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What Is a Bad Trip?

Editorial Policy | Research Policy

Psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mushrooms, and Molly can cause hallucinations known as a “bad trip”. Learn what causes a bad trip, how to identify warning signs, and how to stop it.

A trip refers to the intoxication from a drug that causes hallucinations. It is called a trip because the sensations that a psychedelic ( hallucination-causing ) drug causes can be so strange that it feels as if you are in a whole different world. A bad trip, also sometimes called a bad  acid  trip, occurs when the trip a psychedelic drug causes is negative.

Bad trips can lead to excessive fear, agitation or emotionally disturbing situations. Someone who is having a bad trip may feel as if time is standing still and may have disturbing hallucinations that cause extreme fear or mood swings.

What Causes a Bad Trip?

There are several things that can  increase the probability of a bad trip , but anyone who is using psychedelic substances is at risk of having a bad trip. Some of the things that can increase the risk of having a bad trip include:

• Taking higher doses of a psychedelic drug
• Being in a negative emotional state before using or while using psychedelics
• Being in settings with excessive stimulation
• Using  alcohol  at the same time as using a psychedelic drug
• Not having someone stay with you while using psychedelic drugs
• Not drinking enough water

While avoiding these risks can reduce your chances of having a bad trip, anyone can have a bad trip at any time while using psychedelics. Someone who has been using psychedelic drugs for years and has never had a bad trip can have a bad trip while using, even if they have not changed anything about how they use.

Drugs That Can Cause a Bad Trip

Any drug that can cause hallucinations and lead to a trip can cause a bad trip. These drugs are called psychedelic drugs and are often used for the hallucinations they create. Some common psychedelic drugs include:

• LSD  – Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known as  acid , is primarily taken for the hallucination that it creates. LSD is probably the best known psychedelic drug.
• DMT  – N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a powerful psychedelic drug that can lead to a bad trip. Because of how strong the effects of  DMT  are, it is more likely to lead to a bad trip than many other psychedelic drugs.( See More:  What is DMT
• Mushrooms  – Psilocybin mushrooms, also known as “shrooms” or “magic mushrooms,” are hallucinogenic fungi that can lead to a bad trip. A bad mushroom trip may also be referred to as a bad shroom trip.
• Molly  – Molly, a slang name for the drug  MDMA , is a psychedelic drug that is commonly used in parties or raves. Bad molly trips are more common in situations where people become dehydrated from over-partying.
• Salvia  – Salvia, also known as “sage of the diviners,” is a hallucinogenic drug that is shorter-acting and more potent than many other psychedelic drugs. Bad trips while using  salvia  are reported to be more terrifying than those experienced while using other psychedelic drugs.
• Marijuana  – Bad trips while using  marijuana  are uncommon, but can definitely still occur. Some of the most common bad trip symptoms occurring with weed are anxiety and facial numbness.

Symptoms of a Bad Trip

Bad acid trip symptoms are highly individualized and may be different from previous bad trip symptoms for the same individual. Some common bad trip symptoms include:

• A sensation that time is standing still
• Negative thoughts or interpretations of events around you
• Extreme paranoia
• Extreme and sudden mood swings
• Negative hallucinations that may include sensations, sounds or sights

If you are with someone who is experiencing these symptoms and they have recently been using a psychedelic drug, they could be having a bad trip. If you are with someone who is having these symptoms and you are not sure if they have taken any drugs, you should take them to the nearest hospital or call 911.

How to Stop a Bad Trip

Stopping a bad trip may not be possible, but there are things that can be done to  help someone who is having a bad trip . If someone is having a bad trip, they should be moved away from noise and stimulation, as this can make a bad trip worse. A bad trip guide can also help. This involves having someone who is sober stay with the person having the bad trip and talk them through the trip. Not everyone will benefit from a bad trip guide, and some people may develop a paranoid attitude towards the guide or even become aggressive.

Some medications may help to stop a bad trip, but these can only be given in a hospital. Calling 911 or going to the nearest emergency room can help provide someone who is having a bad trip with these medications.

Related Topic:   Treatment options for LSD

Carbonaro, T.M., et al. “ Survey Study of Challenging Experiences […]egative Consequences .” Journal of Psychopharmacology, August 20, 2016. Accessed August 14, 2019.

Davis, Kathleen. “ Salvia: What Are the Effects? ” Medical News Today, January 16, 2019. Accessed August 14, 2019.

Sturtz, Rachel. “ Refinery29: 7 Ways To Help Someone Who’s Having A Bad Trip .” Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2019. Accessed August 14, 2019.

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Bad Psychedelic Trips: Causes, Coping, and Prevention

Written by: Mushroom Tao

Exploring psychedelics can lead to both enlightenment and difficult experiences, known as "bad trips," characterized by distress and discomfort. Understanding causes, such as mindset and environment, and employing strategies like changing settings or grounding techniques, can help navigate these challenges. Preparation and integration are key to transforming these experiences into opportunities for growth, emphasizing the importance of a respectful and informed approach to psychedelic exploration.

The world of psychedelics offers a vast spectrum of experiences, ranging from life-changing insights to moments of sheer bliss. However, like any profound exploration, venturing into the entheogenic realm can be challenging. One term often discussed in psychedelic circles is the "bad trip." Understanding what constitutes a bad trip, its causes, and how to navigate or prevent one can ensure a safer and more beneficial psychedelic experience.

1. The Psychedelic Abyss: What is a Bad Trip?

A "bad trip" is a term some psychedelic explorers use to describe a distressing, often terrifying experience while under the influence of these substances. While many individuals seek out psychedelics for their potential for profound insights and transformative experiences, not every journey features bright colors and limitless joy. Here's a deeper dive into the intricacies of a bad trip:

• Spectrum of Experiences: The severity and nature of bad trips can vary widely. Some might experience a slight unease or discomfort, while others could confront overwhelming dread, despair, or disorientation. ‍
• Physical Manifestations: It's not just the mind that can be affected. One might also experience physical symptoms like nausea, increased heart rate, or feeling trapped or constricted. Sometimes, the journeyer might lose control of their body movements, which can be frightening. ‍
• Triggering Factors: Bad trips can be spontaneous, but often there are identifiable triggers. These can include an unsettling comment someone makes, a particular song or smell, or even a sudden change in lighting. These phenomena can trigger past traumas, seemingly buried deep within, to resurface during a journey. ‍
• Temporal Distortion: A hallmark of many psychedelic experiences, time can seem to stretch, making minutes feel like hours. This phenomenon can intensify the feeling of being stuck in a negative loop. ‍
• Potential for Growth: While the experience can be jarring, many in the psychedelic community and therapeutic circles believe that bad trips can act as a mirror, reflecting aspects of ourselves that might need attention or healing. Navigating these dark waters, especially with the support of therapy or integration practices, can lead to deep personal growth and understanding. ‍
• The Importance of Set and Setting: The mindset one has going into a trip (set) and the environment in which it occurs (setting) are fundamental. Being in a negative headspace or an unfamiliar or unsafe environment can increase the likelihood of a challenging experience.

"While the notion of a bad trip might seem like an impediment, in the broader tapestry of psychedelic exploration, it's a thread that adds depth, texture, and richness. With the right mindset, what initially appears as a setback can be the very catalyst that propels one towards personal transformation and enlightenment."

In essence, while daunting in the moment, a bad trip is a complex interplay of one's psyche, external factors, and the substance itself. Recognizing its potential as a learning opportunity and a path to deeper self-awareness can change how we approach and integrate these unpleasant journeys.

2. Roots of the Experience: Understanding the Causes of Bad Trips

Venturing into the realm of psychedelics is akin to exploring vast, uncharted territories of the mind. Like any expedition, several factors can determine whether the journey is smooth or challenging. Understanding the potential pitfalls can help in navigating this complex landscape. Let's dissect the primary causes of bad trips in greater detail:

Set and Setting

• Mindset (Set): Our internal emotional and mental state acts as the lens through which we experience the trip. A psychedelic journey can amplify feelings of anxiety, stress, or unresolved emotional issues, leading to uncomfortable or even traumatic trip sequences. You can still go on a journey when experiencing unpleasant emotional states, but you should prepare to confront and work through them. ‍
• Environment (Setting): A chaotic, noisy, or unfamiliar environment can disorient users, making them feel unsafe or anxious. It's not just about the physical space; the people around, the music, and even the lighting can significantly shape the journey's narrative.

Taking a dose higher than one's comfort level or without understanding its potency can plunge an individual into overpoweringly intense visuals, sensations, and emotions. It's essential to start low and go slow, especially with unfamiliar substances or sources, so one can gradually understand their limits.

Pre-existing Mental Health Issues

Individuals with anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, or severe depression might have a heightened risk of adverse experiences. If you have a history of psychotic episodes, please take extreme caution before exploring psychedelics. It's not just the potential for a challenging trip; psychedelics can exacerbate certain conditions or bring latent issues to the surface. Before venturing into psychedelics, a thorough  mental health screening and consultation with professionals  is advisable.

