Can Tech Get Rid of Bad Trips?

Whether it’s teenagers reviving the Benadryl TikTok challenge or people signing up for an out-of-body experience program previously used by the CIA, some of us are chasing unconventional trips—bad trips, essentially. But these trends are happening at a time when AI companies are also looking to create a “cleaner” trip for users, and others are using AI chatbots to therapeutically guide their psychedelic trips. Host Michael Calore sits down with staff writer Boone Ashworth and senior editor Manisha Krishnan to discuss these trends—and the promises and limitations of relying on tech to avoid bad trips.

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You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Boone Ashworth on Bluesky at @boone, and Manisha Krishnan on Bluesky at @manishakrishnan. Write to us at [email protected].

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Michael Calore: Hi, Boone. How you doing?

Boone Ashworth: Hey, Mike, how are you?

Michael Calore: Good. Welcome. This is your first appearance on Uncanny Valley, is it not?

Boone Ashworth: It is. It’s really nice to be back in the studio.

Michael Calore: It’s good to have you.

Boone Ashworth: Good to be here.

Michael Calore: You’re filling in for Lauren this week. She is out meeting the Pope or …

Boone Ashworth: Yes.

Michael Calore: … eating pasta or something. I can’t really remember exactly what she’s doing over there, but this week, we’re going to dive into a subject that I know that you and I are always curious about, and that is the subject of drugs.

Boone Ashworth: I’m peaking right now, Mike.

Michael Calore: Well, before you start getting really sweaty and anxious, we do have to introduce our guest, WIRED’s senior culture editor, Manisha Krishnan. Hi, Manisha, welcome back onto the show.

Manisha Krishnan: Hi, guys. Excited to talk about drugs, my favorite topic.

Michael Calore: Let’s get into it.

This is WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Today, we’re talking about drugs and all the ways they’re changing as they continue to be intertwined with tech, and we continue to enjoy them. From teenagers reviving the Benadryl TikTok challenge to more people than ever signing up for an out-of-body experience program previously used by the CIA. Some people are chasing unconventional trips, bad trips, essentially. And then there’s the AI companies who are looking to create a cleaner trip for users, for those who are using AI chatbots to therapeutically guide their psychedelic trips.

We’ll dive into some of these trends and why behind the weirdness of some of these methods, there is a real appeal that says a lot about the moment we’re in culturally and technologically. I’m Michael Calore, director of consumer tech and culture.

Boone Ashworth: I’m Boone Ashworth, staff writer on the Gear desk.

Manisha Krishnan: And I’m Manisha Krishnan, senior culture editor.

Michael Calore: So let’s start with one of the stranger methods for substance consumption that WIRED has reported on recently. And believe me, we have reported on dozens of strange methods for substance consumption. This one is probably, I think, the strangest at least of 2025. It is the revival of the trend of teenagers and young adults taking a ton of Benadryl to get high. I use the word high loosely. Manisha, can you please explain this to us?

Manisha Krishnan: So this story made me sad, to be honest, but essentially, there’s a Benadryl challenge that blew up in 2020 on TikTok, and it involved young people taking at least a dozen Benadryl pills at a time and then challenging other people to do the same. But what I didn’t know is that when you take a lot of Benadryl in high doses, the active ingredient in it, diphenhydramine, is actually a deliriant, which is a hallucinogenic, but unlike other psychedelics, it’s not fun. It basically causes creepy sensations like tingling, disturbing and scary hallucinations, a brutal numbness, a dulling of the mind. So it just sounds like a dark, bad trip every single time.

Boone Ashworth: Manisha, I have to ask you about the Hat Man. Some of the users of this Benadryl challenge, the descriptions on Reddit of the experience say things like basically puts you in the Silent Hill dimension for a few hours. You feel physically awful and sick and is generally a very dirty high. I recall my whole body feeling like I had bugs in my skin and I couldn’t stop itching. I also was seeing shadows and bugs and spiders on my walls. What’s not to love?

