Heyy  As to the physical and mental, things aren't as clear-cut as you might think they are. Mental processes, especially those surrounding Ego Death are well-known to produce frightening physical symptoms. In fact you can count on those happening. But these are -symbolical- and psychological in origin.
They, like Ego Death, will not cause biological Death because they are meant to be a mental and spiritual hurdle to step across.
If you feel you are suffocating, by all means try to go with it. Should you fall unconscious by it the autonomic nervous system will take over and you will be OK. The bodily basis is most often psychologically induced hyperventilation or psychogenic asthma.
The latter can be especially severe but will never truely harm because its a self-limiting process.
However psychedelics are -not- Wonder Drugs, meaning an asthmatic can get a severe -real- attack and cardiac patients (me) are at an individually differing higher risk for having a myocardial infarction.
So your mind can (and will) -mimic- serious bodily events when you're getting there but will in ha healthy person never cause a -real- medical condition.
If you are susceptible to a medical condition aggrevated by stress such as epilepsy, respiratory disease, cardiovascular diseases and pregnancy (any kind of severe stress can cause miscarriage) or have either a vulnerability or an already present mental disorder you are at risk.
Said physical diseases may create life-threatening situations and the mental problems may give rise to serious psychologic disturbances.
Perfectly healthy people wont get either of this. But the problem is that one in four adults experiences one or more severe mental crises in their lifetime and you can only be reasonably assured you never had one, but are -never- sure whether one is on its way.
Well lets throw some stuff in the blender to get some idea. Lets scratch sex, race, age, social enviroment, genetic predisposition and those things and make a very homogenous guesstimate.
If assumed the crisis is associated with a 5 year aura of either susceptibility plus chance of relapse, you scratch the unlikely young and old your average life can be chopped in 10 chunks of 5 years each.
If you downplay the true figure you can assume one in four people has one chunk of higher risk in his lifetime.
So one in fourty chunks carries significant risk.
This means that over one in fourty people is at risk of activating or aggrevating a pre-existing mental problem they may not be aware of which is quite a stiff number, but if you forget the medical words and state that "one in fourty people who'll take shrooms for a time will have a horrible misadventure that makes them feel like shit for quite some time after" I say that would be conservative.
So the problem is you likely wont know there even -is- a problem until you run into it, and the most effective way to run into something you can't handle is by being ill-informed, less prepared, on a higher dose, without a guide.
Ten bees can sting the shite out of me and it will be quite painful, I will likely add a whole new chapter to the Book of Psalms but that'll be that. For someone with bee allergy even a single sting is an acute, dangerous medical emergency.
How can you know you're allergic to bees until you're stung?
Many people just cannot cope with intense experiences involving loss of control and Ego Death is one of the purest forms thereof.
If you fear losing control, or feel you have -reasons- to fear losing control, you may likely try to fight Ego Death with all your might, which causes extreme stress and anxiety.
Unfortunately some people will react to any kind of extreme anxiety and stress with traumatic reactions, a nervous breakdown or even strong activation of their mental illness. Like the sarge sez: "when you lose it you're lost until you find it again."
This is where the Benzo's come in. Hardicus mistakingly assumes they will put you on your ass and that's that
Nope: Indeed Benzo's can abort a trip.. but only a trip that is relatively uneventful
If you got generic severe anxiety (almost all bad trips are generic) then indeed its good riddance, in fact the typical response is trippers whining they're too sober all of a sudden 
But if the anxiey is a side effect of deep inner processes the effect is radically different. Then the Benzo's will only take some of the fears away but you stay on-topic: you -have to deal with it- and the Benzo's will help you do that by taking the excess fear down a notch.
Ego Death is a spiritual process. A psychedelic may activate its onset, but it's one of your higher functions. Most people confuse Ego Death with the Ego Dissolution of "Triplevel 5" but it stands apart from it.
Ego Dissolution is surrendering to the loss of the Any & All and having your "you" melt away. This is unbelievably intense but some people "routinely"  do this for years on end in level 5 trips.
You will not enter Ego Dissolution at K-Mart, but can be vividly remembered of it.
Ego Death however is in essence an Ego Dissolution but with a major difference: Ego Death means you have to come to terms with every instance of hurt, pain and fear of your entire life, step by step, and culminates in a final symbolic death-and-rebirth associated with non-negotiable surrender to your worst pains and fears.
Once past that darkest hour you're welcomed into the rest of your life: you have left the past behind you, relived and learned from it, often feel lastingly spiritually cleansed and most significantly: you will likely have many instances of Ego Dissolution should you trip, but the distinctive Ego Death features (reliving your life's experiences and Death & Rebirth processes) are behind you and will never return.
All people who've experienced Ego Death have experienced Ego Dissolution, but many who have ample experience with Ego Dissolution
haven't started the process of Ego Death yet.
Dr. Stanislav Grof (genius psychedelic therapist) describes the Ego Death process in his must-read book LSD Psychotherapy as generally taking (well) over a dozen subsequent high-dose LSD sessions with the time between sessions usually spent under strong influence of associated death/rebirth themes which differentiates the one-time process of Ego Death from the ongoing Ego Dissolutions high doses can provide for those capable of learning how to do this.
*pfffffff!* Bottom Line: Benzos are risk-carrying drugs but they should be present pre-dosed in every tripper's pocket as they can mean the difference between succeeding in taking a major psychological hurdle, perhaps ride it out and hang on, or coming down into problems that do not cease with the drug effect.
Even if there would be a real and genuine "copout pill" I would suggest that "the Blue Pill" be present in the tripgroup.
But Benzo's arent. They take the trip away if its generic, but will just help you cope with the stress and fear when the "bad trip" is all about really important things.
Any doctor will prescribe his average patient a couple of Benzo pills if he's plagued by rare bouts of stress leading to insomnia. The 10 pills a year routinely prescribed for occasional use would pose no addiction risks and in fact prescribing a tripper a single
strip of Benzo's is medically completely justifiable for any non-political doctor... Most docs are politicians tho.
I do not advocate use of drugs, especially hard drugs, but should a tripper be offered a big Klonopin, Roofie or Xanax by a trusted FOAF
I'd rather see him buy a single tab for that very special emergency he might experience or witness then let him walk away.
.
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