8 ms·

I hear ya. I’ve yet to see it negatively effect anyone other than a bad trip, which, seen in the right light, can be a therapeutic experience. But I know they

I hear ya. I’ve yet to see it negatively effect anyone other than a bad trip, which, seen in the right light, can be a therapeutic experience. But I know they need to be respected and understood. I also realize that some people with a family history of mental disorders like schizophrenia, would be better off staying away. Like, some people have used psychedelics, and they go crazy. But how many of those people were crazy to begin with? How many would end up like that if they never tried psychedelics to begin with? I tend to think that the fear is over dramatized. But I do emphasize respecting its use in a profound way. It changes you. The upside is that real LSD is so rare, the chances of people finding it are slim to non. It’s distributed by so few people.

cageface 8y ago
I watched a good friend freak out in front of me on a bad trip. Almost thirty years later he's still not the same and needs antipsychotic medication to function. This kind of thing isn't common but it can definitely happen.
- rufugee 8y ago
  It's entirely possible that LSD uncovered or accentuated an underlying flaw in your friend's psyche...
  - cageface 8y ago
    It probably did but that flaw wasn't obvious at all beforehand. He was a bit eccentric but also a really bright and funny guy with a lot of friends and a very dedicated student.
  - psychedictic 8y ago
    This is the common response from proponents of LSD. To them, it's never the LSD, and instead the adverse reaction must be because the person had a mind that was predisposed to some sort of mental illness. Even if it's true that someone has some kind of latent / dormant condition that is ultimately triggered by the LSD, then the act of taking the LSD itself was the catalyst, and the person would have been far better off not ever having taken the drug. The drug is illegal, and the argument growing up was that the "government was suppressing free thought" or whatever nonsense was being pushed, but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people. Whether connected to a predisposition of mental illness or not, it's not a hard connection and people should be extra cautious when considering whether to engage in such behavior.
    - sev 8y ago
      Care should be taken, like with any substance we ingest. However, I disagree with your premise. We do not know if LSD was in fact the catalyst. We don’t know if the people who got ruined after taking a single tab of LSD actually took LSD or some research chemical (which are quite commonly sold off as LSD).
      - erikpukinskis 8y ago
        Yeah, 2CI is for example very dangerous psychologically, and I’m sure it gets sold as LSD when an unscrupulous dealer has excess inventory.
      - yeahforsureman 8y ago
        Some research psychedelics are more dangerous physically, and certainly less researched, but in terms of psychological effects, all psychedelics are generally pretty similar. It's silly to assume LSD is somehow significantly less likely to cause psychological trouble.
    - Pica_soO 8y ago
      I agree, it only should be available to those, who are already in danger by pre-existing conditions like chronic depression or other similar serious mental conditions.
    - telchar 8y ago
      What's your evidence that those people are worse off having taken the psychedelics? You can't know the counterfactual isn't that those people who respond poorly to the drug would have had a similar mental break without it. Until the drug is studied rigorously all we have to go on are conflicting anecdotes. That said in the face of a lack of reliable information caution is warranted.
      - tomerv 8y ago
        Even if that person would not have taken LSD and would have had a psychotic episode 5 years later due to the underlying issue, that's still 5 years of good health lost because of LSD.
  - travmatt 8y ago
    That’s the point - there are other, slower, safer means to effect positive change on your mind that don’t run the risk of fucking up your brain from some random effect you had no way of predicting. The point is that it’s effects are powerful, which is why there is finally a revival into what exactly is happening.
  - arkades 8y ago
    I don’t understand this common response at all. If I prescribe penicillin to a patient with a pcn allergy, the fact that I “uncovered an underlying flaw” is irrelevant. Pcn is dangerous to them and should not be prescribed to them. This is true, in one sense or another, of the majority of adverse effects people have from medications given in therapeutic ranges. It’s basically what having an adverse effect -means-. It doesn’t mean that medication shouldn’t be given when appropriate, but it’s not a rationale for deflecting attention from the risks of the medication.
    - ChristianBundy 8y ago