Interactions with Other Substances

Each substance, be it alcohol, prescription medication, or other recreational drugs, has a unique interaction with psychedelics. Some combinations can intensify effects, while others might lead to unsettling physical or mental responses. It's essential to be  informed and cautious about potential interactions .

Awareness, preparation, and respect for the sacraments ensure a more harmonious and beneficial experience.

3. Navigating the Storm: Coping with a Bad Trip

Embarking on a psychedelic journey brings the potential for both enlightenment and challenge. When faced with the latter, knowing how to maneuver through turbulent waters can be the difference between a harrowing ordeal and a beneficial learning experience. Here's a more detailed exploration of strategies to cope with a bad trip:

Change the Environment: A Reset Button

The surroundings can significantly impact the trip's tone. If a room feels claustrophobic or a particular song is triggering unease, making a change can act as a reset. Switching to soothing music, dimming the lights, or even stepping outside for fresh air can provide immediate relief and a shift in perspective.

Grounding Techniques: Anchoring to Reality

Amid a psychedelic whirlwind, grounding techniques act as an anchor, offering a touchpoint to reality.

• Breathing: Deep, conscious breaths can act as a calming rhythm, pulling attention away from spiraling thoughts and focusing on the here and now. You might visualize your connection with the earth. ‍
• Physical Connection: Holding onto a familiar object, like jewelry, a blanket, or a stone, can offer comfort. Consider putting your feet on the grass if you have an outdoor space. Some individuals prepare 'trip kits' with items that have sentimental value or are tactilely pleasing. ‍
• Hydration: Sipping on water or herbal tea keeps you hydrated, and the act can be a rhythmic, grounding experience. Nourishment, such as coconut water or fresh fruit, are small pleasures that can shift one's mind during challenging moments.

Seek Comfort: The Power of Presence

We cannot overstate the value of a  compassionate, understanding companion  during a bad trip. A tripsitter or trusted friend can act as a lighthouse, offering guidance and comfort amidst the storm. Their smile, a hand to hold, or gentle words can immediately soothe anxiety.

Remind Yourself: The Temporary Nature of the Experience

Amidst the intensity, losing perspective and feeling trapped in the experience can be natural. Taking a moment to consciously remind yourself that you've ingested a substance and that its effects, no matter how overwhelming, are temporary can be grounding. Some individuals find it helpful to have written notes or messages prepared in advance as reassuring touchpoints.

While challenges might arise during your psychedelic experience, these strategies can transform these moments from unpleasant hurdles into profound opportunities for growth and insight.

4. Laying the Groundwork: Prevention is Better Than Cure

Embarking on a psychedelic journey carries inherent risks and rewards. Invest time and energy into preparation to maximize the benefits and minimize potential pitfalls. Much like a traveler preparing for a voyage, the right tools and knowledge can make all the difference. Here's an in-depth look into preemptive measures to ensure a more positive experience:

Educate Yourself: Knowledge as Your Compass

Psychedelics, though transformative, are complex substances. Before diving in, you must familiarize yourself with the chosen substance.

• Research: Dive into reliable sources, books, and firsthand accounts for a holistic view of what to expect. ‍
• Effects: Each psychedelic has its unique effects, duration, and intensity. Knowing these can help you prepare mentally and physically. ‍
• Dosage: Familiarize yourself with standard dosages and understand the implications of varying doses. A small dose can offer profound insights without overwhelming. Consider practicing microdosing for a few weeks or days before delving into a more substantial journey to feel how you respond to small doses.

Create a Safe Space: Your Sanctuary

The environment plays a crucial role in shaping the trip's direction. Setting up a nurturing space can act as a safety net.

• Personal Touch: Add soothing elements such as soft lighting, comforting blankets, or your favorite incense. ‍
• Avoid Disturbances: Ensure privacy. Switching off phones or putting them on 'Do Not Disturb' mode can prevent unexpected disruptions. ‍
• Nature's Embrace: Access to a calm outdoor setting, like a garden, can be therapeutic.

Have a Trusted Sitter: Your Psychedelic Guardian

Whether you're a novice or a seasoned tripper, the presence of a  trusted, sober individual  can be invaluable.

• Experience Matters: A sitter with experience in psychedelics can offer insights, assurance, and guidance. ‍
• Clear Communication : Discuss your intentions, fears, and boundaries with your sitter before the trip, ensuring they know how best to support you.

Respect the Substance: Approaching with Reverence

These potent medicines offer windows into our psyche and the universe at large. Never underestimate their power.

• Intentionality : Set a clear intention for your journey. Whether it's seeking healing, insight, or simply exploration, knowing your 'why' can guide the experience. ‍
• Avoid Mixtures : Refrain from mixing psychedelics with other substances, including alcohol, which can muddy the waters and lead to unpredictable effects.

Proper preparation doesn't just reduce the chances of a challenging trip but enhances the depth, clarity, and transformative potential of the experience.

5. The Silver Lining: Unearthing Growth from Challenge

The realm of psychedelics often mirrors the larger tapestry of life – filled with peaks of euphoria and valleys of discomfort. Yet, just as in life, the moments shrouded in darkness often hold transformative potential. Delving into challenging psychedelic experiences can provide unparalleled opportunities for introspection and growth. Here's how:

Therapeutic Intervention:

• Guided Exploration: Engaging with a therapist familiar with psychedelic experiences can offer a structured space to dissect, understand, and integrate the lessons from a challenging trip. ‍
• Tools for Healing: Therapists can equip individuals with coping strategies, mental tools, and emotional techniques to address the contents of a bad trip and apply these learnings in day-to-day life.

Integration Circles:

• Communal Understanding:   These circles , often guided by experienced facilitators, provide a platform for individuals to share their experiences. The collective wisdom of the group can offer fresh perspectives and insights. ‍
• Validation and Support : Knowing you're not alone, hearing similar stories, and receiving empathy can be immensely healing. Such communal settings underscore the universality of human struggles and the shared journey of seeking understanding.

Spotlights on the Soul:

• Revealing Hidden Wounds: A challenging trip might resurface past traumas, unresolved emotions, or deep-seated fears. Recognizing these can be the first step towards healing. ‍
• Opportunities for Change: By highlighting areas of distress or discontent in one's life, bad trips can act as catalysts, pushing individuals towards making necessary changes, be it in relationships, careers, or personal habits.

Building Resilience:

• Embracing the Full Spectrum: By navigating through the tumultuous waters of a bad trip and emerging on the other side, individuals often find a newfound resilience and strength. The experience teaches that even in profound discomfort, one can discover grounding, understanding, and peace. ‍
• Enhanced Empathy: Going through profound internal challenges can strengthen empathy and understanding towards others, fostering deeper connections and enriching interpersonal relationships.

While the immediate aftermath of a challenging psychedelic experience might feel overwhelming, with the proper guidance and introspection, you can alchemize these experiences into stepping stones for personal growth. It's a reminder that even in the darkest nights, there's the promise of dawn and the potential for renewal and transformation.

Conclusion  

The terrain of psychedelic experiences is vast and varied, much like the myriad landscapes of the human psyche. While understandably daunting, bad trips are not anomalies but inherent parts of this explorative journey. The valleys complement the peaks, presenting a fuller picture of the mind's capabilities and depths. Having the proper foundation of knowledge acts as a compass, guiding individuals through these intricate mazes of consciousness. Preparation isn't just a safeguard against adversity but equips individuals with the tools to navigate, understand, and derive meaning from these challenges. The approach one adopts, characterized by respect for the substance and an openness to all possible experiences, determines the outcomes one can glean from these journeys. More often than not, the challenging trips, when dissected and understood, reveal invaluable insights. They might help you uncover suppressed emotions and unresolved traumas or simply test one's resilience. But in every challenge lies an opportunity to grow, understand oneself better, and reshape one's narrative. So, while the notion of a bad trip might seem like an impediment, in the grand tapestry of psychedelic exploration, it's a thread that adds depth, texture, and richness. With the right mindset, what initially appears as a hurdle can be the very catalyst that propels one towards profound personal transformation and enlightenment.

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Bad Trips Exist. Here’s How to Heal After Them.

In the psychedelic community, we often hear “bad trips don’t exist,” but that’s simply not true.

Article by console.log(""); console.log("author name"); console.log(""); Dr. Erica Zelfand .author-bio * {display: unset !important;} Published on May 15, 2023 Updated December 18, 2023

I know that bad trips exist, because I’ve had one. 

I know that toxic positivity exists, because I’ve been gaslit by it.

Here’s what I wish other people understood:

First, let’s define (and redefine) the term “bad trip,” because the phrase has become too polarized for anyone to think straight when they hear it. I think it’s because “bad trip” is an umbrella term for two very different experiences: challenging journeys and traumatic ones.

Challenging journeys are uncomfortable. They hurt like hell. They can be terrifying. They may send us to the underworld, catapult us to hell realms, or shove us way beyond our comfort zones. But when we work through those experiences—focusing on working with the material instead of running away from it—deep growth, learning, and healing happen. We emerge—hours, days, or weeks later—raw yet triumphant, with vulnerability and solace. 