Manisha Krishnan: No, it is weird. It’s like the Hat Man is this recurring vision that a lot of users who take high doses of Benadryl see and it almost is like this shadowy figure that’s in the room with them. As someone who has sleep paralysis, it reminds me of—there’s a demon that appears that’s known to appear when you have sleep paralysis, but it reminds me of that, where a lot of people describe having the same scary vision appear.

Michael Calore: OK. So is that something where people have seen the Hat Man and then talked about it and described it, and then other people take Benadryl, knowing that if they take a dozen of them, they will see the Hat Man, and since they’ve been offered a description of the Hat Man, they see the same thing that everybody else is seeing?

Manisha Krishnan: Yeah. So I don’t know what the scientific explanation is for why people are seeing a shadowy Hat Man, but from our reporter who did this story, he said that basically sometimes what happens is whatever you’re anticipating that’s scary comes to life when you’re tripping. And so the Hat Man is a meme at this point. There are T-shirts with the Benadryl Hat Man on them. So I feel like it might be one of those things where people are anticipating it.

Michael Calore: The Hat Man has merch?

Manisha Krishnan: He does.

Michael Calore: Oh, boy.

Boone Ashworth: There’s a similar thing with DMT, right? I’ve never done DMT, but I hear that when you take it, you see gnomes. They’re generally friendly. I think they’re wearing hats, but that’s like a shared phenomenon. And it’s not sure if it’s something you would naturally see or if people know about it because, like you said, they just know about it from the culture.

Michael Calore: Sure.

Manisha Krishnan: A lot of hat visions in the drug world, apparently.

Michael Calore: Well, the experience of taking high doses of Benadryl sounds pretty miserable. So usually, we associate people taking drugs with positive effects and people are doing this knowing that it has these negative effects, the creepy crawlies, the visions, the dark places. So why are people doing it then? Why do these people go out chasing a bad trip?

Manisha Krishnan: From our reporting, the people that we talk to, it seems to be a wider part of this nihilism culture that’s being embraced by young people. It’s also very cheap. Young people are not doing too well financially, a lot of them. So it’s cheaper than alcohol, it’s cheaper than probably a lot of other drugs, and it just brings on this numbness. And I guess for some people, that is the point, and some people have even described it as a form of self-harm.

Boone Ashworth: There’s definitely an element of anxiety and depression in that. I can say as somebody who has taken medication for depression before, I would definitely recommend the doctor-prescribed stuff, but you’re very right about the nihilism and the constant feeling of awfulness, and just to feel nothing for a bit. There’s a weird appeal to that, even if it is just full of spiders.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Manisha Krishnan: Yeah. That’s what some people essentially said is that if I’m focusing on these creepy crawlies on my eyelids right now, I’m not thinking about whatever it is that’s bothering me in the real world.

Michael Calore: Bad trips aside, these trends obviously have real repercussions. Back in 2020, three Texas teens were treated for Benadryl overdoses. One of them was just 14 years old and took 14 pills. The 14-year-old recovered and returned home the next day, but that same year, a 15-year-old died from a seizure after overdosing on Benadryl in Oklahoma. Since then, the number of overdose cases from Benadryl has climbed to the point where there are thousands of overdoses a year.

So Manisha, knowing that you have followed drug and health policy in your reporting career, what are the common factors that lead to these dramatic increases in use, and what types of strategies actually work to mitigate harm?

Manisha Krishnan: Yeah. So I just want to start with the term overdose because it is a very scary word, but you can overdose on basically anything. You can overdose on weed gummies, and usually, it just means you get really hungry, and maybe you’re a little bit paranoid for a few hours. So it’s not like all of these kids are falling deathly ill from taking too much Benadryl, but it’s an interesting time because young people have moved away from drinking. I think there’s also data that shows that they are doing fewer drugs than maybe past generations, but at the same time, I don’t think there’s an easy fix to trends like this. I think that there’s probably a lot of isolation and loneliness that factors into trends like this, as well as economic disenfranchisement, which is where the cheapness of this drug, this backdoor psychedelic trend comes into play.

