Flying after a psychedelic retreat can be a bumpy ride

Plus other ecstatic links from around the web

Welcome to another Tuesday Brunch round-up of interesting ecstatic and psychedelic stories from around the internet. First bit is free, the rest for paid subscribers.

According to a new study from the Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety service, in a survey of 2,124 US respondents who used psychedelic drugs in the last 12 months, 32% travelled to take those psychedelics. Of that 32%, 42.9% traveled to Colorado, 28.9% traveled to Oregon and 38.5% traveled internationally. In other words, this ‘travelling to trip’ is a consequence of prohibition, and people travelling to trip legally either in a retreat abroad (Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Jamaica, Holland etc) or in one of the US states where psychedelic usage has been legalized.

Tripping in a legal context reduces some risks and hopefully raises some standards. But it also creates a new complication - taking a flight a day or two after you’ve had a powerful mind-altering experience. Occasionally, that can be a bumpy ride. The paper from RMPDS notes:

Those traveling to use psychedelics were more likely to treat a mental health disorder and have a psychedelic attributable emergency department visit than nontravelers. Emergency physicians in legalized and nonlegal states must be aware that travel to use psychedelic drugs is common because risks of adverse outcomes while traveling and returning home may accompany travel to use.

I’ve noticed, in the many interviews I’ve done with people who develop post-psychedelic difficulties, a certain proportion of them - at a guess, maybe 5% - say one of the triggers for their post-psychedelic difficulty was taking a flight, and feeling disorientated, derealized, anxious and ungrounded (literally) as they went through the airport and then sat on the flight. We take it for granted but the process of flying - checking in, passport control, customs, sitting on the plane and so on - is quite cognitively complex and tiring even if you’re not in the afterglow state, even more so if you’re still in an altered state and are having to navigate the process and ‘act normal’.

In our last peer group meeting, for example, John shared with us a bit of history (and he gave me permission to share a bit here). He’s a therapist without any previous mental health issues, who was interested in learning more about psychedelic therapy, so he went to a retreat in Portugal specifically for UK health professionals interested in psychedelic medicine. The participants took two mushroom trips over a weekend, the second one six grams. John didn’t properly come down from the second trip and remained in an expanded state the next day. On the journey home, he believed he had died and some of the people he encountered were angels. But he also sometimes felt acutely conscious he was not in his right mind and might attract suspicion and even potentially be sectioned. He managed to get back to the UK but spiralled in the weeks afterwards, and was eventually sectioned. He’s in a better place now, six months after the retreat, but not happy about being prescribed anti-psychotics. Did the flight back exacerbate his fragile mental state? Maybe so.

Here’s Alisha, who I interviewed in November 2023 and who experienced intense derealization, anxiety, insomnia and depression after a very challenging ayahuasca retreat in Peru.

She took a red-eye flight back to LA, and couldn’t sleep on that either. She started to experience suicidal thoughts on the flight. She felt in a dream-like state. She says: ‘When I got to my apartment, I didn’t recognize the room I had lived in for three years. It didn’t feel like my house, my bed.’

Here’s Julie, who I interviewed in November 2024, and who experienced 18 months of severe anxiety and other issues after an ayahuasca retreat in Peru. She also had a very difficult trip, didn’t feel she ‘landed’ properly, and then had a panic attack on the flight home:

[The flight] definitely didn't help. Just the over-stimulation of an airport and being in the middle seat, it was that same feeling [as during the ceremony] of feeling like a hostage, and my nervous system is just so jacked up and so, yeah, that didn't help at all.

And of course, Joseph Emerson famously took a plane the day after taking mushrooms for the first time, thought he was in a dream, and tried to crash the plane (he was an off duty pilot for Alaska Airlines, travelling in the cockpit of the plane). We at CPEP helped provide evidence for Joseph’s defence, showing that this sort of extended derealization can sometimes occur after a psychedelic experience.

I had a similar experience myself, which I wrote about in the little book Holiday from the Self. I went to Peru for a 10-day ayahuasca retreat, which was challenging but not awful, but then became disorientated on the flight back, and started to think I was in a dream or even in the afterlife, just like John or Joseph Emerson. I was so sure I was dreaming on the plane, I decided to upgrade to first class with my imaginary credit card. Alas, it turned out the credit card was real.

I wondered if others had experienced disorientation or anxiety taking flights after a psychedelic experience, so I asked the r/psychonaut Reddit page. One or two people mentioned problems:

• Once, I was experiencing some side effects which led to me running into the bathroom while landing. I was ok, but the flight attendant was very upset I did that, lucky I didn't get in more trouble.

• I've done it a few times and it was okay but my preference would be to not. I find I tend to be very open and receptive for some time after a trip so crowded public spaces can be overwhelming.

But others seem to enjoy it:

• Dude, my wife takes mushrooms right before boarding the airplane (small to moderate amount).

Psychedelic tourism can be marketed as a way to escape modern atomization and return to Stone Age community - ‘find your tribe’. But it can also amplify the fact we have lost that tribal solidarity - we have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles for a brief glimpse of psychedelic tribal solidarity with total strangers, before we have to leave them and go through all the weirdness of 21st-century mass travel, then land back at home, surrounded by people who have no idea what earth-shattering rite of passage we just went through.

I guess this is an argument for tripping locally and finding a local community to support you afterwards, so you don’t have to go through the dislocation of post-trip flying. Maybe that’s also an argument against prohibition - if it’s legal where you live, you don’t need to travel in the first place. But if you do fly somewhere to trip legally, and then have a challenging experience, it might be worth taking a couple of days longer to land your mind before you take a flight back home.

After the paywall, people are using ChatGPT as a trip-sitter; CPEP has a new study asking experts about post-psychedelic difficulties; a video of our recent psychedelic safety seminar on traumatic trips featuring Abigail Calder and Ricarda Evens; the cultiness of Betty Eisner; and as Beckley announces very good results for 5-meo-DMT trial, Kimon de Greef asks ‘who will own the God molecule?’