When a person feels unsafe during a challenging trip, however, their journey runs the risk of becoming traumatic. 

Traumatic journeys are a serious injury to the nervous system and psyche. The word “trauma” gets thrown around a lot nowadays, so it’s important that we remember what the word really means. Trauma does not mean feeling offended or rattled. Trauma does not refer to a distressing event, but rather to the nervous system’s response to the experience. Trauma imprints on a person’s subconscious in a lasting way. Trauma can harm a person’s sense of Self, their sense of safety, their ability to navigate relationships, and their ability to regulate their emotions. Trauma, in other words, is a psychological and neurological injury that has negative ripple effects. Like everything in life, trauma can ironically come with a gift, some silver lining or shred of gold. And yet, traumatic trips are distinctly different from challenging ones, to the detriment of our wellbeing. When I talk about “bad trips,” I specifically mean traumatic psychedelic experiences.

READ: How To Survive A Bad Trip

Preventing and Transforming Traumatic Trips

Thankfully, there are things we can do to prevent traumatic trips. We also have tools for transforming challenging journeys so that they are more likely to become healing opportunities and less likely to traumatize a person. 

These include:

Intention : The reason for taking the psychedelic substance. If somebody’s intention is to have fun with their friends at a festival, for example, they may feel very perturbed when the curtain of the subconscious is pulled back and their psyche accesses challenging material (such as a rape, assault, or other intense thing the person has survived).

Set : Set refers to the person’s headspace. Are they feeling agitated when they take the substance? Are they scared? Are they taking the drug because they feel peer pressure to do so? Are they drunk or high? Research suggests that individuals with high levels of neuroticism are more likely to experience a bad trip.

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Setting : Chaotic, noisy environments that require filtering information, focusing externally, or otherwise staying on guard come with high traumatic trip potential. I’ve had many clients experience challenging and traumatic trips at raves and festivals.

Company : Tripping with people you don’t trust, or that you’re trying to impress, comes with the risk of a hard or traumatic trip. For example, one of my clients took LSD with a group of guys. During her trip she sensed that her “friends” were trying to coerce her into sex. Narcissistic or under-trained “shamans” and facilitators can also cause harm.

Substance : The drug itself matters. Pressed pills are more likely to be adulterated with other, more harmful drugs than pure preparations. Professionally, I have seen ayahuasca , LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT cause more traumatic trips than psilocybin or MDMA.

Orientation to the Drug : Does the person know more or less what to expect from the substance? I always counsel my clients on what to expect from the experience and how to navigate the trip. This includes educating them on longtime psychedelic researcher Bill Richards’ “ flight instructions .” I emphasize the importance of turning and facing the terrifying material that may arise during the journey, rather than trying to escape it. I also make sure the client understands the logistics of the substance, like how long the journey may last. Eight hours into an LSD trip, many have panicked, worrying that they broke their brain. Knowing that an LSD trip can last up to 14 hours , would have saved them a lot of distress.

Dose : Higher doses of substances typically require more orientation on how to trip, as they dig deeper into the psyche and our physical energetic holding patterns. They are also more likely to turn sour if the tripper cannot let go and surrender. The common thread here has to do with surrender. To get the most out of a psychedelic experience, we need to be willing to surrender. If we’re in a situation in which we feel that it is unsafe or unwise to surrender, we risk having a challenging trip.

READ: Set and Setting: Why Preparation Matters

Bad Trips May Still Happen Despite Set and Setting

The majority of traumatic trips occur in situations in which one or more of the above factors is sub-optimal. That being said, I personally endured a traumatic trip in which all of the above were quite dialed in. The night of my traumatic trip was the third of a three-night ayahuasca ceremony. I liked the other people in the group. I trusted the facilitators and their skills. The medicine was pure. The environment was soothing and well contained, with beautiful music. During the first half of the ceremony, I released a huge grudge I’d been holding onto for years. I enjoyed feeling more space and lightness in my body as a result.

After I drank my second dose of the brew, however, I took a hard nosedive. It’s difficult to put into words what happened, but I was thrust into an experience that was too much, too rough, too fast, and too hard for my nervous system. I felt like my brain was being raped, and like I would psychologically snap (in more of a “breakdown” than “break though” way). It all felt very, very out of control and unsafe.

The medicine carriers helped me out of the ceremony space and tried to soothe me outside. Somebody stayed with me at all times until I vomited up the salt water they gave me to drink and limped back into the ceremony space to whimper under my blanket. It took me eight years to fully recover.

Healing After a Traumatic Trip

If you have survived a traumatic trip, here are some tools that may help:

• Don’t bother trying to convince other people that you had a traumatic trip. Ignore the “no such thing as bad trips!” gaslighters and the “we all get the trip we need” bypassers. Find people who believe you and want to support you. Your job right now is not to debate the issue of bad trips: your job is to get your nervous system feeling as safe as possible so that it can heal.
• Nurture yourself. Treat yourself as you would if you had just endured a terrifying car accident, a rape, the death of a loved one, or any other potentially devastating experience that can injure the psyche, body, or spirit. Rest. Take time off if you can. Meditate. Pray. Keep your blood sugar balanced with regular, balanced meals. Exercise. Get therapy, energy work, and/or bodywork. Ask for help. Be good to yourself. I personally found warm epsom salt baths helpful, as I felt contained within the bathtub and embraced by the warm water. Craniosacral therapy was also a gentle-yet-effective modality for me.
• Even if the traumatic trip was a result of poor planning, improper set and setting, or other “user error,” be kind to yourself. 
• Ditch the victim mentality. Shit happens. It isn’t always personal.
• There may be a huge blessing in having endured this trauma, but you don’t need to hold your feet to the fire until you find it. Just heal. If the blessings are there, they will rise to the surface in due time. Ignore the bubble of toxic positivity that often comes with pseudo-spiritual communities and frequent-flier scenes. You can decide for yourself, later, if everything is indeed connected or if it’s all truly a blessing.
• You will know when and if it’s time to take psychedelics again. Don’t buckle to peer pressure. Trust yourself. Personally, going back to ceremony too soon after my traumatic experience did me more harm than good: I took the medicine while feeling nervous, and was thrust into several challenging, dysphoric trips that frankly gave me garbage data. Eight years later, however, I felt the arc was finally completed during a peyote ceremony.

Trauma exists on this wild planet, even when everyone does their best. Be gentle with yourself, and with one another.

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• This App Guides You Through Tripping
• Will MDMA Help You Have a Better Acid Trip?
• How Long Does It Take for Shrooms to Kick In?
• How To Come Down From A High: Navigating the Downslope of a Trip

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Edibles: What you need to know so you don't have a bad trip

OAKLAND, Calif. - About a week after the sale of recreational marijuana became legal in California, a woman in her 70s made this call to the poison control center in San Francisco:

I’ve just eaten a cookie. A marijuana cookie. One of my children left it behind. I didn’t realize. Until it was too late. I’ve never been high. What’s going to happen to me?

Dr. Craig Smollin, medical director of California Poison Control/San Francisco Division, relayed the gist of that call to KTVU last week as anecdotal evidence that with the legalization of edibles for anyone over the age of 21, there are likely going to be more scenarios like that. Newcomers will be ingesting edibles, and perhaps too much, for the first time, and the cannabis-infused confections might accidentally get into the wrong hands. It's especially a concern if those hands belong to children reaching for delicious-looking cookies and candies or bottles of sweet lemonade swirled with high concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana.

And this situation could be exacerbated after a KTVU investigation discovered that not every dispensary, even in the pot-savvy Bay Area, has caught up with the law. Three out of nine dispensaries that were spot-checked by reporters were selling products that do not comply with state law. One dispensary in Oakland was even selling an edible brownie that contains 10 times what California's Bureau of Cannabis allows, which is 10 mg of THC per dose. 

“Am I more worried?” Smollin asked. “From a healthcare perspective there is a concern there will be an uptick of people who call the health care and poison control centers regarding marijuana.”%INLINE%

Colorado and Washington state saw increases in marijuana-related hospital visits and calls to poison centers following the legalization of weed and the permitting of dispensaries, the Cannabist  reported.

In California, the numbers of marijuana-related calls have also been going up steadily, according to statistics compiled by poison control: Last year, there were 1,274 cases, which includes calls from individuals and emergency room doctors who might need assistance; there were 922 cases in 2016 and 872 cases in 2015. Experts added however, that many of these calls are from people who took marijuana alongside another drug and the cases cannot directly be linked to overdosing on edibles.

Still, taking too much marijuana is not fun. In fact, it can feel like you're dying, even though there are no known cases of death by marijuana overdose. 

Taking too much can leave people, especially first-time cannabis users, feeling paranoid, scared and as if time is standing still. One 48-year-old Oakland mom who had never been high unknowingly ate a single chocolate candy with 50 mg of THC on New Year's Eve. She sat on the couch not moving or speaking for most of the night while clutching her wrists and reported feeling as if she was in a catatonic stupor. The effects didn't wear off completely for 28 hours.