And then, of course, you have everything being exacerbated by the internet and these things becoming framed as a fun challenge. So what strategies can work to mitigate harm? Always realistic drug information, like telling kids that smoking weed is going to kill them is not smart because everyone has access to better information these days. But I think there’s a lot of systemic factors that go into this that it’s really I think about connection and making sure that people actually have access to fun opportunities.

Boone Ashworth: OK. So Manisha, maybe this isn’t Tide Pods, but there is an element of challenge of it. It’s a TikTok challenge. People are talking about it online. What roles do tech companies have over this content and how it’s moderated?

Manisha Krishnan: I do think that the virality of these things, it presents it as something that’s fun, and I think that takes the dangerousness element out of it, especially if you are a young person. Tech companies absolutely have to play a role in moderating this, and I think it also goes back to parents having to be aware of what their kids are consuming.

Michael Calore: All right. Well, let’s move on to another consciousness-altering trend. This one was reported by WIRED contributor, Mattha Busby, and it’s about a psychedelic meditation program that was developed by The Monroe Institute and it’s been around for decades. Manisha, this story also came across your desk. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Manisha Krishnan: Yes. So their method is based on what’s called the Gateway Tapes, and this is a set of guided meditations that are intended to help people reach new planes of consciousness. And specifically, it’s meant to help you have out-of-body experiences. So this method was created by radio broadcasting executive, Robert Monroe, back in the ’70s. Today, one consciousness content creator described The Monroe Institute as an American Hogwarts, and they have launched all of these virtual and in-person retreats to help people try this method and potentially have out-of-body experiences. They’ve even got Spotify playlists to help you do self-hypnosis.

Michael Calore: How do you do self-hypnosis with a Spotify playlist?

Manisha Krishnan: The method to these tapes is something called binaural beats. And that’s when you’re listening to beats, each ear is hearing a different tone, and what it’s supposed to do is make your brain create a third tone on its own.

Michael Calore: I mean, binaural beats are as old as time, I feel like. And there’s been tapes and CDs. There was even a radio show where I went to college, where somebody would just play binaural beats for an hour, 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. or something.

Boone Ashworth: The ultimate DJ set.

Michael Calore: Yeah, basically.

Boone Ashworth: Manisha, you said that it was described as an American Hogwarts by a consciousness content creator. Can we just stop for a second? Can I ask what a consciousness content creator is?

Manisha Krishnan: I know. As soon as I said that, I was like, “I can’t believe this is a real thing.” I guess it’s just like there is a content creator for every niche at this point, and I guess there are people who are out there who are trying to help people achieve new types of higher consciousness, and this is one of those people.

Boone Ashworth: Right.

Michael Calore: Rad. Well, our producer chased down one of these tapes from The Monroe Institute and has a clip ready for a listen if you’re both game.

[Audio Clip:] The purpose of this exercise is to assist you in the lift-out procedure. The intent is not to travel far off, but to remain in close proximity to the physical body in local one. First, your energy conversion box. Place any worries or concerns in this box, for they will only get in the way of this exercise. Second, resonant tuning, followed by your affirmation, I am more than my physical body. Then move to focus 10, and I will join you there.

Michael Calore: OK. There’s a lot of lingo.

Boone Ashworth: I had a lot of coffee today, and that actually really helped.

Manisha Krishnan: It did calm me down a little bit, but, yeah, I was honestly struggling to follow his instruction because of the jargon he was using.

Michael Calore: Yeah. So the lift-out procedure, I think, correct me if I’m wrong, but this is The Monroe Institute’s big thing. The thing that they teach through their meditative practices and these tapes is out-of-body experiences. So you can actually leave your corporeal form and hover and watch yourself meditate.

Boone Ashworth: That sounds dope.

Michael Calore: And examine the world around you from a different perspective.

Manisha Krishnan: Yeah, that sounds very useful, actually.

Michael Calore: It does.

Boone Ashworth: Kind of like a mirror, but right above you. Yeah.

Michael Calore: Yes, exactly.

