What is it like to smoke weed while tripping on psychedelics?
Friday, 17 January, 2025.
Weed plants. Photo courtesy: Unsplash.
Weed makes psychedelic trips stronger.
Smoking or consuming high doses of weed can increase paranoia and anxiety while tripping on psychedelics such as acid, shrooms and changa.
Research has linked regular weed use to an increased risk of developing schizophrenia and psychosis. So it’s probably a smart idea if you blaze 24/7 to avoid mixing it too often with psychedelics.
If you really want to try the weed/psychedelics combo, start small-scale. In other words, start by smoking a joint, rather than punching a cone, eating a weed edible or smoking a dab, which all tend to hit harder. After this, wait an hour. Most psychedelics last a while, so there’s no rush!
If you’re planning to mix weed with psychedelics, make sure you have a sober trip-sitter.
In Australia, punching cones at a doof campsite at sunrise while tripping dicks on shrooms or acid is practically a national pastime. So is smoking a joint on a shroom-fuelled bushwalk, packing a fat cone in your bedroom at the end of a trip to sleep and spinning out some changa (DMT) with a bit of baccy and green. A lot of people who enjoy the relaxing and reflective aspects of weed also enjoy the mystical awe-inspiring side to psychedelics. Us humans are a curious bunch.
But those who are not so well versed in the art of tripping and the lung punishment of ripping cones daily may be in for a wild and potentially frightening time when mixing weed and traditional psychedelics.
How does weed interact with traditional psychedelics?
Val is a really experienced tripper. He’s tripped on large doses of shrooms alone and written about research chems as a journalist. He likes smoking DMT and he’s currently growing the cactus peyote with the intention of extracting mescaline, a niche psychedelic drug. So let’s just say he knows what he’s talking about.
Val had a psychotic break when he was a teenager after hitting a Christmas tree sized cone while tripping on acid (or what he thought was acid). The trip quickly spiraled out of control. Val was trapped inside his mind, haunted by paranoid thoughts and voices that weren’t real. He says he wasn’t right for a year after that experience.
“If weed chills you out, then some on the comedown is cool. Regular pot smokers can usually blaze through the experience,” he tells Users News. ‘But I reckon if you’re not a regular smoker then steer clear while tripping.”
“It enhances the visuals but it also causes dissociated feelings and thoughts. Mind loops are more common and so are bouts of paranoia,” Val warns.
This isn’t hearsay. There’s not a lot of official scientific research on the interaction between these psychedelics and weed but what we do know seems to back up Val’s claims. Neuroscientists believe that weed and common psychedelics interact with the same parts in our brain (the same “receptors”). Surveys of drug users, meanwhile, reinforce the theory that weed makes a psychedelic trip stronger. But we won’t bore you with scientist boffin talk. Plus, any weed and psychedelic enthusiast knows that weed has somewhat similar effects to some psychedelics. That is, like psychedelics, weed, especially in high doses, can cause us to perceive time differently, heighten our senses, bring on euphoria and prompt bouts of uncontainable laughter from the simple act of making a cup of tea.
(Note: when we’re talking about traditional psychedelics, we don’t mean MDMA or ketamine. Those drugs aren’t really psychedelics in the purist sense. They’re something else. We’re talking about magic mushrooms, acid and DMT in particular.)
One online survey from 2022 with over 300 respondents found weed intensified mystical experiences and visuals. This study directly linked high doses of weed to more challenging experiences on psychedelics, fear and feelings of insanity. If you’re smoking weed or eating a weed edible at the end of a trip with the intention to sleep, it’s important to recognise that the weed could actually bring back the trip and have the opposite effect (in other words, it’ll keep you awake). So you should wait until the trip has absolutely ended to smoke some green to nod off.
Interestingly, the study also found that the group of respondents who don’t smoke weed while tripping experienced the highest levels of grief. This is only one small-scale study and measuring subjective experiences is, by nature, imprecise, so the results should not be read as proven fact. But this last finding could suggest that smoking weed may take the emotional edge off a psychedelic trip. For some people, this may be a desirable outcome. If you’re using psychedelics with the express purpose of healing yourself internally, however, avoiding weed could help you experience the full emotional rollercoaster.
Research suggests that regular weed use, particularly starting from a young age, can increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and psychosis. It’s something to consider when seshing. Evidence from the Global Drug Survey shows that 37% of hospital emergency department visits in 2017 by people tripping on magic mushrooms also involved weed. For people presenting at hospital with LSD-related difficulties that same year, the proportion who had also smoked weed while tripping was 50%. These figures don’t necessarily tell us a whole lot because we have no idea how many people using magic mushroom or acid (LSD) without needing emergency treatment. But many of those survey said mixing substances was the reason their trip went downhill.