There are more stories like that. 

Remember that viral audio call of a Michigan police officer who confiscated -- and then ate -- way too many marijuana brownies with his wife and called 911 to request someone rescue him?  And there is the now-famous story of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who had an edible nightmare in a Denver hotel where she had eaten too much of her caramel-chocolate bar, which made her feel like “I had died and no one was telling me.”  And two years ago, 19 people, including children who were as young as six, all went to the hospital in San Francisco after they accidentally ate marijuana gummy  rings laid out on a tray at a quinceañera.

Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act  

There's not much anyone, even an emergency room doctor, can really do for someone who had eaten too much THC other than provide “supportive care,” Smollin said. In other words, he explained, it helps to have someone who is sober at your side, talking you down and being there for you, which is what he suggested to the 70-something woman who called poison control after she had eaten an entire edible cookie, which typically have 100 mg of THC in them.

In an effort to curb anticipated edible overdosing, California law as of Jan. 1 began mandating that edible manufacturers, and the dispensaries that sell the cannabis-infused products, properly label their products.

Servings must be sold and marked in doses that contain no more than 10 mg of THC. An entire package, say a cookie or a box of candy, can’t have more than 100 mg. Before legalization, there were no limits. Although the intoxicating effects of marijuana and alcohol are different, experts equate ingesting 5 mg of TCH to two glasses of wine. Amateurs are advised to even try less, perhaps 2.5 mg of TCH, at first and wait a full two hours for the effects to kick in.

2 Investigates set out this month to find whether Bay Area dispensaries are adhering to these new packaging requirements after one cannabis activist told KTVU it was the “Wild West out there,” in terms of the dosages that were being sold. Reporters with undercover cameras fanned out to nine dispensaries in Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and San Jose. All of the dispensaries had a bouncer at the door carding IDs to make sure customers were older than 21 and didn’t have felony warrants out for them. All of the dispensaries also had friendly staff.

But one third of the cannabis retailers that KTVU reporters and producers visited were selling products with too much THC. At one dispensary, for example, there was a cannabis brownie with 1,000 mg of THC – ten times the amount allowed. At another dispensary, there was an olive oil with 800 mg of THC, a fact that a customer wouldn’t know because there was no labeling on the bottle – KTVU only learned of that amount when the undercover reporter specifically asked. Another dispensary was selling candies with 25 mg of THC, more than twice the amount that’s allowed, and the employee suggested the reporter “take two” for her first time.

KTVU is not naming the dispensaries and is blurring out the faces of the employees. The point of the investigation wasn’t to specifically call out any one dispensary. It was to find out what was really being sold to consumers, and to educate people, especially who might be new to cannabis, on what they should be looking for and asking about so as not to overdose.

To be fair, while these packaging and labeling laws are now in effect, dispensaries are allowed to sell last year's higher-dose products until July 1 – as long as they are labeled at the store properly with some kind of proper label or sticker. The three dispensaries 2 Investigates found selling edibles with too much THC per dose did not have such labeling.

At Kiva Confections in Oakland, COO and co-founder Kristi Knoblich Palmer takes the new labeling laws seriously. She and her husband, Scott Palmer, have hired extra staff to relabel the company’s chocolate bars and chocolate-covered blueberries, and place them heavy-duty child-proof packaging, also required by law. It’s taking her twice as long to get the product out, she said on a recent tour of the chocolate-making factory in an industrial part of the city, where workers in white hairnets and lab coats meticulously infuse cannabis into the confections.

Palmer likened her business -- which feels part science lab, part Willy Wonka --  to a pharmaceutical company. She quality-controls her products to make sure they taste good and have just the right about of THC, which she sends off to a lab to test after each batch. “That’s how they do it with Advil,” she said, “to make sure each pill has 200 mg.”

Interactive map: Where to buy legal marijuana in California

In fact at Kiva, Palmer and her husband are choosing to dial back the dosage. They are now making doses that break off in 5 mg chunks -- even though the law requires 10 mg -- because Palmer said she’s found that smaller amount might give first-time users a “better experience.” 

It’s in her best interest to follow the dosing requirements. Not only is it the law, but she has found that recreational users, for the most part, want a little something to take the edge off, and they certainly don’t want to be calling 911 after taking a bite of her edibles.

“We make products that are easy to dose for new and existing cannabis consumers,” she said. “We make sure they're delicious and consistent with every batch that we produce. It’s all about finding your dose.”

What you need to know: Experts say that if you're trying edibles for the first time, take 2.5 mg or 5 mg of THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana. Wait a full two hours for effects to kick in. Do not eat any more while you're waiting. If you take too much, you might feel paranoid and that time is moving very slowly. Having a friend nearby can be helpful. The effects might wear off in a few hours, but they might also take 24 or 28 hours to wear off. No one has ever died from a marijuana overdose.

KTVU's Simone Aponte, Ryan Moran and Tony Hodrick contributed to this report.

Making Sense of Bad Trips Through Storytelling

Drawing on narrative theory, researchers have found storytelling is crucial to how people make sense of bad trips, turning them positive..

Bad trips, otherwise known as challenging or difficult psychedelic experiences, can occur for a variety of reasons. But whether due to aspects of set and setting or dosage, psychedelic users can find them difficult to make sense of and recover from. Indeed, some negative journeys with psychedelics can be marked by high levels of emotional distress, sometimes leading to persisting psychological or existential issues. 

As psychedelics become easier to use through changes to drug policy worldwide, in terms of both recreational and medical uses, it’s important to understand how best to help those who have had distressing psychedelic experiences . While the risk of difficult or even traumatic journeys can be minimized through proper screening, careful preparation, optimization of setting, and adequate support both during the journey and the integration phase, bad trips can still occur. And if this happens, do we know what an effective response might be?

A 2021 study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy has provided some clues. Authors Liridona Gashi, Sveinung Sandberg, and Willy Pedersen found that the stories users of psychedelics tell themselves about their bad trips can help turn these negative experiences into positive ones [1]. Before examining their findings, it will be useful to first describe what we mean by a ‘bad trip’.

What Defines a ‘Bad Trip’?

The authors of the 2021 study note, “There is no clear definition of what constitutes a bad trip.” But they acknowledge that they can include adverse reactions like anxiety, panic, depersonalization, ego dissolution , paranoia, as well as somatic symptoms such as dizziness and heart palpitations. Moreover, Barrett et al. (2016) developed a Challenging Experience Questionnaire based on challenging experiences with psilocybin, identifying seven dimensions of bad trips: fear, grief, death, insanity, isolation, physical distress, and paranoia [2]. 

We can also say that bad trips include affective (e.g. panic, depressed mood), cognitive (e.g. confusion, feelings of losing insanity), and somatic (e.g. nausea, heart palpitation) symptoms. In the 2021 study, the authors state that a key feature of a bad trip is “a feeling of losing oneself or going crazy, or ego dissolution.” It is worth highlighting that other research has found that ego-dissolution effects are correlated with the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics [3]. The loss of the sense of one’s identity during a psychedelic journey can induce fear or bliss, or even alternate between one and the other; it really depends on how one responds to this (intense) subjective effect.

As already stated, ‘set and setting’ influence negative reactions to psychedelics. ‘Set’ refers to individual factors, such as personality and mood (although knowledge of who exactly is vulnerable to bad trips remains unclear), whereas ‘setting’ refers to the social, cultural, and physical environment in which the psychedelic is taken. The type of substance and dosage can be relevant factors too. For instance, studies have associated bad trips with high doses [4]. Indeed, participants in the 2021 research described how most bad trips resulted from taking very high doses. 

Typically, participants’ trips started out well, then something ‘challenging’ was experienced, leaving the user distressed, “struggling for a solution to what was perceived as the problem.” Some tried to remind themselves they had taken a drug, whereas others sought help from trusted friends. The challenging experience gradually subsided, either because of the strategies used or because of the effects gradually wearing off. 

Now let’s turn to the design of the 2021 study on how users make sense of their bad trips.

Qualitative Interviews, Narrative Theory, and ‘Bad Trips’

The researchers carried out qualitative interviews with 50 Norwegian men and women (42 and 8, respectively). Most participants were in their late twenties or early thirties and lived in the greater Oslo area. The majority had used psychedelics between 10 and 50 times, with substances including LSD, psilocybin , 2C-B, DMT, or ayahuasca. 

The researchers recruited most participants through a closed Facebook group based on psychedelic use (made up of approximately 7,000 members). In-person interviews lasted 2-3 hours, with the researchers using open questions, enabling participants to provide detail-rich stories about the inspiration, intentions, and social and cultural contexts of their psychedelic use. Bad trips were then explored in detail. The authors concluded:

“Bad trip narratives may be a potent coping mechanism for users of psychedelics in non-controlled environments, enabling them to make sense of frightening experiences and integrate these into their life stories. Such narrative sense-making, or narrative work, facilitates the continued use of psychedelics, even after unpleasant experiences with the drugs.”

