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Icarus on Acid: On the Phenomenon of Leaps and Falls from Heights Involving Psychedelics

ed-prideaux

By Ed Prideaux

shutterstock 2050362317
in this article
  • The Popular Narrative Surrounding the ‘Acid Jumper’
  • Jumping from Heights on Psychedelics Happens More Often Than Most Realise
  • The Diane Linkletter Incident
  • The Case of Frank Olson
  • What Causes People to Leap from High Places on Psychedelics?
  • Psychedelic Jumping is a Harmful Narrative as Well as a Reality
  • Putting the Risks of Psychedelics in Context
  • How Can We Reduce the Risk of Psychedelic Jumping?
ed-prideaux

By Ed Prideaux

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Chemical Collective or any associated parties.

A number of years ago, I decided to try 125 micrograms of LSD in the company of two friends shortly before Christmas. Living on the third storey, and burdened with lifelong vertigo, the potential for defenestration had occasionally crossed my mind. 

As I approached the peak of the experience, one of my companions informed me that a reindeer was stationed on the high street below. It was part of the Leamington Christmas Market. 

So energised was I by this bizarre festive detail that I leapt up from my bed, perched precariously by the window, and bounced on the mattress – before smashing my head through the window. 

I had nearly fucking fallen out. 

I watched in cold-neon horror as the eyes of strangers glanced up quizzically. I saw a terrified mother holding a baby. I saw the glass shattered on the pavement below and twisted into various daggered shapes. 

No one was harmed. My friend was perhaps more shaken than me. I immediately pivoted into a breathless, ersatz-Buddhist monologue about the need to accept “whatever is” in any one moment. He wasn’t very convinced. 

As you can imagine, the rest of the trip was a bit of a bummer. I wandered the Christmas Market in the British Midlands chill that evening – and added to the list of fuck-ups by mistakenly knocking over a toddler.

With all the maturity and foresight you’d expect of a nineteen-year-old, I returned to LSD a month later at the same dose. But the friend who’d announced the reindeer declared decisively that he would be more than quintupling his dose, to a whopping 270 micrograms. 

Things started off okay, as with our Pink Floyd and tolerance for the Grateful Dead’s shaky first LP. Before too long, however, my friend was pinned to the bed by visions and battle scenes of self-interrogation, something about balancing the pragmatic and the ideal. He appeared to be losing touch with consensus social reality. In strange gestures otherwise seen in severely autistic children, he opted to self-soothe by sticking out his tongue in staccato bursts and twisting his cheeks and eyes into uncanny contortions. His expression was only rendered more disturbing by the sheer black transparency of his dilated pupils, which appeared to be verging on tears. He kept asking for the time. He explained that he wanted this to end. 

Eventually, my friend demanded a tranquiliser. 

He admitted later to having been bombarded with suicidal urges to jump out the window – inclinations he found rather tempting. 

He came around slowly with the help of FIFA 11.

Leamington Spa Royal Parade, where my friend and I nearly fell out of windows.

The Popular Narrative Surrounding the ‘Acid Jumper’

From the late 1960s onward, the image of the acid jumper may have been psychedelia’s most persistent cautionary tale. A man takes LSD, believes he can fly, and jumps off a rooftop or out of a window to his death. And like most myths, it’s based on fragments of truth, inflated by media, fear, and repetition.

Comedian Bill Hicks once ridiculed the trope: “If you think you can fly, why not start from the ground?” It’s funny, but also precisely the point. Why don’t they? What compels someone to leap from a height while tripping, when the idea is so patently terrible? The answer is as complex as the human mind–and as unstable as the states psychedelics can produce.

Jumping from Heights on Psychedelics Happens More Often Than Most Realise

Spectators gaze up at a jumper at a Madison Square Garden Phish show, 2022. “It’s security pointing up to the chase bridge where the dude jumped from. We all thought it was a human at first, but since everybody walked out of the section without medical assistance we assumed an object was thrown. It was at least 30 feet, I don’t know how he walked out of there.”

