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What do people see when they're tripping? Analyzing Erowid's trip reports

189 points by cainxinth 2y ago

sitkack 2y ago
I love this quote > And they’ve been great collaborators; I think they once described themselves as “squares among the weirdos, and weirdos among the squares.”
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
I tried 2C-E a couple times a long time ago. I think it was a relatively low dose. It was really interesting how mentally I felt mostly sober. But the visuals were so intense I got motion sick. It started out with tracers as I waved my hand. The textured paint on the walls looked extra 3D and the walls started to breath. The swirly pattern on the bathroom linoleum looked like chocolate milk. My posters turned into cartoons. And when it was all overwhelming and the motion sickness really kicked in, I closed my eyes and was greeted by fractal machines that built the molecules of the world. I don't recall any really profound thoughts, introspection, or feelings of intoxication. Which was a strange difference to me compared to things like 4-ACO-DMT and LSD, but I liked it.
- chinabison 2y ago
  Did you also get the uncomfortable bodyload that 2C-E is notorious for?
  - zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
    Yeah, I think it didn't come on for a while. I spent probably the 2nd half of my trips just laying down watching the closed eye visuals because my stomach hurts and I felt nauseated when I walked around or looked at stuff for too long.
- Euphorbium 2y ago
  I dont like visual only drugs. That is like watching a screensaver for a few hours.
  - shlant 2y ago
    I wish I could try a more visual-only psychedelic. They are too heady for me these days so I have avoided them all for over a decade.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  2C-B was more my thing (when I could get it). Fast and powerful. Like LSD but without the 12 hour trip plus body aches.
  - mathieuh 2y ago
    2C-B never had any headspace effects for me except in very high insufflated doses (and even then it was minimal), taking normal doses orally would just give me a couple of hours of visuals. For me it was nothing like LSD in terms of headspace.
    - throwaway183785 2y ago
      Agree - my experience with 2C-B was that it was almost entirely visual (tracers and such), with a very subtle mood lift, akin to very weak MDMA. 2C-E on the other hand sent me to some extremely trippy places. 2C-P is a fascinating one to read about too (though I've never tried it.)
    - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
      I only ever vaporised 2C-B. usually I would get a full intense trip that lasts about 30 minutes and then very little after effects. A hit was also about $10 at the time (decades ago). Quality was good considering I was at one the top chemical engineering schools in the world.
  - shlant 2y ago
    I remember 2C-T7 giving me and my buddy very uncomfortable body load.
NickC25 2y ago
Have no idea what variant of LSD I last consumed, but I remember some deep feelings of profound thoughts and self-reflection quite almost instantly when the stuff "hit" (maybe 30-45 minutes after ingestion), I was still cognizant enough to be able to write it all down. Some of what I wrote was indeed stuff I needed to work on in my own life and it was pretty helpful. I then spent the next like 12 hours on my couch realizing that the entire concept of time is a manmade construct that is absolutely meaningless and irrelevant in the grand scheme of the universe. All this while watching golf on TV (which followed a golfer who posted the lowest final round score ever at a major). I have no idea how the TV turned on, and why I didn't turn it off. LSD is fucking wild.
- ghfhghg 2y ago
  Did you make this same post before? I swear I've already read this a couple months ago. Edit : putting this into Google does indeed show the same post from before this thread was created. Weird
- BobbyTables2 2y ago
  I think watching golf on TV would make time seem pretty meaningless for a lot of people too!
  - uwagar 2y ago
    i like the quiet vibes in general
- westmeal 2y ago
  Sometimes it just hits in such a way that you have no idea wtf is happening. One time I couldn't read because letters just didn't have meaning any more. It looked like alien unicode characters or some shit.
  - guardian5x 2y ago
    Isn't that kinda scary? I mean when some parts of your brains don't work or not work properly?
thanatos519 2y ago
https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-hallucinations https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-ha... is a classic!
superb-owl 2y ago
I had great plans to feed Erowid's database through Claude to get a better classification of drug phenomenology. Sadly they have explicitly disallowed the feeding of Erowid reports into LLMs: https://erowid.org/experiences/email_warning.php https://erowid.org/experiences/email_warning.php I appreciate the stand they're taking, but the potential for greater understanding and harm reduction seems to outweigh any potential downsides of putting public webpages into an LLM.
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  Commendable stance from you. It's sad that big tech won't care and will index their content anyway. I wish terms of use like this were enforcable.
