My first experiences with psychedelics were not always with the right kind of people or in the right settings, and there was a lot of having to feel things out during my early years at university. I was fortunate to have been told about magic mushrooms growing all but 10 minutes from my campus in Canterbury, and sure enough, they were easy to find once we knew what we were looking for. The relative abundance and ease of finding them made this encounter appealing to many students, and perhaps there wasn’t so much care taken with who we tripped with in the early days of our exploration.
During one of my first experiences (if not my first) with magic mushrooms, I remember having a big grin on my face, but one of the people I was with suddenly stopped and said, “Oli, you’ve got a problem with me, haven’t you? I can tell you don’t like me.” My response was that I didn’t feel like I was giving off this kind of energy, and I didn’t really understand why his energy had taken a sudden turn. I was smiling and generally having a good time, and it felt like this reaction had come completely out of the blue. Reflecting on things, it later transpired that I didn’t really become friends with this person, and they generally didn’t have the kind of energy I wanted to be around, so perhaps they were picking up on some energy that I didn’t even know was there. But maybe this was also just a case of them experiencing paranoia.
What is Paranoia?
Some of us might jump to thinking of paranoia in terms of being synonymous with psychosis. But while a break from reality might accompany paranoia, it is more characterised by severe mistrust of others, where we incorrectly think they mean to cause us harm. This can then be compounded when social interactions become undermined by these beliefs and the individual withdraws due to the distress of thinking everyone is out to get them.
The experience of the self as the subject within a paranoid state can manifest in two different ways: persecution (“poor me”) or punishment (“bad me”). The “bad me” experience seems to relate more to lower self-esteem, more negative self-evaluative thinking, lower negative evaluations about others, and higher levels of depression and anxiety. Paranoia is often spoken about within social contexts. But with it not having any clear organic basis or there being any effective drug treatment for it, there have been several different psychological theories which have attempted to explain how paranoid thoughts become fixed in the mind.
Freud was known for his theory (which is increasingly challenged) relating to his belief that paranoia was a result of repressed homosexual love. Freud stated that the repressed homosexual desires would result in a state of projection, whereby one man is experiencing paranoid jealousy in his wife’s desire for another man, for example, but this is related to his own repressed desires for that man. In this instance, the man is unable to acknowledge his own desires and projects them onto his wife instead.
This isn’t something I’ve necessarily encountered amongst people who are experiencing paranoia. However, I’m reminded of one evening when I had taken LSD with some friends, along with some other additional friends who I’d met for the first time. We were watching an episode of BBC’s Life, which had a segment showing a mating ritual of some great crested grebes, involving an elaborate dance. Due to the effects of the drug, we found this dance quite funny, but one of the additional friends reacted in a way that took us by surprise. He asked, “Why are you laughing? It’s beautiful,” to which we then said, “Yes, we know it’s beautiful, but we’re laughing because it’s also funny.”
After a bit of silence, this male individual then started claiming that he wasn’t gay, despite not anyone saying anything to imply this. It seemed that in expressing his feelings of finding the grebe ritual beautiful, he had made himself vulnerable and felt that because we were laughing, we were undermining this beauty. So then, in his mind, we must have thought he was gay because it could have been interpreted that our laughing was undermining his appreciation of the beauty. There might have been something going on culturally, with this individual originally being from Cyprus, which traditionally has more conservative attitudes towards homosexuality, along with additional factors of being around people he didn’t know, which then contributed towards this paranoid episode.
Although this theory has been largely discredited, and it mainly applies to men in any case, projection is still recognised as a basis by which paranoid people will defend their position. There’s something of a feedback loop that gets created, whereby the paranoid person might elicit anger from those seen as the enemy, which then compounds the paranoid individual’s original assumptions. This can result in them feeling weakly vulnerable while also feeling morally righteous.
This kind of projection can be seen as a defence mechanism of the ego, and perhaps introducing psychedelics into the mix can potentially amplify this state when the ego is feeling like it’s being dissolved (or even dying). This has always seemed quite obvious to me when it comes to my own psychedelic experiences. And perhaps by virtue of having a horrific 50X salvia trip very early on in my explorations, where I felt like I was in an unwinnable battle against my ego and reality being completely shattered, I have understood where the potential lies to slip into a paranoid state. I was convinced I’d done something wrong and angered something (it felt like God, but a very all-encompassing architect of the universe sort of way rather than anything specifically religious), as well as encountering demonic entities who wanted to keep me trapped there. My whole reality had been visually turned upside down, and I’d forgotten that I’d smoked anything, and there was just a sense that this was now my reality forever.
