A bad trip—a sudden vision of horror or death which often grips LSD users when they take it without proper mental preparation-overtakes a teen-age girl at an "acid party" near Hollywood's Sunset Strip. She had taken LSD twice before, both times with pleasant results. This time she "went up" slowly at first, wandering about the room, savoring her heightened perception. Then she began to turn nervous and furtive, and started rubbing her face with her fingers. Sucking her thumb (top, left), she rolled out of her chair and onto the floor, then bit down on her whole hand (above). For a while she lay silent, but soon began to sob, pushing herself about the floor as if trying to escape something that was biting her from within. After about 15 minutes she calmed down and the trip turned pleasant once more. When it ended she explained her convulsion: "It was horrible ... I saw my face. It was very large and it had scars running down it. I experienced the desire to die, but not actual death, the desire to rip my skin off and pull my hair out and my face off, things like that. ... I definitely won't take acid again." Two weeks after the episode she returned to her parents' home for the first time in a year.