Which is not to say that people never take LSD more often than is prudent. The book describes users who became obsessed with the drug, spending most of their time tripping or recovering from trips. But this pattern is rare. Indeed, most people who try LSD use it only a few times. Bad trips generally result from taking the drug in the wrong mood, the wrong setting, or the wrong company.
Experienced users learn to drop acid with friends in secure, predictable situations.
MacDonald and Agar speculate that this requirement may help explain why LSD is not popular in the inner city. A threatening, chaotic environment is not conducive to a good trip. LSD users seek a controlled loss of control, an experience something like a roller-coaster ride, where there is a predictable beginning and end, where the sense of danger is part of the thrill but the true risk is minimal. The best cure for a bad trip is the simple reassurance that the experience will pass. As Henderson notes, the term hallucinogen is something of a misnomer, since neither LSD nor the other drugs classified under that label produce true hallucinations.