4 ms·

Huh? Obviously if you dismiss all of the bad anecdotes and none of the good ones, you’re only going to have good anecdotes My mom’s brother went into psychosis

Huh? Obviously if you dismiss all of the bad anecdotes and none of the good ones, you’re only going to have good anecdotes My mom’s brother went into psychosis during an acid trip and eventually schizophrenia. He killed himself when he was 24. I think hallucinagens are fun recreationally and clearly have the potential for positive therapeutic use, but let’s not pretend that it’s always positive, especially in uncontrolled settings.

eurasiantiger 6y ago
These anecdotes are always sad, but you have no way of confirming whether they took a normal sized dose of actual LSD, or whether they took a shitload of some unknown research chemical. Also, as you wrote, set and setting are important and those are not described.
Talanes 6y ago
Even in the realm of unverifiable anecdotes, there is still a difference between a first party anecdote and a third-party anecdote. In the first party anecdote I only have to put my trust in one person, where in a third party anecdote I have to trust 2-to-infinity people. For whatever reason, negative anecdotes seem to be overwhelmingly third person, at the very least all the ones in this thread have been.
- generalizations 6y ago
  > negative anecdotes seem to be overwhelmingly third person Based on the anecdotes in this thread, I'm getting the impression that when you have a really bad trip, you don't make it back to tell the story in the first person. The only people left to tell are the observers.
  - eurasiantiger 6y ago
    That’s preposterous. Are you a stock shill trying to devalue the rising psychedelic industry or something?
  - Talanes 6y ago
    The observers also have not made it to this thread. They would be second party. We are hearing from people who have heard from observers. At least two links of trust necessary.
spiralx 6y ago
I've taken acid with three people who I later found out suffered from schizophrenia, and in all three cases they had had psychotic episodes years before I had met them. The first of these three definitely went from normal-seeming to more and more intense over the course of taking acid with them - he even drew his own version of the famous schizophrenic cats in doodles on people's doors at university. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Wain#/media/File:Louis_wain_cats.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Wain#/media/File:Louis_w...

eurasiantiger 6y ago

These anecdotes are always sad, but you have no way of confirming whether they took a normal sized dose of actual LSD, or whether they took a shitload of some unknown research chemical. Also, as you wrote, set and setting are important and those are not described.

Talanes 6y ago

Even in the realm of unverifiable anecdotes, there is still a difference between a first party anecdote and a third-party anecdote. In the first party anecdote I only have to put my trust in one person, where in a third party anecdote I have to trust 2-to-infinity people. For whatever reason, negative anecdotes seem to be overwhelmingly third person, at the very least all the ones in this thread have been.

generalizations 6y ago
> negative anecdotes seem to be overwhelmingly third person Based on the anecdotes in this thread, I'm getting the impression that when you have a really bad trip, you don't make it back to tell the story in the first person. The only people left to tell are the observers.
- eurasiantiger 6y ago
  That’s preposterous. Are you a stock shill trying to devalue the rising psychedelic industry or something?
- Talanes 6y ago
  The observers also have not made it to this thread. They would be second party. We are hearing from people who have heard from observers. At least two links of trust necessary.

spiralx 6y ago

I've taken acid with three people who I later found out suffered from schizophrenia, and in all three cases they had had psychotic episodes years before I had met them. The first of these three definitely went from normal-seeming to more and more intense over the course of taking acid with them - he even drew his own version of the famous schizophrenic cats in doodles on people's doors at university. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Wain#/media/File:Louis_wain_cats.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Wain#/media/File:Louis_w...