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LSD: Not Even Once

• yrgulation 4y ago
  [dead]
• bag_boy 4y ago
  Cause you a bad trip, You took a dose down, You write a blog post just to turn it around
• labrador 4y ago
  People who have a history of mental illness in their family or suspect they may have latent mental illness should be wary of some drugs. Nitrous oxide is dissociative as is kratom. This person's first bad experience with psilocybin should have warned them off LSD, as there are many anecdotal stories of people losing their minds because they were mentally ill to begin with (Syd Barret of Pink Floyd). Millions of people have taken LSD over the last 50 years without serious side effects, Steve Jobs who this person cites, being a good example. I've had good trips and bad, but I'm actually fine. I had a very bad experience with kratom so I don't use it.
  • zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
    I've never heard of kratom being dissociative. It feels like hydrocodone to me
    • labrador 4y ago
      I had a very bad experience where I lost myself and came to riding my bike down the road at 2 am in my underwear. It was the Red Maeng Da variety which is more potent. https://www.newsdirect.com/kratom/red-maeng-da-kratom https://www.newsdirect.com/kratom/red-maeng-da-kratom
      • zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
        Wow. Yeah i never had anything like that happen. I used to make a chai tea with green vein that was pretty chill
• snovymgodym 4y ago
  Had a somewhat similar experience. Irritating how harmless and positive psychedelics and cannabis are made out to be in popular culture in spite of the issues like these that can cause.
  • nonbirithm 4y ago
    Makes me wonder if a counterpoint to adopting almost anything will arise with 1 million people having the ability to obtain a drug with ease instead of 10,000 people that are forced to jump through a lot of hoops and navigate a specific kind of closed drug culture to come out changed for the better. When there's a 0.0001% chance of years-long negative effects, that's a lot more people making up the minority. Safety regulations are always written in blood. I think there will only be pushback when, ironically, enough people are convinced that we should finally legalize these drugs for millions of people to use, and that 0.0001% minority grows loud enough.
    • guerrilla 4y ago
      The person wasn't talking about policy but about how people aggressively pretend like these drugs can do no harm. You can have a completely free policy while also being honest and accurate about what the drugs do and what can happen.
      • gusgus01 4y ago
        I had a similar thought. I talk about how delicious Japanese, Korean, Indian, etc food is, but don't warn people that .23% of Americans are allergic to Sesame oil which is used often in those cuisines. Same can be said about products that contain say peanuts. Would you say people aggressively pretend like those foods do no harm if they aren't caveating their love of it with facts about allergy rates and impact? Further, there was a very long discussion on this forum about the sesame warning being mandated and whether that was government overreach or not.
        • guerrilla 4y ago
• willio58 4y ago
  Seems like it got the hug of death. Just based on the headline, I disagree. If you have a genetic propensity for schizophrenia or things like that then yes, avoid it. But for the vast majority of LSD users it’s a transformative experience. Drinking alcohol is socially accepted but tens of millions of Americans have some sort of diagnosed use disorder with it and almost 100k people died last year to drinking. Do we say “not even once” to alcohol? It’s all about drug education, we need to make sure people aware of the risks and allow them to do what they do. Otherwise we’ll just keep repeating this war on drugs nonsense.
  • silisili 4y ago
    I feel like this kind of whataboutism misses the mark. To be clear - I'm in no way advocating for alcohol, or against its damages to society. But one like the article is about doing something safely, once, in your own place. Dangers of alcohol are generally overdose, long term abuse, and accidents. How many people drink one beer in the safety of their home with trusted people, and have their life turned upside down?
    • willio58 4y ago
      I get where you’re coming from but I’m comparing two drugs here, LSD and Alcohol. One of those communities is underground, mixed use with harder drugs, associated in large part with people who are “less than” in society. There’s no way to get well tested, accurately dosed LSD without performing those tests yourself. The other community has companies controlling everything, ads playing to all ages permanently, they have full control over their branding and marketing, etc. They also lobby the federal government to keep doing what they do. If LSD was as legal as alcohol, and as successfully marketed, I think at that point we could draw conclusions as to which drug is more of a detriment to society and peoples’ health.
      • Shocka1 4y ago
        If the same amount of people had access to LSD by simply going to the gas station or local grocery, that is one very big if lol. I get the vibe you are pro-drugs, which isn't a terrible thing IMO, but this thought experiment is somewhat ridiculous on the sole fact that we have an increasingly sick society. The mental health statistics in this nation should give giant red flags. In a vacuum your experiment just might work, but probably not in 2023 American society. There is a lot more non-biased scientific study that needs done before unleashing these powerful substances on the population. I would suggest removing bias and looking at it in a neutral way, as I'm sure a happy medium can be established here.
• sgammon 4y ago
  site wont load (refusing connections)
• jamescontrol 4y ago
  This is one of two reasons why I decided to not try anything, ever. 1. What if it’s the most amazing thing ever, like ADHD medication, what if you get insanely productive, and you then have to go back to being mediocre? 2. What if it triggers something bad. If I get 10% worse at focusing on a solving a problem? Nope
  • knallfrosch 4y ago
    That's why I never smoked a single nicotine cigarette. If I like it, I'll be an addict. If I don't, it was wasted.
    • willio58 4y ago
      I’ve done similar. I’ve actually smoked many cigarettes but I’ve never bought nicotine myself. I’ve seen both of my parents piss away thousands of dollars and years of their lives to cigarettes, but damn a hit of a vape can be fun with friends
  • Obertr 4y ago
    and on the other side you may get insanely creative and change your life for the better and build something valuable to the humanity. Tradeoff is clear for me.
    • PKop 4y ago
      This will never happen, and is an absurd cope for people that just want their fix and to be addicts without feeling bad.
      • cogitoergofutuo 4y ago
        I’m sorry, but are you saying that drugs categorically can not lead to inspiration that can help creativity? Aldous Huxley would like a word…
      • Obertr 4y ago
        how would you argue the fact that you don't develop addiction to this stuff?
• emptyfile 4y ago
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• sva_ 4y ago
  Anecdotally, HPPD goes away for most people after some time (months). The more you focus on it, the less likely it is to go away, as you're training yourself to pay attention to it.
• diordiderot 4y ago
  Penicillin. Not even once. Really
• deleted 4y ago
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• siva7 4y ago
  Both those trip reports are very unusual for psylocibin and LSD. It looks to me that the author might have other health complications that caused the bad trips. As a general advice one should be very careful when taking psychedelics with other prescribed medications or having a history of mental illness.
  • travbrack 4y ago
    Or they took something that was presented as LSD but was actually something else. This sounds like the kind of nerve damage people get from taking dangerous doses of MDMA. Not saying it's MDMA specifically but it could have been something neurotoxic.
    • pcthrowaway 4y ago
      Their experience sounded nothing like MDMA. And some small group of "lucky" people do have similar after-effects from LSD or even mushrooms (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep... ). I have no reason to think it wasn't LSD, but there's also a decent possibility it was something else passed off as LSD, which is a fun consequence of the war on drugs.
  • bsuvc 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      Arguing like this is no good. You're demanding that we accept a random blog post over a random comment, and demanding expertise from the random comment that you're not demanding from the random blog post. The comment you're replying to is speculative. It's all right for people with some personal knowledge to speculate.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
• lxe 4y ago
  Sounds like a CNS injury with symptoms that are pretty much mirror benzodiazepine and alcohol withdrawals. No matter how unusual or rare it is to experience this, it's really worth surfacing cases like these. I'd rather not take the risk at all, even if the risk is really low.
  • x86x87 4y ago
    Hmm. Not sure about "risk is really low" part. How low? Is it greater than the risk of dying in a car accident? Are you going to rather not drive a car at all, even of the risk is really low? What are the pros and cons?
