noun Slang.
- a mentally or physically horrifying drug-taking experience, as one accompanied by nightmarish hallucinations or by physical pain.
- a dismayingly unpleasant experience: He was so ill-prepared that college was a bad trip for him.
A frightening or otherwise very unpleasant experience, as in Given the poor turnout, her book tour was a bad trip. The term comes from drug slang of the mid-1900s, where it meant experiencing hallucinations, pain, or other terrible effects from taking a drug, especially LSD. It was then extended to any extremely unpleasant experience.