Jumpings happen quite often. Whether in Tokyo, Newcastle, Amsterdam, Darwin, Denver, Cambridge, Salem, Manchester, Vermont, Reading, San Francisco, Worcester, Massachusetts, Toronto, Vegas, Syracuse, New York, Florida, Bali, Santa Monica, Sydney, San Fernando, Vancouver, Norway, or Brighton, the same pattern recurs. One VICE journalist, in a piece otherwise defensive of psychedelic drugs, was forced to concede that “a quick Google search reveals dozens of similar incidents that have happened over the years”. 

Frank Olson, a CIA scientist, plunged to his death from a hotel in 1953 after being dosed with LSD without his knowledge days before – his family later claimed it was murder. In 1966, Vernon Cox, 20, leapt from a third-story window in San Francisco, inspired by Timothy Leary’s LSD lectures, believing he’d “go to Europe” mid-trip. Leary was sued by the family and forced to pay $100,000 in damages. Funnily enough, Leary’s colleague Richard Alpert – later renamed Ram Dass – jumped out the window and broke his leg at Millbrook Estate while on LSD. In 1969, Walter Gilchriest, also 20, plunged from a fourth-floor NYC building, proclaiming he “wanted to fly” on LSD. A medical examiner at the time noted roughly a dozen fatal “acid plunge” cases over a three-year span. In 1971, Ruth Moment Armistead jumped from the University of Texas Tower. 

John Lennon, tripping in Abbey Road studios in 1967, was alone on the rooftop until the other Beatles raced up to stop him. A couple of months later, his wife was drawn to jump after being spiked with LSD at a party. “I felt desolate. Upstairs I found an open bedroom window and contemplated jumping out. For a few minutes, ending it all seemed like an easy solution: a chasm had opened between John and me, and I had no idea how to bring us back together”, she wrote in her memoir. Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath revealed that in the early ’70s someone dosed his drink with acid during a tour. He tried to jump out of his hotel window to “end it”. Fortunately, his bandmates Tony Iommi and Bill Ward tackled him and held him down on the bed until the crisis passed.

The band Mike Stuart Span weren’t so lucky. “Tripping on LSD, guitarist [Nick] Langham fell to his death after leaping through an upstairs window. The band were left in a profound state of shock; despite the blandishments of the encroaching psychedelic era, the Mike Stuart Span subsequently became a resolutely drug-free zone.”

In Colorado, 19-year-old Levy Thamba Pongi consumed a high-potency cannabis edible, grew agitated, and leapt from a fourth-floor balcony. In Brighton, Arthur Cave, the 15-year-old son of musician Nick Cave, took LSD and fell to his death from a cliff range called Ovingdean Gap: a site bordered eerily by notices for a suicide prevention hotline. 

Ovingdean Gap

Concert venues can be especially deadly. Joseph Holcomb Adams, a bioethicist and journalist, describes a venue in California with so many incidents that a particular balcony is called the ‘Jumpers Spot’, which is sometimes specially staffed. At Dead & Co’s Citi Field show, fans witnessed a tragic leap. The Chase Center in San Francisco reported a skydive, alongside Madison Square Garden during another Phish show. A 2010 jumper at Jones Beach reportedly asked someone to hold his soda before leaping. SPAC 2023, Worcester, Syracuse, and the Thomas & Mack Center also recorded dangerous falls and leaps, though public details about all cases have not been extensively published to resolve the role of drugs. A 1993 Grateful Dead fan survived a Giants Stadium leap during “Estimated Prophet”. In 1980s Toronto, Benji Haywood leapt off a bridge after a Pink Floyd show.

The Diane Linkletter Incident

Things forever changed on October 4, 1969, when a woman named Diane Linkletter fell to her death from the sixth-floor kitchen window of her West Hollywood apartment. She was twenty years old, the daughter of Art Linkletter, a beloved American TV host. And within hours, her death was national news.

The New York Times called it “a national event.” Two weeks later, Art Linkletter was in the White House, describing his daughter’s death to Richard Nixon and senior congressional leaders. He told them she had leapt “in a panic, believing she was losing her mind from recurring bad trips as a result of LSD experiments six months before.” According to Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson, Diane didn’t test positive or negative for LSD – because no one checked her for the drug. When acute intoxication wasn’t confirmed, Linkletter suggested that she was experiencing flashbacks instead. 