• colordrops 4y ago
  Isn't it true for even over the counter drugs and even foods that they can fuck you up if you are predisposed to have an issue with the substance? Why would LSD be any different. It's like getting mad at people promoting peanuts because some people die if they eat them.
  • code51 4y ago
    You're surely joking when comparing LSD to foods, right? Please name one single food that can bring down all your psychological defence mechanisms in one go.
    • cassianoleal 4y ago
      Nutmeg
    • colordrops 4y ago
      I gave an example. Peanuts. They can literally choke you out. Ciprofloxacin can ruin your life. Acetaminophen can ruin your life. Aspertame can ruin your life. The point is that for every substance there will be someone out there predisposed to have a reaction to it. That's not a problem with the substance, and people shouldn't stop recommending it, as the author suggests.
• jerglingu 4y ago
  Had a similar experience, but with the much more tame marijuana. It was a 6-hour long panic attack for me. Similar to the author of this, I read for years of how "the only way it could ever harm you is if you were crushed by 100 lbs of it" on sites like Reddit. It wasn't until after getting high that I heard about marijuana amplifying stress tendencies in a minority of people. I've always been high strung, and maybe my experience reveals something that needs fixing inside of me, but given how marijuana turned my anxiety up to a measure that has only ever been matched by an actual panic attack, I'll avoid LSD (and anything similar like shrooms) like it's a loaded gun pointed right at me.
  • de6u99er 4y ago
    As someone who has been consuming lots of marijuana in the past 25 years, my recommendation is to not consume marijuana when in a bad mood or in stressful situations. I see drugs (including alcohol) as mood amplifiers.
    • willio58 4y ago
      This is a great way to use drugs. Even coffee! If you have coffee when you have anxiety you’ll be in store for much more anxiety
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • BossingAround 4y ago
      Many people do use cannabis for mood enhancement, though that a) might not work, and b) might lead to dependence.
    • notfed 4y ago
      Also, THC triggers panic attacks in many people, regardless of their mood or whether any stress is going on in their life.
  • BossingAround 4y ago
    > Similar to the author of this, I read for years of how "the only way it could ever harm you is if you were crushed by 100 lbs of it" on sites like Reddit I think this is the direct result of just nonsensical criminalization that equated cannabis with drugs like heroin, while the toxicity of cannabis is much lower than alcohol, for example. Legalization leads to better education, which typically provides both sides of the argument, so that a potential user can make educated decisions as to whether to try the drug or not. I have seen debates on "when not to use cannabis" on some canna podcasts (like Leafly, though I don't remember the episode). I think that avoiding LSD for people prone to panic attacks is a pretty sound decision.
• PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I think it's useful to consider this blog post as an anecdotal experience of someone who had a significant, traumatic experience with LSD for which they were entirely socially unprepared for even when those those experiences seemed to be known among those who take LSD (no one expressed surprise or confusion at their condition in their group). There is plenty of questions to ask here: why didn't this person's friends refuse to give them LSD, given their previous experience with shrooms? Why was this person so blindsided by HPPD? What is going on in the cultural millieu of hallucinogenic drugs where someone can have a bad experience with one hallucinogen and then, knowing this, willingly take even more without seriously being warned against by friends or online resources? Seriously, if I had a friend who couldn't handle alcohol, I would stop drinking with them and I would certainly refuse to take harder stuff with them. When I first had anxiety from smoking weed, my friends promptly told me weed is probably just not a drug for me to take and to take lower doses or to abstain from it entirely in the future-- and anxiety was a well-known (to me) possible consequence from weed.
  • slibhb 4y ago
    I've noticed this pattern where "anecdote" is deployed when someone disagrees with some point another person is making. But would you be chiming in here about "anecdotes" if this was a post by someone claiming acid helped them?
    • ianbutler 4y ago
      No and the reason is I have seen far more anecdotes about good trips than bad, which pushes me to believe that is the norm. And by far more I mean in my life I have seen maybe a 10:1 ratio. There would have to be a flood of negative reports over a period of years to tilt me in the opposite direction to counteract that.
    • willio58 4y ago
      Anecdotes are fine for story telling but have no place in debates.
      • 4y ago
• BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
  Visual noise and tinnitus are both basically perception noise. So the author had their "noise filters" reset basically, and their brain had to relearn this. This is interesting and somewhat supports the notion that LSD can "reset" your mind in some ways.
  • reyqn 4y ago
    I've got both visual noise and tinnitus, guess I should try LSD
• akvadrako 4y ago
  Although I don't agree with the author's conclusion, it is true that drugs can have long-term side effects on sensitive parts of the brain. Tinnitus in particular is fairly common and is listed as a side-effect on many prescription meds. I've experienced it after taking DMT and it also lasted about a year. I've also had small visual changes that are harder to pinpoint and certain smells being amplified. The risk is small for the average person and it usually goes away, so it's really a personal choice if it's worth it.
• lsdont 4y ago
  I've never tried LSD, but a single dose of magic mushrooms screwed my mind up for years. It took me a very long time to get over the anxiety attacks. I wish I'd never tried it, the experience was terrifying.
  • version_five 4y ago
    Are you sure it didnt have LSD in it? I've done mushrooms many times (in the 90s) and in retrospect, based on differences between trips, I think sometimes I may have had some with acid in them. I don't know how common this practice is / was amongst dealers.
    • pantalaimon 4y ago
      Psychedelic trips with mushrooms and with LSD are very similar, often you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. When there are visuals I find them to be more "organic" on mushrooms and more "sharp/electric" on LSD, but that’s very subjective/suggestible. But there are "social" trips where there are no visuals, usually when in a group and experiencing the substance together, there I wouldn’t be able to tell LSD and Psylocybin apart. The feeling of shared being part of a shared consciousness, the cosmic laughter and the fractal thoughts can be the same with both substances. I'd say there is a psychedelic state of consciousness and many different substances (Psychedelics) will get you there, the experience will differ in nuances, but the general idea is the same. Keep in mind that in this state you are highly suggestible, so the environment will often do a lot more to shape the experience than the exact substance.
      • akvadrako 4y ago
        > Psychedelic trips with mushrooms and with LSD are very similar, often you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. Having done both about a dozen times, this is not my experience or the experience that others have shared. Even a large dose of mushrooms only has subtle visual effects, while LSD makes the world look like a van Gogh painting.
        • 4y ago
• xwdv 4y ago
  Had a friend who got DPDR after a bad trip, never really was the same as far as I know. Sometimes just reading about DPDR too much is enough to make you feel the effects a bit, so I can only imagine having it induced by an actual drug. The Reddit threads of DPDR sufferers seem like a special kind of hell.
• mberning 4y ago
  I have had really, really bad trips on weed and alcohol. No way in hell I am trying anything else. It makes me really uneasy to hear normies going on about trying this and that. They all have some vague yet beneficial reasoning for why they did or might try shrooms or LSD. I always ask them, tell me of somebody that significantly and measurably improved their life after getting involved with psychedelics. Nobody ever can tell me of anyone. Same person, same job, same family, same everything. With a good story if they are lucky. And a bad story if they are like the guy that wrote this.
  • timeon 4y ago
    > Same person, same job, same family, same everything. Maybe point is not to have radical change but something else. But anyway what I find more surprising are people taking Datura stramonium. They usually know that it will be mostly bad trip. But they still do it.
  • marketneutral 4y ago
    “since no one can provide an example to me in person, on command, it must not be possible for anyone” take me as your first anecdotal example of someone whose life has been significantly and measurably improved since taking psychedelics. there goes your entire argument.
    • mberning 4y ago
      I would love to hear more about your experience and how it measurably improved your life. My point though is not that it is impossible for people to see real benefits. My point is that the vast majority of people that have tried it don’t seem any better off than before.
      • randomopining 4y ago
        Are the people taking it actually going into it with any intention or work done before? Or they were just taking it for a fun or interesting time?
