Why We Need To Talk About The Term ‘Bad Trip’

The notion of a ‘bad trip’ is one you’re probably familiar with. “Demonic” visions, terrifying hallucinations, feelings of paranoia, dread and anxiety may come to mind. These fears are now referred to as a ‘bad trip’, an idea that was created in the 1970’s as part of Nixon’s War on Drugs. 

Psychedelics, however, have been used as therapeutic healing tools for thousands of years. They’ve been used across North America, Mexico, and the Netherlands to treat everything from alcoholism to personality disorders and beyond.

So how did this notion of a ‘bad’ trip come to be?

Origins of the ‘Bad Trip’

The notion ‘bad trip’ was first coined in America in the 1960’s. LSD was at the peak of its popularity in the United States. Researchers at the time had not yet fully uncovered the significance of set and setting, which meant that many people consuming LSD did not know how to do so safely. This lack of education resulted in a spike in LSD hospital admissions, and the subsequent demonization of LSD in the media. Unsure of how to treat these patients, psychiatrists began dubbing psychedelic states as “acute psychosis.” 

The threat of psychosis wasn’t the only thing that influenced the idea of ‘bad’ trips. The term quickly began to spread outside LSD use, depicting, “psychoactive substances that produced hyperbolic monsters in scenes of reefer madness or super-powerful African American men on cocaine” across the media. This kind of propaganda utilized LSD and psychedelics as weapons in the war on drugs, creating mass public hysteria and fear.

Prohibitionists soon began to demand for the ban of LSD, and in 1970 LSD was banned along with all psychedelics via The Controlled Substances Act. 

The idea of a ‘bad trip’ as a problematic notion was purported by “maverick psychiatrists” at this time. They created a framework in which fear was denied any productive role in the trip—a cultural notion which does us all a great disservice.

The Only Way Out is Through

Back in the 1950’s psychedelic researchers Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer sought out a way to treat alcoholism. They noted that individuals with severe alcoholism, “...often experienced a form of redemptive fear at the height of their illness.” Ironically enough Osmond and Hoffer postulated that this fear “would ultimately lead to recovery.”

To their great surprise Osmond and Hoffer’s subjects ended up having “overwhelmingly positive, though still redemptive, experiences.” One contemporary ‘underground’ psychedelic therapist even went as far as to, “claim[ed] that fear was a normal, even cathartic, process to be expected in a psychedelic experience.”

Contrary to popular belief fear can actually be a very good thing. Fear can be a useful tool that helps us to outgrow old, harmful notions and dismiss them in favor of more helpful paradigms. 

In fact, psychiatry has since acknowledged the role of fear in treatment. Confronting your fears is a frequent theme found throughout Freudian-based psychodynamic therapy. It’s also a key principle in other behavioral based treatments such as exposure therapy. 

Truly adverse reactions to psychedelics, interestingly enough, are actually fairly rare. They’re usually also influenced by pre-existing psychiatric conditions.  

A willingness to embrace fear is key to having a therapeutic trip. It’s also postulated as a reason why some people have “bad” trips. If psychedelics can bring things up that you’ve been avoiding, it’s easy to see why encountering them head on may seem frightening.

Psychologist Timothy Leary, known as “Father Of The Psychedelic Movement”, believed that the demonization of psychedelics in popular culture fueled our fear of the ‘bad’ trip. He blamed poor reactions to LSD on medical authorities for creating “a climate of fear”, adding, “The lesson here is to fear neither LSD nor your own psychological nature.” Poet Alan Ginsberg, too, took issue with the language of psychosis, arguing, “...a flipout, here termed acute psychosis, may be a basically positive experience if rightly handled.”

Others argue the notion of ‘bad’ trips are rooted in the idea of ego loss. Ego loss is the phenomena in which your ego, or sense of identity, can dissolve into a sense of “oneness.” Rather than accept this process some individuals “will fight the drug to the teeth”. Ego death was also said to resemble death itself, evoking its own existential dread. 

Integration Is Key

In the 1960’s psychiatrist Sidney Cohen observed a mild depression in patients occurring a few days after their LSD experiences. This led Cohen to make an important distinction: namely between patients who were involved in controlled, medically sanctioned experiments compared with those taking the drug recreationally and in an uncontrolled manner. 

Cohen’s work reminds us yet again of the importance of set and setting before embarking on a trip. People who are educated about what to expect are far less likely to experience a ‘bad’ trip than someone who doesn’t know what they’re getting into. 

Community—and our perception about mental health—also plays a vital role here. Having a support system you trust can help ground you in moments where you fear relying on external help. 

Cohen’s experience also highlights another element integral to psychedelic success: integration. Integration is the process by which people make sense of the positive and negative experiences they encountered on their journey. This work is usually undertaken by psychotherapists and other mental health care providers, but can also be undertaken on an individual basis. 

Integration makes a huge difference in how you process and apply what you experienced in your trip. Tools like counseling, EMDR and meditation can help show you how ‘bad trips’ are, more often than not, “disquieting experiences” with generally positive outcomes. 

Many people surveyed by Cohen were reluctant to classify the experience as ‘bad’ or ‘negative’. While some people found certain aspects of a trip to be frightening, many of them still found meaning or value in the journey. This idea still holds true today: many people surveyed in a 2019 research study described their psychedelic experience as one of the most meaningful experiences in their life.

Contrary to the connotation, and how the term has been used in popular culture, ‘bad’ trip might actually be a positive step towards healing, wholeness, growth, or whatever it is you most need at that point in your journey.