5 ms·

I feel like I'm alone in this, but I don't like mushrooms. I usually have unpleasant body effects, and I don't like the trip generally. I'm fairly confident in

I feel like I'm alone in this, but I don't like mushrooms. I usually have unpleasant body effects, and I don't like the trip generally. I'm fairly confident in my ability to have dosed as responsibly as possible with a biological product. Usually, though, I just feel weird and uncomfortable for 10. LSD, by comparison, is positively therapeutic for me.

colordrops 5y ago
My experience is that LSD, when good, is great, but when bad, can be disastrous. Mushrooms, while not as crisp and euphoric as LSD, don't seem to ever leave me scarred, even with large doses. I'll be laughing about a bad trip on mushrooms after I come down, but will be left unable to function in society for 6 months after a bad trip on LSD.
- gavinray 5y ago
  Same experience. Have PTSD from this, was not inexperienced either.
  - RikNieu 5y ago
    What kind of immediate and long-term side effects did you have, if I may ask? And what happened during the experience?
    - gavinray 5y ago
      I've written in-depth about that particular experience before on here, if you're interested here are the post links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22991744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22991744 (See chain of replies too) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993060 Short-term side effects were acute + severe panic attacks, triggered by flashbacks and feeling as though I was physically back in the same situation/it was starting to happen again. Even though entirely illogical and not being in the same place it happened, in my mind I felt dead certain that the events that had happened were starting to replay themselves and even physically I was reliving the sensations. This made me dysfunctional for a period of months, slowly over time the severity + frequency of this tapered off. It took about ~2 years for it to become what I'd call "mostly subsided". Even now though, if I am under a lot of stress or if I don't sleep well and am slightly sleep deprived, I will start to have flashbacks + panic attacks, but I know how to handle them better now and can force logic through a bit better. My vision is permanently altered, though it's minor. If you're not familiar with psychedelics, when you take a low dose of them, it makes everything have a sort of "oil-painting" type look to it, and textures are crisper. The bark on a tree is a good example of something that looks much more intense. The intensity of this has also subsided a fair amount, but even now I choose not to wear glasses most of the time because if I put on my glasses, everything is too "High definition" and visually intense. I prefer things to just be blurry, to be honest.
      - mistermann 5y ago
        I think it's a shame that science does not study rare phenomena like this when they arise, I think there is a lot that could be learned from them. > and feeling as though I was physically back in the same situation/it was starting to happen again. > Even though entirely illogical and not being in the same place it happened, in my mind I felt dead certain that the events that had happened were starting to replay themselves and even physically I was reliving the sensations. I once took some psychedelics and forgot I had taken them (I was also drinking beer), and I had an experience quite similar to this, but at the time had completely forgotten that I was on psychedelics. I always leave myself a note nowadays.
      - 01100011 5y ago
        Interesting. When I was 15.5 I took a couple tabs of what I thought were LSD. Given the extended duration, it was probably a research chemical, but it was on blotter(NBOMe? it was 1991) so it was a potent one. My friend took 5 tabs and started throwing up, which we never experienced with LSD. After nearly 24 hours of tripping I was left with years of panic attacks and HPPD. Walls breathing, textures enhanced, increased visual snow, etc. It probably cut my reading speed in half between the difficulty of looking at black text on a white background in addition to the slightly disorganized thinking. It faded away after a decade or two. I think I still notice it if I look for it, but I try not to. I was absolutely convinced someone would try to dose me again without my consent after that. For years I double checked everything I consumed out of the irrational fear that someone injected LSD into the package(friends of mine joked about doing this, which probably started the worry). I've used psychedelics since then(although much, much later in life). Nothing ever like it since.
        gavinray 5y ago
        FWIW, if I can offer you anything, it's a hint as to what you probably took. The only thing I've ever taken + know of with even remotely a 24-hour duration is the "DOx" series, like "DOM", and "DOI", etc. I felt like I had been dragged through hell and back after the time I willingly + knowingly took a single dose of DOI. No idea who thinks 24 hours awake tripping is a good time. https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOx https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOx https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOM https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOM https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOI https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOI NBOMe wasn't discovered until 2003, and not popularized/available until ~2010. I've done my fair share of NBOMe and it lasts only ~5-6 hours.
- acchow 5y ago
  Fully agree. Bad LSD trip changes your life dramatically. Bad shroom trip (example took way too much and end up in a never ending panic of “will this ever end?!”) has no long term negative effects. I also feel instantly better, smarter, happier, etc for weeks after shrooms. Don’t feel that all on LSD.
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    This is conjecture/personal experience/anecdotal, just to be clear for others who are evaluating these two substances. It’s worth prefacing with, “My experience was…”
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Had a truly terrible LSD trip a while ago, took a couple weeks to shake off and I never really felt "the same" afterwards. I'm not here to spread FUD, but goddamn is it a powerful chemical. Some people (myself included) underestimate the amount of mental rewiring it can do if you're not careful.
  - throwaway_52828 5y ago
    I got PTSD from shrooms. It took 6 months before I felt mostly functional, and another year after that before I felt “normal.” My impression is that all psychedelics have serious negative effects for the unluckiest users.
  - metroholografix 5y ago