  • 4y ago
• Apocryphon 4y ago
  Kind of unfair to Jobs. It wasn't just him, Gates did it too! https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-once-coyly-defended-162300612.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-once-coyly-defende...
• lapcat 4y ago
  Peanuts: Not even once. Says person with peanut allergy. I can't believe that peanuts have a good name and are promoted a lot in some circles! I'm sorry that this person had a very bad experience, but someone with a peanut allergy wouldn't be so full of themselves as to warn everyone off of peanuts, despite the fact that the vast majority of people can consume peanuts with no problem, and enjoy it. Most things in life have some risk.
  • dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
    Great analogy... generally the tendency is just plain human nature, peanut, LSD or other things.
• crabkin 4y ago
  I've done psychedelics upwards of 50 times over the last 5 years and while I think they are dangerous, and that their real purpose and origin may be different than what we are taught, I still think they are valuable drugs. Invaluable even. I just can't conceive of a place in our culture where we could do them like for instance we do adderall or prozac. I know they do studies but to me it seems like an experience that comes to you and then goes away when you don't need it. Very difficult thing to explain unless you've "been there." I don't think you necessarily need drugs to get there but it vastly vastly makes it easier. Just like I don't think you need a train, car, or plane to travel across Eurasia but walking there sure takes a whole lot of something else.
  • badcppdev 4y ago
    What do you mean by, "that their real purpose and origin may be different than what we are taught"
    • selimthegrim 4y ago
      Origins of Datura metel in Asia are mysterious for example
      • soupfordummies 4y ago
        Sounds interesting, do you mind elaborating?
        • selimthegrim 4y ago
          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_metel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_metel See the section about controversy of country of origin under Entheogen
• trhr 4y ago
  I went up into the Catskills with a big bag of mushrooms and a trunk full of rice and beans and didn't come down for a year. I learned what it means to be grounded. I'm fucking unshakable now. "Everyone's different" is the real lesson here. That being said, the way Silicon Valley uses this shit makes me want to rage. Treat it like it's sacred, and it'll treat you like you are.
  • pyrophane 4y ago
    Couple of questions for you about this, if you don't mind: 1. What kind of situation where you in in terms of lodging, social isolation, and access to nature? 2. How often were you taking mushrooms and how much did your dose vary? 3. We're you consuming any other drugs at the time? 4. What time of day did you typically take mushrooms and what did you do during? 5.Did you get sick of rice and beans and how much did you supplement your diet with other foods? Interested in your experience.
    • trhr 4y ago
      I was by myself, in a tent. When I felt lonely, I moved the tent closer to hiking trails. When I wanted to be alone, I moved it further away. The easiest way to meet people on a mountain is just walking to the summit and sitting there. When I was tired of rice and beans, I hiked down to a little restaurant that had really, really good fried fish. One time I built a hot tub. A park ranger was kind enough to jump start my car when I was ready to leave for good. I feel like that was the least they could do after writing me six parking tickets, all of which I paid. The rest of the answers, I leave to you.
      • ryanwaggoner 4y ago
        Sounds like you should write a book!
        • trhr 4y ago
          They already have one, which was a partial inspiration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Side_of_the_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Side_of_the_Mountain Required reading for 5th graders, imo. At the end of the day, it's not much different than the thousands of people who hike the PCT every year. I just... didn't walk anywhere. It was so long ago that I could no more get a book out of it than I could get a book out of "what I did last year." I just... don't remember the details. I remember admitting to myself that I could see ghosts and the moment I figured out why I saw them. I remember the day the air changed and I knew I could either stay another winter or leave. But most days were just, "fill the water, boil the water, make the food, mend the clothes, gather the firewood, tend the fire, sleep."
• almost_usual 4y ago
  I’ve had visual snow since I can remember. I went to the eye doctor as a kid and they ran a bunch of tests which resulted in “it’s nothing”. Dabbled in psychedelics pretty heavily in college. Think it was one bad trip that ended it for me. Dealt with some major anxiety for a couple years afterwards but eventually I went back to ‘normal’. Visual snow never got worse, I did get “seeing stars” though which I never had prior to doing psychedelics. Overall the conclusion I came to is that psychedelics are an absolute luxury in the US. If you can afford to break your brain and you think the risk is worth it go for it I guess? Fortunately I was in college, had a job that was easy, and programming was an in depth enough experience that it made my anxiety go away while doing it.
  • guerrilla 4y ago
    > Visual snow never got worse, I did get “seeing stars” though which I never had prior to doing psychedelics. Seeing stars can have other causes like the blood vessels in your eyes being messed up. You can get them from, for example, being too hungover or tired. Not saying it's that, but it could be totally unrelated.
  • MattPalmer1086 4y ago
    Same here. I thought everyone saw snow (mostly in the dark). Its never bothered me though. Also a similar experience with psychedelics in college, although it was actually smoking marijuana a week after a very intense trip that gave me the most terrifying night of my life. I had to have sedatives and suffered major anxiety for a couple of years afterwards. I still don't regret taking them. I learned a lot about myself and had some amazingly beautiful experiences. But I wouldn't wish the final one on anyone.
• nsxwolf 4y ago
  I thought everyone experiences what he describes as “visual snow”. I just figured it was noise created in the retina and optic nerve, from stray photons and quantum effects and whatnot.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• snitzr 4y ago
  I know too many burnouts to personally want to try drugs. I'm high on life, thank you.
• goldenshale 4y ago
  Lots of published scientific literature backs up the positive benefits that many people experience. This guy sounds like a tweaker who generated more of these effects from his own paranoia than from the actual experience, but anyways I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and encourage anyone trying a new substance to appreciate the possibilities. Anecdotal stories should be balanced against data though, and just by the tone of his writing this author seems to have a lot of baggage.
• jamesredd 4y ago
  If your mind is weak you shouldn't take hallucinogenic drugs.
• macleginn 4y ago
  Thousands, if not millions, of people in India and increasingly across the world take Indian ginseng aka ashwagandha for anxiety and other psyche problems. My wife ate several kilos of the stuff during her BSc programme; it helped her with exams and general stress. At some point I was very anxious for a perfectly valid exogenous reason, and she recommended I take it. Three pills in (recommended daily dose, taken over the whole day), my liver briefly shut down, and I spend a week in hospital, recovering and educating doctors about five or six published cases of this phenomenon we found on PubMed. Later I found many more in Amazon reviews. Ashwagandha is world-wide legal, over-the-counter food supplement. But you’ve been warned.
  • x86x87 4y ago
    Lol. Tylenol is over the counter and the wrong dose can literary kill your liver. Do you have links to those studies? I'm curious. I've tried Ashwagandha and stopped as it seemed to make me more anxious but YMMV.
    • tptacek 4y ago
      Bleach will kill you, too. But unlike bleach, Tylenol is carefully regulated as a medication; in particular, it's packaged at precise dosages, with high quality control standards.
      • x86x87 4y ago
        Are you saying bleach is not carefully regulated? My point was that we are commonly using medication that can have devastating effects - and the precise dosages do not account for the imprecise body weight and sensitivity to the substance of the person taking it.
        • tptacek 4y ago
          Bleach is not regulated the way Tylenol is, no.
• klyrs 4y ago
  > About 160 µg later Serious? You went with a strong dose on your first try and you blame Steve Jobs? I mean, don't get me wrong, he was a dick what with driving a un-plated Porsche just so he could park in handicap spots and all, but this is 100% your fault. According to erowid, a starter dose is around 25ug.
  • rblatz 4y ago
    Wonder if the first time he drank he chugged a fifth of vodka.
    • kube-system 4y ago
      I know people who have done this, not having any information to know otherwise.
      • kevinventullo 4y ago
        I wonder if this leads to less alcohol use in the future.
        • 1MachineElf 4y ago
          It did in my case, up until I moved in with an alcoholic.
