Each month, we battle through days of bleeding, painful cramps, depressing PMS and expensive sanitary products, which makes it pretty hard to see the silver lining of periods. However, there could be a way of channelling the pain of periods into an LSD-like trip, according to Vice.
In her book Period Power, women’s health expert Maisie Hill explains the term “menstrual tripping,” which involves harnessing your cycle to give you motivation, focus, and apparently, a really good high.
Hill explains that during your first few days of menstruation “when the production of oxytocin and endorphins are at a high,” you can enter a “dreamlike and hallucinatory state” by secluding yourself in a dark room, “place your hands over your abdomen, and focus on meditative breathing.”
“The gentle high would progress into a dream-like state where I would experience visions,” Hill writes of her own experience.
According to Vice, the practice isn’t common but a number of women have experienced it. 28-year-old New Orleans woman Kim Wong-Shing told said, “I enter this sort of elevated, dreamy state where I have a hard time grounding myself in reality.”
Another woman, 29-year-old Lola Méndez said her “heightened sense of spirituality” during menstruation has given her “moments of great understanding and healing.”
I can’t say I’ve ever experienced anything more than pain and discomfort during menstruation, and according to OB/GYNs, getting high during that time of the month is “not accepted scientific terminology.”
However, John Hopkins Medicine Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences Matthew Johnson told Vice that ‘naturally occurring states of altered consciousness’ “can be associated with any number of physiological processes. So it wouldn’t surprise me that some women experience altered states during menstruation.”
Kudos to the ladies who are able to channel their frustrating period symptoms into a sweet high. For now, I’ll stick to painkillers and a hot water bottle.