Bad trips occurring during psychedelic drug use are analyzed as social rather than pharmacological products. Survey data from psychedelic users show a dramatic decline in bad trips over the period from the mid-1960s through 1975. Several explanations of this phenomenon are considered. Neither pharmacological explanations nor explanations depending on the growth of supportive subcultures of psychedelic users are supported by the data. Instead an historical analysis of the political conflict that was fashioned around psychedelic use in the 1960s suggests that the terms of this conflict and the policy environment around psychedelics structured social experience with these drugs in such a way as to generate experiences defined as bad trips. By the mid-1970s the shift of social conflict away from psychedelic issues produced a corresponding decline in bad trips among new groups of users.
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