        • cwmoore 4y ago
          No https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/early-drinking-linked-higher-lifetime-alcoholism-risk https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/early-dr...
        • Ancapistani 4y ago
          I doubt it. My first time getting drunk was somewhat unexpected. I was with friends and drinking screwdrivers, because I didn’t particularly like the taste of vodka and that’s all we had. I had no idea screwdrivers should be about around 20% vodka by volume - I made mine half and half. I also wasn’t familiar with enough alcohol to know about how long it takes to take effect, or to judge where I was in the process. Between those two things, I drank six ~16oz glasses full before I got to the point that I felt a strong buzz. I stopped… but my metabolism didn’t. I vaguely remember sitting in the bathroom floor that night, looking at my own vomit in the toilet, and thinking “Huh. That looks like blood. That’s not good.” The funny part (in retrospect!) is that is the only thing I remember for a six hour period or so, and that the thought was in a purely flat, narrative tone. I wasn’t at all worried about throwing up blood. It was at most a mildly interesting thing to have noticed. FWIW, the next day I realized that it wasn’t blood. I’d eaten a spaghetti a couple of hours prior, and it was partially digested marinara.
• currymj 4y ago
  in certain niche social circles, there is a lot of pressure to use psychedelic drugs. someone who chooses not to use psychedelic drugs might be looked down on -- presumed to be closed-minded or not very bright -- or otherwise socially excluded. as psychedelic drugs grow in popularity, more and more people in more and more social milieus will run into this kind of condescension. some will be pressured into taking risks they don't want to, and some will be harmed by it. i expect a backlash to psychedelic drugs fairly soon (based on hacker news comments on this article vs. what it would have been a few years ago, maybe already starting). i hope that this backlash doesn't derail the promising medical research into psychedelics that's gotten off the ground in the last few years.
• ravi-delia 4y ago
  Fairly interesting post, especially for those who weren't aware that hallucinogens sometimes cause minor hallucinations indefinitely, but arguments like the conclusions section are why we need to, as a society, beat "the plural of anecdote is not data" into every single person's head. Some people have a negative reaction to LSD. Some people don't. Some people have a positive reaction to LSD. Some don't. What's missing, crucially, is the only useful information- how many of each there are. There is nothing else that is relevant! If "some guy had a bad time" was a robust argument for "never ever do this thing", it would be a bad idea to do anything ever. > Reading reddit anecdata about how LSD has changed people’s lives for the better - and the army of comments that dogpile on, agreeing - makes me upset at their naiveity and harmful promotion It is indeed naive to think that some random guy on the internet talking about their experience is useful. Now how did we decide it was "harmful promotion" again?
  • medler 4y ago
    The tail risk is real though. I do hope someday we’ll have accurate estimates of those risks. In the meantime it seems pretty clear to me that the expected value of these drugs is negative. I think it was Charlie Munger who said “in the best case scenario you feel good for a few minutes. In the worst case scenario it ruins your life.”
    • ravi-delia 4y ago
      I mean maybe? Depends on how willing you are to trade small risks for small benefit. But we have no real bounds on upsides or downsides, and no real probability of any of it. I don't know about you, but my prior in situations such as these is that if a strong effect in either direction were likely, we'd have better data.
    • lagadu 4y ago
      This is true for anything though. For example: I dance (professionally), surf and snowboard. All three of them have caused me injuries, though only one of them left me with something permanent (very minor, more of an annoyance thankfully) and people have gotten extremely serious injuries and even death from all of them. Should we stop doing them recreationally because of possible risks?
• reso 4y ago
  I definitely think cases like this can happen, and I've had troubles with some drug experiences in the past as well. That being said, the author's report of how they tried psilocybin sounds like a warning sign to me: 3 grams, seemingly at home alone. That is a big dose for a first time, and I've never heard anyone recommend taking it alone at home.
  • pyrophane 4y ago
    My first mushroom experience was a similar dose at home alone. I was a teenager and sneaking it in after high school. It probably wasn't the best idea, but the experience I had was pretty amazing. I am the sort of person who likes to do these drugs alone, put on a record, and chill (although I do also immensely enjoy being in nature).
• throwaway22032 4y ago
  I've tried LSD once and would never do it again for the reasons the author states. Yes, it was great fun, but it's just too unpredictable. Regardless of whether or not it actually happened, it was incredibly clear to me that I could have just decided to jump out of a window thinking that it was my bedroom door, or cut myself with a kitchen knife thinking that it was a brush, or think my partner was some sort of attacker and become violent towards him/her, or whatever else. Plus the emotional effects. It felt like I played Russian Roulette with my brain and won, I just got lucky and I'm OK. I think. Maybe my emotions are a bit different now. How would I even know?
• x86x87 4y ago
  So let me get this straight. This person had a hard time on psilocybin and though they should try LSD? Jfc I think it's well known that things can go south really quickly on basically anything that alters your brain chemistry. Yes, these drugs alter your brain chemistry. And also, yes some people are way more sensitive than others. It's unfortunate this happened but to completely write off the potential psychedelics show for treating trauma and PTSD is naive at best.
  • justinator 4y ago
    Does sound like they overdosed themselves.
• CyberRabbi 4y ago
  The popular LSD and psychadelic advocacy online and elsewhere is an expression of the mainstream ideology. The foundation of our collective ideology tells us these drugs should have some profound life-altering and improving effect. Obviously, when examined critically, the premise is ridiculous on its face. Everyone I know who regularly does these types of drugs is not really doing much else with their lives. As for Steve Jobs, he was not a regular LSD user, he was a baby boomer who bragged about using it to make himself seem unique or different, like many of his generation. You see a similar sort of popular collective delusion with people who claim Cannabis cures cancer or other disease. Sorry but hard no. There is no such thing as "Medical Marijuana." It's simply marketing and propaganda to get the public into associating virtue with Cannabis use, with the end goal of eventually changing policy.
  • x86x87 4y ago
    Sorry. This is an ignorant take. It's not about regularly doing the drugs + therapy with a drug is different from people taking a drug for fun.
  • willio58 4y ago
    You seem to have heard one extreme, that cannabis cures diseases, and you’ve snapped back to the other extreme where you state there is no such thing as a medical use of cannabis. Have you seen the studies? Have you looked into CBD? Yes, there’s a lot of exaggeration if you’re listening to some person who knows nothing about science, but there are true benefits with it as well. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water as they say.
    • MagicMoonlight 4y ago
      You can't exactly placebo cannabis. Anyone taking part in the study wants to take cannabis so when they take the unmarked plant product out of the packet they will tell the person running the study how amazing it is. The scientist will then report 100% success because everyone taking part is loving the new treatment. Imagine if medical heroin was a new discovery. "I had depression so I took medical heroin and now I'm cured, we should be giving this to kids instead of pills". Because it makes you feel good and that reduces pain, people would believe it's a magical cure for everything rather than just being a painkiller. Ironically, medical heroin would actually be a safer and more effective cure for all of the things cannabis is being suggested for. The only real downside to heroin is the cost and that's what causes the societal problems.
• dvt 4y ago
  I've had "visual snow" since forever, but it's very mild, and more acute when light exposure delta is high (e.g. turn on/off a light). I suspect it's because I also suffer from migraines, which started around puberty, though I think it's at least partly genetic because both my mom and my sister also get them. I used to get a very bad one at least once a week, as in, couldn't even get out of bed. Since I started drinking coffee (late 20s), it helped my migraines out tremendously. My migraines (which is a condition closely related to seizures) are partly why I've always said "no" to any form of psychedelic substance; just seems needlessly dangerous.
• code51 4y ago
  I find it so ironic that on one hand, we are placing great value on achieving consciousness with artificial intelligence and yet, we place so little value on our own. If this "consciousness" thing is so hard to get, then why do we try our best to get rid of it through alcohol, recreational drugs etc ?