Art Linkletter’s grief curdled into a crusade. He blamed the counterculture, LSD, Timothy Leary, and the permissiveness of the times. “It wasn’t suicide,” he said. “It was murder. She had a tiger in her bloodstream.” He became a national figure in Nixon’s War on Drugs, standing alongside Sammy Davis Jr. and NFL star Gale Sayers on an advisory council. Diane’s death was used to justify funding increases for drug education and enforcement. Linkletter told the story on talk shows and even cold-called Leary live on air to insult him.

But the truth was murky. Emerson documents how Diane had battled depression, and that her brother-in-law had killed himself months before. Her companion the night of her death, Ed Durston, told contradictory stories: to one person, Diane had “bolted” onto the balcony in a panic; to police, she walked calmly to the kitchen window and jumped. Durston never mentioned LSD use to a friend of Diane’s, despite telling investigators she took it. Notwithstanding the pseudoscientific character of such tests, Durston even took a police polygraph, but its results were never made public. He is described as a dubious character involved in the abuse of women. He later witnessed actress Carol Wayne’s mysterious 1985 drowning. 

What are the chances?

Grant Conroy, Diane’s first husband, claimed that she had used heroin, speed, and LSD from age 13 or 14, yet such accounts are disputed by friends like Tom Bleecker, who wondered how such prolific use could have been concealed from the family she lived with.  

None of it really mattered. The media ran the story hard: another beautiful young woman destroyed by acid.

The Case of Frank Olson

In 1953, CIA scientist Frank Olson plummeted from a 13th-story New York hotel window, marking one of the earliest cases linking LSD to fatal jumps. Secretly dosed with LSD by the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program, Olson’s death was initially labelled a drug-induced suicide, with the agency claiming the psychedelic triggered a psychotic break. However, his family contested this narrative, alleging murder to silence Olson’s knowledge of CIA biological warfare secrets. 

Declassified in the 1970s, the case revealed inconsistencies: no witnesses saw Olson jump, and his injuries suggested possible foul play. The CIA’s own documents admitted dosing him without consent, fueling suspicions of a cover-up. In 1994, a second autopsy found a suspicious hematoma on Olson’s skull, inconsistent with a fall. The debate persists – did LSD drive Olson to leap, or was he pushed to protect covert operations?

What Causes People to Leap from High Places on Psychedelics?

The classic fight-or-flight response is an ancient survival mechanism: confronted with mortal danger, an animal’s adrenaline soars, and it either battles ferociously or runs without hesitation. On a bad trip, a person might perceive a harmless object or hallucinated figure as unspeakably threatening. The “flight” impulse can then override rational thought. Interestingly, LSD by itself does not typically increase fear responses – in fact, low or moderate doses in controlled studies can diminish activity in the amygdala, making people less reactive to fearful stimuli. But a psychedelic user in panicked psychosis may feel they are literally disintegrating or in imminent doom, leading them to flee the situation at any cost.

Zach Holden, a teenager who survived a leap, “believed he was ‘stuck’ in the simulation at the party, with the idea of it sticking in his mind, leading to him being desperate to ‘escape’.” Various perceptual distortions may make windows or cliffs seem less dangerous than they are, while simultaneously a surge of fight-or-flight physiology (high heart rate, tunnel vision, overwhelming fear) drives split-second decisions.

“I was hallucinating so hard, I thought a meteor had hit earth and I was convinced my brain had exploded across the walls”, one jumper survivor recalled. “I thought I was dead and trapped alone forever in my home. It was pure horror… I have no memory of doing this. I was told by medical experts and professionals of all kinds afterward that one side effect of Acid is experiencing crazy bursts of energy and having almost superhuman strength. Also experiencing gaps in memory.”

Indeed, some flight attempts stem from distorted euphoria or grandiosity rather than terror. Psychedelics (and stimulants and dissociatives like PCP) can make users feel superhuman. They might not feel pain or normal physical limits. A young man on LSD attacked his girlfriend, attempted to cut off his own penis, then jumped out a window – all clearly actions of someone impervious to normal pain/disinhibition signals. In these states, someone might genuinely think they can do the impossible – “I can totally jump and land safely” – or that they are being guided by cosmic forces. One man jumped off belly-first “like Peter Pan”. Even Harry Styles took a leap: “I was high so I jumped out of a window, I don’t know if I thought it was cool, I hit my chin on my knee and bit a part of my tongue off.”

