Psychedelics and Ontological Shock

During or after intense psychedelic experiences – typically elicited by taking a high dose, or a synergistic drug combination – one may find oneself in a state known as ontological shock. This is when reality, or one’s experience of reality, has been transformed so profoundly that it induces a visceral feeling of shock. However, this state is distinct from awe (which philosophers also refer to as the sublime), as awe tends to carry positive connotations of attraction and pleasure. Ontological shack, conversely, is typically framed in negative terms – it is an experience of disorientation, anxiety, uneasiness, or panic.

Ontological shock should be regarded as a potential outcome of psychedelic use. While – like other altered states marked by negative emotions – it can prove to be educational or beneficial, it is a form of distress one should be aware of. Knowing that it can occur can make the shock – hopefully – a bit less shocking. There are also ways of dealing with it that can be grounding, making the experience easier to process. 

Before delving into the link between psychedelics and ontological shock, it’s worth examining the origin of the term ‘ontological shock’, as well as the different varieties of this experience, as it will help frame the psychedelic variety.

In Systematic Theology (1951), the German theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich uses the term ‘ontological shock’ to refer to the mind’s encounter with "[t]he threat of non-being”, when one’s assumptions about the structure and meaning of reality disintegrate. He writes, “‘Shock’ points to a state of mind in which the mind is thrown out of its normal balance, shaken in its structure.” He compares this feeling to looking into an abyss.

On a psychological level, Tillich says ontological shock involves “the anxiety in which [individuals] are aware of their finitude”: we become overwhelmed by the knowledge of how limited we are and our mortality. On a metaphysical level, ontological shock concerns the question of why there is something (being) rather than nothing (non-being), and the search for the ultimate ground of being. Tillich believed ontological shock can lead people to recognise God (or the divine) as this ‘ground of being’. But we can only talk about God symbolically, as God’s infinite nature, and existence as the source of being, transcends human understanding and language. For Tillich, God is “being-itself”: the ultimate reality. God grounds being and explains why there is not simply nothing.

Ontological shock is a distinctly human experience (although perhaps other intelligent lifeforms out there in the universe also experience it). Humans have long considered the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing. The ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides wrestled with this question. His own solution was to point to the logical contradiction involved in asking it: we cannot speak of non-being, as the very act of speaking of it gives it being. Indeed, if nothing can be talked about, is it truly ‘nothing’? To envisage ‘nothing’ is to envisage something.

However, Tillich ultimately concludes, “the very structure which makes negative judgments possible proves the ontological character of non-being.” Being and non-being are in a dialectical relationship; they are not mutually exclusive but instead are interdependent. One cannot exist without the other.

Indeed, non-being, or nothing, could be an ontologically valid concept. The trouble is that the human mind was never meant to properly understand or grasp it. So, as in the case of God, we have to use symbols to represent it, such as the notion or image of a black, empty void.

Ontological shock can manifest in a variety of ways, diverging from the meaning of Tillich’s original formulation. If more broadly defined as an experience that abruptly forces one to question one’s understanding of the world and one’s place in it – resulting in a state of disorientation or anxiety – then several non-Tillichian things can trigger it. 

One example is unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). When people look at purported evidence of alien beings or spaceships and believe we have been contacted, this can lead to a radical reframing of our place in the universe or anxiety about what this means for humanity. It could also involve the realisation that we have been lied to for decades by governments about the existence of intelligent extra-terrestrial life.

The UAP community often points to Lue Elizondo’s articulation of ontological shock. Speaking on the ‘Theories of Everything’ podcast with Curt Jaimungal in October 2021, Elizondo said:

Imagine everything you’ve been taught…about who we are right, in our background in our past, what if all that turned out to be not entirely accurate in fact? The very history of our species, the meaning of what it means to be a human being and our place in this universe what if all of that is now in question? What if it turns out that a lot of the things we thought were one way aren’t? Are we prepared to have this question with ourselves? Are we prepared to recognise that we are not at the top of the food chain that we are not the alpha predator, and that we are maybe somewhere in the middle.

John Mack, a Harvard psychologist who became well known for his psychiatric work with UFO abductee claimants, used the term ‘ontological shock’ in his 1994 book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. He wrote:

Abductees also experience what I have called "ontological shock" as the reality of their encounters sinks in. They, like all of us, have been raised in the belief that we on Earth are largely alone in the universe and that it would simply not be possible for intelligent beings to enter our world without using a highly advanced form of our technology and obeying the laws of our physics. Abductees tend to persist in the hope that a psychological explanation for their experiences will be found.

Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall discussed the difference between the physical and ontological threat of UFOs in their 2008 paper ‘Sovereignty and the UFO’. They argue:

Threats can take two forms, physical threats to life and ontological threats to identity or social being… The physical threat, of course, is that ET presence in “our” solar system would indicate a vastly superior technology to human beings’, raising the possibility of conquest and even extermination…The ontological threat is that even if the ETs were benign, their confirmed presence would create tremendous pressure for a unified human response, or world government.