Boone Ashworth: More than just the sounds. So it’s the people who are enrolling in this program and why. Their participant pool has really increased since 2022, I think. Military service people, psychonauts, meditators, it surprised me to read that the military’s involvement with the institute goes way back. So what’s the story there?

Manisha Krishnan: So in the early 1980s during the Cold War and fears that Soviets had a psychic war for edge, the CIA and the Department of Defense sent US Army Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell to The Monroe Institute to see if this method could be useful for defense purposes. So essentially, to see if he could do remote viewing, which you could see why the military would want to be able to leave their bodies and spy. And so he wrote a report, and he said that there is a sound and rational basis to some of their methods in terms of physical science parameters for considering the gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives. But about manifestation, he said, “Since our consciousness is the source of all reality, our thoughts have the power to influence the development of reality in time space, if those thoughts can be projected with adequate intensity.”

Boone Ashworth: Our thoughts have the power to influence the development of reality in time space.

Michael Calore: Isn’t this the Men Who Stare at Goats thing?

Boone Ashworth: Yes.

Manisha Krishnan: Yeah. Yes.

Michael Calore: OK.

Manisha Krishnan: It actually is.

Michael Calore: OK, all right.

Manisha Krishnan: Yeah. That’s funny you said that. I was thinking of Oprah and The Secret.

Boone Ashworth: Oh, yeah.

Manisha Krishnan: In terms of manifestation.

Boone Ashworth: You’re going to buy that book for that to work, though.

Michael Calore: Yeah. I mean, we’re joking about it and, obviously, I think all three of us are pretty skeptical that the methods are things that actually lead to out-of-body experiences, but there are many people who I’m sure have enrolled in the program and found it to be useful, but what do we make of its rising popularity now? The Monroe Institute is something that’s been around for decades. Meditation, out-of-body experiences have been around for a really long time, but there’s a resurgence now. So what do we make of its rising popularity? It feels like every decade, every generation has its own collective spirituality crisis, and I just wonder if that’s what’s going on here.

Manisha Krishnan: I do think it fits into broader wellness culture. I think that … I mean, even yesterday, I was at this tech store and they put me in something called The Hum, and it’s just a giant rock loosely shaped like someone meditating. And you go in, you get covered in blankets, they cover your eyes, they put earphones on you, and it’s like a five-minute trip. And so basically, you feel the vibrations while you’re listening to these beats. And they described it as just being a shortcut to maybe even having some sort of a psychedelic experience without the psychedelics.

So I just think this whole thing is very popular right now, and I think part of it is we’re all so busy. Capitalism is a hellhole right now, and I feel like people are just searching for something, and maybe they want a little bit of a quick fix. If I listen to this hypnosis program, it’s going to open my mind in two weeks or whatever for 800 bucks or whatever it is.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Boone Ashworth: I feel like the meditation aspect of it is really interesting. I am somebody who’s always tried to meditate and just don’t have the patience for it, and just haven’t had anything that pulls me in to being able to sit there that long. So if this is what does it, I mean, if you overdo anything, you’re going to be a wacko, but if this is what gets you into it, I mean, maybe I want to go to section 10.

Michael Calore: Yeah. I think you belong there. Just make sure you leave everything in the consciousness box.

Boone Ashworth: Yeah, I’ll do my best when I’m looking down at my body.

Michael Calore: OK. Let’s take a quick break and we’ll come right back.

Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. So Manisha and Boone, we have been talking about psychedelic drugs and consciousness-altering experiences. But now I would love for us to dig into other ways that the tech industry is shaping these human endeavors. So for one, there’s a startup like Mindstate Design Labs, which is a Silicon Valley startup backed by the buzzy incubator, Y Combinator, that has created “the least psychedelic psychedelic that is psychoactive”. Basically, the company is using AI to help design psychedelic-like drugs that induce specific mental states that deliver the benefits of psychedelics without the hallucinations.