Modern synthetics and other kinds of drugs may amplify the risk. In 2024, a woman in Tokyo exclaimed, “I’m becoming a new me!” before throwing herself from an eighth-floor window on 1D-LSD, a research chemical related to LSD. A month earlier, a university student in western Japan jumped from a rooftop after taking the same drug. In the UK, a wave of tabloid stories from 2017 onward linked the synthetic cathinone MDPV, known as Monkey Dust, to erratic behaviour and rooftop jumps, especially in the Midlands. 

In one case, a teenager in the U.S. took what he thought was LSD but was actually 25I-NBOMe; he experienced hallucinations and ultimately fell to his death from a height. In 2025, Liam Payne’s fatal balcony fall in Argentina, linked to a drug mix called tusi that may have contained hallucinogens, stunned the world. A Malaysian model was found lifeless on a sixth-floor terrace after taking ecstasy and amphetamines. A teenager drowned in a river after taking N-Bomb and becoming “disorientated”. An Irish singer in a boyband died after taking crystal meth and falling from a 13th-storey balcony, a coroner has found.

Mixing drugs can be dangerous: a coroner says a Penn State University student had “marijuana and synthetic LSD” in his system when he fell from an apartment balcony. “We would take between 150 and 350 ug depending on our mood, always ensure we were in a good place, house was clean, etc.”, one Redditor described. “The source was good – a reputable darknet seller. We also decided to try smoking a little weed on the come up to keep it mellow, and to try smoking a little at peak. Bad idea….[W]e had an altercation of some kind, he beat the shit out of me with a number of blunt objects and broken glass, and then jumped off our balcony and fell 3 stories.” A student under the influence of LSD fell 30 feet from a window and had also been drinking. 

The problem of adulteration or overdosing may render drugs sold as LSD particularly liable to accidents. Of more than one million tabs of ‘LSD’ seized by authorities in Brazil, only 18 per cent in 2019 exclusively contained the drug – down from 100 per cent in 2014. A range of junk was found on those blotters: Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPSs) like 25I-NBOMe, ‘synthetic mescaline’, and even fentanyl. 30 per cent of a limited sample of LSD in Colombia contained 25I-NBOMe: an LSD-like drug whose higher doses result in cardiac events, seizures, and deaths. 

From 2009 to 2018, the UN reported that 899 different Novel Psychoactive Substances had emerged worldwide, including synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones (known colloquially as ‘bath salts’), novel opioids and psychedelics, and non-pharmaceutical benzodiazepines. European authorities in 2018 documented one new NPS in drug supplies every week. Between 2011 and 2017, the rate of NPS adulteration in Dutch drug samples increased by a proportionate rate of over 2000 per cent. As of 2021, 45 per cent of MDMA sampled from English music festivals in 2021 was adulterated, up from 7 per cent from measurements made in 2019. Data gathered by The Loop in 2016 found that over a quarter of festival-bought drugs they tested contained “adulterations or analogues”, twice the rate of drugs purchased off-site.

Several instances describe spiking. As well as Lennon’s wife and the Black Sabbath bassist described above, the British television presenter Ben Fogle attempted to leap after being dosed without his knowledge. 

People may already be depressed. Diane Linkletter had recent emotional problems. An Oxford University student wrote his own obituary two weeks before he fell to his death while high on drugs. The belief in flight on psychedelics is perhaps not surprising, either. Masters and Houston (1967) reported that LSD or mescaline often induced out-of-body experiences: subjects felt their consciousness project outside the body and hover above it, observing themselves from afar. Drug users have long described intoxication in vertical terms – one is “high” and later “comes down.” LSD is known to induce sensations ranging from feeling extremely heavy to feeling “light and floating,” as if the normal laws of physics are suspended. A 1967 Jimi Hendrix poster by Rick Griffin depicts a soaring eyeball. In music, lyrics are replete with skyward themes: “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” (Beatles) places LSD’s motif literally in the sky, “Fly Translove Airways” (Donovan/Jefferson Airplane lyric) playfully casts love and drugs as flight. The classic “Up, Up and Away” (5th Dimension) evokes balloon flight as joyful transcendence of the earth. 

