Wow! How? Dr. Reddit

A positive psychedelic experience can make you feel at one with the universe. A bad trip can make you feel psychotic.

People who want a relatively safer experience have two choices:

1.     Ask a friend to stay sober and be a calming guide (called a “trip sitter”)

2.     Have remedies on hand to blunt or stop the effect of the drug they ingest (called a “trip killer”).

Since LSD, magic mushrooms, and other psychedelics are illegal, there is little research in the medical literature about how to handle a bad trip.

People trade trip-killer tips peer-to-peer, outside the view of clinicians and other authorities.

A study published in the British Medical Journal detailed how people use Reddit, an online discussion platform, to crowdsource information about trip killers. Gregory Yates and Emily Melon searched Reddit to identify 128 discussion threads (called subreddits) focused on psychedelic drug use, trip-killer dosing, and safety warnings. On the positive side, the most popular trip-killers mentioned (benzodiazepines and antipsychotics) are the same ones that clinicians would be likely to give to someone who arrived at an emergency room describing the symptoms of a bad trip. However, dose recommendations varied widely and included amounts that risk over-sedation and respiratory depression.

Trip-killer advice is emblematic of an underground network of health information. In my book, Rebel Health, I highlight a study of r/STD, another subreddit where people crowdsource information that they otherwise may not want to talk about publicly: sexually-transmitted infections. Again, the good news is that Redditors are, for the most part, giving speedy and accurate advice. Clinicians and other authorities are smart to pay attention to these networks since they are some people’s first or only choice for some types of health information.

Where have you seen examples of alternative and even clandestine health information networks? Please share in the comments below.