To What Extent Are Memories of Psychedelic Trips Embellished

The embellishment of memories is a widespread phenomenon. Sometimes, the distortion of memory goes beyond embellishment and becomes fabrication: false memories are common, and they can be easily induced. Simply put, memory is prone to distortion.

Research shows that human memory is constructive (or reconstructive) rather than purely reproductive; we fill in gaps in memory with imagined details, familiarity, or suggestions. Bigger gaps in memory, as well as longer gaps between the remembered event and it being later recalled, are more prone to embellishment and false memories. When key details are missing for these reasons, the brain has a tendency to fill in the blanks with logical, expected, or fabricated information to create a coherent story. 

Memory distortion can be adaptive, however. Researchers have found that there are contexts in which it may aid our survival. In one paper, the authors “consider recent cognitive and neuroimaging studies that link these distortions with adaptive processes, including simulation of future events, semantic and contextual encoding, creativity, and memory updating.”

Whether advantageous or not, the fact of memory distortion is relevant to the question of how much we can trust our memories of psychedelic experiences. There is an ongoing debate over the issue of people recalling memories of sexual or childhood trauma on psychedelics, as it is not always clear if this recollection is the unearthing of hidden memories or the creation of false ones. In a Medium post, Rosalind Watts, the former Clinical Lead for Imperial College London’s psilocybin for depression trial, said that sessions could release “shocking ‘discoveries’ about awful things that had (maybe?) happened in childhood.” One such account was portrayed in a BBC Two programme about this clinical trial.

Psychedelics have been shown to increase suggestibility and enhance false memories, effects which, as Saga Briggs writes in a piece for Big Think, “understandably raise suspicions about retrieved memories, similar to suspicions in the ‘memory wars’ of the 1990s, a series of debates on the scientific validity of repressed memories, uncovered trauma, and the perils of memory recovery therapy.”

In this article, I would like to focus on the distortion or embellishment of memory following psychedelic trips, including a discussion on false memories related to trauma. Given how widespread and natural the sharing of trip reports is, I can’t say I often come across people giving the disclaimer, Take what I say with a grain of salt. Of course, this disclaimer is rarely offered in any retelling of an important life event, but I do think this matters uniquely in the case of psychedelics, as trip report embellishment may lead others to have unrealistic expectations about using these compounds.

Moreover, this issue raises the question of whether it matters if someone, theoretically, only embellished their trip to themselves. Given the potential advantages of memory distortion, could the embellishment of a psychedelic experience be beneficial? Or are there still reasons to be wary about making psychedelic trips sound different or better than they were at the time?

‘Trauma culture’ refers to the cultural tendency to diagnose all emotional pain as the result of trauma. Gabor Maté, for example, has helped popularise the notion that the overwhelming majority of addictions are rooted in trauma, which doesn’t seem to be supported by the data. Legitimate and much-needed awareness of how traumatic events underlie various forms of mental distress is not what constitutes ‘trauma culture’; rather, the latter involves the distortion, romanticisation, and commodification of emotional pain.

I wonder, then, in which cases, and to what extent, the resurfacing of hidden trauma during psychedelic states is influenced by trauma culture. We know that ‘set and setting’ play a massive role in influencing the quality of psychedelic experiences: combine this with enhanced suggestibility, and it makes sense that at least some cases of resurfaced trauma, not accessed before, are really cases of false memories.

Aspects of ‘set’ include expectations and intentions surrounding the psychedelic experience, which may involve the expectation that psychedelics uncover repressed, painful memories, as well as the intention (or wish) for this to happen. ‘Setting’, meanwhile, can include the ‘cultural setting’ in which the psychedelic is taken. Part of this cultural setting may include trauma culture, as well as the assumption that psychedelics heal emotional pain through the processing of deeply rooted trauma. These trauma-themed aspects of set and setting are often enhanced by figures in the psychedelic space, such as Maté, as well as therapists and facilitators working with psychedelics.

Now, if you combine these factors with the influence of enhanced suggestibility, then it is plausible that memories of traumatic events can arise during altered states – directly or more symbolically – which don’t reflect reality. (External evidence and trusted witnesses may disconfirm the memory.)

The wish to search for and heal the roots of mental distress, which is a common motivation for psychedelic use, may lead to psychedelic experiences centred around traumatic memories. But it’s worth questioning whether, in certain cases, this is influenced by trauma culture. Emotional pain can have all sorts of causes that don’t necessarily fit into a popular mental health narrative.

Also included in set and setting are expectations, intentions, and wishes surrounding what the ‘ideal’ psychedelic experience looks like. Features of trips that people may want and chase include ego death, unity, insight, catharsis, entity encounters, and states of heightened bliss and joy. Psychedelic culture also sometimes involves the glorification of the ‘bad’ (or challenging) trip, which is seen to involve the deepest healing, shadow work, and the most insights and personal growth.

While psychedelic experiences can certainly involve all of these effects and benefits, might some memories of trips involve the insertion or exaggeration of one or more of these elements? If one thinks a psychedelic trip is only worthy – worth having or talking about – if it features one or more ‘ideal’ qualities, then could we be unconsciously inserting ego death into our experiences, or exaggerating the sense to which the ego dissolved?

In his book Deeper Learning with Psychedelics, the philosopher David Blacker has questioned whether the concept of ‘ego death’ makes sense: “Where were you during the alleged ego death? If you weren’t there then you didn’t experience it (because there was no ‘you’ present).” I wonder, then, whether the assumption of one’s ego dying during a psychedelic state is not just (potentially) a conceptual error, but also an outcome of retroactively imposing concepts on one’s trips due to cultural assumptions about psychedelics.