    I don't like it when folks generalize from a few subjective experiences. Mushrooms and LSD are powerful catalysts and one can never be sure of what one will experience. Even McKenna had a bad trip on psilocybin that nearly broke him: "Terence’s pivotal, existential crisis came abruptly, some time in ’88 or ’89. Everything that happened after that event was fallout. I don’t know exactly when it happened, and I don’t know exactly what happened; I am piecing it together from what Kat [his wife at the time] has told me, and she has volunteered few details, and I am reluctant to probe. It happened when they were living for a time on the big island, and it was a mushroom trip they shared that was absolutely terrifying for Terence. It was terrifying because, for some reason, the mushroom turned on him. The gentle, wise, humorous mushroom spirit that he had come to know and trust as an ally and teacher ripped back the facade to reveal an abyss of utter existential despair. Terence kept saying, so Kat told me, that it was “a lack of all meaning, a lack of all meaning.” And this induced panic in Terence, and probably, I speculate, a feeling he was going mad. He couldn’t deal with it. Kat’s efforts to reassure him were fruitless. After that experience, he never again took mushrooms, and he took other psychedelics, such as DMT and ayahuasca, only on rare occasions and with great reluctance. Whatever the specific content of the psychedelic experience might have been that triggered the cognitive collapse of Terence’s worldview and precipitated his existential crisis, what was most remarkable was that he did not see it coming. He did not see it coming." — From Dennis McKenna, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna, now excised
- api 5y ago
  Mushrooms are a journey in a car with suspension and comfortable seating. LSD is the same journey in a car with no shocks, metal benches, and no seatbelt. Sometimes the trips are similar but if you hit a bumpy spot the results are quite different. In practice I have seen several people do a lot of LSD and kind of “not come back all the way.” Don’t recall seeing the same with other psychedelics. I would caution people against acid, and especially against using a lot of it or repeatedly. I think there’s a reason it has that nickname. It seems to be harsh and unforgiving. There are positive reports from microdosing the stuff. I have no experience here. This wasn’t a thing when I was in college and I have not been near anything like this for a long time.
  - tpm 5y ago
    For me it is the opposite, LSD is the safe one, shrooms being more difficult - I suspect this is caused by LSD additionaly being a dopamine receptor agonist, which is better for my brain (I also like hippie/candyflips for the same reason I suspect).
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    It has the nickname 'Acid' because it's literally Lysergic acid diethylamide.
- 01100011 5y ago
  Yeah I think for some folks the dopamine kick of LSD is akin to combining meth with mushrooms. It can be very edgy and electric, with more paranoia and a harsher come down. Mushrooms have always just worked for me. Then again I don't mind the body load(i.e. feeling like I need to take a shit for 6 hours, mild stomach unease, fatigue). I've had some good times on LSD, but it leaves me raw after, sometimes for months. I've done high dose shrooms every week or so for extended periods and while I get a little scatterbrained after a while I don't feel like I'm going insane. To each their own.
hosh 5y ago
I think everyone is going to have different experiences. I saw a wide variety experiences among people taking Ayahuasca, and my own experiences were each different. LSD wasn’t uncomfortable for me, but I also knew at a deep level that it wasn’t something I needed to explore further. By contrast, there were many times that Ayahuasca had been at times uncomfortable and disturbing for me … but I also knew I needed it.
- RikNieu 5y ago
  What do you mean by "needed it?" How did it affect your life afterwards?
tokumei 5y ago
Exact opposite for me. LSD is nice, but the visuals can be overwhelming. The visuals on mushrooms, for me are more “organic” I guess, and the mental state more natural. I haven’t done either in over a decade, but that’s what I remember. I used to do a heroic dose of mushrooms once a week - the feelings of euphoria once you peek and the subtle visuals were amazing. It’s also possible to go to sleep on mushrooms once you’re at the end of your trip, as the trip is really a lot shorter. I remember lying awake in my bed on LSD with the room melting around me, wondering if it would ever end, just wishing that I could go to sleep. Edit: As far as being alone with your experience - I had a lot of friends that preferred LSD over mushrooms. It’s really a personal preference as to which one suits you best.
- acchow 5y ago
  There are so many varieties of psychedelic shrooms. Some don’t have strong visuals, some can make you hallucinate far beyond the capabilities of LSD.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    If you're talking about different mushrooms with different compounds in them (like fly agaric) we are specifically talking about psilocybin mushrooms here. If you're talking about different species of psilocybin containing mushrooms like wood loving ones and what not, what are your experiences with them? I've only had cubensis mushrooms, but I assumed the primary difference between them would be potency considering they have the same active compounds.
    - _proofs 5y ago
      wood-loving generally oxidize fast and have a more psylocin heavy profile on consumption, so there's less come-up, and my anecdotal experience of eating large amounts of wood-eaters (blue footers, found around box elder trees/floodplanes in Bethany, WV area) -- the experience is like immediately intense and psychedelic with no playful buffer since the conversion is shortened -- and if you're not ready you will be properly fucking spun. other than that, i've had some insanely intense experiences with them, both pleasant and unpleasant. but i have not had much experience with other species. related to the thread however, my experiences with good L were way more pleasant, manageable, and desirable. but perhaps that's a result a more responsible, less reckless dosing (i had some experience by this time, dosing in clubs and stuff) -- when i was eating mushrooms (spring time, quite a few seasons not really outside of that window) simply eating whatever i am finding on a hike through the woods while having an afternoon coffee, while not really knowing any better, sometimes meant i ingested way more than necessary, shrug. YMMV.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aeturnum 5y ago
Psychadelics famously impact people in vastly different ways. Anyone who hasn't tried them before will probably have the best time doing a standard dose (1 "tab" of lsd or ~1.5g of mushrooms) around friends with nothing else scheduled during the day. That said, many people have nonlinear responses to these substances. I know folks who hate lower doses of LSD because they just get an anxiety-generating body high, but love the experience above that. Generally, on a per-dose basis, LSD and mushrooms are inexpensive and so experimentation is cheap (even though it's also time consuming because of the ~8hr trip duration). Though, again, if you take lower doses (below the standard I mentioned above) most people will have no trouble doing chores if you must get something done (as long as that chore does *not* involve driving). Edit: mushrooms are hard to dose consistently, the dose I listed might be high or low but it will probably not melt your face off or do nothing. More info here: https://erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_basics.shtml https://erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_basics.shtml
bagacrap 5y ago
psylocibin gives me bad acid reflux (even when separated from the mushroom solids). L doesn't have the same effect, only slight nausea.