So Mindstate’s approach is based on the idea that the psychedelic trip might not be necessary for the therapeutic benefit. Psychedelics work on the brain’s serotonin system by promoting neuroplasticity, which involves the growth of neurons and the formulation of new connections. And some researchers believe that this ability to stimulate neuroplasticity rather than the hallucinogenic effects and the colors and the visions and the sounds, that that ability to stimulate neuroplasticity is the key to treating mental illness. Our colleague, Emily Mullin, reported earlier this year on the company’s first compound and that it looks very promising, and I’m just curious what you make of this, the trip without the trip.

Manisha Krishnan: So I think this is really interesting. First of all, a lot of people who work in the psychedelics space would say that there’s no such thing as a bad trip. That a bad trip is something that ultimately you can work through and come out the other side, and that that work is actually helpful to someone. But when I think of somebody like my mom or maybe somebody who just doesn’t have a lot of experience with drugs at all, and maybe is a bit nervous, but wants to gain some of those benefits, I think that a trip without the extreme ups and downs could be a practical and good thing. So I’m just very intrigued to see where this goes, and do we actually need that trip for it to be effective?

Boone Ashworth: I think also this thing is going to be really good for people who go to festivals. I’m sure they will love this. In Emily’s story, they talked about people with psychoactive issues or things like schizophrenia who probably should not be doing like LSD, for instance. If this is something that is potentially more usable for them, that could be great. I do think there’s an element of it being scary of the potential for there being a bad trip for people to take it a little bit more seriously, because especially if you’ve been there, if you’ve gone through that and had that experience, maybe you might say there’s no bad trip, but you might not want to redo that anytime soon.

Michael Calore: And I know that that is a big barrier to people to have a psychedelic experience is they don’t want the frightening part. They don’t want to be in a position where, all of a sudden, they’re confronting their darkest fears. And, yes, there is a good reason to confront all of your darkest fears, but also, they’re missing out on any possible benefits. So if this drug actually works the way it’s intended to, then it might be a good way to get people into that type of therapeutic environment who would otherwise not step into that space themselves.

Boone Ashworth: I mean, there’s all kinds of drugs that do all sorts of different things. Maybe you don’t need one that gives you ego death. Maybe you want that, to have the choice. There you go.

Michael Calore: So it’s not just startups trying to leverage AI into better “cleaner drugs”. People are also using AI chatbots alongside drugs for therapeutic purposes. And probably the best example of this is people using ChatGPT or Claude as a guide through a psychedelic trip. So the chatbot becomes the trip sitter. Manisha, please tell me that you have fired up ChatGPT and used it as a trip sitter.

Manisha Krishnan: I actually do want to get its advice just to see how bad it is. So the thing is, psychedelics are still largely illegal in the US outside of Oregon, Colorado, and even to the extent that we do have psychedelic therapy, for example, in Oregon, where you can pay and go to a facility and do shrooms. The sitters that they have there are very expensive. And so I can see why you would maybe turn to ChatGPT. Also, it’s just when someone’s on drugs, I think sometimes it’s just nice, probably, to have someone there to talk to, even if it is a chatbot.

But I think where it gets hairy is if you’re actually relying on it for advice, even around dosing and things like that. And I mean, this is a chatbot. It doesn’t understand your medical history, your psychology, and all of these other things. So that’s where I feel like even Reddit would be a better source.

Boone Ashworth: I think with all things AI, the best advice is keep a human involved. Keep a human in the loop at some point. I mean, maybe a trip sitter is expensive, but if you’re going to do LSD or mushrooms or something, have friends around. Maybe you don’t need a trip sitter, but just having somebody there in the room because it can have physical effects, and you can wind up walking around somewhere else that you do not expect. And so having somebody else there to be there with you, somebody that you trust, ideally, that way, it’s not just some weirdo who’s giving you bad vibes, but having a friend around, having someone that you are cool with around, I think, is really helpful. And then use the chatbot as you guys see fit.

Michael Calore: Yeah, and absolutely do not use Grok. Don’t use that as your trip sitter.

Boone Ashworth: Yeah. You’ll come back racist.

Manisha Krishnan: Just won’t stop making 420 jokes at you.

Boone Ashworth: Wrong drug.

Michael Calore: All right. Well, we need to take another break, but we’ll come right back.

