50 Trippy Quotes About Psychedelic Drugs

Psychedelics have a long history of making people ‘trip,’ and these trippy quotes will help you understand it all a little better.

Tell us your favorite trippy quote in the comment section below.

Trippy has become the word we use when describing anything that resembles or induces the hallucinatory effect produced by taking a psychedelic drug.

What are the benefits of reading these trippy quotes?

For starters, you will better understand what makes people trip and why they do it.

Just what is a psychedelic drug?

A psychedelic drug, or hallucinogenic drug, is a group of substances that are usually used recreationally to change and enhance sensory perceptions.

Psychedelics affect your thought processes and energy levels.

They were used to facilitate spiritual experiences by shamans and other spiritual leaders.

They include chemicals, such as LSD, and plants, such as peyote.

Psychedelics are often smoked and inhaled.

They can be eaten or brewed into tea.

Using hallucinogens goes back centuries in many cultures.

Learn more about the research behind hallucinogens

Psychiatrists like Stanislav Grof and psychologist Timothy Leary were a part of researching the use of hallucinogens as a tool for psychotherapy.

After the 1960s, though, much of this work was halted for mainly political reasons.

Many of these quotes come from Stanislav Grof and Timothy Leary, along with some other people recounting their trippy tales.

A few of them just might surprise you!

If you enjoy this article, check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily motivation. 

Browse our entire collection of inspirational quotes for more motivating ideas and concepts.

Trippy quotes about psychedelics from psychiatrist Stanislav Grof

1. “The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence.” — Stanislav Grof

2. “Patients reported that their psychedelic sessions were an invaluable experiential training for dying.” — Stanislav Grof

3. “Many of us who have experienced psychedelics feel very much that they are sacred tools. They open spiritual awareness.” — Stanislav Grof

4. “The knowledge of the realm of death makes it possible for the shaman to move freely back and forth and mediate these journeys for other people.” — Stanislav Grof

5. “LSD is a catalyst or amplifier of mental processes. If properly used it could become something like the microscope or telescope of psychiatry.” — Stanislav Grof

6. “As long as I had easy access to psychedelics at the government-sponsored research project, most of my energy went into psychedelic sessions.” — Stanislav Grof

7. “There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain.” — Stanislav Grof

8. “There are people who can start having very powerful experiences without taking psychedelics. It can happen against their will. This is a universal phenomenon.” — Stanislav Grof

9. “It became much more complicated politically to work with psychedelics because of the unsupervised experimentation with psychedelics, particularly among young people.” — Stanislav Grof

10. “The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death.” — Stanislav Grof

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Trippy quotes about the history of psychedelics and shaman

11. “Evolution of mankind is paralleled by the increase and expansion of consciousness.” — Albert Hofmann

12. “Drugs allows us to taste the beyond but do not make us masters of the transcendental.” — Satyananda Saraswati

13. “In history, psychedelic plants were used by priests and shamans with a desire to discover the interior.” — Alejandro Jodorowsky

14. “Believe it or not, bananas do contain a small quantity of Musa Sapientum bananadine, which is a mild, short-lasting psychedelic.” — William Powell

15. “Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.” — Terence McKenna

16. “Whilst I’m all for psychedelic science—I think it’s fantastic—I don’t think we necessarily have time to wait for the science to tell us these medicines are useful. The indigenous cultures have already shown us the ways.” — Gail Bradbrook

17. “I stumbled upon the philosopher’s stone. I had the veil of illusion pulled back, and was confronted by the many levels of energy and many realms of consciousness which were available to man. I opened the pandora’s box of multiple realities.” — Timothy Leary

18. “There is a wealth of information built into us … tucked away in the genetic material in every one of our cells … without some means of access, there is no way even to begin to guess at the extent and quality of what is there. The psychedelic drugs allow exploration of this interior world, and insights into its nature.” — Alexander Shulgin

19. “And so much of these plant psychedelic entities are at least 4,000 years old. Now, when you experiment – when you work with these plant psychedelics, what I have found is that these entities are actually there. They are aware of you, they are aware that you are a person, and they are able to communicate with you.” — D. M. Turner

20. “With psychedelics, if you’re fortunate and break through, you understand what is truly of value in life. Material, power, dominance, and territory have no value. People wouldn’t fight wars, and the whole system we have currently would fall apart. People would become peaceful, loving citizens, not robots marching around in the dark with all their lights off.” — Gary Fisher

Funny trippy quotes

21. “If life wasn’t real, it would be the craziest psychedelic trip ever.” — Joe Rogan