At this point I felt like I had to almost physically rip myself out of the trip, but at that moment my friend had coincidentally picked up his phone charger, which to me looked like he was trying to plug me back in (either to the trip or to the matrix), and I freaked out and managed to exit the trip and the room I was in. I felt sure I’d escaped the control of something outside myself, where I was being told off by something (perhaps by the spirit of salvia, which doesn’t like being smoked) because I’d done something wrong. This was coupled with a sense of shame and isolation that followed in the weeks after the experience, where I felt like I’d got it wrong – maybe I had, but all of these feelings were very much coming from me.
While this interpretation of paranoia is linked very much to the self and ego, there might also be developmental foundations underpinning paranoia in certain individuals. There might have been a family background that was highly authoritarian and lacking in warmth or love, in which growing up in this kind of environment leads individuals to feel judged by others. There might have been high expectations and constant criticism from parents, leading someone later in life to expect this to happen in social situations.
I find that this can happen to me in social situations, particularly when I’m under the influence of psychedelics and then feel like I’ve said something stupid. There was a lot of expectation placed on me as a child to succeed academically, and although school was something of a nightmare, I managed to excel at university level. But since I decided not to continue in academia beyond postgraduate studies, I sometimes find myself in situations where I worry that I don’t know enough and then end up becoming paranoid that I’ve said something stupid. I had a difficult childhood from an emotional perspective and experienced a lot of bullying at school, which has probably impacted the way in which I interpret people’s intentions.
Some research has shown that behavioural difficulties in childhood, coupled with inadequate socialisation, may affect individuals' understanding of others' motives and intentions, leading to a suspicious misinterpretation of harmless remarks or actions.
We might find ourselves in situations where we start to feel that something is wrong, which could be as a result of these prior experiences as a child – possibly a sense of hypervigilance kicks in, where we don’t feel safe within ourselves and instead project it outwards to others. So what happens when we start to believe that these feelings are real? Does the mind suddenly start looking for explanations when we feel a sense of unease or dread?
Why Does Everything Suddenly Feel Meaningful?
Psychedelics have the power to change the amount of meaning we ascribe to something that unfolds during our experience, often shifting things from being relatively neutral to possibly being quite profound. The concept of aberrant salience can help explain how, in certain states, we can misassign importance to certain stimuli that might otherwise be considered either unimportant or neutral. Genetic predisposition and environmental factors can impact our level of salience processing and consequently affect the formation of idiosyncratic beliefs as well as sustain the conviction with which these beliefs are held.
Substances such as psilocybin and LSD have the potential to alter the brain’s predictive and information-processing systems, which might then weaken previously held habitual assumptions we use to organise perception. This can of course have some rather amazing consequences, where we feel more connected to aspects of nature and recognise the beauty of a tree or a flower, or feel fully connected to another individual during a profound conversation. These kinds of connections might position coincidences as cosmically significant or fated, where we might suspend our everyday scepticism in favour of an experience that contains more meaning.
The significance we attach to these moments doesn’t unfortunately tell us whether or not an experience is safe, dangerous, profound, or meaningless, and psychedelics such as LSD seem to increase our novelty and symbolic thinking. Along with this, it seems that our convergent thinking is reduced, so it might be that symbolic and novel thinking takes over during our experiences. We might find that coincidences feel symbolic, for example. But this could then be extrapolated to thinking that this was arranged by someone (or something) if we become susceptible to paranoid states of thought. Hidden patterns that might form insight could be perceived as some kind of conspiracy. And even intense social awareness, which can form a great basis for connection, could be misinterpreted as being watched by others in the social group.
Could paranoia be a result of our search for meaning simply coming up against fear? How can something with healing potential also provide experiences that can be threatening?
Fear Before Explanation
We might often imagine paranoia as beginning with a thought such as “they’re out to get me.”But more often than not, the paranoid individual is dealing with a sensation that might relate to dread, physical discomfort, confusion, disorientation, sensory overload, or loss of familiarity. It’s quite natural that we would want to try and make sense of these sensations, but when we’re in an altered state of consciousness, this might be easier said than done.
The impact of psychedelics on our physiology, such as increasing our heart rate, muscular tension, or fluctuations in body temperature, can change the way in which we interpret bodily sensations. We might not experience them as usual everyday parts of being alive, and instead ascribe to them some sense of danger and a feeling that something is wrong.
This feeling that something is wrong might not necessarily be totally unfounded – psychedelics can allow us to tap into these bodily sensations, which ordinarily we might not be aware of. The dynamic process of interoception can be facilitated by psychedelics and allow us to become more aware of what’s going on in our bodies, which could then provide more immediate responses to situations which could pose a threat. How much weight we give to the perceived threat could then result in a paranoid thought, but could this thinking still provide some actual protection?