This can apply to all sorts of other psychedelic effects. The profundity of insights, the appearance or messages of entities, and other mystical and visionary qualities may be unconsciously embellished to sound (to oneself and others) more intense, deeper, clearer, and therapeutic. Moreover, while a psychedelic experience is rightfully called a ‘trip’ because it feels like a journey, it’s also possible that the way individuals construct the narrative of their experience from start to finish can still involve embellished elements that serve to create a more coherent, interesting, and exciting story.

Unlike cases of false memories, however, these other psychedelic effects only occur for the person having them; that person cannot seek external evidence or accounts from trusted witnesses to tell them whether their experience really was as mystical or insightful as they say it was. In this way, it can be a difficult task to separate ‘fact’ from ‘fiction’ in terms of recollecting psychedelic memories, that is, whether the lived moment-to-moment psychedelic experience matches the later recollection of it.

Yet perhaps it’s not worth spending time worrying about this (potential) divergence between so-called ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’: after all, if the embellishment of trips makes them feel more spiritual, cathartic, insightful, and therapeutic, could this not be framed in more positive terms, rather than as self-delusion? Believing an experience was more profound than it was may make it precisely that profound; this could be viewed as a form of integration that deepens and augments the experience in a way so that it becomes more meaningful and purposeful.

I can, however, imagine some pitfalls associated with this pro-embellishment view, such as deluding oneself about the extent to which therapeutic progress or personal growth has been achieved, or promoting a narrative around psychedelics that exaggerates its benefits or diminishes its risks (or inefficacy), which may mislead others. 

A tendency to make psychedelic trips seem better than they were could also be a result of Pollyannaism, or the positivity bias, whereby people focus on and better remember pleasant aspects of their experiences, while ignoring or diminishing the negative aspects. While psychedelics may be hailed as shifting people’s perspective away from the overly negative towards the more realistic, it would be idealistic to suggest that psychedelics can remove all biases. Indeed, if they don’t challenge our positivity bias (perhaps they even enhance it?), then memories of psychedelic trips may not always be realistic or balanced.

But again, it is difficult to judge whether a recollection of a psychedelic experience is ‘realistic’ or ‘balanced’. Through post-trip introspection, an individual may come to decide – perhaps by also considering perspectives from a therapist, psychedelic facilitator, integration group, or loved ones – that the experience was more mixed than previously assumed. Some insights could be open to interpretation or influenced by personal biases, while others are simply not that profound or meaningful. The positivity bias may also make the more distressing, confusing, or overwhelming aspects of the experience seem more fun or funny in retrospect, which is often the case when retelling the trip to others. 

However, this point about turning negative experiences into entertaining stories seems to apply to difficulties one encounters when travelling as well. Is this really a problem? Is this not simply a way of transforming adversity into value and strength? That is of course true, on the one hand, but at the same time, this doesn’t mean one should take no lessons from those difficult moments, such as how best to avoid danger in the future. And it would be unwise if others likewise didn’t take any lessons from someone’s negative psychedelic or travel experiences if they are viewed as simply fun, funny, and wild. After all, some people’s challenging psychedelic experiences can lead to extended emotional difficulties. 

Hype surrounding psychedelics may help to magnify or validate any Pollyannaism applied to one’s psychedelic experiences. It is worth reflecting, then, on the extent to which personal, cognitive, and cultural biases work together to shape memories of psychedelic trips. 

Some emotions, thoughts, or visions that occurred during a psychedelic experience may feel certain and clear, whereas others can feel hazier and more ambiguous. Elements may be hazier and more ambiguous, and therefore more prone to embellishment, due to several factors. 

First, psychedelic experiences can involve big gaps in memory. And this is especially true in the case of compounds like DMT, which often involves an amnesiac effect, although high doses of other compounds, such as LSD and psilocybin, also seem to raise the likelihood of forgetting big chunks of the experience. As we’ve seen in memory more generally, when there are gaps in recollection, we have a tendency to fill in those gaps. If a particular psychedelic experience is prone to large gaps in memory, this – combined with an intensification of meaning, significance, suggestibility, and set and setting – creates ample opportunity for embellishment.

Second, one common feature of psychedelic mystical experiences is ineffability: a difficulty or inability to put into words what one experienced. I’ve used the term hyperineffability to refer to experiences that not only cannot be described but also elude consolidation into memory because of how novel and alien they are. The quality of a mystical experience may be so incongruent with one’s ordinary experience and concepts that the mind is unable to translate it into memory, or at least not any clear memory. When linguistic, cognitive, and conceptual frameworks are lacking to accurately translate a psychedelic state into memory, it may be later reconstructed with added details.

Gaps in memory may also result from psychedelic states in which one feels perceptually, somatically, emotionally, and ontologically overwhelmed. The experience may shock one’s system to such a great degree that it becomes difficult to compartmentalise and, therefore, consolidate into memory. Perhaps the mind is not equipped to turn sufficiently intense experiences into memories that can later be soberly recollected; it may even resist doing so as a self-protective mechanism, if it judges certain experiences to be traumatic or threatening.

These, however, are speculative points: research would need to be carried out to identify which qualities of a psychedelic experience impact memory recall. Beyond the need for more research, it remains worth reflecting on the potential embellishment of our psychedelic memories – and whether this embellishment is something to embrace or question.