Fighter admits he was high on LSD during UFC fight: ‘It just felt empty’

A UFC fight is a difficult challenge under the best of circumstances. However, one former fighter decided to take things up a notch by dropping LSD—a powerful hallucinogen—before walking to the Octagon.

The fighter in question is Blake Bilder, a featherweight who fought four times in the Octagon.

Bilder had apparently enjoyed doing small doses of hallucinogens like psilocybin (magic mushrooms) in training. After those experiences, he decided to do a small dose during one of his fights—which is of course a violation of drug-testing protocols.

In the end, he put his plan into motion for a UFC 289 undercard fight with Kyle Nelson in 2023. Because the fight was in Canada, the American first had to smuggle his drugs over the border. When it came time to take the LSD he’d brought, he accidentally took too much, which resulted in a “brutal” fight experience.

Blake Bilder was high on LSD in UFC fight with Kyle Nelson

“A buddy was making the most crystallized form of psilocybin that you can make, and he was like a mad scientist so he was making LSD too,” the former UFC fighter said on Rise Above with Kevin Lanning. “He’s like, ‘Dude, I made you some.’ So he pretty much just drenched the thing in LSD, these sugar cubes, and wrapped them in a foil and gave them to me. And so I had a really good experience at the gym when I was training a couple weeks before my fight, and I was like, ‘Oh dude, if the mushrooms worked really good, the LSD will be crazy.’

“I snuck it over into the Canada border,” he added. “I took some the day before and then I took some the day of, right before I left to go to the show. And we meet with the UFC staff and I have these murdered-out, blacked-out Dior glasses and nobody can see my eyes. And dude, when I took it, I took it… I put it on my tongue, and it just dissolves. I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, no!’ I was only supposed to do a microdose. I was like, ‘oh, no!’ And I was like, ‘Alright, no. It’s alright. God, we got this.’

“I know God is always with me, but it just felt like I wasn’t with God. And it just felt empty.”

Bilder lost his UFC 289 fight with Nelson by decision. That’s really no surprise, considering he could hardly hold it together in the lead-up to his walk to the Octagon.

“As soon as you get to the venue, ‘You’ve been randomly selected to be drug-tested, so we’re going to have you pee immediately when you get to the venue.’ I was like, ‘Cool.’

“I just felt like everybody was giving me the eye. And then I lost and everybody was talking s*** on the internet. ‘F***ing dumbass! Clown!'”

Bilder said he didn’t use LSD again after the experience. He was released from the UFC following a decision loss to Jeong Yeong Lee in February of 2024. He has not fought again since.