The Numb Trip: What Causes Emotional Blunting on Psychedelics

Psychedelics are often associated with increased emotions across a broad spectrum. Whether it’s awe, bliss, grief, fear, empathy, or rage, users frequently report feeling things more intensely. Sometimes there’s no specific emotion at all, just an amplified depth of experience, where one feels more alive or more human.

This emotion-enhancing quality is often listed among the common effects of psychedelics. It feeds into a popular narrative that psychedelics are superior to antidepressants: “Enhancing emotions rather than numbing,” as one headline puts it.

Yet such an outcome isn’t universal. Psychedelics can certainly help people reconnect with their emotions, but sometimes the opposite occurs. Emotional blunting – a sense of numbing or detachment from both positive and negative feelings – can happen during or after a psychedelic trip, though it’s relatively rare.

Psychedelics and Overthinking

Joey, a support worker, described having psychedelic experiences marked with dulled emotions, which he attributed to overthinking.

“[It’s like] dissociating from my body and getting stuck in my head fighting a cognitive battle,” he said. “It happened a few times when I was taking psychedelics recreationally at raves or festivals. Rather than enjoy the party or sense the vibes, I’d turn inward and get lost in thought, not really being in my body.”

Overthinking can perpetuate certain emotions, namely worry and anxiety, but it can also narrow the emotional landscape. According to the mBIT coaching model, humans have three “brains”: one in the head, one in the heart, and one in the gut. The heart and gut are linked to expansive emotions such as love and intuition, while the head is more narrowly focused, concerned with logic and analysis.

To feel “stuck” in one’s head, then, is to shift away from the heart and gut brain into the head brain. It’s not a common effect of psychedelics, but some users report becoming overly analytical or hyper-focused on specific thoughts. They can get caught in “thought loops” – trains of thought that feel impossible to escape.

Thought Loops

Such loops can range from existential dread to surprisingly mundane concerns.

“I’ve had really boring thought loops on psychedelics,” said May, an Events Organiser. “Once, I took mushrooms, and the whole experience revolved around how to respond to a work email from my boss. It was my first time taking a large dose alone, and I’d hoped the trip would be profound, but it was profoundly dull. I felt trapped in my thoughts. I probably shouldn’t have checked my emails before the trip.

Another time, I took 2C-B at a gig and spent far too long thinking about what to do with the going-off vegetables in my fridge. I definitely didn’t feel emotional.”

The pioneering psychiatrist Stanislav Grof once described psychedelics as “non-specific amplifiers.” They don’t dictate what people think or feel, but increase what is already there. Psychedelics can intensify emotions, but by intensifying thoughts, they can also restrict the emotional experience, particularly when the thoughts themselves are relatively meaningless.

Emotional Shutdown: Fight, Flight, or Freeze

The intensifying effect of psychedelics can sometimes overwhelm the nervous system, leading to a kind of shutdown that dulls emotions.

The fight-flight-freeze response is a widely accepted model in psychology that describes how the nervous system responds to stress. When the body perceives mild danger, it prepares for action, fighting, or fleeing. Yet, when it feels in greater danger, it can go into complete shutdown – a mechanism of playing dead, lingering from an evolutionary past.

Psychedelics can overload the senses and make users feel out of control. Some also trigger the release of hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which signal the body that it might be under threat. Together, these factors can provoke a freeze response, resulting in numbness or dissociation.

“It was like a freeze – I was frozen,” said Hannah, a Science Tutor, recalling an LSD trip. “I envisioned myself as Beatrix Potter’s rabbit in the headlights.”

Relatively new to psychedelics, Hannah felt overwhelmed, a feeling intensified by discomfort around her tripping companion. “With this disparity between me and him, I felt lost, empty, and void,” she said.

In some cases, psychedelics not only dull emotions but can also shut down experience entirely. People have reported smoking DMT, a particularly potent psychedelic, and losing all consciousness, or at least any memory of what happened.

The Neuroscience of Emotional Blunting on Psychedelics

It’s still unclear why psychedelics amplify emotions in some cases and flatten them in others, but brain-imaging studies offer clues.