      The difference is that penicillin allergies can only be triggered by penicillin (or maybe penicillin-adjacent analogues). Mental illnesses and psychedelics don't work the same way. Psychedelics bring these issues to the forefront, but they don't necessarily cause mental health issues, as the same issues could happen without LSD. I understand what you're trying to express with your example of penicillin, but it's not the same thing. In my opinion, it would be more accurate to compare psychedelic drugs to activities like meditation and fasting, which also have a risk of anxiety, discomfort, and bringing out dormant mental health issues in some people.
      - ada1981 8y ago
        A good mindset of psychedelic use is that you’d like things to be brought to the surface so they can be worked with and integrated. This is precisely what makes them such useful tools for things like PTSD and why it can be a bummer if someone does Molly at a rave and winds up with a memory of being molested and her friends are too busy doing K to talk with her. In a safe and supportive setting, this is exactly what can help people heal. It’s when things get uncovered but not fully released and processed they can occupy ones life. A good psychedelic therapist or sitter should be able to help someone integrat a current or former bad trip.
      - yosito 8y ago
        Psychedelics are not just spiritual/mental. They can literally alter your brain chemistry and, in rare cases, cause severe adverse effects. There need to be more studies done on the brain chemistry so we know how to predict and prevent those adverse effects.
  - lightcatcher 8y ago
    This isn't a useful distinction unless you can reliably identify the flaw before the negative impact of LSD. Without a detection mechanism, this is as actionable as "LSD does bad things to some people"
- api 8y ago
  I've seen this too but not from just one trip. I've seen heavy users kind of never come back. I suspect your friend had latent psychotic tendencies. Would be interesting to look at family history. These are powerful drugs that seem capable of both helping and doing harm. They should definitely be used with care, studied, and not abused. Of course what the war on drugs did was to ban the scientific study of these things and push them exclusively onto the street where they did get abused.
  - techbio 8y ago
    The existence of undiagnosed disorders and the potential presence of effective coping skills/supportive stable home environment/unstressed personality/late-onset symptoms would preclude reliance on prior indicators of determining fitness for a given psychedelic. Family histories are not always clearly diagnosed. That hypothetical uncle you've never met and no one talks about? Unknown mental health flag. Self-diagnosis of a mental/emotional state that calls for drug-taking is itself a clue that not all is so normal in the individual's mind--or is it something wrong in the world the person wants to relate to better? Who can know but the one supposedly experiencing an unnaccepted state? Observing/deciding/dosing by the selfsame suffering/diagnosing/tripping individual sounds risky, because if the downside is a long future of some degree of insanity, it is only a variety of Russian Roulette. To allow scientific studies, fund them, possibly create therapies is to also conquer the stigmas involved in substantial ways and that process is tectonically, multi-generationally slow (or impossible).
- ada1981 8y ago
  What was the set and setting for your friend? What was going on in his life at the time? Who was with him and how did they work with his “freak out”? It sounds like he lacked the set, setting and support to integrate that experience in a healthy way.
- flatline 8y ago
  It can happen with various meditation and yogic practices as well, and the effects can be just as severe and long lasting. I suspect that some people’s minds are in an unstable equilibrium that, when perturbed, sends them way off balance, and it is a state that no one would have been privy to before some traumatic experience acted as a trigger.
- Gatsky 8y ago
  The rate of psychosis in clinical studies appears to be very low, and they carefully select research subjects. I would suggest that psychedelics cannot take a person with zero risk of developing psychosis, and make them psychotic. There are many apparent triggers for mental illness eg a failed relationship, a drug binge, losing your job, giving birth etc, and we don’t treat these as causal events. Psychedelics are most likely no different. People at risk of developing psychosis may have a greater willingness to try psychedelics as well, creating a biased sample. If we ever do get regulated access to psychedelics, it will need some process to exclude ‘at risk’ persons. This will be crude and highly exclusionary at the start. Over time, genomics and brain imaging may allow more careful selection of those who can take psychedelics safely.
  - tcj_phx 8y ago
    > People at risk of developing psychosis Psychosis is an episodic condition caused by metabolic failure. Contributing factors include malnourishment, alcohol withdrawal, chronic stress, certain prescription and OTC drugs, street drugs, etc. People would recover from psychosis if given supportive treatment - good nutrition, B-vitamins (liver, yeast, etc), appropriate pro-metabolic prescriptions, naltrexone to keep them off alcohol, etc. My observations of the standard treatments forced on "psychotic" patients is that they are only useful for preventing the patient's recovery. My aunt's friend was always sort of 'off', now she's dying of liver failure. Didn't know until now that she's been on maintenance antipsychotics for decades, even though the trigger for her episode concluded decades ago.