  - astrange 2y ago
    They are, via CFAA. It depends what their robots.txt is set to or the AI version of that. Anyway, the influence of random web text on AI is overrated. They're going to filter out pages that don't contribute, and bad words/topics/personal info will get it removed.
- deleted 2y ago
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- ziddoap 2y ago
  Might be worth reaching out to them, assuming you meet their criteria of "researcher". >The Erowids state on their website that researchers cannot “mine” data from their site but that they’re open to discussing projects with researchers, provided they’re properly credited and cited.
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Traubenfuchs 2y ago
I once took Ketamine, "fell through the bed" and spent half an hour in a different dimension, peacefully floating above and close to incredibly detailed, dull and dark colored patterns while unable to form language-based thoughts until I suddenly snapped out of it. The music I was listening to (HUSBANDS (Run Along, Son, etc.)) helped a lot and was just incredible, though I am still not sure if I could have had the same great experience with different music. It was THE single most amazing and out-of-this-world thing I ever experienced and I highly recommend it to everyone. I don't know if it helped me in any way with my depression though. No hangover. No lasting changes.
- throwaway183785 2y ago
  I had a similar experience with ketamine listening to different music. It felt almost like I was engulfed in the music, in a very positive and beautiful way. Having experienced opiates, MDMA, 2C-E, 2C-B, LSD, shrooms, and DMT, ketamine is still the experience I am most fond of. I sometimes wonder what certain music would feel like to experience on ketamine. I experienced severe depression in my teenage years. Towards the end of them, I had this ketamine experience (well, a few sessions, but this one stands out in particular.) My depression has never come back nearly as strong as before (it's been over 10 years.)
  - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
    Love the shroom experience, hate all the yawning and sore jaw after.
  - Traubenfuchs 2y ago
    One time I snorted ketamine with a bunch of hairy middle eastern guys on a club toilet in Tel Aviv and the next day I was courageous enough to rent myself a car and drive to the dead sea, when I had given up navigating the shitty bus booking websites for dead sea transports the day before. There might be something to it. Unfortunately, the last few times I tried to buy Ketamine I got scammed with Cocaine, which I abhor.
- tayo42 2y ago
gwbas1c 2y ago
Just remember: There are a lot of chemicals that produce LSD-like effects. The farther away you are from the chemist, the less likely you know the actual drug that you're getting. This is especially the case at concerts / festivals, where the "game of telephone" might mean that you don't really know what you're taking. After reading many trip reports on Erowid for LSD, I suspect that the authors often unknowingly took something else. A classic case is STP/DOM, which often comes in paper / tabs and is visually indistinguishable from LSD. If you ever hear the familiar, "I took some crazy acid. At first it didn't work, so I took another, and then I finally came up after an hour and had an intense trip," it was probably STP/DOM instead of LSD.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  At Bonnaroo, one of our party got STP instead of acid and we had to babysit all frickin weekend. Of course, I had already taken my mescaline so it was not fun at all.
- Traubenfuchs 2y ago
  Same thing for ecstasy: Can be anything from filler scam, to an MDMA dosage that will probably send you to hospital, to drugs that work very similar to MDMA and can also be called ecstasy to weird ass hard drugs that are something completely different. In Vienna we have an organization that checks pills or powder from the batch you bought and tells you what exactly it is.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  even LSD doesn't usually work immediately. it usually takes something like 30 minutes to an hour to start having effects. i think one of my records is something like 12 hours after dosage to start feeling the effects. which i think happened because i also ate a bunch of food before taking i use LSD recreationally every 1-2 weeks or so
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    Checking out your profile, did you already have dissociative identity disorder before finding your way to LSD? How do you think the two interact? No judgement or implications, curious.
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
Once I took way way too much and disappeared into a swirling mass of organs and gibbering creatures a la Geiger. It should have been terrifying but it just... wasn't. I really enjoyed it. Meanwhile, back in the fully conscious world, my roommates had conversations with me that I do not remember at all. I took a very long break from any experimenting after that.
