Whether due to fatigue, anesthetic dentist gas, or aimless desert wandering, everybody experiences a terrifying and/or euphoric hallucination at some point in their lives. Keep this guide close in order to survive the experience without succumbing to madness:

Keep Calm: Most hallucinations can be confronted by simply acknowledging them and moving on—for instance, if your roommate begins to expand into a translucent cerulean pyramid, don't make the rookie mistake of trying to climb him. Instead, remind yourself, "That's just Matt. There's no gold in Matt."

Stay Close to Your Halluci-Buddy: A halluci-buddy can keep you grounded in the real world while you confront the terrifying universes inside of you. Remember to never let go of their hand, even if it turns into a brass clockwork tentacle where the individual suckers are the faces of tiny watches.

Don't Read Into Symbolism: Sometimes hallucinations can lay your private anxieties bare as visual metaphors, but just as often they're completely random. Or, to paraphrase Dr. Freud, "Sometimes a cigar is just your computer keyboard turning into a giant, skittering centipede, and sometimes the clacking of its carapace is just you composing an e-mail to your boss that you won't remember sending."