6 ms·

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

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.
      - erikpukinskis 8y ago
        Or it’s 5 years less of post-treatment life. We can make random guesses all day about what’s a good outcome but how about we leave it to medical researchers to actually figure out what’s safe and beneficial?
        cgag 8y ago
        It seems pretty delusional to just say these people would have spontaneously lost their minds even if they didn't do extremely powerful mind altering drugs.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        It seems pretty delusional to make conclusions when you don't even know if they really took LSD or something sold as LSD, but actually dangerous, and are missing basically all other important data other than "they took something and then became crazy", while the then in the sentence means "after that", as in time, not "because of that".
        erikpukinskis 8y ago
        It’s literally guaranteed that some of them would have.
  - windows_tips 8y ago
    >The drug is illegal, Only in certain contexts (ie. some instances of interstate commerce).
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    >The drug is illegal >but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people. With this reasoning, skydiving, base jumping, and even the act of simply driving a car should should also be illegal. We let people do far more dangerous things, yet keep them legal. There is another reason LSD & most psychedelics are illegal. What that is, I don't know.
- 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.

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.
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      Or it’s 5 years less of post-treatment life. We can make random guesses all day about what’s a good outcome but how about we leave it to medical researchers to actually figure out what’s safe and beneficial?
      - cgag 8y ago
        It seems pretty delusional to just say these people would have spontaneously lost their minds even if they didn't do extremely powerful mind altering drugs.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        It seems pretty delusional to make conclusions when you don't even know if they really took LSD or something sold as LSD, but actually dangerous, and are missing basically all other important data other than "they took something and then became crazy", while the then in the sentence means "after that", as in time, not "because of that".
        erikpukinskis 8y ago
        It’s literally guaranteed that some of them would have.
- windows_tips 8y ago
  >The drug is illegal, Only in certain contexts (ie. some instances of interstate commerce).
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  >The drug is illegal >but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people. With this reasoning, skydiving, base jumping, and even the act of simply driving a car should should also be illegal. We let people do far more dangerous things, yet keep them legal. There is another reason LSD & most psychedelics are illegal. What that is, I don't know.
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.