It was several hours after taking a large dose of the psychedelic drug LSD that things took a turn for the worse for Nadia. She and her friends were lost in a park and had to ask for directions to get back to the main road. The only people there to ask were police officers, and she suddenly became hyper-aware that she had taken an illegal substance. Nadia started feeling anxious that she would get in trouble and got paranoid — worrying, for example, that somehow her cats got into the LSD and would be poisoned.

She wanted the trip to end, so she turned to her antipsychotic prescription, which she takes daily. She had read online that it could reverse the effects of a so-called “bad trip” and had some on hand prepared for this very reason.

“It made the experience much better since it gave me the option to stop the bad trip,” Nadia, who is using a pseudonym to protect her privacy, told Salon. “It makes me feel safe taking LSD in general knowing that I can kill the trip in case it turns bad.”

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Psychedelic experiences can be both physically and emotionally intense, sometimes lasting for hours or even lingering for days, depending on the substance. As Hunter S. Thompson famously quipped (paraphrased) when you buy the ticket, you take the ride. And these experiences can feel very similar to a journey, with crests and waves of emotion and altered perception that can make an 8-hour psilocybin mushroom snack feel like an adventure. But what if you want to — need to — get off the ride? Well, there are drugs for that, too.

Some evidence suggests people have been using sedatives or tranquilizers as early as the 1970s to try to halt tripping. As both the therapeutic and recreational use of psychedelics exploded in what some call the "psychedelic renaissance," it would make sense that bad trips, have also become more common. Not every bad trip is necessarily negative, so some have resorted to........

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