colordrops 5y ago

My experience is that LSD, when good, is great, but when bad, can be disastrous. Mushrooms, while not as crisp and euphoric as LSD, don't seem to ever leave me scarred, even with large doses. I'll be laughing about a bad trip on mushrooms after I come down, but will be left unable to function in society for 6 months after a bad trip on LSD.

gavinray 5y ago
Same experience. Have PTSD from this, was not inexperienced either.
- RikNieu 5y ago
  What kind of immediate and long-term side effects did you have, if I may ask? And what happened during the experience?
  - gavinray 5y ago
    I've written in-depth about that particular experience before on here, if you're interested here are the post links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22991744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22991744 (See chain of replies too) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993060 Short-term side effects were acute + severe panic attacks, triggered by flashbacks and feeling as though I was physically back in the same situation/it was starting to happen again. Even though entirely illogical and not being in the same place it happened, in my mind I felt dead certain that the events that had happened were starting to replay themselves and even physically I was reliving the sensations. This made me dysfunctional for a period of months, slowly over time the severity + frequency of this tapered off. It took about ~2 years for it to become what I'd call "mostly subsided". Even now though, if I am under a lot of stress or if I don't sleep well and am slightly sleep deprived, I will start to have flashbacks + panic attacks, but I know how to handle them better now and can force logic through a bit better. My vision is permanently altered, though it's minor. If you're not familiar with psychedelics, when you take a low dose of them, it makes everything have a sort of "oil-painting" type look to it, and textures are crisper. The bark on a tree is a good example of something that looks much more intense. The intensity of this has also subsided a fair amount, but even now I choose not to wear glasses most of the time because if I put on my glasses, everything is too "High definition" and visually intense. I prefer things to just be blurry, to be honest.
    - mistermann 5y ago
      I think it's a shame that science does not study rare phenomena like this when they arise, I think there is a lot that could be learned from them. > and feeling as though I was physically back in the same situation/it was starting to happen again. > Even though entirely illogical and not being in the same place it happened, in my mind I felt dead certain that the events that had happened were starting to replay themselves and even physically I was reliving the sensations. I once took some psychedelics and forgot I had taken them (I was also drinking beer), and I had an experience quite similar to this, but at the time had completely forgotten that I was on psychedelics. I always leave myself a note nowadays.
    - 01100011 5y ago
      Interesting. When I was 15.5 I took a couple tabs of what I thought were LSD. Given the extended duration, it was probably a research chemical, but it was on blotter(NBOMe? it was 1991) so it was a potent one. My friend took 5 tabs and started throwing up, which we never experienced with LSD. After nearly 24 hours of tripping I was left with years of panic attacks and HPPD. Walls breathing, textures enhanced, increased visual snow, etc. It probably cut my reading speed in half between the difficulty of looking at black text on a white background in addition to the slightly disorganized thinking. It faded away after a decade or two. I think I still notice it if I look for it, but I try not to. I was absolutely convinced someone would try to dose me again without my consent after that. For years I double checked everything I consumed out of the irrational fear that someone injected LSD into the package(friends of mine joked about doing this, which probably started the worry). I've used psychedelics since then(although much, much later in life). Nothing ever like it since.
      - gavinray 5y ago
        FWIW, if I can offer you anything, it's a hint as to what you probably took. The only thing I've ever taken + know of with even remotely a 24-hour duration is the "DOx" series, like "DOM", and "DOI", etc. I felt like I had been dragged through hell and back after the time I willingly + knowingly took a single dose of DOI. No idea who thinks 24 hours awake tripping is a good time. https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOx https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOx https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOM https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOM https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOI https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOI NBOMe wasn't discovered until 2003, and not popularized/available until ~2010. I've done my fair share of NBOMe and it lasts only ~5-6 hours.