  • pantalaimon 4y ago
    That’s not how psychedelics work
  • Trasmatta 4y ago
    Drugs create altered states of consciousness, not get rid of it
    • code51 4y ago
      Yes, sorry, I didn't frame it well. I meant the possibility of breaking your properly functioning state of consciousness.
      • lambdatronics 4y ago
        That's a great way to put it. ("properly functioning state of consciousness") Because some folks would argue that the it isn't functioning. That brings us to the question of "What does it mean to be properly functioning?" which isn't by any means settled, although "experiencing 24/7 visual snow" certainly isn't it.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• cbreynoldson 4y ago
  A number of the side effects listed here are also known to happen on the "waking up" journey. Tinnitus, for example, is a thing we all have that our brain filters out for the most part. Depersonalization is an obvious (and sought after) side effect of "waking up" as well. These side effects can be scary to someone that doesn't anticipate them (or just doesn't want them), but the "benefits" of LSD often point to the loosening of your sense of self, seeing unfiltered reality, etc. TLDR: these side effects can be seen as good in the right context.
• Trasmatta 4y ago
  I’ve noticed a troubling trend among psychonauts: any reports of terrible experiences or long lasting negative effects of psychedelics are waved away in two different ways: 1 - blaming of the person who had the experience, for not having the proper “set and setting”, or not respecting the drug. 2 - claiming that there’s no such thing as a “bad trip”, and only a challenging one that takes time to integrate. There might be some truth to both of those things, but I think it vastly undersells how incredibly destabilizing a “bad trip” can be. The primary thing I learned from spending an eternity in hell on two of my trips? That it’s absurd how much suffering the human mind is capable of experiencing. A few years later and I can no longer feel much of the trauma of the experience, but there were months were I would just lay there feeling the aftershocks of the seemingly unending emotional pain I had experienced. Currently I feel that there’s nothing about life or myself that I can learn on drugs that I can’t learn in other (safer) ways. I’m glad people have massively positive experiences on drugs, but I worry that we’re underselling the risks when we just say “just check your set and setting, and remember that there’s no such thing as a ‘bad trip’, just a challenging one”.
  • Waterluvian 4y ago
    > That it’s absurd how much suffering the human mind is capable of experiencing. When I was 8 or 9 I had a night terror that involved some sort of life-sized game of Tetris that was moving terribly fast. My brain wholly adopted the belief that if I were to lose, everyone I loved would die horribly. I was trapped in this night terror for what felt like forever. Afterwards I refused to sleep voluntarily for weeks. To this date, nothing has come close. I would describe the feeling as “dread.” Just complete, pure dread.
    • Trasmatta 4y ago
      I think I know the feeling exactly. I had recurrent dreams like that as a kid, that somehow always involved a large yellow sphere / ball. For some unknown reason I HAD to move that sphere, but I also knew it was impossible. It evoked this odd and terrible sensation emerging from two opposing mental forces: there was something I HAD to do at all costs but I also knew it was entirely impossible at the same time. My “bad trips” brought back that same feeling, but magnified by a thousand.
• deleted 4y ago
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• scorxn 4y ago
  Set and setting are enormously important when taking anything, even alcohol or caffeine. If you're in a bad mood or uncomfortable space, drugs will probably make it worse.
• MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
  „the psychedelic experience sells you your own soul back to you, tried to bribe you with what was already yours, presenting it as you receiving a gift from the Powers, when in reality you have been burgled then it tries to sneak in little untruths in between the truths that were already yours and already inside you, such as "you should encourage other people to do psychedelics, because they reveal all this wisdom and insight to you" you stand to gain nothing you don't already posses, and you risk prelest. best case scenario is nothing happens, worst case scenario is you go insane and lose everything and become a literal demon“ https://twitter.com/cumlasagna1/status/1648670301406863370 https://twitter.com/cumlasagna1/status/1648670301406863370
• sambapa 4y ago
  I know someome who choked to death on a piece of banana
• Loeffelmann 4y ago
  I had the same experience with tinnitus and visual snow, and unfortunately, they are still present. While I had one bad trip, I was okay after that one. However, after waking up from another trip, I simply wasn't the same. The depersonalization was the worst part - it left me in an awful state of mind. It's been so long now that I'm not even sure if it's still there or if it's become the new normal. In fact, I couldn't even tell you what normal feels like anymore. For me, the few hours of fun weren't worth the amount of stress that followed. I got nothing out of it except some temporary entertainment. I strongly believe that using LSD in therapy is malpractice. It is not right to give such a potent and mind-altering drug to people who are already dealing with mental health issues. I worry that in the future, we will see a rise in similar cases to mine, as LSD becomes more commonly used in therapy. And although I turned out OK and I can deal with the condition I am scared about how people who might already be suicidal deal with such a life altering event.
  • TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    LSD is not used in therapy for patients who have a family history (or individual history) of schizophrenia, bipolar, or schizoaffective disorders.
    • Loeffelmann 4y ago
      I don't have a family with history in that either.
• acallaghan 4y ago
  Not scientific enough. Take it three times and average the results
• ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  This post is basically why I have no interest in doing drugs. The risk it could fuck me up or I have a very bad trip, however small, is not worth it.
• cogitoergofutuo 4y ago
  > Halfway through my trip, about 4 hours in, visual snow started appearing on everything. > On top of that, the loudest tinnitus you could imagine. This sounds more like a DO(C/M/B/I) trip than LSD. > I had dabbled a bit before with psilocybin, and don’t think it changed my life in any real manner other than showing me what mental illness is. The author had a negative experience with psilocybin, expected that that would be the case with other psychedelic drugs, and was angry that they proved themselves right? > Fuck you, Jobs. It is super easy to create a scapegoat to absolve yourself of any responsibility in your decision making process. You pretty much have to actively ignore a large amount of advice when doing cursory reading about psychedelics to arrive at “LSD Bad!” without a single thought or mention of set and setting.
  • junofan 4y ago
    It does sound more like 25I-NBOMe or DOI. 4 hours to visuals, the body load, the tinnitus, the HPPD, the “160ug.”
    • cogitoergofutuo 4y ago
      I think there is a special circle of hell for people that sell those drugs as LSD. I have personally had great experiences with DOI but only when I dosed it out myself, was very mindful of set and setting, knew about and anticipated the body load, and carved out a full 48hrs to give myself a full extra day of recovery. If you don’t anticipate all of those things, I’d imagine it would be a very hellish experience.
  • oska 4y ago
    > This sounds more like a DO(C/M/B/I) trip than LSD. I had no idea what you were talking about here, so looked it up. Link for anyone similarly ignorant : https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOx https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOx
    • eurasiantiger 4y ago
      Today many people learn that there are thousands of different LSD-like psychedelics (and other drugs) they don’t talk about in schools
• gundamdoubleO 4y ago
  Not discrediting the author's experiences but those are pretty heavy doses to take for both shrooms and lsd if you're a newbie. Anyone willing to get into psychedelics should take as much caution as possible and begin with smaller safe (and hopefully tested) doses in a safe environment with people you trust to help lessen the possibility of adverse effects. This of course does not mean you are guaranteed to have a good trip without side effects but that's a risk you should always be aware of when taking any drug.
• snapdeus 4y ago
  Skill issue
• thenerdhead 4y ago
  > And I didn’t even learn anything cool from the trip. Fuck you, Jobs. Sounds like you learned plenty. Also given how little time since, there's probably plenty of reflection and learnings yet to come too.
• atoav 4y ago
  As someone who tried LSD before this post is a reminder that it is not a good idea to take LSD if you are already sort of anxious, stressed, in a bad spot or what not. LSD is nothing for people who are in danger of putting themselves into negative spirals. E.g. the visual snow becoming stronger is something that can frighten you, or you could just let it wash over and start to worry if it is still there after a week. These things are a bit like being a kid on a bicycle: without experience you ride where you look — and if you look at a tree, that is a sure way to ride directly into it. I experienced some effects of my first dose for 4 days after that everything was back to normal, except that I had gained an outside view onto my life that remained truly valuable up to this day.
