Bad Psychedelic Trips: Perspectives and Causes to Consider

What is a Bad Psychedelic Trip? Key Facts and Definitions

In psychedelic culture, a bad psychedelic trip is typically framed as a psychedelic experience that is distressing in some way. Usually, it is a type of experience involving prolonged distress that feels difficult to manage or a series of challenging moments that seem to outweigh the positives.

However, what many people call a bad trip can, in many contexts, be framed in less black-and-white language. These experiences may later be interpreted positively, such as meaningful, insightful, therapeutic, or cathartic. People may find it helpful to view this type of experience as difficult or challenging, rather than simply bad.

This article looks at the difference between bad trips and challenging experiences, what a bad psychedelic trip involves, the contributing factors, and what can be learned from difficult psychedelic experiences.

Bad Psychedelic Trip vs Challenging Experience: Key Differences Explained

A bad psychedelic trip is a highly distressing experience, sometimes a traumatic one, that feels unmanageable and does not resolve into a sense of meaning or insight – either during or after the experience.

A challenging psychedelic experience may also be intense, overwhelming, and characterized by fear or anxiety, but through proper support and integration, it can lead to profound personal growth. This type of experience is not typically thought of as bad in the grand scheme of things, given the value and benefit it provides. For example, a 2016 study on challenging psilocybin experiences found, “Despite difficulties, 84% endorsed benefiting from the experience.”

MycoMeditations does not use the term bad trip to describe a challenging experience, for several reasons.

Based on the distinction between bad trips and difficult experiences highlighted above, people can learn to manage challenging moments through adequate preparation and psychological support, and find positive resolutions through post-session integration.

We acknowledge that in recreational settings, poorly planned contexts, or with bad facilitation, psychedelic experiences can become extremely distressing or lead to extended emotional difficulties. When people are destabilized following these types of experiences, they may struggle, in the long term, with anxiety, depression, depersonalization, derealization, social disconnection, or existential confusion.

But with research-backed and professional preparation, support, and integration in place, classic bad psychedelic trips are rare. In carefully planned and supervised psychedelic clinical trials, participants may experience transient anxiety and the arising of painful memories, but it is uncommon for this to result in an unmanageable experience or long-term issues.

The 2016 study noted above concludes, “The incidence of risky behavior or enduring psychological distress is extremely low when psilocybin is given in laboratory studies to screened, prepared, and supported participants.” For most participants in clinical trials, adequately supported psychedelic experiences, even if they are challenging at times, result in long-term benefits, such as enhanced well-being, life satisfaction, meaning, and spirituality.

Why People Describe Some Psychedelic Experiences as Bad

A psychedelic trip may be described as bad when it feels overwhelming, unmanageable, or leads to lasting difficulties. This may stem from any of the following effects:

• Negative emotions, such as fear, anxiety, dread, panic, dysphoria, and paranoia
• Unsettling visual effects, such as the perception of negative entities
• Thought loops, where the same thought or chain of thoughts repeats over and over
• The feeling of losing one’s mind or “going crazy”
• A fearful ego-dissolving experience, resulting from psychological resistance
• The resurfacing of traumatic memories, which might feel retraumatizing

What Role Do Set and Setting Play in Bad Psychedelic Trips?

Several factors can contribute to a bad psychedelic trip, and these fall under the concept of “set and setting”, where “set” refers to mindset and “setting” refers to aspects of one’s environment.

How Mental Health and Emotional State Affect Psychedelic Trips

A user’s pre-existing emotional state can have a major influence on the quality of a psychedelic experience. For example, if someone has barely slept for one or more nights, this can lead to a more distressing experience, as sleep deprivation is associated with increased anxiety and distress.

Sleep deprivation is also linked to impairments to cognitive functions, such as memory, judgment, discrimination, reaction time, and executive functions, which may affect one’s ability to navigate altered states. Sleep deprivation could make a psychedelic experience more intense, unstable, and distressing.

Clinical researchers and reputable psychedelic clinics and retreats also have rigorous screening in place to minimize the risk of bad psychedelic trips. Exclusion criteria typically include recent suicidality and a personal or family history of psychosis, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder. This is due to concerns about psychedelics triggering or worsening suicidality or psychotic or manic symptoms. Screening for psychiatric contraindications is a crucial aspect of minimizing the risk of a bad psychedelic trip.

Psychedelics can induce intense psychological experiences. It’s of paramount importance to have a baseline of emotional and mental stability. This should involve basic skills related to self-awareness, emotional regulation, and tolerance of discomfort. It means being able to notice when distress is beginning to worsen and to use techniques to navigate this mental spiral.

Self-awareness also involves knowledge of one’s past or trauma history and how it affects one today. Since psychedelics may lead to confrontations with events from the past, it’s vital to know that this can occur, as well as to have the willingness and ability to explore this material and its potential therapeutic value.

Why Expectations Can Shape a Psychedelic Experience

The expectations you have about an upcoming psychedelic experience, or psychedelics in general, can also affect how the journey unfolds. If you don’t know, acknowledge, or appreciate the possibility of challenging emotions or dramatic shifts in experience, distress is more likely. Expecting an easy, completely controllable experience, and one that is full of only positive emotions, is unrealistic.

It’s important to have realistic expectations around the psychedelic experience. This means understanding that it can be unpredictable, intense, or emotionally difficult at times. Without this knowledge, it’s more likely for someone to experience overwhelm, panic, or resistance to the unfolding effects.

How to Know If You’re Ready for a Psychedelic Experience

Another aspect of set is personal readiness. This encompasses not just realistic expectations but also knowledge, techniques, and skills in navigating altered states.

