Psychology
Understanding Bad Trips: The Power and Potential of Adverse Psychedelic Experiences
July 23, 2024
Featuring: Erica Rex, MA
What are bad trips, or adverse, negative, or challenging experiences? Can a definition truly define the power they have to create intense distress and sometimes life-defining moments? Why do they happen, and how do you deal with them?
What are bad trips, or adverse, negative, or challenging experiences? Can a definition truly define the power they have to create intense distress and sometimes life-defining moments? Why do they happen, and how do you deal with them?
In this episode, Joe interviews Erica Rex, MA: award-winning journalist, past guest, thought leader on psychedelic medicine, and participant in one of the first clinical trials using psilocybin to treat cancer-related depression.
She tells the story of her recent harrowing experience, brought on by 6 times the amount of Syrian rue that was recommended: from entities threatening her, to a sense of terror she was going to die, to finding her way out of it with time, and most importantly, context to process and a strong support system. She and Joe emphasize the reality that bad trips can happen at any time, with any dose, for any reason, and that – if you can make your way through the experience without being traumatized – you can learn a lot about yourself during those states.
Her book, “The Heroine’s Journey: a woman’s quest for sanity in the psychedelic age” will be published by She Writes Press in the spring of 2026.
She discusses:
- Methods to help others having a bad experience
- Her skepticism about psychedelic therapy being in a medical context at all
- Her thoughts on the recent ICER recommendation against approving MDMA and the multiple topics not addressed
- Possible complications from MDMA use nobody talks about, from cytotoxic effects to even sudden-onset psychosis
- The pathologizing of anything outside the ordinary, to the point that we’re trying to suppress natural human emotions and reactions
and more!
Links
Psychedelicrenaissance.substack.com
National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute: A Breast Cancer Patient’s Perspectives on the Uses of Psychedelics in Medicine (Erica’s talk starts at 1:04:41 and lasts about 44 minutes)
PT273 – Erica Rex – Clinical Trials and Spontaneous Mystical Experiences
Could the Sonoran Desert Toad Cure Narcissism? by Erica Rex
Chacruna.net: DEA Denies Soul Quest’s Religious Exemption: Impacts on the Ayahuasca Community
An Inside Look at the FDA and Early Drug Development, featuring: Dr. Amanda Holley
Lykospbc.com: Lykos Therapeutics Statement on FDA Advisory Committee Meeting
Nih.gov: Persistent Psychosis After a Single Ingestion of “Ecstasy” (MDMA)
Goodreads.com: Albert Camus’ quote about suicide
