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.
share your toughts
Join the Conversation.
great article!