The head and the eyes atop the human body form the loci of one’s sense of mastery and personhood. Vertical symbolism pervades world religions and myth. Jesus’ ascension into heaven, angels rising from earth, UFOs and stars, and sacred mountains (Mount Olympus, Mount Meru, etc.) all literalise spiritual transcendence as upward motion. Art and scripture reinforce this: for example, Jacob’s dream in Genesis shows angels ascending and descending a ladder between earth and heaven.

Within many traditions of shamanism, we see the practice of “soul flight”, or travelling beyond one’s body to commune with community ancestors or spirits. Many cultures incorporate heights (cliffs, mountains, towers) into sacred rituals. Indigenous men in Vanuatu climb ~20–30 m wooden towers and jump head-first with vines tied to their ankles in a fertility/harvest ritual called naghol or “gol”: a ritual made famous in Karl Pilkington’s travel documentary series, An Idiot Abroad

Other motives are more unsettling. “What if I just stepped off?” is a question many of us may have pondered while standing atop a roof or balcony. That strange impulse is called the “call of the void”. Psychologists refer to it as the high-place phenomenon (HPP). In one study, Hames et al. found that over half of people with no history of suicidal thoughts had felt this urge at least once (among those with any past ideation, the rate was even higher). As you lean over the edge, your fear circuitry instantly fires a “Back up, you might fall” warning, causing you to recoil without conscious thought. A moment later, your rational mind catches up and misremembers the reflex as a strange temptation: “Was I going to jump?” Authors liken the HPP to the fleeting, intrusive thoughts we all have – sudden violent images or taboo ideas that we immediately reject. 

Under LSD, however, that built-in alarm may take on a different life. Recent theory suggests LSD multiplies the felt intensity of any internal “insight,” even if it’s false, and laboratory studies confirm it dramatically boosts suggestibility. The writer James L. Kent sees skyscraper culture as amplifying this danger: “I would constantly stare off the balcony and imagine jumping even when I wasn’t high. I think maybe the impulse is always there in the back of the mind and impulse control is severely diminished under the influence of psychedelics.” The mere act of peering over can trigger an adrenaline jolt and a vivid mental image of the fall, which psychedelics may intensify. 

Psychedelics tend to reduce top-down cognitive control. In laboratory tests, moderate-to-high doses impair executive functions such as response inhibition, working memory and executive function. One small study found that LSD administration did not affect risk-taking behaviour. But Kent speculates that there may be a general serotonergic mechanism with sudden suicidal behaviour. In humans, SSRIs may increase impulsive behaviour. One fMRI study found that 3 weeks of fluoxetine did not change gamble choices, but blunted orbitofrontal responses to risk. Another experiment found that acute citalopram actually increased willingness to accept gambles, especially for small stakes, in both social and nonsocial contexts. The FDA found that SSRIs double the risk of suicidal behaviour in youth early in treatment. Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s brother, died by leaping in 1988 shortly after starting treatment, possibly involving serotonergic medication, suggesting that shifts in serotonin, whether from Prozac or psilocybin, may, in rare cases, unmask latent risk.

Kent also suspects many psychedelic jumping incidents go unreported. At his college, two students leapt from dorm balconies while on LSD – injured but not killed. “They were both expelled,” he recalls. “I’m guessing this happens way more often than it is recorded because only the fatalities make the news.” Social context matters too – “pushing limits” or group dares can tip a fragile mindset toward catastrophe, not least when one may be drawn to heights and spectacular views while tripping. 

Psychedelic Jumping is a Harmful Narrative as Well as a Reality

Another intriguing and somewhat ironic aspect of the “LSD flight” legend is how it can influence the very experiences it warns against. Anti-LSD warnings in the 1960s and 1970s produced anxiety and fear, leading to self-fulfilling bad trips. As George Harrison noted in 1971, users may “already be on a bad trip” before they’ve even taken the drug. If someone has heard many times about “acid casualties” thinking they can fly, that meme can lurk in their psyche. Then, once they drop acid, those buried suggestions may emerge in distorted form. If you go into an experience worried “What if I lose control and jump out a window?”, you may start obsessing over that very window while high. The memetic power is so strong that it can even distort personal memory. In researching this article, one contributor noted that their mother had always said a family friend jumped off a building while on LSD. But later inquiry revealed he had only been drunk. Still, the meme had reshaped her recollection, retrofitting the fall to a trip.