acchow 5y ago
Fully agree. Bad LSD trip changes your life dramatically. Bad shroom trip (example took way too much and end up in a never ending panic of “will this ever end?!”) has no long term negative effects. I also feel instantly better, smarter, happier, etc for weeks after shrooms. Don’t feel that all on LSD.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  This is conjecture/personal experience/anecdotal, just to be clear for others who are evaluating these two substances. It’s worth prefacing with, “My experience was…”
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Had a truly terrible LSD trip a while ago, took a couple weeks to shake off and I never really felt "the same" afterwards. I'm not here to spread FUD, but goddamn is it a powerful chemical. Some people (myself included) underestimate the amount of mental rewiring it can do if you're not careful.
- throwaway_52828 5y ago
  I got PTSD from shrooms. It took 6 months before I felt mostly functional, and another year after that before I felt “normal.” My impression is that all psychedelics have serious negative effects for the unluckiest users.
- metroholografix 5y ago
  I don't like it when folks generalize from a few subjective experiences. Mushrooms and LSD are powerful catalysts and one can never be sure of what one will experience. Even McKenna had a bad trip on psilocybin that nearly broke him: "Terence’s pivotal, existential crisis came abruptly, some time in ’88 or ’89. Everything that happened after that event was fallout. I don’t know exactly when it happened, and I don’t know exactly what happened; I am piecing it together from what Kat [his wife at the time] has told me, and she has volunteered few details, and I am reluctant to probe. It happened when they were living for a time on the big island, and it was a mushroom trip they shared that was absolutely terrifying for Terence. It was terrifying because, for some reason, the mushroom turned on him. The gentle, wise, humorous mushroom spirit that he had come to know and trust as an ally and teacher ripped back the facade to reveal an abyss of utter existential despair. Terence kept saying, so Kat told me, that it was “a lack of all meaning, a lack of all meaning.” And this induced panic in Terence, and probably, I speculate, a feeling he was going mad. He couldn’t deal with it. Kat’s efforts to reassure him were fruitless. After that experience, he never again took mushrooms, and he took other psychedelics, such as DMT and ayahuasca, only on rare occasions and with great reluctance. Whatever the specific content of the psychedelic experience might have been that triggered the cognitive collapse of Terence’s worldview and precipitated his existential crisis, what was most remarkable was that he did not see it coming. He did not see it coming." — From Dennis McKenna, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna, now excised
api 5y ago
Mushrooms are a journey in a car with suspension and comfortable seating. LSD is the same journey in a car with no shocks, metal benches, and no seatbelt. Sometimes the trips are similar but if you hit a bumpy spot the results are quite different. In practice I have seen several people do a lot of LSD and kind of “not come back all the way.” Don’t recall seeing the same with other psychedelics. I would caution people against acid, and especially against using a lot of it or repeatedly. I think there’s a reason it has that nickname. It seems to be harsh and unforgiving. There are positive reports from microdosing the stuff. I have no experience here. This wasn’t a thing when I was in college and I have not been near anything like this for a long time.
- tpm 5y ago
  For me it is the opposite, LSD is the safe one, shrooms being more difficult - I suspect this is caused by LSD additionaly being a dopamine receptor agonist, which is better for my brain (I also like hippie/candyflips for the same reason I suspect).
- goldenkey 5y ago
  It has the nickname 'Acid' because it's literally Lysergic acid diethylamide.
01100011 5y ago
Yeah I think for some folks the dopamine kick of LSD is akin to combining meth with mushrooms. It can be very edgy and electric, with more paranoia and a harsher come down. Mushrooms have always just worked for me. Then again I don't mind the body load(i.e. feeling like I need to take a shit for 6 hours, mild stomach unease, fatigue). I've had some good times on LSD, but it leaves me raw after, sometimes for months. I've done high dose shrooms every week or so for extended periods and while I get a little scatterbrained after a while I don't feel like I'm going insane. To each their own.