In terms of study limitations, the authors stress that the self-recruitment aspect may have impacted the results. They write: 

“For instance, it is likely that these participants are particularly interested in psychedelics and probably more motivated for using than other recreational users are. They may also have been influenced by the pro-psychedelic ideologies present in this online forum.”

Another interesting consideration is, as the authors say, “Results might have also been different if the sample was younger and their experiences happened under less controlled circumstances.”

The researchers used narrative theory to analyze the interviews they carried out, which is the study of how stories help people make sense of the world, others, and themselves. Storytelling allows us to choose what experiences we deem most relevant, fill in information gaps, bond with others, construct our personal identity, and achieve a sense of agency and coherence in our lives. As psychologist Dan P. McAdams states in the Handbook of Identity Theory and Research (2011), “Adults in modern societies construct integrative narratives to explain how they came to be, where their lives are going, and how they hope to fit in the world that awaits them” (pp. 99-100).

Bad trips will typically contain dramatic or even traumatic experiences that require both explanation and processing. Sometimes, narratively, this can be achieved by turning them into a humorous story, but often the decision is to imbue these experiences with a sense of meaning and purpose. This is consistent with the view that narratives and storytelling are crucial in recovering from trauma ( Crossley, 2000 ; Kaminer, 2006 ; Tuval-Mashiach et al., 2004 ) [5, 6, 7]. Retelling or reconstructing a traumatic incident is common in therapeutic trauma interventions.

The researchers thus use narrative theory to explain how bad trip stories are narrative work used by psychedelic users to help them process, come to terms with, and positively transform challenging experiences. However, individuals may also create helpful narratives through integration circles , which center on sharing experiences and receiving feedback in a non-judgmental space, which is common in psychedelic communities and retreats.

Turning Bad Trips Into Valuable Experiences

Almost all participants had disturbing psychedelic experiences. However, reflecting on them, they felt they were meaningful experiences, providing them with deep insights. For instance, one participant, Hannah, said: 

“The bad trips are what gives you the most insights. It’s this [bad] trip that shows you some sides of yourself that you perhaps have tried to diminish, that probably are the most important ones to understand. [These are insights] about who you really are, who you have been, what you’ve done, right. You have to see your flaws to be able to work through stuff.”

Hannah felt her bad trip allowed her to work through ego defenses and access repressed material, similar to what may be uncovered in psychodynamic therapy . Sometimes, unpleasant and frightening experiences were seen as necessary; Christina, for example, commented that you should not expect euphoric, blissful experiences from ayahuasca but ones involving self-development and hard work. 

Others feel gratitude following their bad trips. Helen, for instance, had a distressing trip on LSD in which she struggled to do ordinary activities like eating and urinating, and was convinced she had choked herself to death. However, she said:

“In the following three weeks, I woke up each morning so happy just to be alive. I felt that I had been given a gift, that I was allowed to live, that I can take trips in nature, that I have so many good people around me. I just felt so extremely lucky. I don’t think that I would experience this feeling if it weren’t for the extreme distress that I experienced.”

In addition, many participants valued their bad trips “sometimes because the bad trips had enabled them to face and resolve deep-rooted emotional barriers, interpersonal relationships or taught them to control their life.” Even participants who had extremely adverse reactions – what they referred to as psychotic episodes – felt gratitude for them.

Bad trip stories often followed the narrative structure of classical literature of many genres, folktales, and everyday storytelling in which the protagonist travels somewhere, has some experiences (sometimes challenging ones), and then returns with new insights (transforming difficulties into positive outcomes). By imbuing frightening psychedelic trips with a purpose, users can give these experiences new and positive meaning, as well as integrate them into larger life stories (i.e. the kind of direction their life is taking), thereby making them feel coherent.

Bad trip stories also gave psychedelic users an opportunity to explore “ambiguous life histories and relationships, as well as raise and discuss existential and moral questions.” The authors add that narratives surrounding bad trips can lead to flexible meaning-making, which breaks free from rigid and narrow views of personal identity. 

The authors note that narrative work following challenging experiences “may be particularly important for recreational users outside of safe and controlled therapeutic settings.” This is because, they state, “It is likely that in controlled and clinical contexts – with pre-screening of participants, professional “trip sitters” (e.g. nurses, psychologists), and follow-ups after participation – bad trips may be more benign.”

This doesn’t mean that narrative work should not also be valued in a therapeutic context. After all, this work may likewise offer benefits to those who have distressing experiences in controlled, supervised settings (when apparently everything – set and setting, and dosage – is ‘done right’). 

Previous research ( Griffiths et al., 2016 ) has found that high doses of psilocybin (average 4 grams) resulting in bad trips were, nonetheless, valued by users. 34% of those surveyed said their bad trip was among the top five most personally meaningful experiences of their life and 31% said it was among the top five most spiritually significant. 76% said the difficult trip resulted in an improved sense of personal well-being or life satisfaction. Interestingly, the degree of distress was positively associated with beneficial outcomes, so more difficult experiences were seen as more meaningful (although longer bad trips were linked to less beneficial outcomes) [8]. 

This study, like the 2021 one we’ve looked at, was similarly prone to bias because it relied on recruiting participants from psychedelic-focused online forums, which includes people who are more likely to have a favorable view of psychedelics. Nevertheless, the findings from the 2021 research indicate some of the ways people both cope with bad trips and how they turn them into valuable and meaningful experiences.

Follow your Curiosity

• Gashi, L., Sandberg, S., & Pedersen, W. (2021). Making “bad trips” good: How users of psychedelics narratively transform challenging trips into valuable experiences. International Journal of Drug Policy , 87, Article: 102997.
• Barrett, F. S., Bradstreet, M. P., Leoutsakos, J. S., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2016). The Challenging Experience Questionnaire: Characterization of challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms. Journal of Psychopharmacology , 30(12), 1279-1295.
• Kałużna, A., Schlosser, M., Craste, E. G., Stroud, J., & Cooke, J. (2002). Being no one, being One: The role of ego-dissolution and connectedness in the therapeutic effects of psychedelic experience. Journal of Psychedelic Studies , 6(2), 111-136.
• Bienemann, B., Ruschel, N. S., Campos, M. L., Negreiros, M. A., & Mograbi, D. C. (2020). Self-reported negative outcomes of psilocybin users: A quantitative textual analysis. PLoS One , 15(2), Article: e0229067.
• Crossley, M. L. (2000). Narrative Psychology, Trauma and the Study of Self/Identity. Theory & Psychology , 10(4), 527-546.
• Kaminer, D. (2006). Healing Processes in Trauma Narratives: A Review. South African Journal of Psychology , 36(3), 481-499.
• Tuval-Mashiach, R., Freedman, S., Bargai, N., Boker, R., Hadar, H., & Shalev, A. Y. (2004). Coping with trauma: narrative and cognitive perspectives. Psychiatry , 67(3), 280-293.
• Carbonaro, T. M., Bradstreet, M. P., Barrett, F. S., MacLean, K. A., Jesse, R., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2016). Survey study of challenging experiences after ingesting psilocybin mushrooms: Acute and enduring positive and negative consequences. Journal of Psychopharmacology , 30(12), 1268-1278.

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Screen Rant

10 best movies like netflix's bad trip.

Netflix's Bad Trip is filled with hilarious and shocking pranks. There are many movies out there like it or that star the film's talented cast.

Netflix’s recent release Bad Trip is an amusing experiment of a film. It stars Eric Andre and Lil Rel Howery as two friends who steal a convict’s (Tiffany Hadish) car and try driving away from their worries on a no-holds-barred trip that finds them pranking people and reliving their younger days.

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The filming style is noteworthy for the narrative transitions between fact and fiction as the two leads prank the general public by staying in character. Drawing rave reviews from critics and audiences alike , Bad Trip is easily one of the finest entries in the pantheon of prank comedy films .

Tag (2018) - Amazon Video (Rent)

Based on an actual Wall Street Journal article , Tag is the story of a few childhood friends who have an annual ritual of playing a game of tag. The reasoning behind this childish event is to relive their childhood despite the crises of their adult life. However, over the years, a natural distance sets the protagonists apart that prompts Ed Helms’ character to go all-out with a final game.

The over-the-top nature of this absurd premise makes it an amusing watch while some of the tag scenes are quite thrilling to watch, especially as Jeremy Renner unleashes his action potential.

Good Boys (2019) - Max Go

Good Boys can be seen as a children’s version of any Superbad -like raunchy comedy . The concept behind the film is bold and could have failed under the wrong execution. However, Good Boys turned out to be a fun-filled ride as three pre-pubescent boys come to terms with the changes in their life, both physical and mental.

As they start developing teen crushes and sipping beer, the so-called ‘Good Boys’ embark on a seemingly dangerous adventure to find a high-value drone after one of them (Jacob Tremblay) crashes his own. The ensuing journey makes them come to terms with their coming-of-age and their own friendship.