Indeed, the media tend to latch onto the most shocking elements of a story. Headlines like “Man on LSD jumps to his death” or “Zombie drug user leaps from building” are attention-grabbing. For instance, the New York Post and tabloids gave lurid coverage to the 2016 mushrooms death in NYC (the banker who fell 26 stories) with quotes about believing one can fly. 

Fictional depictions like Bandersnatch and the famous ‘Golden God’ scene in Almost Famous have reinforced it. This sensationalism can skew public perception, making it seem as if drug users frequently become deranged and suicidal. In reality, the prevalence of hallucinogen-related jump/fall incidents appears extremely low relative to use rates. The 2017 Global Drug Survey, for instance, found that only 0.2 per cent of people who used psilocybin mushrooms in the prior year required emergency medical care – the lowest rate for any drug surveyed. LSD’s rate of medical emergencies was about 5–6 times higher than mushrooms (around 1 per cent), but still a small fraction of users. 

Putting the Risks of Psychedelics in Context

Other risky behaviours under psychedelics might be equally real, even if they lack the meme value. For instance, reckless driving on psychedelics is a genuine concern. People sometimes attempt to operate vehicles while tripping – often with terrifying near-misses. In 2016, a 20-year-old man high on LSD caused a multi-car collision that killed another driver. Cases of drowning while tripping (in pools, lakes, or even a bathtub) dot the medical literature, yet we have no “LSD mermaid” myth equivalent to the flying myth. But the jumper endures in part because of its symbolic economy. Unlike a stabbing, which requires motive, or genital mutilation, which strains credulity, the idea of an irrational leap has mythic undertones, reminding readers of Icarus and Prometheus. 

As early as the 1960s, LSD researcher Sidney Cohen tallied only a “small handful” of suicide attempts across thousands of supervised psychedelic sessions. In relying on therapists’ own reports, however, his tally may have been an undershoot. Among 107 adolescent LSD users in treatment, 21 per cent reported that they or a close friend had endorsed a serious accident or suicide attempt during LSD intoxication; 5 required emergency care, and 7 knew someone who died, including 2 by suicide during an LSD trip.

Yet a 2024 review in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology found just 28 psychedelic-related deaths in the UK over a 25-year period – across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland combined. Unlike alcohol or stimulants, LSD doesn’t typically increase aggressive tendencies; one survey found only ~2.7 per cent of psychedelic users reported any violent behaviour during a bad trip. 

Compare this to other substances. While hallucinogen-related ER admissions have risen substantially in California in recent years (to 3,965 people in 2022), alcohol was associated with over 300,000 admissions on a national basis that same year. Acute use of alcohol was responsible for 35 per cent population associated risk of all suicide attempts. 13 per cent of methamphetamine users in one survey screened positive for psychosis, and 23 per cent had experienced a clinically significant symptom of suspiciousness, unusual thought content or hallucinations in the past year: big risk factors for catastrophic outcomes.

Across a range of large-scale investigations of falls from height, alcohol stands out as the dominant substance. In a 10-year study of more than 11,000 suicide victims in Sweden, 34 per cent had consumed alcohol before death, while drug use of any kind was far less prevalent. A cross-sectional study from Greece found that 16.3 per cent of fall-related fatalities tested positive for alcohol, while only 3.2 per cent screened positive for any psychoactive drug – and among those, heroin and cannabis were the most common, though psychedelic drugs were not tested. A 2019 study in Injury Epidemiology found that among trauma admissions at a San Diego hospital, every single instance involved alcohol use. The notorious “balconing” phenomenon in Spanish resorts (young tourists jumping between hotel balconies or into pools) is almost always linked to heavy alcohol (and sometimes other drug) use, and dozens of such injuries occur some summers. A systematic review reported that 17 per cent – 53 per cent of non-fatal falls involved exposure to alcohol in studies published between 1950 and 1987.