hosh 5y ago

I think everyone is going to have different experiences. I saw a wide variety experiences among people taking Ayahuasca, and my own experiences were each different. LSD wasn’t uncomfortable for me, but I also knew at a deep level that it wasn’t something I needed to explore further. By contrast, there were many times that Ayahuasca had been at times uncomfortable and disturbing for me … but I also knew I needed it.

RikNieu 5y ago
What do you mean by "needed it?" How did it affect your life afterwards?

tokumei 5y ago

Exact opposite for me. LSD is nice, but the visuals can be overwhelming. The visuals on mushrooms, for me are more “organic” I guess, and the mental state more natural. I haven’t done either in over a decade, but that’s what I remember. I used to do a heroic dose of mushrooms once a week - the feelings of euphoria once you peek and the subtle visuals were amazing. It’s also possible to go to sleep on mushrooms once you’re at the end of your trip, as the trip is really a lot shorter. I remember lying awake in my bed on LSD with the room melting around me, wondering if it would ever end, just wishing that I could go to sleep. Edit: As far as being alone with your experience - I had a lot of friends that preferred LSD over mushrooms. It’s really a personal preference as to which one suits you best.

acchow 5y ago
There are so many varieties of psychedelic shrooms. Some don’t have strong visuals, some can make you hallucinate far beyond the capabilities of LSD.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  If you're talking about different mushrooms with different compounds in them (like fly agaric) we are specifically talking about psilocybin mushrooms here. If you're talking about different species of psilocybin containing mushrooms like wood loving ones and what not, what are your experiences with them? I've only had cubensis mushrooms, but I assumed the primary difference between them would be potency considering they have the same active compounds.
  - _proofs 5y ago
    wood-loving generally oxidize fast and have a more psylocin heavy profile on consumption, so there's less come-up, and my anecdotal experience of eating large amounts of wood-eaters (blue footers, found around box elder trees/floodplanes in Bethany, WV area) -- the experience is like immediately intense and psychedelic with no playful buffer since the conversion is shortened -- and if you're not ready you will be properly fucking spun. other than that, i've had some insanely intense experiences with them, both pleasant and unpleasant. but i have not had much experience with other species. related to the thread however, my experiences with good L were way more pleasant, manageable, and desirable. but perhaps that's a result a more responsible, less reckless dosing (i had some experience by this time, dosing in clubs and stuff) -- when i was eating mushrooms (spring time, quite a few seasons not really outside of that window) simply eating whatever i am finding on a hike through the woods while having an afternoon coffee, while not really knowing any better, sometimes meant i ingested way more than necessary, shrug. YMMV.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aeturnum 5y ago

Psychadelics famously impact people in vastly different ways. Anyone who hasn't tried them before will probably have the best time doing a standard dose (1 "tab" of lsd or ~1.5g of mushrooms) around friends with nothing else scheduled during the day. That said, many people have nonlinear responses to these substances. I know folks who hate lower doses of LSD because they just get an anxiety-generating body high, but love the experience above that. Generally, on a per-dose basis, LSD and mushrooms are inexpensive and so experimentation is cheap (even though it's also time consuming because of the ~8hr trip duration). Though, again, if you take lower doses (below the standard I mentioned above) most people will have no trouble doing chores if you must get something done (as long as that chore does *not* involve driving). Edit: mushrooms are hard to dose consistently, the dose I listed might be high or low but it will probably not melt your face off or do nothing. More info here: https://erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_basics.shtml https://erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_basics.shtml

bagacrap 5y ago

psylocibin gives me bad acid reflux (even when separated from the mushroom solids). L doesn't have the same effect, only slight nausea.