psychedictic 8y ago
Someone does not need to have a "family history of mental disorders" to become an acid casualty. Some people simply have a bad reaction to the chemical and there isn't a reliable way of knowing in advance how a person might react to it.
- tranchms 8y ago
  How do they know if what they’ve taken is actually LSD-25, and not some research chemical? Research chemicals pawned off as LSD is more common than ever. They are dangerous psychotic inducing deugs.
  - WalterGR 8y ago
    How do they know if what they’ve taken is actually LSD-25, and not some research chemical? Anyone who has become an ‘acid casualty’ was dosed with these dangerous research chemicals, and everyone who was just fine had legitimate LSD?
    - sev 8y ago
      Are you suggesting that’s impossible or improbable given the prevalence of fake LSD as well as research chemicals being sold as LSD-25?
      - WalterGR 8y ago
        My implicit suggestion was that the viewpoint expressed in my comment (as a question) is a ridiculous logical fallacy. Reading the other comments I see that others have expressed the same thought.
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      It’s a hypothesis.
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    I heard LSD is rarely synthesized now and instead people end up with research chemicals (now scheduled) like 2C-B instead. Do you know if this is true?
tibbon 8y ago
I’ve seen a friend become semi dependent and kinda disassociated from reality after multiple times a week use of various research chemical psychedelics. It seemed to bring out some underlying bipolar like condition. Anyway; also a strong proponent, but I’ve seen the potential harm as well. On the balance it seems worthwhile for many people, and good for many people to try a little LSD at least once.
- tranchms 8y ago
  Research chemicals are dangerous. They’re mostly all synthetics derived from amphetamine class of drugs like MDMA. 2CE. 2CB. 2CI. Etc. and countless others. No one taking them know what it truly is. They are dangerous. And more ubiquitous than LSD-25. You can never be sure what you’re getting. You can OD and have a psychotic episode. I do not classify them as therapeutic psychedelics, and always advise against. If you ever take a tab of LSD and it’s bitter or metallic, or anything but absolutely flavorless or just paper, do not take. Spit it out.
  - samatman 8y ago
    This is an idiosyncratic opinion to say the least. 2C-E, 2C-B, and 2C-I are what they are, single compounds, just as LSD-25 is. They are phenethylamines, related to mescaline, the substance for which the term "psychedelic" was coined. They are synthetic, as is LSD, and have a wide therapeutic index. Being less potent by weight, it is easier to measure a specific dose than with LSD, which is commonly put on paper or taken in liquid form. Getting "puddled" from a bottle of LSD is a more likely route to a psychotic episode than anything 2C-I or 2C-B have to offer; 2C-E is a different beast. It's fine that you have these opinions, I guess. It's just that most of them are wrong and I wouldn't want others to be mislead.
  - throwaaaay 8y ago
    Anecdotally I’ve consumed 50-75 100mcg doses of 1P-LSD over the last year and found it almost indistinguishable from LSD. Not to mention easier and safer to obtain (directly from a research lab). Obviously there is no research on long term effects at this point, and there may never be, but for my personal therapeutic rituals it’s affectiveness is the same. It’s also worth noting that I’m not microdosing, which you may have assumed from my doses over time. I’m taking it once a week at an average dose of 300-600mcg with a 1-2 week break every 4 weeks (obviously I didn’t start at this dose when I first tried it). Along with other health supplements and exercise just so were clear. I am an experienced psychonaut, but I’m not a doctor, and I’m not here to champion 1P-LSD nor my personal rituals. But this is my experience.
yeahforsureman 8y ago
Real LSD is not that rare. You know, people can and many do have their stuff tested. There was a bit of a dry season in the early 2000s but not anymore. This is variation of the stupid old "clean" vs "dirty" acid myth. Anyway, you're probably right in the sense that there are only a handful of original sources for it. But once you get the production going, you quickly end up with a crapload of doses.
posterboy 8y ago
> But I do emphasize respecting its use in a profound way. You did not emphasize in any profound way. You did imply though that it invariably changes everyone, and never was anyone you know changed for the worse. So it changes everyone for the better. But you ask, surely because you are not sure, whether those who were crazy afterwards had to be crazy to begin with. So, the only thing you really emphasized was your ignorance. What does that mean to you? Everyone is a little crazy to begin with. Thus estimates about sanity are rather distorted and a small sample group not enough, especially if you are biased by preoccupation.