It’s possible that a systematic lack of testing for psychedelic drugs is causing an undershoot. Since alcohol is the most commonly used drug, it is not surprising that its implication in falls is so common. It is possible that psychedelic drugs post an outsized risk for their relative use rate, which is growing in the US. No systematic survey of psychedelic-related falls has been conducted. 

A systematic review of hospital admissions for all fall injuries – synthesising data across more than 2,000 cases, including but not limited to those from height – reports disparate drug-related prevalence rates, ranging from 2 per cent to 57 per cent, to 7 per cent to 46 per cent. Cases were driven primarily by alcohol and psychotropic drugs, like antipsychotics, antidepressants, anxiolytics, sedatives and hypnotics. What appears most dangerous is polydrug use, which may nearly quadruple the risk.

Authors acknowledged, however, that “research addressing… the use of drugs other than alcohol was limited”. Patients with poly-drug use were not counted in individual drug estimates, either, “likely leading to underestimations in prevalence for individual drug classes.” More work has been done with cannabis. Its prevalence in reviews ranges from 0% to 13%. But one review of 21,276 patients over four years in LA county reported a cannabis prevalence of 41% – for patients who fell more than fifteen feet. 

The more significant, and less sensational, drivers of falls are workplace conditions and under-regulated labour environments, especially in the developing world. In a retrospective review of 460 patients treated for falls from height, 90 per cent of cases resulted from unintentional accidents, often workplace-related. The connection between psychosis and leaping is clearer than with any specific drug class, too. Research indicates that at least 5–13 per cent of schizophrenic patients die by suicide, including around 12 per cent by jumping.

How Can We Reduce the Risk of Psychedelic Jumping?

Environmental and cultural factors shape the overall risk. Published clinical trials of psilocybin or LSD have not reported any window-falls or jumps as adverse events, and safety guidelines specify the need to close and restrict access to potential jumping sites. Recreational users altogether and tourists or festival-goers in unfamiliar settings in particular – hotels, rooftops, wilderness – are more vulnerable. 

Specific architectural decisions can raise that risk, through features like low balcony railings, open stairwells, rooftop smoking areas, and floor-length hotel windows. Around half of the suicides in Hong Kong between 2002-2007, for example, involved jumping, attributed to the abundance of accessible high-rise buildings. After one fatal jump at a brand-new venue in Nashville, a Phish fan remarked online: “Being able to launch oneself like that should be designed out of possibility.” One Redditor, summing up the moment, put it plainly: “Throw in some seriously powerful dissociative drugs, low railings, big heights, and here we are.” Bridges with suicide reputations now install nets and barriers. Should concert halls, hotels, and dorms – especially those hosting events where psychedelics flow freely  – be subject to the same scrutiny? Who foots the cost?

Conventional wisdom says the best trip sitter is calm, grounded, and emotionally intelligent. But in a crisis – an aggressive outburst, a suicidal sprint – that might not be enough. You might have to restrain someone.

Erica Siegel is a licensed therapist and psychedelic facilitator. “…[F]or physical safety reasons, a facilitator should never work alone and always have an assistant or helper around in case of emergency”, she says. She urges sitters and practitioners to get trained in “compassionate restraints”–techniques to intervene physically without injury or escalation. She recommends courses like the Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI), already common in psychiatric care and special education. “It’s more important for the facilitator to know how to physically intervene without hurting themselves”, she says.

This introduces a difficult question: should a trip sitter be physically matched to the tripper? If a large man on acid enters a psychotic state and tries to leap, can a 120-pound friend or partner stop him? In medical settings, sedation is available. For everyone else, it may come down to size and strength.

The idea feels taboo in psychedelic circles that emphasise consent, healing, and gentleness. But real-world cases suggest otherwise. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler had to be physically restrained by two bandmates to stop him from jumping during an acid-fueled breakdown. If he had been alone–or with someone weaker–he might have died.

