What Causes a Bad (Drug) Trip?
Did You Fall Down the Rabbit Hole, Alice?
While experimenting with hallucinogens, the experience may feel too intense and cause a bad trip. When the drugs get too scary, it’s crucial to take time to get comfortable, feel safe, and calm down. This article discusses hallucinogens, negative drug experiences, and where to find help.
Content
Continue reading below for a better understanding of why certain drugs cause bad trips. You will also discover how to deal with a bad trip, and how and where to get help.
How Much is Too Much?
When a person has had too much of anything, it can lead to disastrous consequences. For example, a bad trip on LSD or shrooms can become a nightmare. It can lead to psychosis, like a scary ride you want to get off. Additionally, there can be an intense feeling of fear and panic.
A bad trip’s symptoms can include:
- panic attacks
- passing out
- anxiety
- head spinning
- vomiting
- thinking you will die
- feelings of insanity
There is an unfortunate relationship between bad trips and mental states. Psychedelic substances can cause short and long-term effects that drastically affect your daily life.
Do You Need Help?
Fortunately, help is available for individuals suffering from a bad trip to stop the madness.
Treatment programs can help turn those bad trips into a life of sobriety—Call 385-327-7418 to get started today. We are here to help you take your life back.
How Can I Tell if I’m Having a Bad Trip?
Many drugs contribute to having a bad trip. For example, psychedelics have psychological effects from taking them. The most popular psychedelic substances include shrooms and LSD and are typically the suspects responsible for bad trips.
Generally, psychedelics cause clouded judgment and impairment, hallucinations, and paranoia. As a result, individuals may believe untrue things and may act in strange ways.
What Can Happen During a Bad Trip?
These substances may cause individuals to do something that they would not do. Some of these actions can be dangerous. The consequences of these actions can lead to injuries such as automobile accidents, property damages, and financial and legal issues.
Likewise, bad trips can even have fatal consequences. However, for someone to die from a bad trip, they need to take a dose of over 400 mcg. Moreover, the behavior from these trips is so unpredictable anything is possible.
Furthermore, the effects of these psychedelics and others can have a powerful influence on the mind.
Many individuals take psychedelics to have a good time and escape their problems. But unfortunately, the result seems to do more harm than good.
Over the years, research has gone back and forth between positive and negative psychological effects—most research sides with the negative aspects.
Psychedelics 101: Shrooms
Magical mushrooms, also called shrooms, contain psilocybin. They look like dried-out mushrooms with a greyish-white appearance on the stems and caps.
This psychedelic was initially used for rituals and to help ill people. Today, people take them in more of a recreational capacity. As a result, there is a low risk of someone being addicted and overdosing.
However, individuals can become dependent on this substance. Nevertheless, some studies have shown that it has some positive effects as it can help treat resistant depression. Humphrey Osmond gets credit for psilocybin’s research discovery of psilocybin in 1957.
Studying Shrooms for Depression Treatment
Over the years, much research has shown shrooms’ positive and negative side effects.
The study has shown that the potency of psilocybin mainly affects the brain. However, the concept that psychedelics have a beneficial impact is not adopted formally.
Federal funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Mental Health have found no evidence that psychedelics positively affect.
Moreover, in the latter part of the 1990s, John Hopkins got a team together to research the positive impact of psilocybin with volunteers in a controlled environment and with psychologically prepped volunteers. Their efforts proved to show some positive effects on the attitude and behavior of a person.
What Do the Experts Say?
After that study, more research on bad trips proved that “bad trip” is the most used layman’s term for this experience. However, its meaning is blurry.
According to John Hopkins Medicine
“…Our laboratory studies and this survey study support each other in showing that an unpleasant, “bad” experience can sometimes lead to positive outcomes.”
If you want help with an addiction or a bad drug trip, don’t hesitate to contact us today. Our experts will work with you to ensure you get the proper treatment for your needs.
Psychedelics 101: LSD
LSD, also known as lysergic acid diethylamide, was created by accident in 1938 by Swish Chemist Albert Hofmann to treat respiratory depression.
Physically, the appearance of LSD is small, bland, and colorless. Yet, it goes by names such as blotter, purple haze, dots, and acid on the street.
The substance comes in pill form, gum, tablets, or liquid. A small amount can impact a person for 6 to 12 hours.