Some research suggests psychedelics reduce activity in the amygdala, the brain region that drives emotional responses. This suppression could create a sense of emotional flatness, muting reactions to fear, anger, or joy. Yet other studies show the opposite: under certain conditions, psychedelics may heighten amygdala activity.

Psychedelics also quiet the default mode network (DMN), a web of brain regions linked to self-referential thought and identity. The DMN is thought to be where emotions and thoughts intersect, connecting feelings with personal meaning and memory. Dampening the DMN may not necessarily blunt emotions, but emotions may feel less personal. People may have strong feelings without any clear source, as if the emotions were arising from outside themselves.

Prolonged Psychedelic Use and Emotional Blunting

When it comes to prolonged psychedelic use and emotional blunting, the chemical messenger serotonin likely plays an important role. This neurotransmitter is involved in mood and emotion and is a key target of typical antidepressants, like SSRIs and SNRIs.

Up to 60% of people taking SSRIs experience emotional blunting. When serotonin levels stay elevated for too long, the receptors that respond to it can become less sensitive. As a result, emotional signalling can become weaker, leaving people feeling dulled.

Like SSRIs, psychedelics act on serotonin receptors, and prolonged use could lead to a similar loss of function.

As part of a personal science experiment, Joey decided to have an “insane psychedelics binge.” He said that after two weeks of taking LSD every day, he reached a point of emotional flatness, which was like a “combination of feeling low, a bit frustrated and bored.” The acid stopped working, and he described his emotions as flat and similar to being on SSRIs.

Post-Psychedelic Emptiness

Emotional blunting can also appear after the trip ends. Some users report feeling exhausted, empty, or “like recovering from surgery” in the days or weeks following an intense experience.

These “post-psychedelic blues” can deepen into more serious challenges: existential uncertainty, loss of meaning, or a sense of detachment from one’s usual self and reality.

One Reddit user described lingering “schizoid” symptoms of voidness and apathy after using psychedelics. They took away his depression, but at the expense of also taking away a sense of purpose and connection.

“Before my Psychedelics experiences, I did not feel this way: life's work felt egocentrically meaningful. I had a drive to achieve - albeit on trauma-fueled grounds,” he said.

“After Psychedelics, I lost egocentricity. I felt myself less as a distinct ego, but as a vessel for awareness that was born of life/creation. The "me concept" died: there was no 'My thoughts', 'my feelings', etc….I am now no longer invested in the playing out of the drama that is my own life. Relationships feel empty, hollow. I feel I have no 'spiritedness'.”

Psychedelics and Improved Emotional Regulation

Despite these challenges, many people report emotional improvement following psychedelic use. Emotions may not be blunted, but instead, become better regulated, less chaotic, and often more positive overall.

“With acid or shrooms I’ve felt what a lot of people describe as feeling more grounded and present,” said Terry, a Hospital Doctor. “I haven’t felt negative in terms of missing emotional intensity; it’s more that my emotions are less capricious and quickly changing to becoming anxious and worried,” said Matthew.

Psychedelics are believed to enhance neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new connections and reorganise itself. This flexibility is the basis of learning and creating memories.

While psychedelics don’t directly “rewire” the brain, they open a window of possibility for making change. When combined with therapy or intention, people can more easily learn healthier coping mechanisms and emotional habits. They can learn to respond rather than react, letting go of patterns like anger, guilt, or jealousy.

Support for Psychedelic-Related Emotional Blunting

Psychedelics are a broad category of substances with effects that vary from person to person and from one experience to the next. They certainly affect emotions, but whether someone’s feelings will become heightened, numbed, or more regulated is uncertain. Emotions are subjective and extremely complex, and, as non-specific amplifiers, so are the outcomes of psychedelics.

One thing that is certain, however, is that emotional blunting can be distressing. Particularly when it evolves into a dissociation, and loss of sense of purpose or meaning. As such, support is essential for those struggling with any long-term difficulties related to emotional blunting. The Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project has an online support group for people struggling with such challenges, as well as relevant resources.

NB: All the contributors to this article wanted to be kept anonymous and so the names have been changed.