the.com/power trip
A vacation from self-awareness, paid for by everyone around you.
means A pattern of behavior where someone intoxicated by a little bit of authority starts wielding it for the thrill of it rather than any actual purpose.
from American slang from the drug-soaked vocabulary of the 1960s, when 'trip' meant a psychedelic experience — a journey of altered perception, usually via LSD. 'Power trip' borrowed that structure directly: power itself becomes the drug, and the person wielding it is tripping on the high of control rather than on any chemical. The phrase caught on through countercultural and political slang of the era and never left, outliving most of the other '-trip' constructions it arrived with.
- origin
- term rose in 1970s counterculture slang
- psychology
- small authority plus zero accountability equals maximum mess
- classic example
- any mall cop with a walkie talkie
- cure
- someone who outranks you, instantly