22. “Drugs are the religion of the people? The only hope is Dope.” — Timothy Leary

23. “To fall in hell, or soar angelic, you need a pinch of psychedelic.” — Humphry Osmond

24. “One of the side effects of good psychedelics is you can’t remember how much you took.” ― Tim Dorsey, The Pope of Palm Beach

25. “I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they’ve always worked for me.” — Hunter S Thompson

26. “Seems like everyone’s sleep-walking through their waking state, or wake walking through their dreams.” — From the movie Waking Life

27. “There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics.” — Paul Lockhart

28. “LSD is a psychedelic drug which occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have NOT taken it.” — Timothy Leary

29. “It seems that I know that I know. What I would like to see is the ‘I’ that knows me when I know that I know that I know.” — Alan Watts

30. “I wish there was some hip way of telling you this, baby, but, ah… you’re one with and part of an ever-expanding, loving, joyful, glorious, and harmonious universe.” — From the movie The Trip

Trippy quotes from great minds and thinkers

31. “To make this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme.” — Aldous Huxley

32. “To me, the psychedelic experience is the experience of trying to make sense of reality.” — Terence McKenna

33. “If the door of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to a man as it is, infinite.” — William Blake

34. “Know what [drug] you’re using, decide just why you’re using it, and you can have a rich experience.” — Alexander Shulgin

35. “Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing, that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.” — Albert Einstein

36. “The potential of the psychedelic drugs to provide access to the interior universe, is, I believe, their most valuable property.” — Alexander Shulgin

37. “I became tuned in on the network of neurological signals and cellular wisdoms that radiate at hundreds of millions per second.” — Timothy Leary

38. “Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.” — Timothy Leary

39. “Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.” — Steve Jobs

40. “I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain in relief; they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing. Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation, which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared. What had caused this condition?” — Dr. Albert Hofmann – Laboratory Notes (1943)

Trippy quotes from authors, actors, and musicians

41. “’Psychedelic’ means mind-expanding.” — Ian Brown

42. “Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was.” — John Lennon

43. “It’s mind-altering when you slip into someone else’s shoes. That’s psychedelic, man.” — Bryan Cranston

44. “See with a different eye, visualize with a colorful mind, manifest your thoughts with the energy within.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson

45. “In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the Peyote tells us where to find it.” — Antonin Artaud

46. “Drugs shouldn’t be used for recreation although they can be, but ultimately the point of psychedelics is to put you in touch with the powers of the universe.” — Ray Manzarek

47. “Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you’ve been to some of those places, you think, ‘How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?’” — Jerry Garcia

48. “Through all of history, mankind has ingested psychedelic substances. Those substances exist to put you in touch with spirits beyond yourself, with the creator, with the creative impulse of the planet.” — Ray Manzarek

49. “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” — Douglas Adams

50. “I was looking for something and I wasn’t sure what it was. [After experimenting with] certain funguses, I had a psychedelic experience where I looked up at the clouds and went, ‘Oh!’ I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make happen.” — Adam Lambert

More facts about psychedelics

The history of psychedelics is very interesting.

Drugs like LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide, were once legal.

LSD only became illegal in the 60s.

LSD is chemically synthesized, but it is derived from a mold that grows on rye grain called ergot.

Then there is Dimethyltryptamine or DMT.

DMT is a naturally occurring plant-based psychedelic.

It can be found in the bark and nuts of certain Central and South American trees.

Tripping on DMT has been referred to as the “businessman’s trip” or “businessman’s lunch.”

This is because the effects of DMT only last about an hour.

Normal effects of psychedelics include a wide range of things.

Typically, tripping involves an altered perception of time and hallucinations.

These could be anything from feeling sensations, hearing sounds, and/or seeing images that aren’t real.

A person might also experience difficulty communicating clearly or thinking rationally.

Psychedelics have been used in many cultures because the trip can also heighten a person’s awareness or understanding.

The vivid sensory experiences and heightened awareness have led to many spiritual experiences.

Tripping is not always fun, and there are plenty of reasons to avoid doing so

Of course, there is a downside to these types of drugs.

They can also cause dizziness and sleepiness.

Psychedelics can also increase blood pressure and make you feel nauseous.

Loss of appetite, dry mouth, sweating, numbness, weakness, tremors, and impulsive behavior are just a few other negative effects.

Keep in mind that there are other ways that do not involve drugs for you to become more attuned to the world around you.

Positive thinking and meditation are a few things you can try.

Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comment section below!