Well worth a read
Back in the dim distant 80’s and 90’s when my social group partook of psychedelics in a number of settings the concept of the “bad trip” was always discussed or at least acknowledged by all participating andan informal discussion had on who and how to help anyone experiencing issues with their trip.
In a great deal of the literature , marketing, PR and commoditization that we have seen in the last 5 years I would suggest a lot of individuals and organisations now sweep this rather “annoying” fact under the carpet in their desire to sell wellnes and nirvana to others.
This is a balanced and useful article to read on the topic as I believe there may well be at issue legal concerns that take on the importance of the likes of thalidomide and although the “medicine” administered my not cause the same physical effects they could well cause in some long term and maybe even lifetime issues.
Policy makers and lawyers need to both understand the issues and start devising solutions to best manage what will be an inevitability is psychedelics become ingrained in wider society.
I for one am very grateful that the likes of Jules Evans in the UK have decided to start apply some proper research to the issue
The most serious effects may also be vastly underreported in trials involving psychedelics.
The psychedelic renaissance is upon us. In 2021, the National Institutes of Health’s annual “Monitoring the Future” study observed that hallucinogen use had hit an all-time high since the first survey was completed in 1988, with reported use by United States adults aged 19-30 up to 8 percent. Following two decades of research celebrating the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, many people associate the substances with a range of psychological benefits: heightened social connection, reduced anxiety and depression, a deeper sense of meaning, and a more powerful connection to the divine or the universe.
But amid all the scientific and cultural enthusiasm for these drugs, little attention has been paid to bad trips and their after-effects, and even less to what might alleviate them.
This is not entirely arbitrary. Bad trips are rare: Surveys indicate that the majority of those who report having taken psychedelics never have a difficult or distressing experience, during or after the trip. But for a select few, the after-effects can be quite serious. In one small study of 613 psychedelic users, in the days and weeks following a challenging trip, close to 7 percent reported thoughts or attempts of hurting themselves or others, and 3 percent sought psychiatric help. Something called Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, flashbacks of visual disturbances that first arose during a hallucinogenic trip, is also now recognized by the DSM-V.
As Evans, now a researcher at the University of London in the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary, began looking into the literature, he learned that the most serious effects may also be vastly underreported in trials involving psychedelics. One review of clinical ketamine use for depression, for example, found that 42 percent of serious adverse events and 39 percent of non-serious events reported in clinical trials data were not reported in the published articles. Some scientists say psychosis risk is also underestimated in the research literature, in part because older reports of it led modern psychedelic researchers to exclude participants with a family history of psychotic spectrum illness from their studies.
Evans decided to launch the “Challenging Psychedelics Project” with a handful of colleagues. They posted a survey in the fall of 2022, inviting people who had difficulties for at least a day following a psychedelic trip to participate. Some 608 individuals from around the world responded over the next few months, answering questions about context of use, the nature and duration of the challenges they experienced, plus a range of possible risk factors and perceived causes, and providing written accounts of their experiences. Evans was particularly interested in collecting written narratives about these bad trips, he says, which remain rare in the research literature.
