Has anyone else ever experienced "the loop"?

Just wondering.. I'll try my best to explain what I'm talking about.

Almost every time I have a psychedelic experience, drug induced or not, I always find myself pondering the universe and the meaning of life and such.. And many of those times I find myself getting stuck in a thought loop. I've tried to describe it before, but it's tricky. I was reading experience reports on erowid one day, and this one was actually on amanitas muscarias, though the substance doesn't matter.. This is how this individual described it, and when I read this account my stomach dropped and it brought tears to my eyes.. That's how deeply it resonated in me. I've always wondered if other people have similar experiences to this or not.

This is how CuriousJim's erowid report described it:

"It was like knowing everything and knowing nothing at the same time. Always learning in the hope of finding out and getting ever closer to the goal, but then realising that it's all been done before and that I was never meant to find out at all. Realization that I'll never get there fades to a memory and then back to blissful obscurity only to be rediscovered after another heart breaking journey of discovery and failure. On and on, faster and faster. Each rotation of the loop getting smaller and smaller, faster and faster. This must be what it's all about, this is going to be the real lesson here I can feel it. The loop turns into a blur and I'm obviously at the end of it.
Then BANG. The loop was part of a loop. "

Like knowing that you can never know, but you've always known at the same time. Sometimes with me this is also accompanied by a DEEP feeling of eternal recurrence. That I've lived this life (or others) a million times before, and will continue to do so for eternity. And that all the fear that comes with this realization is just a reflection of the eternal love of the source, that I can only glimpse.

Not sure who wrote it, but I also recently came across this poem:

"
I
Return
Eternal
From calculated sleep
To find my Self
Again
Living this All
Anew

I choked
I learned to eat
I set the trap that's catching Me
And in combing Eternity
I have found that It was in my back pocket the entire Time
I merely forgot
I was always here

Thou art That
I Am

"

I've experienced this, many times, and i know EXACTLY what you and Cj are saying....

I think this is a "side effect" of trying to think to much. As our mind can't comprehend anything unfathomable, it creates a loop to confuse us. I believe the only way to actually break from this loop would to be to go "clinically insane", which I just don't see myself (or anyone in there right mind [no pun intended]} doing.

I try to not think to much about how "everything works together" and try to examine the now, the present, my feelings at that specific moment in time... because every time I have ever tried to "think the unimpossible" I get stuck in this "loop", as you call it... and I hate listening to a repeating track of music, so why would I like to continue to think of the same thing over and over? Sad fact is, I can't help myself, my thirst for knowledge is my destructive nature, and is one of my strong weakness's... I hate it, and I've been dealing with it for as long as I can remember..... I sometimes think, "Maybe I am insane, maybe I am crazy...." and I truly might be, I don't know... I even get stuck in "the loop" while sober sometimes... if fucking sucks dude.... its REALLY sucks....

yes this had happened to me many times. i think its quite common with many different psychedelics, its in the hyperspace lexicon in the wiki as well. check it out very cool collection of terms.

speaking of annoying trip states....ya ever get stuck in cliche land? such a bitch.

Ahahaha! Wow! I get stuck there all the time on mushies! At least... if it's what I think your saying... Where you constantly... "notice?" cliche things? I dunno how to explain it, but I think it's the same thing...

Hahaha @ cliche land.. Yeah, been there too..

And Kevyn: I like your idea about staying rooted in the present moment.. Usually when I hit those loops they bother me at first.. although my past few trips it hasn't been as bad. The loops don't last quite as long, and I've finally started to be able to 'break' the loop in a way.. Usually by saying, either out loud or in my head, "I can't understand it!", and trying to accept the limits of my own mind.. When I do have that realization, which isn't everytime, I usually burst into laughter and finally move on to other thoughts..

But the loop can be quite menacing at times too. And it always seems like the same loop, and I've hit it with so many different psychedelics! Some of my LSD loops are very memorable to me, but those were my first experiences.. Overall though, my Ibogaine experiences stand out a lot I think.. I wish I could begin to explain them with words. Iboga has a very strong spirit presence for me. It felt like it was there watching me struggle hopelessly in this neverending loop. It felt ominous at the time, but Iboga is weird.. the lightness seems to come on stronger and stronger as it wears off.