Jackass: The Movie (2002 )- Paramount Plus

Based on the MTV prank series of the same name, the first Jackass movie triggered a whole cinematic franchise of slapstick comedies that culminated in Jackass sequels and Bad Grandpa . Starring Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, and the usual gang of pranksters, Jackass can be seen as an anthology of gross, weird, and laughable prank-filled vignettes as they challenge their own sanity.

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Jackass is definitely not a movie for everyone as it might entertain a few or disgust others but it’s worth checking out for the sheer scale of its absurdity.

Pineapple Express (2008) - Amazon Video (Rent)

One of the quintessential buddy ‘stoner’ comedies, Pineapple Express   boasts of witty dialogue  and an adrenaline-heavy storyline. James Franco and Seth Rogen star as a pot-dealer and his client who get embroiled in a murder conspiracy. Thrown in the mix are hitmen and a corrupt cop tailing them.

The comedy continues to hold an iconic status in pop culture and the chemistry between its leads has to be one of the best friendships in modern cinema. And if those two weren’t enough, Danny McBride also joins in as another bumbling dealer.

Girls Trip (2017) - Amazon Video (Rent)

There have been several ‘boys road trip’ films featuring men engaging in all sorts of drunken tomfoolery with The Hangover being a prime example. Girls Trip subverts these tropes and reverts the perspective to four women seeking to have a carefree trip of merrymaking while trying to avoid their personal and professional tussles.

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As is evident, the plot makes use of formulaic elements but at the same time, this trip has its fair share of dramatic moments that would be earnest and relatable for adults going through mid-life crises and transient friendships. Bad Trip ’s Tiffany Haddish stars as one of the friends and shines bright with her delightfully loud performance and perfect comedic timing.

Game Night (2018) - Sling TV

Game Night might seem like a generic situational comedy at first glance but is actually a tight-knit dark comedy with unexpected twists and turns. The title refers to a couple’s game night parties as they invite their friends over every week for playing simple indoor games. However, when they decide to transition to a sophisticated interactive experience, the party turns into a night of finding clues, bad driving, and a lot of violence.

The ensemble, led by Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman, delivers fully while Jesse Plemons takes the spotlight  relying on deadpan humor to play the couple’s nosy neighbor who wishes to be a part of the game night.

Paul (2011) - Apple TV (Rent)

Even though the Cornetto trilogy might be the best of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s collaborations, Paul  might come as a close second. The British actors star as sci-fi comic writers who happen to encounter an extra-terrestrial creature christened Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen). They embark on a road trip to get Paul back home while federal agents chase them, leading to a series of intoxicated misadventures.

Paul is unabashedly profane and ridiculous in its approach but still functions as a wholesome ode to classic sci-fi  like the films of Steven Spielberg.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) - Prime Video

The sequel to Sacha Baron Cohen’s magnum opus Borat , this Prime original film doubles the political satire of its predecessor, almost chartering the territories of investigative journalism. The unexpected, and intentionally disgusting improvisational humor aside, it’s a timely satire produced and distributed right during the global coronavirus pandemic and the American elections of 2020.

RELATED: Borat: Why Subsequent Moviefilm Is Great (& Why The First One Is Still Better)

From Cohen dressing up as Donald Trump to that infamous interview with Rudy Guiliani, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm  has it all. Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova also stars as the titular lead’s daughter delivering a fresh and effortlessly hilarious performance.

Impractical Jokers: The Movie (2020) - HBO Max

Much like Jackass, Impractical Jokers has gained a cult fanbase as one of the best prank comedy shows . Starring the original’s cast, the cinematic adaptation might not impress recent converts but makes for essential viewing for loyal fans of the series.

While most of the reality comedy elements of the original are retained, the film boasts of a more professional sound and visual aesthetic. The plot is driven by a high-school incident from the four Jokers’ life that prompts them to get back to their chaotic days of hidden-camera pranks and jokes.

Get Out (2017) - Apple TV (Rent)

The ultimate ‘bad trip’ movie Get Out made Daniel Kaluuya a household name while Bad Trip ’s Lil Rel Howery delivered his first breakout performance in this satirical horror. Kaluuya plays Chris Washington, a man on his way to visit his girlfriend’s white parents despite the cynicism of his best friend (Howery).

As the protagonist starts discovering strange phenomena linked to his significant other, he starts questioning his relationship while unearthing a hauntingly bizarre plot of changing race relations. Jordan Peele’s visionary storytelling and direction elevated Get Out above familiar horror tropes, making it a film worth revisiting with multiple viewings.

NEXT: The Eric Andre Show: The 10 Most Awkward Celebrity Interviews

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What is a Bad Trip and Why are They Important?

• Jimmy Nguyen

Those of you who have endured a psychedelic experience understand their potential to heal the mind, body, and spirit. You also probably had a very entertaining time while exploring these states of altered consciousness. However, many of you are equally nervous about the probability of becoming transfixed in what has been termed a “bad trip ” .

If you or someone you know has experienced a bad trip, this article will help you understand what you went through. But before we go any further, let’s break down what a bad trip really is, why they are important, and how to navigate one.

What is a Bad Trip?

Unfortunately, the War on Drugs in America has created a lot of misinformation when it comes to psychedelics, particularly with regards to the bad trip. You may have heard rumors that even one experience with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) can make you perpetually trip or permanently insane. Scare tactics like these have been used over the past several decades to demonize psychedelics and deter their use. 

Though these myths are untrue, it is important to note that individuals predisposed to mental illness, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, may have adverse effects from a psychedelic experience, including psychosis, and that proper mental health screening should be conducted before engaging in any psychedelic activity. 

So what defines a bad trip? A bad trip refers to a challenging or difficult experience while being under the influence of a hallucinatory substance such as psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, ayahuasca, or even cannabis. Although it is common for occasional unpleasantness, such as nausea or bewilderment, to occur temporarily during a psychedelic experience, bad trips are defined by prolonged or seemingly uncontrollable episodes.

During these experiences, symptoms can range from unpleasant to traumatic, with some experiencing anxiety, paranoia, resurfacing of repressed memories, or overwhelming stress. Physical discomforts, such as an upset stomach, sweating, overheating, or soreness may also occur. 

To be clear, “good” and “bad” are arbitrary labels we assign to our experiences. And generally, people use “bad” to describe discomfort or pain. But like a weightlifter who endures temporary discomfort to build muscle, so too can a psychedelic explorer endure a bad trip to receive long-term benefits. The caveat is that the user must prepare in advance of the experience , exercise safety during, and take care of the body and mind well after. And just like the weightlifter, results do not happen overnight. 

What is the Likelihood of Having a Bad Trip? 

It is often difficult to predict if you will have a bad trip. In actuality, it’s not really a question of if, but when, as bad trips are actually unavoidable milestones in the psychedelic journey. When you do experience one, it may be comforting to know that you are not alone and that adverse effects are temporary. 

According to the Journal of Psychopharmacology , a study surveyed 1993 psilocybin users. Of this, 39% labeled the experience one of the most challenging of their lives. However, 84% of the total participants stated that this challenge was a positive experience in the long term. What’s more is that the study concluded that risky behavior or enduring psychological distress is extremely low when psilocybin was given to screened, prepared, and supported participants. 

Not only does this mean that bad trips are generally safe, but it further supports our belief that bad trips, though difficult to endure, are actually the most crucial part of the psychedelic experience as they result in the positive mental, physical, and spiritual growth we all desire.  

Why Bad Trips Are Important

If you ask someone experienced in psychedelics if they’ve had a bad trip, an overwhelming majority would say yes. This matters because it suggests that discomfort is part of the psychedelic journey. You are typically not in control of the events or outcome of a psychedelic experience, thus putting you outside of your comfort zone.

This often results in opening up and exploring your fears, anxieties, and analyzing unwanted aspects of our personalities. This experience is accompanied by a series of mental, physical, and emotional triggers and releases. 

Bad trips are misunderstood experiences that have a misguided social context. Many of these “bad” trips can actually lead to prolonged mental and physical healing. Though healing isn’t always comfortable, it is necessary to make a significant change in your life.

Healing requires confronting the traumas and pain that limit our lives to truly embrace and love all the facets, both the light and the shadow, the “good” and “bad” parts of ourselves. Like a lobster that molts its shell each year to grow larger, the psychedelic experience, particularly bad trips, can provide a venue to undergo this challenging, yet vital evolution.

This isn’t to say that you should be specifically seeking bad trips. These difficult trips are most common for inexperienced users and those who did not adequately prepare. A higher dosage is typically related to an increase in adverse reactions, so proper dosage and preparation are key. Psychedelic Passage offers guidance on dosage and preparation through our trip sitting program .

Even the most seasoned psychonaut has a chance of experiencing a taxing psychedelic experience. Ironically, if you are equipped with the framework to work through these difficult experiences, they turn out to be very rewarding. If you happen to undergo a “bad” trip, these 10 tips may help you navigate the trip , mitigate risks, and stay safe during these stressful episodes. 

What Should I Do If I’m Currently Having a Bad Trip? 

This is a great question, and thankfully, it’s not too late to take the edge off of your discomfort. While we always maintain the position that proper preparation is most important , there are certainly some tips you can use to make a bad trip more pleasant.