cageface 8y ago

I watched a good friend freak out in front of me on a bad trip. Almost thirty years later he's still not the same and needs antipsychotic medication to function. This kind of thing isn't common but it can definitely happen.

rufugee 8y ago
It's entirely possible that LSD uncovered or accentuated an underlying flaw in your friend's psyche...
- cageface 8y ago
  It probably did but that flaw wasn't obvious at all beforehand. He was a bit eccentric but also a really bright and funny guy with a lot of friends and a very dedicated student.
- psychedictic 8y ago
  This is the common response from proponents of LSD. To them, it's never the LSD, and instead the adverse reaction must be because the person had a mind that was predisposed to some sort of mental illness. Even if it's true that someone has some kind of latent / dormant condition that is ultimately triggered by the LSD, then the act of taking the LSD itself was the catalyst, and the person would have been far better off not ever having taken the drug. The drug is illegal, and the argument growing up was that the "government was suppressing free thought" or whatever nonsense was being pushed, but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people. Whether connected to a predisposition of mental illness or not, it's not a hard connection and people should be extra cautious when considering whether to engage in such behavior.
  - sev 8y ago
    Care should be taken, like with any substance we ingest. However, I disagree with your premise. We do not know if LSD was in fact the catalyst. We don’t know if the people who got ruined after taking a single tab of LSD actually took LSD or some research chemical (which are quite commonly sold off as LSD).
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      Yeah, 2CI is for example very dangerous psychologically, and I’m sure it gets sold as LSD when an unscrupulous dealer has excess inventory.
    - yeahforsureman 8y ago
      Some research psychedelics are more dangerous physically, and certainly less researched, but in terms of psychological effects, all psychedelics are generally pretty similar. It's silly to assume LSD is somehow significantly less likely to cause psychological trouble.
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    I agree, it only should be available to those, who are already in danger by pre-existing conditions like chronic depression or other similar serious mental conditions.
  - telchar 8y ago
    What's your evidence that those people are worse off having taken the psychedelics? You can't know the counterfactual isn't that those people who respond poorly to the drug would have had a similar mental break without it. Until the drug is studied rigorously all we have to go on are conflicting anecdotes. That said in the face of a lack of reliable information caution is warranted.
    - tomerv 8y ago
      Even if that person would not have taken LSD and would have had a psychotic episode 5 years later due to the underlying issue, that's still 5 years of good health lost because of LSD.
- travmatt 8y ago
  That’s the point - there are other, slower, safer means to effect positive change on your mind that don’t run the risk of fucking up your brain from some random effect you had no way of predicting. The point is that it’s effects are powerful, which is why there is finally a revival into what exactly is happening.
- arkades 8y ago
  I don’t understand this common response at all. If I prescribe penicillin to a patient with a pcn allergy, the fact that I “uncovered an underlying flaw” is irrelevant. Pcn is dangerous to them and should not be prescribed to them. This is true, in one sense or another, of the majority of adverse effects people have from medications given in therapeutic ranges. It’s basically what having an adverse effect -means-. It doesn’t mean that medication shouldn’t be given when appropriate, but it’s not a rationale for deflecting attention from the risks of the medication.
  - ChristianBundy 8y ago
    The difference is that penicillin allergies can only be triggered by penicillin (or maybe penicillin-adjacent analogues). Mental illnesses and psychedelics don't work the same way. Psychedelics bring these issues to the forefront, but they don't necessarily cause mental health issues, as the same issues could happen without LSD. I understand what you're trying to express with your example of penicillin, but it's not the same thing. In my opinion, it would be more accurate to compare psychedelic drugs to activities like meditation and fasting, which also have a risk of anxiety, discomfort, and bringing out dormant mental health issues in some people.
    - ada1981 8y ago