Looking forward to more journey's with Aya though. She hasn't caught me up in the loop yet, but we'll see how it goes. Ugh.. Just talking about the loop makes me wish I could understand it. It just seems so.. important. substantial. meaningful. but, like some cruel joke at the same time.

I think it will be understood once we pass beyond our mortal bodies and into the reality of conciousness... that is when everything will be explained.

Uhh, I'm so jealous of you! I've wanted to take a dip in the Iboga river myself... but unfortunately the country I live in doesn't accept it (although they don't accept many other things either) and it's just incredibly hard to find (at least for me).

Also, yes that's how I tend to deal with the loop as well, laughter seems to scared the demons away and bring in the good thoughts xD

exactly... and every thing anyone says is so cliche! you feel like you can finish everyone sentences, its nuts and i agree its only happened on mushrooms to me. too funny!

i do get stuck in visual loops quite a bit with dmt. it became a problem for a while. the trips felt really shallow and silly. i would have a dmt entity repeat a series of motions like a video looped together. one time it was this crazy blue monkey type creature in a jeweled tank top flying from my bed to my dresser then flying to and HUMPING my nightstand!!! all in a repeating visual loop.
quite funny but not exactly a real deep moment

Now that would be an interesting sight! Can't really comment on the mushrooms but I have had some visual loops on NN. one that stands out in particular:
There was little cartoony robots dancing all around me and there was really cheesy techno music playing (not really but in my head) I started laughing hysterically. DMT made a funny! It wouldn't stop either, It just kept going and I was expecting it to shift into something else but the music and robots were still there.

thats funny stuff ^^^^^

i often have creatures do little dances as well. dmt can be quite humorous!

Yes I completely agree. I think this is a fact that some people on these forums forget because smoking spice is "SERIUS BIZNESS". But sometimes journeys are so bizarre you can't help but laugh! So laugh! That's part of the experience

Anyway I wanted to add to digital_phreedom that I completely understand the loop. But in not being able to find the answers...what about in reference too "ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find, knocketh and it shall be opened unto you" (I think like Matthew something).

I think the answers can be "found", but like you said, they are already within you. It's allowing their understanding to wash over you, without trying to explain it in human words. Just be the answer. As you said, the answer is with you, you can FEEL it. But perhaps our human vocabulary is not efficient enough to explain the answer because even by limiting the answer to words, you have already lost the whole definition. Words are like boxes, humans like to put stuff in neat little boxes and explain everything. The answer doesn't have a box methinks.

thankyou

cheers to that!

It gets a little frightening when you find yourself repeating the same actions over and over while twisted uppppppp.

sounds like salvia to me. "gator rolling" is a common action.

This sounds exactly like what happened to me on multiple substances. The first of which was in my early years huffing gas. Then later on Salvia, Mushrooms, and DXM.

The loop really kicked my ass the more I think about it though. Because every time I would be so close to figuring it out, but I just couldn't, no matter how hard or often I tried. It got to the point where I'd buy Salvia, and smoke all of it in one sitting, having trip after trip, trying to figure it out. Which is weird, because the actual loop is terrifying to me.

After all my experiences with it, I'd rather not figure it out, and just get over the whole thing completely. Although it happens almost every time I trip anymore .

In my first and only DMT trip report, I tried my best to describe it.

Cabyz:

Yeah! I've had that same "Game over - Please try again" feeling many times.. Sometimes too I kinda get the feeling that when I finally die, I'll 'wake up' to someone standing over me who will say something like "so how was it?".. To which I will be tired and disoriented. And then they'll ask me something like "Would you like to do it again?", and I'll have the illusion of making the choice, but in reality there are no other options.

That's just one of the weird scenarios that plays itself out in my head when I think about these things.. It's weird how I can have the strong feeling of living in a pre-determined world, and completely maintain the idea of free will at the same time. Logically they should contradict, but somehow I get the feeling that they both have to be true.

Yep, Digital, that's the loop that always confounds me. I like to think we all make our own choices but there is also this overwhelming feeling that we can't escape our own destiny. It's that contradiction that that makes it so hard for me to come up with a really solid life philosophy. But I suspect you're right, at some point those lines meet and run parallel .Just gotta try not to over think it. Great topic though.