When things go wrong, we see swift, and perhaps disproportionate, policy responses. In Japan, the government banned 1-D LSD rapidly following a series of incidents, without a long-term review. In the Netherlands, a similar panic unfolded in 2007, after a 17-year-old French tourist jumped from a bridge while intoxicated on psilocybin mushrooms. Her death made international headlines and prompted Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen to propose a ban. Fresh mushrooms were banned in 2008, though truffle equivalents remained legal. 

Online commenters mocked the French girl’s memory. A poster wondered if a conspiracy was involved. “Why take shrooms after psychiatric problems?” one asked. “Maybe they should do an IQ test before selling them to people.” Others hurled misogyny: “The stupid French bitch was on alcohol when she jumped. Wonder why they didn’t point that out?”

“It’s always the dumbasses who ruin it for everybody,” one commenter spat. In response to a man’s fatal leap at a Phish show, one forum poster dismissed it: “I’m all for having a good time… but when it starts to affect the safety of others–get your shit together and be an adult.” Comedian Bill Hicks made this disdain iconic: “If he thought he could fly, why didn’t he take off from the ground first? You don’t see ducks lined up to catch elevators to fly south.” 

Catastrophic outcomes raise questions of personal responsibility for the injuries and deaths that leaping on others may create. Can a user be held accountable and mocked if they are driven to manic psychosis? Should they not have known that taking a high dose in a chaotic environment would have raised substantial risk? Yet psychedelic drugs are always unpredictable. Are we to say, then, that those users whose trips didn’t go wrong are to be blamed for even risking a terrible outcome? If I wave a gun in someone else’s face and it doesn’t go off, am I to feel more morally worthy than another whose finger slipped on the trigger?

The criminal law is fairly clear: if you freely decide to take hallucinogens, you are liable for the outcomes. 

What also gets lost in the mockery is how devastating these events are for the people around them. Sitters may feel shame for using force, guilt for not doing enough, or horror at the failure of an experience that was meant to be fun or healing. After one incident at a Phish concert, a woman who was hit by the falling man wrote: “I don’t really know how to explain what it felt like other than to say, one minute I was standing there, & all the sudden it was like I got hit with a cannonball in the back.” Miraculously, she survived with bruises. Others weren’t so lucky. Even those who weren’t physically struck were psychologically shaken: “It was like bad trip mental images but without the trip.”

They described it as “wartime-like” – a sudden, visceral horror injected into what was supposed to be a joyous communal ritual. And many weren’t sober. “If you’re one of those people,” one witness added, “please go talk it out. Get past sarcasm and self-protecting dismissal. Vocalize how you feel.

Joseph Holcomb Adams, a journalist and bioethicist, attended a Phish concert at the Chase Center in California in 2021.

“At this particular show, I chose to take LSD. I was having a fantastic time, and a very clear, lucid, elated trip”, he says. In retrospect, the first sign of something weird afoot was when Phish played ‘Back On The Train’, which opens with the lyric, ‘“When I jumped off, I had a bucket full of thoughts.” Later, they played a song called ‘Maze’, whose chorus goes, “You’ll never get out of this maze!” repeatedly. 

“Not long after that, during a very euphonious, joyful instrumental improvisation, I was hit out of nowhere with a wave of dark, demonic, malevolent energy.” The energy seemed to localise in space as a distinct presence. His girlfriend mentioned the word ‘projectile’. “The word ‘PROJECTILE’ jumped out and vibrated intensely in the air, as the demonic entity stared at me through her eyes”, he says. Adams left the stands and soon re-stabilised.  

Then he heard the news the next day. “My blood ran cold and a shiver went down my spine as soon as I heard about the jumper… As it turned out, the man jumped during the song “Destiny Unbound,” which was played just minutes after my encounter with the demonic entity.” The event has convinced him “that disembodied autonomously-existing spirits/beings/entities are real, and that they can harm people”. 

Some jumpers were seasoned users. Others were trying a drug for the first time. In a few cases, users believed they were dead already. In others, they were fleeing threats that didn’t exist. One man wrote:

43 years old. Taken acid more times than I can count. Never thought I could fly. But my friend jumped from his dorm room window on acid. He didn’t make it. I’ll never understand why.

Ed Prideaux | Community Blogger at Chemical Collective

Ed is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at samwoolfe@gmail.com

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ryuzu_yamazaki
11 days ago

great article!

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