• DJBunnies 4y ago
  How small minded.
• jimnotgym 4y ago
  It is interesting that the person went into trying LSD fully expecting it to be a negative experience. Could this be a self-fulfilling prophecy? I know little about drugs, and have never tried LSD. I have watched paramedics on television trying hard to put a patient in a positive frame of mind before administering ketamin. Could this be similar?
  • dathinab 4y ago
    Disclaimer: Oversimplifying psychedelics. Many psychodelic drugs are not giving you "nice trips", which is also part of the reason _some_ have a very very low chance to make mentally addicted (and happen to also not trigger physical addiction). But they do "shake up" you mind in a way which can have long term positive effects in various ways, which could be as simple as helping with self reflection or as live changing as curing depression (not from a LSD tip, but there are psychedelic based treatments for depression which not only had cases of healing some people where "classical" methods did not work at all, but yielded long term results in a way no anti-depressant I'm aware of can archive). So in other words having a "not so nice trip" can be a "good live experience" for some. But then pretty much anything which messes with your mind can have bad long term effects if rareish complications appear, and a (oversimplified) rule of thump is the more it messes with your brain the more server can the rarish unexpected side-effects be for your live (e.g. worsening or triggering latent schizophrenia, but might also help treating it if done appropriately).
• bandersnitch 4y ago
  [dead]
• krater23 4y ago
  Lying in a bed and puking from shrooms and thinking this was horrible is not a experience that should lead you to take LSD. In the community I know, now one would give him anything. We decide to give newbies smaller doses and sometimes we say 'not you', just based on how the people are in their normal life. For me the writer sounds like a guy that doesn't like to lose the control and needs to know what happens and can't lean back and give the rudder out of hand. Thats OK in normal life, but not when you take LSD. Just to say it clearly, LSD enriches my life, and I know a much people that feel the same way. But it's definetly nothing for everyone and when you think about taking it, don't do it alone in your room. Find people with experience, not every week experience(!) and talk to them if it's a good idea and if yes, go to the woods and have a nice trip.
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  LSD, like certain other hallucinogens, is a serotonin analogue, and its immediate effect comes about through binding to serotonin receptors, in particular one called the 5-HTP2A receptor. Since any meaningful discussion of this requires a certain degree of background knowledge: > "In terms of visual perception, the 5-HT2A receptor has been found to play a role in modulating the processing of visual information. Specifically, activation of this receptor has been shown to enhance certain aspects of visual perception, such as the perception of brightness, contrast, and spatial frequency. This effect is thought to be mediated in part by the 5-HT2A receptor's ability to increase the activity of neurons in the visual cortex, which is the part of the brain that processes visual information." > "Interestingly, the 5-HT2A receptor has also been implicated in altered states of consciousness, such as those induced by psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin. These substances are known to activate the 5-HT2A receptor, which is thought to underlie their profound effects on perception, thought, and emotion. However, the precise mechanisms by which 5-HT2A receptor activation leads to these effects are still not fully understood and are an active area of research in the field of neuropsychopharmacology." So, let's consider the question raised in this post, which is: "how a could a temporary substrate-receptor interaction result in a long-term effect that persists well past the biochemical elimination of the drug from the user's system?" I don't think this is uniquely applicable to LSD vs. any other drug, by the way. Some people might try an opiate-class drug once and develop an immediate craving for that experience. However, this really cannot be attributable to the basic drug-receptor binding - so it's probably something to do with neuronal rewiring of some sort. If neurons respond to the immediate drug experience by forming new neuronal connections to other cells, then this could explain how a long-term effect (visual snow, opiate craving, etc.) could be created by neurons seeking new connections in response to the short-term effect of one-time drug use. Profoundly, it seems our brains are always rewiring themselves in relation to various stimuli and experiences, but LSD and similar drugs are affecting this process at fairly low levels in the neuronal hierarchy. Note that this is precisely why many people have said that the psychedelic drug cohort, under controlled conditions, has unique potentials for curing various mental illeness-related conditions. The use of the potent hallucinogen ibogaine to effect long-term cures for opiate addiction is one such case: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28402682/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28402682/ > "Conclusion: A single ibogaine treatment reduced opioid withdrawal symptoms and achieved opioid cessation or sustained reduced use in dependent individuals as measured over 12 months."
• deleted 4y ago
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• dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  > Halfway through my trip, about 4 hours in, visual snow started appearing on everything. > [..] > “Do you all see this too ?!” > “Oh yeah, I have that. Don’t worry, you learn to live with it.” > “LEARN TO LIVE WITH IT?! No way! WTF!” Hehehe, I had this after an MDMA trip. The sky turned into a giant Brownian motion/visual snow playfield, to the point it was hard to see some clouds. Imagine my surprise next morning when I woke up and it still looked like that. It did go away after a couple years. The bigger surprise was when night came and my friend realized he was still terrified of _the moon_. But I agree with his friend, it's weird at the beginning but not actually a big deal. It turns out the sky could look different and it doesn't really matter.
• Hammershaft 4y ago
  Despite having had a small handful of terrifying psychosis inducing trips in my 10 years of using psilocybin & LSD, I still recommend that people try them. I have had amazing and occasionally profound experiences with psychedelics, and I have had friends with social anxieties who made serious breakthroughs in the course of a day. Many of the best days of my life have been spent in nature, with friends, on psychedelics. I'm also an outlier, of my network of friends I'm the only person who has experienced serious very bad no good trips. Psilocybin is generally more anxiety inducing, nausea inducing, & introspective then LSD (on the comeup), yet I still recommend that people new to psychedelics should start with psilocybin because it is much easier to control dosage, and the trips are generally much shorter. The intrinsic danger of LSD is that it is impossible to be sure of the dosage of a blotter, even from the same sheet as another blotter. I understand if the author never wants to take these drugs again. I'd recommend that if you ever are curious again, you skip LSD, find a safe environment with friends and start with a small, manageable dosage of psilocybin (~1-2 grams).
• throwaway2214 4y ago
  haha i have most of the negative symptoms and never had any drugs what so ever > Continuous anxiety about literally nothing. I felt like a student who didn’t do their homework, and was dreading their teacher calling on them - for 24 hours a day. this one is most fun :) kind of like the end of the world is coming and you are supposed to do something but you dont know what, but you know its the most important thing that has to be done
• javaunsafe2019 4y ago
  I mean ofc drugs are dangerous but reading this it’s quiet obvious that the op did have had some circumstances before taking a really high dose of lsd. The tinnitus is a broad link. I feel really sorry for him but he could have k own better. As they all say: set and setting and this was not right here. Blaming the drug itself is like blaming a car for a car crash afterwards…
• dtx1 4y ago
  There has long been evidence that LSD has a higher likelihood of bad reactions and long term issue than psilocybin and these days mostly legal LSD prodrugs are used that may have different effects. Personally my experience with shrooms was similar to the article but it felt during and afterwards like a weight has been lifted from my shoulder and I could finally deal with a lot of trauma that resulted in a severe depression. And I found it had long term positive effects on it. But unless you are naturally inclined to it and in a good position to take it, I think most people would not like doing a mushroom trip.