Boone and Manisha, thank you for serving as our psychedelic drug experts here on Uncanny Valley for the week. We appreciate it. We’re going to dive now into our new segment. It’s called WIRED and TIRED. Whatever is new and cool is WIRED and whatever passe thing is on the way out is TIRED. So Manisha, would you like to go first?

Manisha Krishnan: Yes. I’m going to do it backwards because I want to, but apparently, everything fun about drugs, including the rite of passage that is a bad trip, is TIRED, and the boring parts are now WIRED.

Michael Calore: Please explain.

Manisha Krishnan: Well, I mean, I think we just summed it up. We want to have a chatbot babysit your trip instead of your best friend and sucking all possibility out of psychedelics, so that you never have a bad trip. But as I said, it is like a rite of passage and a funny story.

Michael Calore: Yeah. OK. That’s a good one. Boone.

Boone Ashworth: My TIRED is downers and my WIRED is uppers. No, I’m kidding. I have a WIRED/TIRED that is like a recommendation segment from the old Gadget Lab show. My TIRED is TikTok and my WIRED is Dropout, the streaming platform.

Michael Calore: Dropout.

Boone Ashworth: Dropout. It is a comedy platform. You’ve probably seen a bunch of clips from it on TikTok, things like “Dimension 20,” “Um, Actually,” “Game Changer.” It’s a bunch of very funny comedy nerds doing long-form improv and I think it is great. I don’t know if you remember in 2008 or whatever it was when the nerds took over the culture and have held it ever since and then slowly turned into techno fascists. These are the good nerds still.

Michael Calore: The good ones.

Boone Ashworth: They are kind and empathetic and still very raunchy, but also very fun. And it’s a cheap streaming service. It’s like six bucks a month, and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for something to take your mind off of everything else that’s going on that isn’t drugs.

Michael Calore: And you don’t want to scroll on TikTok.

Boone Ashworth: Yes.

Michael Calore: So is it like vertical video scrolling style or is it more like a YouTube style, on-demand video, and you just watch things?

Boone Ashworth: More like YouTube style, yeah, but you can watch it on your phone.

Michael Calore: So TikTok comedy is out.

Boone Ashworth: I mean, there’s still plenty of TikTok comedy. I’m not deleting the app. I’m just saying, if you want something that won’t keep you on there forever, you have other options.

Michael Calore: Right on. Solid.

Boone Ashworth: Mike, what’s yours?

Manisha Krishnan: I’m going to do mine backwards as well because TIRED is waking up with the alarm on your phone, because if you do that, then you just look at your phone right when you wake up, which is, we all do it. We all know it’s bad and we keep doing it anyway.

Boone Ashworth: Tick tock.

Michael Calore: And you need to break those old habits, so that’s TIRED. Don’t use your phone as your alarm anymore. WIRED is a sunset alarm clock. I love sunset alarm clocks. And this time of year, the fall is particularly when they are in fashion. This is a clock, it’s an alarm clock. It has noise if you want noise, but you don’t really need it. It simulates the sunrise over the course of 20, 30 minutes. It slowly starts glowing orange and then it gets brighter and brighter. It can get really bright, but you can set the maximum brightness on it, and it’s just a really pleasant, fun way to wake up. It’s a very gentle way to wake up. So I highly recommend the sunrise alarm clock much more than looking at your phone.

Boone Ashworth: That’s so nice. I feel like I’m coming down now. Thank you.

Michael Calore: All right, Boone, thanks for being here this week.

Boone Ashworth: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Michael Calore: Manisha, thanks for joining us.

Manisha Krishnan: Thank you.

Michael Calore: Thanks for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you’d like what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at [email protected]. Today’s show was produced by Adriana Tapia and Mark Leyda. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Mark Leyda is our San Francisco studio engineer. Pran Bandi is our New York studio engineer. Daniel Roman fact-checked this episode. Kate Osborn is our executive producer. Katie Drummond is WIRED’s global editorial director. And Chris Bannon is Condé Nast’s head of Global Audio.

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