If the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials were disclosed by one or more governments, this would be the single biggest piece of news ever revealed. It would, arguably, create global shock waves, leading to a state of global ontological shock. This is why some people speculate that governments have purposefully kept this knowledge hidden from us – or why they would choose to be judicious about what or how much they reveal – lest global panic sets in. But however convincing this explanation might sound, there is currently no evidence showing that governments have (or could have) kept alien technology hidden from us.

The rise and development of artificial intelligence (AI) is another potential trigger of ontological shock. Indeed, if AI can develop human levels of intelligence, emotion, experience, and creativity, it would fundamentally challenge the essence of what it means to be human, and it could force us to redefine human connection altogether. Moreover, if we create immortal AI, this could bring human mortality sharply into focus, making our existence seem even more fragile and fleeting. AI could ontologically or existentially shock us too if it can predict our actions with a high degree of accuracy. This would throw into question our assumptions about being free or autonomous. And if AI knows us better than we do ourselves, then who are we really?

AI can also induce ontological shock in a future in which deepfakes become indistinguishable from reality. We won’t know if the images we’re seeing are real or AI-created. Thus, we’ll be thrown into a state of confusion and anxiety, making it hard to navigate reality in the way we’ve been accustomed to. Finally, if AI matches or surpasses human intelligence, we’ll be forced to reconsider what makes us unique, as well as perhaps our sense of purpose and worth.

One could experience ontological shock in a less ‘object-oriented’ way, based instead on more philosophical or experiential causes. For example, reading certain philosophical texts or ideas may induce ontological shock if it leads one to radically question (or discard entirely) one’s unquestioned understanding of reality. This can include an encounter with ideas like solipsism (you are the only mind in the universe) or the simulation hypothesis (reality is a computer simulation). Experiential causes of ontological shock, meanwhile, might include forms of psychological distress such as derealisation, derealisation, and psychosis. Sometimes, these forms of distress resemble – or have the character of – a philosophical concept (e.g. the self or reality is not real).

The last cause of ontological shock I want to look at – which is the focus of this article – is altered states of consciousness. When your consciousness is altered to a sufficient degree, reality can distort or dissolve; a new ‘reality’ may intrude into view or supersede it (e.g. another realm or entities); and you may have the feeling of disappearing yourself, ceasing to be human, merging into infinity and eternity. Such experiences are possible with psychedelics, but they can also occur during near-death experiences (NDEs).

The psychedelic variety of ontological shock can often be powerful: when the altered state takes one by surprise – such as when DMT or 5-MeO-DMT rapidly disintegrates consensus reality – intense shock may follow. Users may experience this as a state of overwhelm or panic. Part of the ontological shock may involve the feeling of reality being ‘slippery’ – one loses something foundational or sturdy to hold onto. The experience can challenge one’s fundamental assumptions, such as the existence of self, the existence of material reality, what the base level of reality is, the non-existence of spirits or God, and one’s relation to the universe or fundamental reality. The stark contrast between the experience and one’s prior beliefs creates the feeling of ontological shock.

However, this ontological shock can outlast the psychedelic experience. Assuming you don’t black out during the experience and remember its ontologically shocking quality, you can be left straddling two different worlds: the one you lived in before the experience and the one presented to you during it.

Psychedelic experiences, like the other triggers outlined before, can threaten what the psychiatrist R.D. Laing referred to as ‘ontological security’: the sense of stability and continuity in one’s existence and the world. The result is a profound cognitive dissonance between sober, prior perceptions of reality and those arising in a non-ordinary state, the latter of which feel real – or ‘more real than real’ – to the person who experiences them. This can be experienced as an intense form of confusion, imbalance, and disorientation – one may not know how to resolve fundamental questions about what (if anything) is truly ‘real’ or meaningful.

A 2024 paper (available as a preprint) examines the feeling of ‘groundlessness’ – ontological shock and existential distress – following psychedelic experiences. The authors – who include Eirini K. Argyri, Jules Evans, and David Luke – state:

Psychedelic induced mystical experiences have been largely assumed to drive the therapeutic effects of these substances, which may in part be mediated by changes in metaphysical beliefs. However, there is growing evidence that psychedelic experiences can also trigger long lasting distress and studies of persisting difficulties suggest a high prevalence of ontological challenges (related to the way people understand reality and existence).

The team of researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 people who reported experiencing existential distress following psychedelic experiences. They explored the phenomenology of participants’ difficulties as well as the ways they navigated them, including what they found helpful and unhelpful when dealing with their post-psychedelic distress. The subthemes of ‘Ontological shock and existential distress’ that the team identified include:

• Existential crisis and despair
• Emptiness, meaninglessness, nihilism
• Derealisation and questioning reality
• Questioning identity
• Grief over loss of past self
• Continued visitation or possession by entities
• Obsessive preoccupation with making sense of their experience
• Preoccupation with mortality
• Continuous confusion
• Psychotic and paranoid experiences
• Religious or spiritual disappointment
• Spiritual grandiosityy

(I previously wrote about how psychedelics can inspire belief in nihilism, which can be experienced as either ultimately negative or positive for users. At the same time, framing these experiences as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is often not that simple; they can be a tangled mix of positive and negative aspects. The character of these experiences also evolves based on one’s future interpretations of them.)