• dusted 4y ago
  I've had strongly pronounced visual snow since I was a little kid.. Remember asking my parents "what is the thing you see when you close your eyes?" They were confused, "black?" yeah, but.. I know the color back, like, a piece of black paper on the table in a well-lit room, I understand that it's this near ideal smooth surface that reflect very little light of no particular color.. But the thing when you've been in bed for a few minutes in darkness, and the "tv static" blobs start moving around and pulsating ? They never really understood what I was talking about.. I talked to others, and most people report no such experience.. I was convinced (and still is) that everyone has this, and it's more about.. how well attuned they are to it, how aware they are of it.. Like with the floaters.. As I'm writing this, I sit in a dark room with my monitor, and around the white text box is a hundred little "cells" jotting around in the snow.. I don't believe for a second this is uncommon, I think the less part is becoming aware of it. It's hard to "unsee", when you've recognized the face on the crab, it will always be there to some degree. When you've become aware of a sound, you can't unlearn it. Back to childhood, as a kid, I was at the ear doc a few times, trying to find out what the thing was I heard.. It was not tinnitus (that came later) but, in the end they concluded it was the flow of blood in my ear.. Something everyone hears, but many people don't notice. When I was a kid, I would blink my eyes when looking at high contrast scenes, and as my eyes were closed, play with the afterimages, eventually learning to refresh them by slightly changing the force with which my eyes were held shut.. Eventually I noticed how the light became momentarily brighter when going outside from inside a dark house.. I found that thing in my head, that thing that made it become brighter and darker, and played around with it, eventually showing my friends at school that one can change the size of their pupils by thinking about it, just like one can wiggle their ear or move their scalp. I'm not discounting the experience, but rather, I question if this is really damage to the brain, or rather, a stimulation that caused them to notice what is already there.
  • kuratkull 4y ago
    The night fuzz is probably the brain generating noise. I use it to fall asleep quicker. But the white squiggles on white or against the blue sky are white blood cells at the back of your eye.
  • csh0 4y ago
• ahoy 4y ago
  This seems akin to drinking a whole liter of vodka as your very first drink and concluding that no one should drink alcohol, ever.
• jancsika 4y ago
  > LSD is a hallucinogenic drug, promoted a lot in tech circles for both recreation and the expanse of creativity it grants you. Those last six words are troubling. At least in my experience, it's that drugs tend follow the creatives around. Often to the detriment of their creativity. I sincerely hope this kind of cargo-culting of LSD is limited to college-age tech circles.
• totoglazer 4y ago
  This happened to a teenager I know. About 6 months ago. They’ve been hospitalized several times for suicidal thoughts, self harm, etc. Really messing them up, I fear for the rest of their life.
• weare138 4y ago
  It's like anything, it's not for everyone and you should make informed decisions before try something like LSD or anything else for that matter. But you shouldn't be making those types of life decisions based on a comment from someone like Steve Jobs. LSD is one of the most potent psychoactive compounds known. It's not a toy. You have to be smart about these things. Again it's not for everyone. Don't find out the hard way.
• lez 4y ago
  Oh, how much I loved those times when google returned the best document on the Internet (still) called "LSD faq". https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_faq.shtml https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_faq.shtml It states its dangers: Purely psychological hazards, not harmful to body. May release latent psychosis or exacerbate depression, leading to irrational behavior. There is also a danger of foolish or incautious behavior, e.g, misjudging distances or thinking one can fly. Physical overdose is not a hazard, though one may easily ingest more than one may be able to handle psychologically.
• thrww20221219 4y ago
  Last time I took LSD I ended up spending 3 months in the mental hospital. Stay away from that stuff!
• mushr_br 4y ago
  Throwaway as I am just a lurker but this is a topic that goes very deep. My brother took magic mushrooms once as he read a lot of things about it that it would cure social anxiety or anxiety in general. This is a problem that lies in our family and I am affected myself so I can understand why he did it. However, his experience was terrible and he had a bad trip that had the effect that he couldn't sleep for three days. Afterwards he took some medication (sleeping pills and beta blockers) and seemed quite ok for a few weeks but then terrible panic attacks and extreme anxiety happened. He is still recovering but I can see that he is suffering. All the good reports are probably true and also partly survivorship bias. For my brother it was a terrible experience and I am not sure if he can fully recover from this. People should also report about potential negative effects.
• kevinventullo 4y ago
  If psilocybin left him in tense anxiety with vomiting, why on earth would he try LSD next??
• deleted 4y ago
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• throwaway173738 4y ago
  It occurs to me that many people don’t actually test their drugs, and that it’s easy to get research chemicals with LSD-like effects. With MDMA often what you get is either partially or fully methamphetamine. So you have to test what you’re getting before you take it and there’s a culture of testing everything and not taking random pills from people. I wonder if any of these bad trips are from lsd-analogues sold as lsd.
  • creatonez 4y ago
    You're right, fake LSD is rampant and it's important to screen for it using a reagent test! If this is the case, due to the long comeup I'd suspect the author took a drug in the DOx family. But there's no definitive telltale sign of it, a long comeup can theoretically happen on LSD as well. ^1 LSD analogues (1P-LSD, AL-LAD, ALD-52, etc.) are generally very similar to LSD, to the point where most unknowing users might not know the difference. They are also more expensive to obtain, so they are rarely ever sold as fake LSD. Some of them may even be prodrugs and therefore identical aside from slightly different potency. Most fake LSD will instead be a different class of psychedelics entirely, usually a phenethylamine, such as the DOx class of substituted amphetamine psychedelics, or 25x-NBOMe. 25i-NBOMe is a pretty bad one. Bromo-DragonFLY is said to be utterly horrible. Thank god it's rare. Not all phenethylamines are bad, though, such as 2C-B and mescaline, but the ones sold as fake acid are usually terrible. --- ^1: Something I find extremely fascinating -- different psychedelics are notorious for feeling wildly different to psychonauts, yet when you actually compare two psychedelics, LSD and mushrooms, a lysergamide and a tryptamine, in a double-blind controlled trial you get a list of reported subjective effects that is nearly identical. Can human language not describe the differences, or is it more based on expectation of what you think you are taking more than anything? What if you did the same study but had them write an essay instead of a list of effects? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01297-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01297-2
• thebigspacefuck 4y ago
  I had some weird experiences after smoking weed in high school, probably 15 or 16, where repeating patterns I observed while moving would sort of make my vision glitch so that they seemed to be still. It was like if you watch a car in a movie/commercial the tires will appear to be moving backwards or standing still as it’s driving. This happened while I was mowing the lawn with the blades of grass, waking down the hallway of my school with the lockers, and once while I was driving at night with the lines of the road, which kind of freaked me out since I still felt myself moving but my vision made it feel like I wasn’t. I feel that I had seen this happen when I was high and it had triggered this pattern recognition in my sober state as well. However I have never had these kind of visual phenomena happen with weed I have purchased after legalization. I’m not sure if I got something laced or could just handle smoking a lot more weed back then. I had also taken some dissociatives and psychedelics around then as well, so maybe some effect enhanced by them. I did try mushrooms when I had just turned 16 and it really brought a storm of existential questions to the forefront of my mind that were very difficult to sift through with everything I had going on as a teenager. I developed a somewhat unfounded fear of tripping randomly and losing control of my ability to distinguish reality that greatly frightened me. At times I would be susceptible to this thinking, having read about HPPD, and any visual disturbance might lead me to feel tremendous anxiety again that I might be tripping or worse going crazy. One notable occasion I was driving at night and noticed halos around every light. I thought I must be going mad, but nope, it turned out I just needed glasses. Not to minimize the anxiety I felt at the time, but reading too much into some of these things can really make it worse. I never randomly started tripping at any time and my grasp on reality was only made worse by the anxiety at the thought of it potentially happening. Many years since then and feeling I have a much firmer grasp on reality, I just think “my eyes must be playing tricks on me” and bring it up with my optometrist if I see anything weird. However, I do feel for the author having recently gone through a lot of health anxiety after the sudden death of my cat. I did get to the point where I couldn’t drive across town and a sip of caffeine would send me spinning. I guess a lot of things in life can affect you this way if you’re not ready for them is all I’m trying to say, especially if you’re already anxiety prone. Be careful with psychedelics if you have anxiety!