      A good mindset of psychedelic use is that you’d like things to be brought to the surface so they can be worked with and integrated. This is precisely what makes them such useful tools for things like PTSD and why it can be a bummer if someone does Molly at a rave and winds up with a memory of being molested and her friends are too busy doing K to talk with her. In a safe and supportive setting, this is exactly what can help people heal. It’s when things get uncovered but not fully released and processed they can occupy ones life. A good psychedelic therapist or sitter should be able to help someone integrat a current or former bad trip.
    - yosito 8y ago
      Psychedelics are not just spiritual/mental. They can literally alter your brain chemistry and, in rare cases, cause severe adverse effects. There need to be more studies done on the brain chemistry so we know how to predict and prevent those adverse effects.
- lightcatcher 8y ago
  This isn't a useful distinction unless you can reliably identify the flaw before the negative impact of LSD. Without a detection mechanism, this is as actionable as "LSD does bad things to some people"
api 8y ago
I've seen this too but not from just one trip. I've seen heavy users kind of never come back. I suspect your friend had latent psychotic tendencies. Would be interesting to look at family history. These are powerful drugs that seem capable of both helping and doing harm. They should definitely be used with care, studied, and not abused. Of course what the war on drugs did was to ban the scientific study of these things and push them exclusively onto the street where they did get abused.
- techbio 8y ago
  The existence of undiagnosed disorders and the potential presence of effective coping skills/supportive stable home environment/unstressed personality/late-onset symptoms would preclude reliance on prior indicators of determining fitness for a given psychedelic. Family histories are not always clearly diagnosed. That hypothetical uncle you've never met and no one talks about? Unknown mental health flag. Self-diagnosis of a mental/emotional state that calls for drug-taking is itself a clue that not all is so normal in the individual's mind--or is it something wrong in the world the person wants to relate to better? Who can know but the one supposedly experiencing an unnaccepted state? Observing/deciding/dosing by the selfsame suffering/diagnosing/tripping individual sounds risky, because if the downside is a long future of some degree of insanity, it is only a variety of Russian Roulette. To allow scientific studies, fund them, possibly create therapies is to also conquer the stigmas involved in substantial ways and that process is tectonically, multi-generationally slow (or impossible).
ada1981 8y ago
What was the set and setting for your friend? What was going on in his life at the time? Who was with him and how did they work with his “freak out”? It sounds like he lacked the set, setting and support to integrate that experience in a healthy way.
flatline 8y ago
It can happen with various meditation and yogic practices as well, and the effects can be just as severe and long lasting. I suspect that some people’s minds are in an unstable equilibrium that, when perturbed, sends them way off balance, and it is a state that no one would have been privy to before some traumatic experience acted as a trigger.
Gatsky 8y ago
The rate of psychosis in clinical studies appears to be very low, and they carefully select research subjects. I would suggest that psychedelics cannot take a person with zero risk of developing psychosis, and make them psychotic. There are many apparent triggers for mental illness eg a failed relationship, a drug binge, losing your job, giving birth etc, and we don’t treat these as causal events. Psychedelics are most likely no different. People at risk of developing psychosis may have a greater willingness to try psychedelics as well, creating a biased sample. If we ever do get regulated access to psychedelics, it will need some process to exclude ‘at risk’ persons. This will be crude and highly exclusionary at the start. Over time, genomics and brain imaging may allow more careful selection of those who can take psychedelics safely.
- tcj_phx 8y ago
  > People at risk of developing psychosis Psychosis is an episodic condition caused by metabolic failure. Contributing factors include malnourishment, alcohol withdrawal, chronic stress, certain prescription and OTC drugs, street drugs, etc. People would recover from psychosis if given supportive treatment - good nutrition, B-vitamins (liver, yeast, etc), appropriate pro-metabolic prescriptions, naltrexone to keep them off alcohol, etc. My observations of the standard treatments forced on "psychotic" patients is that they are only useful for preventing the patient's recovery. My aunt's friend was always sort of 'off', now she's dying of liver failure. Didn't know until now that she's been on maintenance antipsychotics for decades, even though the trigger for her episode concluded decades ago.

psychedictic 8y ago

Someone does not need to have a "family history of mental disorders" to become an acid casualty. Some people simply have a bad reaction to the chemical and there isn't a reliable way of knowing in advance how a person might react to it.