Here are some reports from participants that relate to the ontological shock they experienced:

• Ida: “It's hard to put into words... It felt as if I was a ghost somehow... I was there but also I was not there.”
• Beth: “I could not stop thinking about what I had seen...I was just like, couldn't focus on anything like that. It was just going round and round in my head like that.”
• Will: “When all those boundaries get confused, or you're just living in an entirely fabricated LSD dreamland, then you're like, Oh whoa, that's the world over there, like, there it is, it's gone crazy, what's happening to you? What's going on with me? All was not as it seems, and sensory data is not the real world.”
• Max: “I went looking for God and for love and for connection and I got the exact opposite. gave me this feeling of existential betrayal that to this day, I feel has created a very, I mean, profoundly distrust for me, of a very deep sense of like not feeling safe in life.”

Many participants reported that their ontological shock or existential distress involved persistent emotional, social, functional, or somatic difficulties. Some described the experience as ‘traumatic’, with some reporting difficulties that overlapped with the symptoms seen in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These included “re-experiencing, avoidance of thoughts of trauma, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, alterations in arousal and reactivity and significant functional impairment that lasted over one month.” The authors note:

Triggers that participants identified as bringing them back to the mental space of their psychedelic experience included: meditation and breathwork, substance use (including further psychedelic trips), discussions related to psychedelics or the content of their trip, and sleep-related triggers (including falling asleep and nightmares).

The strategies that people found helpful for dealing with their distress include:

• Grounding practices
• Cognitive practices
• Self-education and prior experience
• Interpersonal support
• Behavioural and practical help
• Spiritual practices

Almost all participants (22 out of 26) mentioned that grounding practices were helpful for letting go of their mental preoccupations. The authors state:

Specific practices that were noted for their grounding effects were yoga and other body work (including acupuncture, massage, breathwork), trauma release exercises (including shaking and screaming), experiences with water (hot baths, cold showers, swimming, surfing) and spending time in nature or with animals.

For some participants, integrating their psychedelic experiences involved resolving their ontological shock. As Beth describes:

Going from the mystical reality and the ordinary reality and yet bridging the gap, letting them co-exist. You know, I don't have to not have conversations about car insurance… like learning to deal with that side of things, like the yoga or going from the mystical to the mundane and learning to bridge that gap and the disparity between them and not feel like you're betraying either one side. ... I can live in both those sides at once now. I can go to work and I can go and have a crazy trip and neither really imposes on the other.

The authors note that the risk of ontological shock “may be especially pronounced in secularised contexts, where larger, communal meaning structures such as religion have largely dissolved…. In contrast, traditional psychedelic use within ritualised social contexts provides protective resources by offering a controlled environment and frameworks for integrating the experience”. They add, “The process of navigating ontological shock, as well as the loss and reconstruction of cognitive structures, may be heavily influenced by the availability of cultural resources alongside individual psychological resilience.” With this point in mind, they draw attention to a potential limitation of the study:

Our sample predominantly comprised participants from western cultures and only English speakers, who pointed to the lack of societal understanding of the spiritual nature of psychedelic experience. It may be that cultures with animist ontological frameworks have the structures to absorb ontological shock so that uncertainty is not experienced negatively. More research is needed to untangle the impact of such cultural framings and future studies should seek to broaden the cultural backgrounds explored.

The authors conclude:

Our findings suggest that psychedelic-induced ontological shock leads to cognitive, emotional and social ungrounding which can in turn lead to existential confusion through struggles with meaning-making that prolong distress. Grounding, whether somatic, through embodiment practices, or through social connection and the normalisation of unusual experiences, helped people navigate their confusion, obsessive preoccupations and isolating anxieties. Psychedelic integration that follows ontologically challenging experiences may be conceptualised as a process of normalisation, rebuilding stable ground following the dissolution of prior frameworks for understanding the world.

Psychedelic-related ontological shock can feel scary and destabilising, but, like other kinds of extended difficulty, it may lead one to beneficial outcomes. (This is not to say, of course, that every person who experiences ontological shock is ultimately glad they went through the experience; sometimes this extended difficulty causes more harm than good.) One beneficial outcome of ontological shock may be a worldview or set of metaphysical beliefs that improves one’s mental well-being (this does, however, raise questions about whether such metaphysical belief change is justified; if not, it could be considered a form of epistemic harm).

Some other positive outcomes of ontological shock (and I’m thinking speculatively here) could include increased open-mindedness, the capacity to handle future feelings of instability, greater self-compassion and compassion for others, interest in the ‘Big Questions’ (i.e. metaphysical and existential questions), and gratitude for the feeling of groundedness (as it’s easy to take it for granted when it’s constant and uninterrupted).

We certainly need more research into this (under-researched) aspect of psychedelic experiences. Still, it’s promising to see that psychedelic ontological shock is being studied, particularly questions surrounding the risk factors involved and what best helps people deal with this kind of distress.