• abhaynayar 4y ago
  I once got high with weed for about a week. I was kinda depersonalized, my time perception was off, and I was not truly feeling things when I was touching them for about a week or so. And there was barely any info about this on the internet. None of my friends had ever experienced it, their high only lasted a couple of hours at max. After a couple of days of being in that state, I got really fearful thinking I might be stuck with it forever, that I had damaged my brain permanently, but thankfully I got off of it after a week. I promised myself I would basically be a good boy from now. I got a newfound respect for this normal state of consciousness and I became super grateful for just getting out of that nightmare. I would not wish what happened on my worst enemy. Even though I've heard MDMA can do wonders for some of the mental issues I have, I am basically never gonna touch it.
• juancn 4y ago
  This is anecdotal, but not everyone reacts the same way to drugs (any drugs). I only tried pot a few times and it makes me feel miserable. It's funny for about 5 minutes, after that I feel like shit. Sometimes even nauseated, I never had the munchies, I don't know what they feel like. A few years ago I was in a bad bike crash, and it was the first time I had opioids (they tried fentanyl and tramadol). I asked the doctors to just take them away, the pain of a hip and ankle fracture was way better than the feeling of the opioids. There's definitely something different about how my brain deals with some of these drugs which makes me think that for me, it would be a really bad idea to try anything else, even in a controlled environment.
• sitkack 4y ago
  Everyone should view the process of taking any and all drugs as uncontrolled scientific experiment. Start with near zero amounts and ramp, taking notes and vitals (bpm, blood pressure). Understand yourself, the drug and have a friend nearby. I have a low tolerance for THC, many folks consume way more than I ever could. But at the same time I have managed enjoy 200-400 mg doses (RSO). If I had taken this much at the beginning, I can see how I would have felt like I was losing my mind. I no longer have any form of paranoia, because I know what to expect. Everything in life comes down to practice and familiarity. Approach everything with a gradual slope and know what you are doing.
• shipscode 4y ago
  The most interesting thing in this space is that what OP describes, and the benefits that people claim to receive from hallucinogens, are both documented by scientific literature. OPs response is actually far more well proven than any hallucinogen-related benefit currently being studied. The fact that OPs is "controversial" isn't actually set in any science, it's set in extra-scientific mushrooms-as-religion mentality that is currently proliferating as the "current thing". A drug-based solution to depression, anxiety, etc would be incredible, but unfortunately outside of humanity's reach today. If you're not interested in science and instead seeking religion, skip the drugs and reach for your closest religious text and start reading. As a Catholic I recommend the Gospel of Mark as a starting point. It's far easier to believe that multitudes of people 2000 years back witnessed some dope stuff and started following some rules that make everyone feel great today, rather than the universe transpired from nothing in some scientifically unprovable theory and potentially HPPD-causing substances are the only way to feel whole.
• pg938hkd 4y ago
  [dead]
• kris-nova 4y ago
  I often attribute the vast majority of my happiness and success back to psychedelics, trauma, and my experience living an unconventional and eccentric life. I could fill pages with the anecdotes, specific examples, and my personal speculation on why this is but i can just gloss over the details and skip to the takeaway: LSD has made my life net better. Another point I am trying to drive home is that this is what I would consider an “incomplete” or “immature” take. For example the authors anxiety is likely stemming from some organic experiences either traumatic, economic, physiological, or psychological — getting to the bottom of those and surfacing the patterns themselves is one of the great benefits of this chemical. I’d love to see this author examine their experience and ask where the anxiety is coming from. You have to face your fears and anxiety before you can understand them — before you can conquer them. I’m just glad this forum is finally talking about this topic. More psychedelics here please.
  • oska 4y ago
    > You have to face your fears and anxiety before you can understand them — before you can conquer them. You can do all this without the use of drugs.
• lawrenceyan 4y ago
  Respect psychoactive substances. And don't take them if you aren't going to integrate learnings / cultivate your foundation with them.
• SentientAtom 4y ago
  I mean, shit happens. This is a horrible adverse reaction but outliers that have terrible reaction exist with every substance.
• BTCOG 4y ago
  Guy takes a mystery drug at a high first time dose without tapering up. Did he Ehrlich reagent test it first? Likely not, because it sounds like he took 25I-NBOMe. Monumentally stupid. Then writes a hit piece blog about it and blames Steve Jobs and anyone else but himself? Next time, don't pop mystery blotters or there may not be a next time. N-Bomb is sold constantly as fake LSD, and truthfully there is very little pure LSD being synthed. Monumentally stupid, you could have ended up taking something like N-2C-Fentanyl.
• CodeWriter23 4y ago
  I’m not a doctor but the tinnitus combined with the visual “snow” long after the drug had been metabolized sounds kinda like a minor or “lucky” (by that I mean not significantly debilitating) stroke.
• RickJWagner 4y ago
  When I was about 30 years younger, I drank alcohol-- a lot of alcohol. Often. Then I married a woman who didn't drink much (some members of her family never drank-- ever, not even a drop) and I thought about how we should raise our kids. (We had 3.) I haven't had a drink in a long time, and I don't miss it a bit. I'd feel even more so about drugs. I encourage everyone to think carefully about what you put in your body.
• ktbwrestler 4y ago
  What Jekyll theme? I dig it
• wcarron 4y ago
  Ya know, I have a hard time finding sympathy for LSD users who have bad trips. I say this as someone who has quite enjoyed it in the past. People complaining about LSD, to me, sound like people complaining about being shot out of a cannon. You knew what was going to happen once you lit the fuse. You chose to shoot yourself out of the cannon. Not liking it is to be expected for a significant portion of the population; but stop pretending like it's some horrifyingly dangerous activity. This is the mental equivalent of pissing yourself while bungee jumping and warning other people that if they try it, they are 100% going to piss their own pants.
• di456 4y ago
  If you are currently or were recently on SSRI antidepressants, there is a danger of triggering serotonin syndrome from LSD or psilocybin. > Some recreational drugs, such as LSD and cocaine, and dietary supplements, including St. John's wort and ginseng, can also cause serotonin syndrome when you take them with these antidepressants. https://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/serotonin-syndrome-causes-symptoms-treatments https://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/serotonin-syndrome-ca...
• mock-possum 4y ago
  This is bullshit. Honestly I'm disappointed to even see this posted here. I mean, as a horror story that convinces people to be careful when they experiment with drugs, maybe it has some value. But as a description of a reasonable approach to trying LSD? Come on. He should've started with 1/10th that dose, especially considering his bad experiences with shrooms. This is asinine. It's like throwing yourself into the deep end of the pool, not knowing how to swim, and then accusing everyone else in the pool of being assholes for making you drown. Come on dude. I've tried Codeine recreationally, a couple of times, and it gives me the spins - the nausea just isn't worth the trip. Knowing this, do I try an epic dose of Morphine? No, of course I don't. Do I make angry blog posts whining that everyone has lied to me about how good narcotics feel? No, I also do not do that.
• razodactyl 4y ago
  Absolutely right - I have a feeling you anxiety further allowed your mind to burn in the connection as it repeated the damaged parts. Glad you recovered, that would have been quite a horrible year.
• tim333 4y ago
  Anecdotally from people I know, I know three permanently mentally impaired from psychedelics and no one especially mucked up from other drugs/alcohol. They all took a lot of LSD like more than weekly for more than a year and mixed it with other drugs so it's hard to be definite about what did what but they had similar symptoms - delusions and lack of contact with reality. One went mental hospital nuts, one killed himself, the third I'm not sure. I'd avoid long term use.
• freedom2099 4y ago
  I am surprised by the amount of people doing psychedelics here! I know no one… and even expanding the drug pool at best I know a guy doing weed maybe once every 2 years. Is that common in the US doing drugs?
• e1ghtSpace 4y ago
  If you need to cure your visual snow, watch this: https://odysee.com/DSOPi https://odysee.com/DSOPi