlike the mindset of tripping.

I mean, it is different but it's about as close as you can get without drugs.

Holy shit you're retarded

Just take it while having in your pocket 2 Xanax tabs.
If you don't know how to use the darknet just buy 1P-LSD (literally the same thing, but legal) or AL-LAD (literally the same thing, but legal and it lasts only 6 hours).
When you'll get freaked the fuck out either resist or take the xanax tabs. If you take them the trip will die out in 5 minutes and you will be fine. Those 5 minutes are enough to understand what thinking under LSD feels like at low doses (1 to 2 blotters).

wah stop triggering meEEEEe
>different state of mind
lol so deep lmao

Yeah steer clear if that's the case, LSD might just bounce you over some mental line into a Bad Trip or a psychosis.
If you're gonna do it anyway, get a trip-sitter.

Yeah, it will...

I can't even find words to describe most highs I've experienced.

...

Weed makes me paranoid sometimes but acid has never had such an effect on me

It's just dumb, for a variety of reasons. Brian's mental illness prevents him from being understood. To try to write his perspective is foolish. Writing from VDP's perspective is better suited because it matches your viewpoint- rational, sober in comparison, not mentally ill.

>is it always going to be cringey to attempt to depict drug use that you've never personally encountered?
Yes

:(