Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) an unpleasant experience.

1952		W. Burroughs letter 15 May in Harris (1993) 124: Pressure from the States, the source of bum kicks.
1958		E. Gilbert Vice Trap 19: Sometimes, coming off a bum kick, I would get in her [i.e. a car] and fire hell out of her.
1959		W. Burroughs Naked Lunch (1968) 279: I once gave marijuana to a guest who was mildly anxious about something (‘On bum kicks’ as he put it).
1967		John Horton ‘Time and cool people’ in Trans-action 10/1: A regular on the set will readily admit being crippled by a lack of formal education. Yet school was a ‘bum kick’.
1969		Cressey & Ward Delinquency, Crime, and Social Process 824: When a dope fiend is ‘on the nod’ he does not want to be around erratic or excited people who put him on a ‘bum kick’.
1969		R.R. Lingeman Drugs from A to Z (1970) 52: bum kicks [...] Troubled, worried, depressed.
1995		(con. 1968) R. Kruse Sam the Sham 🌐 A 1968 interview in Jazz & Pop showed a Samudio sick and tired of the ‘scum percent of people who make the business a bumkick.’.