A lot of cultural commentators, journalists and health professionals argue that the medicalisation of weed has meant that the pendulum has now swung so far to the pro-weed side that there now isn’t enough public discussion about the drug’s downsides. A lot of people don’t realise there are dangers related to cannabis, a natural plant. As well as schizophrenia and psychosis, depression, anxiety and amotivational syndrome have been linked to long-term and heavy cannabis use.
Not all adverse effects involve long-term use. Possible acute effects include orthostatic hypotension (acute low blood pressure, which can make you suddenly feint) and panic attacks. Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, meanwhile, remains a seriously under-studied and under-reported health condition.
A 2024 study, which explored concurrent cannabis and psychedelic use among music festival attendees in Colardo (in the US), also found that weed makes psychedelic experiences stronger. However, 25% of participants said that cannabis helps them deal with the challenging aspects of a psychedelic trip. In contrast to the aforementioned 2022 study, this more recent study used a broader definition of psychedelics which included MDMA and ket, which tend to pair very well with weed, alongside traditional psychedelics.
Regardless, the jury is still out on this topic.
We need to recognise that mixing weed and psychedelics doesn’t automatically equate to a bad experience. There’s no universal drug experience, and you can have a lot of fun mixing drugs.
Another peer, Bella, tells Users News a similar story to Val. On one occasion, on a big dose of acid on holiday, a friend brought out some weed.
“I’m deep in the acid trip now and think a few puffs will be fine. Weed had never done much for me before and maybe in this state it’ll actually be fun,” Bella recounts.
“Absolutely incorrect. I go to my room immediately as the pot starts to hit, stare at the ceiling and then proceed to believe that I start dying and being reborn over and over again. Each time I ‘come back to life’ I wake up in every room that I had lived in throughout my life. This ordeal goes on for realistically a few minutes but feels like hours.”
These peer stories are remarkable precisely for how unremarkable they are. That is, they’re really common. There was no shortage of people with difficult experiences smoking weed while tripping keen to chat to Users News. Others still love the combo.
In short: smoking weed while tripping makes a trip stronger. It also makes it last longer. If weed works for you or you’re a daily pot smoker with a high tolerance, this can lead to a really fun time. But it goes both ways. If you end up going down the rabbit hole of negative thought patterns instead, it can lead to a really challenging time. It’s hard to break out of that spiral once you’re stuck within it.
Our top tips on how to trip safely with weed
In a nutshell, you need to feel safe and supported when taking psychedelics. Especially so when weed is in the mix. We live in a world where it’s rare for people to use one substance alone on a particular day. We like to dip our fingers in many waters. So we know people will continue to mix weed with strong psychedelics regardless.
We often call the importance of our mental state and environment when tripping “set and setting”.
In terms of “set”, it’s vital you’re in the right place mentally before taking any psychedelics. Remember: psychedelics are intense. Not only do they alter our vision and create mystical experiences, they can amplify what is going on inside our mind. You may also be in for a long trip. A 2C-B trip will last roughly 4 hours, a mushie trip is usually around 5 or 6 hours and an acid trip is around 10 hours.
“Setting” is a little more self-explanatory. When you’re taking psychedelics, you want to be in a comfy environment surrounded by trusted people, whether they’re family members, mates or someone else. In the psychedelic world, we call those trusted people “trip-sitters”. They’re there to look out for you. It helps if they’re sober but we know this won’t always be the case, especially in a party environment. (For women, the question of safety is really serious and nuanced, as we explored in a recent article).
Moreover, if you really want to try the weed/psychedelics combo, we suggest you start small-scale. In other words: we suggest you start by smoking a joint, rather than punching a cone, eating a weed edible, such as a brownie, or smoking a dab, which all tend to hit harder. After this, wait an hour. Most psychedelics last a while, so there’s no rush. Moreover, you don’t have to roll a big j. White cigarette papers are perfectly capable of making great spliffs! Alternatively, you can try smoke half of the joint. You can always finish it later if you feel like you can handle the rest.
What if I’m wigging out on weed and psychs at a festival?
If you’re having a bad trip at a music festival, gig or rave where DanceWize staff are present or you’re trip-sitting someone who is wigging out and going through the ringer mentally, the DanceWize tent is a reliable first port of call.
Dancewize volunteers in their distinctive purple high-vis vests and t shirts at HTID 2024, Sydney Olympic Park.
DanceWize members offer harm reduction advice to punters, manage chill-out zones and roam through crowds in live music spaces. They’re easily recognisable by the purple hi-vis vests they wear. Lived and living experience of drug usage is a vital part of their job description, the idea being that munted punters much prefer to chat about drugs with people like them.
A DanceWize tent is a non-judgemental safe space run by peers. It’s great if you’re not ready to escalate the situation and attend a medical tent or you’re wary of cops harassing you.