By 1960, it started becoming recreational, as the folklore of psychotic behavior and LSD trips became mainstream.
Can LSD Be Used as Treatment?
The overall production of LSD ended in 1967. The substance was banned and classified as a Schedule 1 drug, which is not acceptable for medical use.
Its popularity has decreased since the 1970s and remains illegal virtually everywhere worldwide.
What Does LSD Do?
Furthermore, the physical appearance of LSD is small, bland, and colorless. On the street, it goes by names such as blotter, purple haze, dots, and acid. The substance comes in pill form, gum, tablets, or liquid. A small amount can impact a person for 6 to 12 hours.
However, LSD often blurs the line between perception and imagination.
LSD’s short-term side effects can include:
- dilated pupils
- increased heart rate
- increased blood pressure
- high body temperature and sweating
- difficulty sleeping
- suppressed appetite
- numbness
- tremors
- weakness
The potent effects of LSD can bring on a sort of mystical experience. There can be a feeling of euphoria and a sense of community with everyone around the person.
The user also has no concept of time and their immediate surroundings. The higher the dose of LSD, the more vulnerable the person is to it.
How Do I Deal with a Bad Trip?
Bad trips give the user the feeling that what they are experiencing will never end. They may experience an array of negative thoughts and feelings. Since the individual consuming the drug has no control over how pure the substance is, the effects are often unpredictable.
When individuals are experiencing a bad trip, they lose control of themselves and their grip on reality. However, it is imperative to recognize the signs of a bad trip and stay calm. Whether it is you or someone else, there are ways to ease someone through a bad trip.
You are Safe; Take Some Deep Breaths
The first important step is to calmly and quietly assure the person that they are safe. Then, stay with them throughout their trip. If you are experiencing adverse effects, accept the environment you are in, and keep in mind the situation will pass.
“If you feel like you are dying, melting, dissolving, exploding, [or] going crazy, go ahead and embrace it,” says Dr. Bill Richards. Dr. Richards assisted in developing the psychedelic-assisted therapy model practiced today at institutions like Johns Hopkins University.
The simple task of breathing helps defuse the situation. Focus on breathing and exhaling longer than you inhale. While doing simple breathing exercises, tension should subside.
What Else Helps a Bad Trip?
Furthermore, another tactic is changing the environment. For example, moving to another room or going outside might help. Also, changing the room’s aesthetics can help someone experiencing a bad trip.
Examples of changed aesthetics include:
- changing the lighting
- playing music
- getting comfortable clothes
- going outside
- moving to a different room
These small changes can help the user feel calmer and lessen the adverse effects of a bad trip.
Call our professionals today and start living a happier and healthier life.
How to Never Have a Bad Trip Again
Unfortunately, there is a stigma on the label of being an addict. Not everyone understands that addiction is a progressive disease. Addiction can destroy lives, families, and relationships.
However, a new dawn is here, and the daily struggle you have been facing is treatable. There are multiple resources available for addiction treatment. Unfortunately, fighting addiction takes a lot of work.
Luckily, you do not have to do it alone. It takes commitment, time, and effort. However, if you or someone you care about has one bad trip too many, it may be time to address the issue.
Treatment is Available if You Need Help
Now may be the time to turn to professionals and ask for help. The good news is there is a chance for redemption and a new life. With the right plan in place, addiction does not stand a chance!
Admitting an addiction is the first step toward getting clean and sober. The next step is taking action. So much support is available to those who take action and reach out for help.
With treatment, you will learn to live a life that is addiction free. We work with drug and alcohol recovery programs that help those struggling with addiction.
These treatments allow the addict to come to terms with their addiction, learn to recognize and stay away from triggers that lead them to use, and eventually discover a new life in recovery. Now is the time; make that call to us at 385-327-7418.
Find Help Now with
Better Help Addiction Care
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Resources
- Why the Brain has ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Trips | Neuroscience (labroots.com)
- Q&A with Study Authors Roland Griffiths and Robert Jesse on ‘Bad Trips’ (hopkinsmedicine.org)
- How to Survive a Bad Trip – DoubleBlind Mag
- 30-Day Treatment Programs – Better Help Addiction Care
- What Should I Expect When Going to Rehab? – Better Help Addiction Care