Ideally, with adequate preparation, you are in the presence of a guide or trip sitter who is knowledgeable in harm reduction and altered states of consciousness. This individual should be well prepared to help you safely and smoothly navigate a “bad” trip. 

The number one thing to keep in mind is that it is temporary—you aren’t stuck like this, you will return to your normal self with time. That said, we’ve put together a list of 10 tools to help you safely navigate a bad trip , which you can find here. 

I’ve Recently Had a Bad Trip. Now What Do I Do? 

First off, congratulate yourself for having the strength to endure a challenging and taxing experience. We understand how wild and confusing that process can be. Now the real work can begin for you to use the experience of a bad trip to positively affect your life—this work is known as psychedelic integration .

Fortunately, we are smack dab in the middle of the psychedelic renaissance where support and integration services are more available than they have ever been. If you are preparing for an upcoming experience, you may want to seek the guidance of a trip facilitator. 

And if you feel a lasting negative effect from taking psychedelics or want to discuss your trip in-depth to gain further insight, book a consultation to speak with our guides and trip sitters who are also integration specialists, have first-hand experience, and can help you integrate these powerful, profound events.

Looking for a professionally supported in-person psychedelic experience?

Take the first step and book a consultation call with us today. We'll walk you through every step of the process after getting to know you and your unique situation.

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At Psychedelic Passage, we offer professional 1-on-1 guidance and companionship on your journey of healing. We simply can't sit back and let Americans continue to sit in silent suffering trying to battle mental health issues within a broken health care system, all while knowing that effective alternatives exist. We stand for the sacred, at-home, ceremonial use of psychedelics for consciousness exploration, which we believe to be a fundamental human right.

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‘Bad Trip’: Eric Andre, Tiffany Haddish and Lil Rel Howery Prank America

By David Fear

It makes a certain kind of sense that Bad Trip, Eric André’s entry into the Gonzo Comedy Hall of Fame (see: Jackass, Borat, Bad Grandpa ), starts in Florida. Not that the other 49 states of this fine U.S. of A. don’t have their share of goofballs, chowderheads, numbskulls, fuck-ups and jag-offs; it’s just that this particular Southeastern one has a reputation for American eccentricity that results in eyes bugging out, jaws dropping and shit going very wrong. Those “Florida Man” headlines are well-earned.

And the “Florida Man” energy is strong in this one, right from the get-go: No sooner has the comedian appeared onscreen, rocking a mechanic’s jumpsuit and washing a BMW in a West Grove car wash, then something genuinely WTF happens. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know it involves a vacuum hose and full frontal nudity. It also involves a customer who has no idea that he’s part of an elaborate prank that’s been set up for several rolling cameras, someone who is neither in on the joke nor the butt of it. The guy is just an innocent bystander who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a situation he hadn’t planned for or even possibly imagined, while a naked man tries desperately not to show his dick and balls to the world. “Florida Man Loses Clothes, Flashes Customers in Bizarre Car Detailing Accident.” Normally, you can’t make this stuff up. André engineers it like he’s in charge of a NASA launch.

The scene is over way, way too soon — a problem that plagues a lot of Bad Trip ‘s gotcha scenarios, but that’s the risk you take when you’re literally putting your ass out there when making variable-heavy comedy — but it still does what it needs to do, i.e. set the tone and set up the “story.” Note the scare quotes; abandon all hope, ye who want a narrative here, which is frankly missing the point. This is no more a movie than The Eric André Show is a talk show. (Though the director, Kitao Sakurai, has also worked on that Adult Swim gem.) It’s a delivery system for strung-together Situationist happenings and performance art, a fancy way of saying that everyday people get co-opted into sometime highly elaborate, often hilarious, remarkably effective smart-comics-doing-really-dumb-and-gross shit. Including, in one case, a bit that may or may not have involved being covered in actual fecal matter. We don’t know just how Jackass things got here.

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Right, sorry, the story: So when Chris (André) is cleaning the unsuspecting gent’s car, a second customer drives up. Her name is Maria (Michaela Conlin), and she was Chris’s high school crush. He was going to ask her out, but then whoosh go his clothes. Later, he finds out she lives in New York and runs an art gallery. If he’s ever town, drop by and see her. So Chris grabs his best friend Bud (Lil Rel Howery), they take the pink Crown Victoria that belongs to Bud’s sister, Trina ( Tiffany Haddish ) — she’s in prison, it’s all good — and plan a road trip to visit Chris’s soulmate. When Trina “releases” herself from the clink, she finds out that her car’s been stolen and decides to track these guys down across the Eastern seaboard.

There’s a version of Bad Trip in which you pay attention to this tender story of best friends who’ll do anything for each other, who have their ups and downs but still have each other’s backs, rednecks and psycho siblings and cops be damned. The version you’ll probably want to push to the forefront, however, is the one where these three comedians, respectively and together, stage the kind of truly outrageous shenanigans that make you wonder how the hell they got out of these scenes alive. Looking at my notes, I see nothing but a series of phrases: “Chinese Finger Trap,” “Smoothie Shop Blender,” “Cowboy Bar,” “Projectile Vomiting,” “A Priest,” “The Hamptons,” “Gorilla Selfie.” (That last one is genuinely above and beyond the call of duty.) To try and explain what they mean wouldn’t do the gags justice, though I will say that a sequence involving a a movie-musical number in a mall — which includes singing, dancing, a giant wedding cake and the threat of actual violence — is a work of genius.

In other, the sheer hilariousness of a number of individual bits here are enough to get you past slow spots and a few D.O.A. duds, and you come out of Bad Trip with a serious appreciation for this trio’s chops and ability to go with the flow. (Four, actually: Conlin can more than hold her own when she needs to.) And unlike the Jackass crew’s how-low-can-you-go competitions and Borat ‘s politicized exposés, there’s almost a sweetness to the way these folks prank the public. The everyday folks who find themselves having to deal with angry ex-cons or exchanges spiraling out of control aren’t marks; they’re more like collaborators in the movie’s “what if” set-ups. For every encounter in which you fear that André or Howery or Haddish are actually going to get the snot beat of out of them for antagonizing folks, there are a half dozen examples of people stepping in and defusing things, offering help, trying to de-escalate a blow-up. The end credits roll feature a bunch of “smile, you’re on Candid Camera” reveals that lead to smiles and yelps of “oh my god, that was crazy!” The joke’s not on them. They were just a key part of the trip.

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Psychedelics can have enormous benefits, but the risks shouldn’t be ignored

As access grows, we need better research and education on bad trips.

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Share All sharing options for: Psychedelics can have enormous benefits, but the risks shouldn’t be ignored

The term “psychedelic” was coined by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond: “To fathom Hell or go angelic / Just take a pinch of psychedelic.” But today’s public messaging around psychedelics has a dangerous tendency to gloss over the “fathoming hell” part, which has been euphemized into the language of a “bad” or “challenging” trip.

Challenging trips are generally ones that involve encounters with intense anxiety, unwelcome loss of control, surfaced trauma, or physical discomfort. They’re difficult experiences in the moment, but ultimately, once things settle down, they can be cast in a therapeutic light, and people look back on them as worthwhile .

Then there are just plain bad trips that do not resolve into a harmonious insight, no matter how much therapy, intention, and journaling you throw at them. “Choking, breathless, I was having a grief-tinged cosmic panic attack,” the Harvard theologian Rachael Petersen wrote of her experience in a psilocybin clinical trial. “A small kernel of doubt: a splinter wedged between me and the world ... What if terror is just that — terrible, terrifying, absolute?”

The positive sides of psychedelics — therapeutic promise, spiritual renewal, and radical forms of creativity — attract more interest, and more funding, than research into what might go wrong for a minority of users. And to be clear, even outside of the well-controlled settings of clinical trials, the majority of psychedelic trips do seem to lean positive. One recent study that surveyed 613 lifetime psychedelic users drawn from a nationally representative sample found that 82.4 percent reported “never” or “rarely” experiencing bad trips. More than 90 percent reported either no subsequent impairment in their ability to function, or difficulties lasting no more than 24 hours.

But the attention capture of good trips has fed a poor understanding of the vast array of experiences that fall into the “bad trips” category, leaving those who suffer from them without much institutional support or information, even as states have begun providing regulated access to psychedelics and decriminalizing them for personal use.

“We need to learn more about the risks and harms of psychedelics … We’re still at the beginning of that process, in my view,” said Jules Evans, director of the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project . “It’s not just about researchers trying to be more rigorous in reporting adverse experiences in trials. It’s also about actively researching harms and how to treat them.”

In the late 1960s, poor public understanding of the actual risks of psychedelics allowed misinformation and sensationalized stories — of LSD users leaping from tall buildings to their death under the impression that they could fly, or irreparably damaged chromosomes — to spread, stoking a moral panic that led to the prohibition that is only just being relaxed, more than 50 years later.

