I've had a few, and one in particular was very useful in the long run. This was about 20 years ago, one of the first times I took mushrooms. It was at an "afterparty" and I had already been awake for at least 24 hours. Someone gave me a handful of mushrooms and I ate them. She came back an hour later and asked me if I felt anything yet. I didn't, so she gave me another handful and I ate them too. Typical newbie mistake--I began tripping very hard a few minutes later. Within some hours I think the psychedelic fireworks had subsided enough that I was no longer catatonic, but then the real internal drama began. I was with a bunch of other people in altered states, many of them complete strangers, physically exhausted but unable to sleep. What people would refer to as a "sketchy situation". I got very paranoid. No matter where I sat or what I did, I had the sensation that people were talking about me, and mostly in a not nice way. There were turntables and records, so I tried to DJ. The challenge was enjoyable, but I couldn't shake the feeling that everyone was complaining about it and making accusations. I confronted some of them and they denied it--here was where it became both scary and later educational--I had enough rational mind left to understand that they were telling the truth, in reality it was a party and people were mostly having a good time and having conversations amongst themselves NOT ABOUT ME. I knew it without a doubt to be true, but I could not control the paranoia. I would go back to DJing or whatever else I was doing and my mind would imagine the worst about whoever was near me. A little voice told me "this is what it's like to be crazy" and from there I spiraled into a delusion of "I'm not coming out of this. I've gone and broken my brain. This is how crazy people become crazy." At the same time a rational voice would tell me, nevermind that, you'll be fine once this wears off.

I could go on and on but the bottom line is that yes it did eventually wear off and I was fine, but left with a lasting, visceral sense of empathy for the plight of mentally ill people.

I took mushrooms once at a strange house. I didn’t correctly anticipate how strong they were. The kitchen table had violent police tabloid magazines that I skimmed before my trip. Insanely terrible idea.

I ended up staying up for hours hallucinating that the world was covered in undercover police. A car would drive by and I would see the police. It was just a barrage of bad thoughts stacking on each other. Reality got lost somewhere and I forgot that I was tripping. I basically thought I was in a modern 1984-style society.

I could have probably kicked myself out of that with some logical thoughts: “How does the government afford to make 80% of the population a cop?” The feelings were too overwhelming for me to get there, and I don’t think my friends realized how bad of a time I was having.

Not from personal experience, just from what I've read...

One kind of bad trip is where you are aware you have taken a drug, but you are convinced you screwed up the dose this time and you are dying, and are filled with regret and fear that won't abate for hours. Or you 100% believe you are stuck in this new state and there is no way to get back to normal. Some people can have PTSD from it.

Another is you are confused enough that you have forgotten you have even taken a drug and might not even remember the stuff you were doing after the fact. But when you come around you find yourself in a jail cell or a hospital bed and realize that oh, crap, things must have gone horribly wrong. That's when you find out your roommate tried to calm you down but you apparently thought they were trying to take your soul so you ran into the street and stripped off your clothes to make it harder for the soul-stealers to grab you, then the police were called and wrestled your sweaty body to the ground and then you peed in the back seat of the police car. That kind of stuff.

Many things can happen, and it's hard to be exhaustive when the stories are so subjective and not a lot of research can be done on psychedelics yet.

First, for some people, psychedelics can trigger things they were not aware of (but likely in their family history or personal history) such as schizophrenia or episodes of past trauma. This is not really the norm, but is sometimes not mentioned by people who are afraid of the "demonization" of those drugs.

Depending on the dose, the drug, and the susceptibility of the person, one can also experience gaps in memory which create confusion in the moment (and in some cases after the trip), or a psychotic state (which can end up being manageable with knowledge and support for some, and a trip to sleep through the night in a hospital for others).

If we're not talking about these things, then bad trips can have physical components as well as psychological ones. For example: seeing horrific visions (when closing your eyes most often, sometimes even with eyes open), having a "body feeling" that just doesn't feel quite right (messed up proprioception, nausea), having thought patterns that take you down a negative spiral..

Examples of horrific visions: fractals of upsetting images that may or may not be related to experiences you've had (from past traumas to movies, or even random bits of your perception you weren't quite aware of).

Examples of body feeling issues: feeling like parts of the body aren't where they are ("my nose is a few centimeters off"), speech impediment/slurring, losing control of limbs temporarily (which can create a lot of fear and confusion)

Examples of thought patterns that create panic/anxiety/fear: thinking that the current state will last forever (forgetting that the psychedelic effect will wear off), feeling a lot of emotions without understanding the specific cause, perceiving some past trauma and not being resilient against it, heightened empathy being overwhelming, forgetting that perceptions are altered which affects behaviour ("I can't walk this path because it's too steep" on a flat path).

There's so much more to say about that, and also so much to say about proper preparation (set, setting, support) which can prevent almost all the problems listed, but it's important to remember that psychedelics are not a joke. Particularly so when getting into high doses, "research chemicals", or simply powerful ones (DMT comes to mind for intensity, or STP/DOM for length)

In my worst trip (LSD), I started vividly experiencing other people's lives, including seeing through the eyes of a child, a heroin addict, and a dying old man among several others, and I was convinced this reality was just one of them and not the one I was supposed to be in, and that if I didn't figure out a way to end up in the right one by the end I'd be stuck in whichever I was in last.

I definitely had a panicked feeling towards those around me trying to help, and felt they were trying to deceive me and trap me in their reality, with one friend in particular being the orchestrator of the deceipt. Thankfully, I have good friends who worked through it with me and who were experienced in psychedelic use.

That said, I've done acid several times since, as well as mushrooms, and I do plan on doing them again. I feel like every time I do, there's new work for me to do on myself that they bring to the forefront whether I want to look at it or not, and that's been overall quite helpful for me. Psychedelics are no "party drug", but rather a serious thing undertaken for the purpose of exploring ideas like identity and meaning, and to be done in the right setting and with the right supports. I'm also quite interested in trying DMT for the same reasons, if I could find any around here...

"I was given this drug in order to pull myself out of my previous extremely low-level of consciousness. The people who are with me seemed to be friends but I now realize they are therapists who are struggling to put me into a place where I can properly express myself, which has heretofore been impossible. I seem to be relearning how to speak. Facial expressions and crying are more effective. When this is over I will go back to my previous state but be entirely unaware that I am essentially disabled. Maybe my therapists are my parents and they are teaching me the meaning of basic words."

it's complicated. i haven't taken acid in a decade or more.

Spiders everywhere