Psychedelic ego death and its strange aftermath
The Dark Side of Good Trips

Psychedelic ego death and its strange aftermath
Are you suffering as a result of an ego death experience? This article discerns between a number of troubling outcomes of an ego death experience.
The very question, “Am I now enlightened, for making it through this overwhelming, yet essentially elective and recreational experience?” and the fact that it is so often posed after surviving an experience of ego death, is kind of telling.
The TL;DR answer: it kind of depends on your definition of the term, but probably not. Let’s get into it.
What do we mean when we use the term Ego Death? What is it that dies? Is this a good thing? What happens during an ego death experience? And what happens afterward?
Are you feeling less than grounded after a psychedelic experience? Are you having trouble sleeping, or experiencing the build up of unknown energies? Are you feeling inexplicably afraid at times? Read this article for insights and ways of coping with this psychedelic ungroundedness.
Psychedelic experiences can be radically different from those we are used to. What knowledge has history given us about approaching psychedelic experiences? And what can we learn from contemporary approaches towards the use of psychedelics?
What are the risks involved in taking psychedelic drugs? Can these risks be compared to those associated with other so-called drugs of abuse? Are there other kinds of risks involved?
In other words, what could possibly go wrong?
Psychedelic experiences, whether “good” or “bad,” can be tremendously insightful. That is why you should start working on integrating the experience as soon as you can, if you want the insights to last, and to start informing your actual moment-to-moment experience of being human.
So what happens when you trip?
We’ll discuss the stages through which a psychedelic experience moves, and will then talk more at length about the different Realms of Insight that can be identified in a psychedelic experience.