This time around, we run a similar risk. Except now, many of those who are working to spread awareness of the potential harms don’t want another prohibition, and opposing one shouldn’t mean sweeping the risks under the rug so as to rush through legislation. Instead, an honest and transparent account of both the benefits and risks of psychedelics can help build a better, more resilient post-prohibition world.

If good trips can change long-term behaviors, so can bad ones

Last month, an off-duty pilot aboard a flight to San Francisco tried pulling the plane’s emergency shut-off handles because he thought he was in a dream and crashing would wake him up. He had struggled with depression for six years and also reported struggling with the recent death of a friend. Forty-eight hours before the flight, he tried psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, had a terrible experience, and hadn’t slept since.

In the subsequent media coverage, experts debated what role the drugs — whose subjective effects generally fade after six hours — might have played in the episode two days later. While it might seem strange that psychedelics could play a role in behavior changes that take place well after the molecules have left the body (psilocybin is generally metabolized within 24 hours ), most of the hype around their therapeutic effects depends on it.

Current research on psilocybin suggests that a single dose, coupled with psychological support, can reduce symptoms of treatment-resistant depression for at least three weeks or help people quit smoking for good. If that’s the case, why wouldn’t it be possible to see negative effects persist along the same timelines? Why couldn’t the psilocybin have something to do with an episode occurring 48 hours later?

“There is hardly any empirical research on how best to treat extended difficulties. That’s one example of a massive research gap that still exists,” Evans said. At least until last month, when a new study he co-authored was published, surveying 608 psychedelic users who all reported extended difficulties lasting more than 24 hours after the trip itself subsided. Thirty-two percent reported difficulties persisting longer than a year.

Participants reported using a number of drugs — mostly LSD and psilocybin — in a broad range of settings, including solo trips, underground ceremonies, clinical trials, therapy sessions, and raves. The most common type of difficulty reported was emotional, including things like anxiety, depression, paranoia, and low mood. Another 42 percent reported “existential difficulties,” consisting of subtypes like “existential struggle,” derealization (when the world comes to feel “less real,” or as if it’s a dream, akin to what the pilot reported), and difficulties integrating experiences into everyday life. In total, the report divided the blunt category of “extended bad trips” into nine themes and 62 subthemes, creating a more granular account of what exactly people experience.

Despite the entire sample reporting extended difficulties, about 90 percent agreed that “the insights and healings gained from psychedelics” are worth the risks, “when taken in a supportive setting,” which is left open to interpretation.

What should bad trips mean for regulation and access?

“None of us want to see psychedelics become less accessible,” Erica Siegal, a social worker who supports victims of sexual assault who were harmed while on psychedelics, told the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics’ newsletter, the Microdose.

That’s a big shift from the late 1960s, when stories of distressed airline pilots or psychedelic sexual abuse might have fed directly into prohibition efforts. But if heavy restrictions are not what’s wanted, then what to do?

According to Katrina Michelle , the former director of harm reduction for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), “The power lies in educating people and empowering them with information to make intelligent choices.” She explains that public access to information about risk management can help mold the public’s idea of what responsible use looks like. Society uses a similar approach to cars and alcohol, where after meeting basic accessibility criteria or obtaining a license, we rely on a mix of public education and individual responsibility.

Evans offers another metaphor, likening psychedelics to “dangerous sports, like diving or mountain climbing. It took humans decades to develop safety protocols for these sports, and even now there are accidents.”

He outlines four pillars for improving psychedelic safety: researching harms, communicating them, supporting those who experience them, and regulating the emerging psychedelic markets to minimize those harms.

That last point will be thorny, especially since we don’t know what types of markets will be legalized (state-level reforms have focused on decriminalization, research, and restricted access rather than full commercialization). Transform , a UK-based drug policy foundation, will publish a report next week that provides guidance on four different approaches: decriminalized private use and non-commercial sharing, nonprofit membership associations (a model pioneered by cannabis social clubs in Spain), licensed production and retail, and commercial guided experiences.

“Despite there being plentiful, eloquent critiques of the failure of prohibition, these have not necessarily produced credible visions for an alternative approach which public, professional and policy-maker audiences can buy into,” the report states.

As these regulatory visions take shape, addressing the imbalance in research on benefits and risks could be an important part of building good institutions for the next era of legal psychedelic use. It won’t be easy, but Evans sees a few hopeful signs. “Thankfully, I see some of the big psychedelic philanthropists now looking to fund more research in this area,” he said. “I also see younger psychedelic researchers keen to learn more to make the field safer.”

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Hot Oceans Worsened Dubai’s Dramatic Flooding, Scientists Say

An international team of researchers found that heavy rains had intensified in the region, though they couldn’t say for sure how much climate change was responsible.

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By Raymond Zhong

Scenes of flood-ravaged neighborhoods in one of the planet’s driest regions stunned the world this month. Heavy rains in the United Arab Emirates and Oman submerged cars, clogged highways and killed at least 21 people. Flights out of Dubai’s airport, a major global hub, were severely disrupted.

The downpours weren’t a total surprise — forecasters had anticipated the storms several days earlier and issued warnings. But they were certainly unusual.

Here’s what to know.

Heavy rain there is rare, but not unheard-of.

On average, the Arabian Peninsula receives a scant few inches of rain a year, although scientists have found that a sizable chunk of that precipitation falls in infrequent but severe bursts, not as periodic showers. These rains often come during El Niño conditions like the ones the world is experiencing now.

U.A.E. officials said the 24-hour rain total on April 16 was the country’s largest since records there began in 1949 . And parts of the nation had already experienced an earlier round of thunderstorms in March.

Oman, with its coastline on the Arabian Sea, is also vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Past storms there have brought torrential rain, powerful winds and mudslides, causing extensive damage.

Global warming is projected to intensify downpours.

Stronger storms are a key consequence of human-caused global warming. As the atmosphere gets hotter, it can hold more moisture, which can eventually make its way down to the earth as rain or snow.

But that doesn’t mean rainfall patterns are changing in precisely the same way across every part of the globe.

In their latest assessment of climate research , scientists convened by the United Nations found there wasn’t enough data to have firm conclusions about rainfall trends in the Arabian Peninsula and how climate change was affecting them. The researchers said, however, that if global warming were to be allowed to continue worsening in the coming decades, extreme downpours in the region would quite likely become more intense and more frequent.

Hot oceans are a big factor.

An international team of scientists has made a first attempt at estimating the extent to which climate change may have contributed to April’s storms. The researchers didn’t manage to pin down the connection precisely, though in their analysis, they did highlight one known driver of heavy rain in the region: above-normal ocean temperatures.

Large parts of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans have been hotter than usual recently, in part because of El Niño and other natural weather cycles, and in part because of human-induced warming .

When looking only at El Niño years, the scientists estimated that storm events as infrequent as this month’s delivered 10 percent to 40 percent more rain to the region than they would in a world that hadn’t been warmed by human activities. They cautioned, however, that these estimates were highly uncertain.

“Rainfall, in general, is getting more extreme,” said Mansour Almazroui, a climate scientist at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and one of the researchers who contributed to the analysis.

The analysis was conducted by scientists affiliated with World Weather Attribution, a research collaboration that studies extreme weather events shortly after they occur. Their findings about this month’s rains haven’t yet been peer reviewed, but are based on standardized methods .

The role of cloud seeding isn’t clear.

The U.A.E. has for decades worked to increase rainfall and boost water supplies by seeding clouds. Essentially, this involves shooting particles into clouds to encourage the moisture to gather into larger, heavier droplets, ones that are more likely to fall as rain or snow.

Cloud seeding and other rain-enhancement methods have been tried around the world, including in Australia, China, India, Israel, South Africa and the United States. Studies have found that these operations can, at best, affect precipitation modestly — enough to turn a downpour into a bigger downpour, but probably not a drizzle into a deluge.

Still, experts said pinning down how much seeding might have contributed to this month’s storms would require detailed study.

“In general, it is quite a challenge to assess the impact of seeding,” said Luca Delle Monache, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Dr. Delle Monache has been leading efforts to use artificial intelligence to improve the U.A.E.’s rain-enhancement program.

An official with the U.A.E.’s National Center of Meteorology, Omar Al Yazeedi, told news outlets that the agency didn’t conduct any seeding during the latest storms. His statements didn’t make clear, however, whether that was also true in the hours or days before.

Mr. Al Yazeedi didn’t respond to emailed questions from The New York Times, and Adel Kamal, a spokesman for the center, didn’t have further comment.

Cities in dry places just aren’t designed for floods.

Wherever it happens, flooding isn’t just a matter of how much rain comes down. It’s also about what happens to all that water once it’s on the ground — most critically, in the places people live.

Cities in arid regions often aren’t designed to drain very effectively. In these areas, paved surfaces block rain from seeping into the earth below, forcing it into drainage systems that can easily become overwhelmed.

One recent study of Sharjah , the capital of the third-largest emirate in the U.A.E., found that the city’s rapid growth over the past half-century had made it vulnerable to flooding at far lower levels of rain than before.

Omnia Al Desoukie contributed reporting.

Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times. More about Raymond Zhong