Perhaps we’re unaware of people’s energy or intentions. Where psychedelics can leave us potentially vulnerable or too open, they can also have the opposite effect of making us incredibly wary of certain people or situations. I had a recent experience in London seeing the electronic artist Four Tet live, where I had taken a combination of LSD and mushrooms (probably not the wisest choice on a super hot day). Some friends and I had found our way to the front of the audience, and then I was strangely grabbed by an older woman who told me to “move over there,” to which I strongly responded by reminding her that she doesn’t control this space, and certainly shouldn’t put her hands on someone she doesn’t know.
There was no apology, but just an admission that she shouldn’t have done that, and I told her to go away and find another space. Then it got a bit weird – the energy between this person and others in the crowd was getting odd, and then at one point she started saying something that sounded like an incantation right into my ear. A wave of paranoia hit me, and I very strongly said, “You sound like a narc; stop fucking talking to me,” which interestingly caught her totally off-guard and finally made her leave.
I don’t know for sure if I necessarily believed what I said in that moment, but I certainly don’t 100% not believe it. I always find there’s always one weirdo in these kinds of environments, and perhaps the paranoia I experienced was a state of hypervigilance against dark energy from someone who was trying to manipulate the space. I did have the thought, however, of “hmm, did I just fight off a demon?”,which could have potentially led me down a challenging spiral. But since the doses I had taken were very low, I was able to calm down after that exchange. Interestingly, I then mbraced the thought in a positive way, where I was dancing around with friends almost in a celebratory fashion after having protected myself.
These kinds of situations, however, can be quite ambiguous, and someone in a paranoid state could potentially find themselves interpreting internal and external signals in a catastrophic way. I found myself able to resolve my fears in a positive way, where I focused on my friends and the positive environment of listening to interesting music with an incredible sound system.
The Importance of Set and Setting
The fact that I was with long-term friends in this situation made things a lot easier, but just being with friends in a positive environment isn’t always enough to counteract paranoid thinking.
Our inner emotional state or ‘set’ is not just informed by the responses we have to our environment or the people around us. Many factors shape how we interpret things, all the way from existing anxieties to previous psychedelic experiences, fear of losing control, relationship difficulties, shame, major life stress, or an over-emphasis on discovering some kind of ‘truth’. The setting we’re in can also impact the propensity for someone to experience paranoid thoughts after having consumed a psychedelic substance. But no setting is objectively safe, and everything relates to our experience of safety.
Concerning ourselves with set and setting can be useful in terms of understanding acute cases of paranoia, but are there instances where psychedelics have created some kind of feedback loop?
Psychedelics and Persistent Paranoia
While doing research for this article, it wasn’t surprising to see many links from services offering help for psychosis or mentioning drug addiction. While it might be tempting to think that a lot of the noise is about psychedelics and paranoia, it’s important to recognise the difficulties that people might find themselves in following challenging psychedelic experiences. Adverse effects from substances such as psilocybin can potentially contribute to episodes of paranoid thinking, even long after the intoxication has ended.
But this is not to say that psychedelics cause paranoia or that they are completely safe – but rather that the harm reduction we implement should take into account the individual’s level of vulnerability. There might be a personal family history of psychotic disorders, major psychological stress, or other compounding factors that could make someone more vulnerable to experiencing paranoid thinking. For most people, it seems that paranoia is mostly transient rather than persistent, with paranoid thoughts even being a normal part of our existence.
How to Manage Paranoia and Hold Meaning Lightly
In situations where you might be with someone who is going through paranoia, there are often practical ways to manage this. Reducing stimulation seems like an obvious first step, where we can maybe move somewhere quieter, less crowded, or more familiar.
Reducing sensory input as well as establishing safety without arguing can often allow space for the feelings to be validated, without necessarily validating the story of the paranoid individual. This isn’t to say that you dismiss their story, but rather that the focus is on the importance of safety over anything else. Certain techniques can also be implemented from an embodied point of view, such as slow breathing, finding somewhere more comfortable to sit, drinking water, eating something simple if appropriate, or focusing on physical sensations.
The idea is not to try and stop the psychedelic experience altogether, but to create a scenario that can potentially interrupt the paranoid feedback loop. This could also create space for us to experience the profound without immediately jumping to a conclusion about what it means. To be able to hold meaning lightly can allow for epistemic flexibility, where we can explore these worlds with less rigidity and create a space between experience and interpretation, which allows us to engage with fear and let it pass without it becoming a permanent story.