PT532 – Understanding Bad Trips: The Power and Potential of Adverse Psychedelic Experiences, with Erica Rex, MA

Psychedelics Today

Psychedelics Today, LLC

Life Sciences, Science, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2024

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

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!

Rex's 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.

For links, head to the show notes page.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, everybody and welcome back to Psychedelics today.
0:14.6	This is Joe Moore coming at you from Bracken Rich, Colorado.
0:16.8	Today on the show, we have Erica Rex.
0:19.7	She is a regular contributor here, writer for us sometimes,
0:25.4	regular podcast, guest. And today we're here to talk about bad trips. Erica had one. I've had a few.
0:33.2	And it's a complicated topic. And we get into some of the depth there. We also start off with some
0:39.5	interesting commentary around the recent MAPs FTA adcom meeting and sure plenty of you heard
0:45.9	about that in June, early June, late May and some good stuff there too. So anyway, I think that's it
0:52.6	for now. Erica has a great and interesting
0:55.3	background that i suggest you all go check out and we'll see you on the other side enjoy this one
0:59.9	oh here we are hi everybody welcome back to psychedelics today uh we have erika rex with us who's been
1:09.1	on the show a whole mess of times written for us a bunch and has a very interesting background and career.
1:14.5	Today we're here to talk about bad trips.
1:16.2	How are you today, Erica?
1:17.2	I'm pretty good.
1:17.8	How are you?
1:18.6	Wonderful and excited to dig into this.
1:21.2	I was just chatting before we started rolling, just talking about how interesting this topic is, how taboo it is to write about. And yeah, like what, what are these things? And, you know, when medical regulators
1:35.0	come in, they're like, oh, that sounds like just a bad effect and we shouldn't have those, right?
1:39.8	But maybe it's a feature, not a bug, but let's get into it.
1:46.9	So let's first, again, introduce you.
1:49.2	You've got a great background.
	...

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