A 2024 study observed, “Participants differed substantially in their ability to let go of control. Some were able to surrender to the experience, reassured by their (trust in) therapists, but for others this remained challenging.” The authors add that, for some participants, “giving into the experience was challenging or even frightening due to the lack of agency or their inability to steer the experience in a specific direction, and some were unable to ask for help during difficult moments.”

Research has found that adopting an attitude of acceptance and surrender – or “trust, let go, and be open” – is associated with more positive and therapeutic experiences. This strategy may help shorten any periods of struggle, which is important since, as a 2018 paper notes, “the duration of struggle is predictive of negative outcomes.”

You can find out your level of readiness for a psychedelic experience by answering this survey based on the Psychedelic Preparedness Scale (PPS), developed by researchers at University College London (UCL).

How Environment and Setting Affect Psychedelic Trips

It is not just one’s inner landscape that shapes a psychedelic experience, but elements of the outer environment, too. Features of the setting that can increase the risk of a bad psychedelic trip include:

• A lack of psychological support in general
• Misguided psychological support, such as from a stranger, friend, or untrained or unprofessional facilitator
• Taking psychedelics around people one doesn’t know or trust
• Not fully trusting or feeling an alliance with the facilitator
• Negative interactions with, or negative responses from, other people
• Having a psychedelic experience under the supervision of an unethical facilitator
• A noisy, chaotic, or overstimulating space, such as a club, party, festival, or urban setting
• Harsh music, lighting, or smells
• A cluttered and messy indoor space

The risks of a bad psychedelic trip can be minimized when there is adequate psychological support from a trusted facilitator, the presence of nature, a calming and comfortable environment, and a carefully curated playlist.

Common Themes People Report During Difficult Psychedelic Experiences

During challenging psychedelic experiences, which don’t have to be framed as bad, people report some common themes, including:

• Intense fear or anxiety, which may center around the feeling of losing control or going insane
• Losing the sense of self, or ego dissolution, which may be experienced as confusing, scary, isolating, like dying, or as detachment from reality
• Resurfacing trauma, where traumatic memories are re-experienced in a direct or symbolic way
• ‘Ontological shock’: the experience may challenge one’s beliefs about reality so profoundly that it induces a state of overwhelm, confusion, and rumination
• A sense of encountering negative entities
• Time distortion effects, such as time dilation (e.g., minutes feeling like hours) or the feeling that one is stuck in a timeless moment
• Perceptual effects, such as disturbing visions
• Cognitive effects, such as thought loops
• Somatic effects, such as leaving the body or the body dissolving

While these effects can be challenging at the time, it’s important to reiterate that their challenging nature doesn’t mean that users reflect on the experience negatively. As we’ve seen, research has shown that most people view their difficult psychedelic experiences in positive terms.

One way to understand people’s positive evaluation of their most challenging experiences is through the lens of psychedelic integration.

Psychedelic Integration: What Can Be Learned From a Challenging Psychedelic Experience?

Integrating a challenging psychedelic experience involves searching for clear insights, as well as how to put those insights into action.

At MycoMeditations, thousands of psilocybin therapy sessions have shown us that emotionally difficult psilocybin experiences can be sources of profound meaning and growth, so we work with guests to reliably unearth these benefits. As a result, we see how it can be premature to label any challenging psychedelic experience as simply bad, as there are typically clear aspects to draw healing from through the difficulty.

Based on the research we’ve outlined, stories from retreat attendees, and the common themes of challenging psychedelic experiences, the following lessons are possible:

• Confronting and taking a new perspective on traumatic memories or repressed emotions, which for many users involves adopting an attitude of self-compassion.
• Learning to accept and connect to an experience, rather than push it away, can reduce the feelings of distress associated with it.
• Viewing dissolution of the sense of self as an opportunity to construct a healthier, more adaptive self-model, thereby challenging rigid patterns of self-criticism and low self-esteem.
• Ascertaining important insights from entities, which could relate to one’s emotions, behaviors, relationships, or life path. An entity encounter may also lead to a sense of spiritual expansion, as researchers have connected these experiences to states of awe and changes to one’s beliefs about fundamental reality.
• Acute ontological shock during or after a psychedelic experience may lead to a re-evaluation of existential concerns, perhaps altering one’s views on what the psychotherapist Irvin Yalom called our “ultimate concerns”: death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness.

Important Perspectives to Consider When Talking About a Bad Psychedelic Trip

When the topic of bad psychedelic trips arises, it’s important to consider whether the user feels there has been a positive resolution to that experience or if there is lasting harm.

When psychedelic experiences lack adequate psychological support, a person may struggle to confront and work through difficult psychological material, which is essential when it comes to difficult psychedelic journeys. And without integration in place, such as facilitated group discussions at retreats or one-on-one psychotherapy sessions, there is a lack of opportunity to make sense of difficult experiences and process any residual emotions connected to them.

When the intention is to use psychedelics therapeutically, it’s crucial to have preparation, support, and integration in place, so that one is better able to transform challenging experiences into personal growth.

It can be premature to judge a psychedelic experience as completely or irrevocably bad based on it being uncomfortable, or even because of a degree of difficult adjustment after an experience. Reputable psychedelic therapists or retreats will support participants with further integration resources and practices, which allow them to build new perspectives about their experience. Through this process, distressing emotions, thoughts, or visions during a psychedelic experience can lead to lasting personal breakthroughs.

Because of the potential of a psychedelic experience to generate new insights and opportunities for self-growth, it can be helpful to reframe bad trips as challenging. This framing helps many participants view their emotionally difficult experiences as potentially therapeutic and transformative.