tranchms 8y ago
How do they know if what they’ve taken is actually LSD-25, and not some research chemical? Research chemicals pawned off as LSD is more common than ever. They are dangerous psychotic inducing deugs.
- WalterGR 8y ago
  How do they know if what they’ve taken is actually LSD-25, and not some research chemical? Anyone who has become an ‘acid casualty’ was dosed with these dangerous research chemicals, and everyone who was just fine had legitimate LSD?
  - sev 8y ago
    Are you suggesting that’s impossible or improbable given the prevalence of fake LSD as well as research chemicals being sold as LSD-25?
    - WalterGR 8y ago
      My implicit suggestion was that the viewpoint expressed in my comment (as a question) is a ridiculous logical fallacy. Reading the other comments I see that others have expressed the same thought.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    It’s a hypothesis.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  I heard LSD is rarely synthesized now and instead people end up with research chemicals (now scheduled) like 2C-B instead. Do you know if this is true?

tibbon 8y ago

I’ve seen a friend become semi dependent and kinda disassociated from reality after multiple times a week use of various research chemical psychedelics. It seemed to bring out some underlying bipolar like condition. Anyway; also a strong proponent, but I’ve seen the potential harm as well. On the balance it seems worthwhile for many people, and good for many people to try a little LSD at least once.

tranchms 8y ago
Research chemicals are dangerous. They’re mostly all synthetics derived from amphetamine class of drugs like MDMA. 2CE. 2CB. 2CI. Etc. and countless others. No one taking them know what it truly is. They are dangerous. And more ubiquitous than LSD-25. You can never be sure what you’re getting. You can OD and have a psychotic episode. I do not classify them as therapeutic psychedelics, and always advise against. If you ever take a tab of LSD and it’s bitter or metallic, or anything but absolutely flavorless or just paper, do not take. Spit it out.
- samatman 8y ago
  This is an idiosyncratic opinion to say the least. 2C-E, 2C-B, and 2C-I are what they are, single compounds, just as LSD-25 is. They are phenethylamines, related to mescaline, the substance for which the term "psychedelic" was coined. They are synthetic, as is LSD, and have a wide therapeutic index. Being less potent by weight, it is easier to measure a specific dose than with LSD, which is commonly put on paper or taken in liquid form. Getting "puddled" from a bottle of LSD is a more likely route to a psychotic episode than anything 2C-I or 2C-B have to offer; 2C-E is a different beast. It's fine that you have these opinions, I guess. It's just that most of them are wrong and I wouldn't want others to be mislead.
- throwaaaay 8y ago
  Anecdotally I’ve consumed 50-75 100mcg doses of 1P-LSD over the last year and found it almost indistinguishable from LSD. Not to mention easier and safer to obtain (directly from a research lab). Obviously there is no research on long term effects at this point, and there may never be, but for my personal therapeutic rituals it’s affectiveness is the same. It’s also worth noting that I’m not microdosing, which you may have assumed from my doses over time. I’m taking it once a week at an average dose of 300-600mcg with a 1-2 week break every 4 weeks (obviously I didn’t start at this dose when I first tried it). Along with other health supplements and exercise just so were clear. I am an experienced psychonaut, but I’m not a doctor, and I’m not here to champion 1P-LSD nor my personal rituals. But this is my experience.

yeahforsureman 8y ago

Real LSD is not that rare. You know, people can and many do have their stuff tested. There was a bit of a dry season in the early 2000s but not anymore. This is variation of the stupid old "clean" vs "dirty" acid myth. Anyway, you're probably right in the sense that there are only a handful of original sources for it. But once you get the production going, you quickly end up with a crapload of doses.

posterboy 8y ago

> But I do emphasize respecting its use in a profound way. You did not emphasize in any profound way. You did imply though that it invariably changes everyone, and never was anyone you know changed for the worse. So it changes everyone for the better. But you ask, surely because you are not sure, whether those who were crazy afterwards had to be crazy to begin with. So, the only thing you really emphasized was your ignorance. What does that mean to you? Everyone is a little crazy to begin with. Thus estimates about sanity are rather distorted and a small sample group not enough, especially if you are biased by preoccupation.