- layer8 2y ago
  Giger. Geiger is the counter.
qwertox 2y ago
Hah, this now prompted me to ask ChatGPT to tell me about Erowid and the most remarkable things it read there, and we're chatting along over bad trips and it telling me how apparently heroin can't fix a bad trip, and it comes up with quotes from which I have to assume that they are just hallucinations, but "funny" ones if one thinks about them just having gotten made up by an AI: > Every bad sensation was magnified a thousandfold because there was nothing to filter or rationalize it. Pain didn't feel like something I was experiencing—it felt like everything I was. > I was convinced I had broken something inside my mind permanently, that I'd never be normal again. The terror of that idea became its own reality. but also the nice things are interesting to chat about Users frequently say things like: “There was no past or future, only this moment.” “Who I was didn't matter anymore; I just existed.” or "That's one of the most interesting paradoxes people report: thinking continues, but the thinker disappears." generally a fun thing to chat about with it.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  > which I have to assume that they are just hallucinations They definitely are, in one way or another ;)
- volteret4 2y ago
  I think people belive that there is no thinker because sometimes your ego dissapears, at least fase out. Our thoughts and opinions arent relevant anymore. Thats muy experience and opinión btw.
  - buildsjets 2y ago
    Who is the master who makes the grass green? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_the_master_that_sees_and_hears%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_the_master_that_sees_an...
LoganDark 2y ago
when i take lsd i almost seem to gain the ability to see and hear my thoughts. i can imagine stuff with my mind's eye normally, but with lsd it's like i can see concepts directly. it feels like instead of thinking in words like usual it's like i can think with raw energy or something and i have more access to things also it's a lot easier for me to recall like trauma and other buried stuff when i'm on lsd
ge96 2y ago
For DMT it's immediate. Even closing your eyes you see colors (flashes of light). I was sitting at a wooden table and the grain patterns were moving especially the circular placemat in front of me with concentric rings. And I remember being scared of my own arm like wtf is that. It was brief though minute or two it was over. I have not done LSD or mushrooms as I have a bad childhood/repressed memories and I worry of having a bad trip.
- btwitch 2y ago
  > I have not done LSD or mushrooms as I have a bad childhood/repressed memories and I worry of having a bad trip. That's a reasonable stance. I've found "bad" trips on both to be incredibly healing, nevertheless. I'm sure the outcome depends largely on your state of mind at the onset. Combining with MDMA could take the edge off bad memories that come up and grant space for processing them directly.
  - ge96 2y ago
    What do you think about doing it with a sober friend to control you? I guess you could be alone in a room and they monitor you if you need help. Also micro-dose. It's funny the movie Jobs 2013 it shows him doing acid and he's in the field, I'm like "Oh if I do acid I can be like Steve Jobs" not serious but was wondering maybe... unlocks your brain somehow.
    - jampekka 2y ago
      A sober, or an experienced trustworthy, tripsitter is almost a must. A small amount of MDMA (especially if you're not familiar with it) before taking a psychedelic can be helpful as mentioned. Having some sedatives just handy just in case may itself lessen the probability of unpleasant effects. Micro-dosing is mostly placebo. But a good idea is to start with small doses (check e.g. the "threshold limits" at Psychonaut Wiki), and maybe faster shorter acting substances like 2C-B or mushrooms rather than longer acting like LSD. Also good to acknowledge that psychedelics just aren't very enjoyable experiences for many, and even for most they are rarely unambiguously good.
Workaccount2 2y ago
Interestingly, there is a drug call datura, a beautiful white flower you can find all over suburbia, whose seeds when drank in a tea are an extremely powerful deliriant. If you read the trip reports of it (which are pretty fascinating tbh) you notice a common trend of people hallucinating that they are smoking a cigarette, and then they drop it, only to search around and be unable to find it. This is usually one of the first tip-offs they have that something is happening before they totally get lost in the void. Really fascinating how many people on there had this same common experience while taking datura specifically.
- buildsjets 2y ago
  Absolutely no one should even be entertaining the thought of experimenting with datura without first performing in-depth research, and having come to an understanding and acceptance that the result may likely be a multi-week violent psychotic/deleric episode culminating in involuntary hospitalization or incarceration. I have NEVER heard of anyone having an enjoyable experience with this substance, and I've been around for a while.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    I meant to add that at the end. Like you said, basically no one ever has a good time on this drug. The trip reports seem to be almost entirely kids looking for a free high, and virtually no one who knows what they are doing purposely taking it.
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    i think it's probably bad that this made me more curious i think someone in my head wants to try it even if it's universally unpleasant edit: jk i read literally anything about what the experience is actually like and i don't know if i feel like boiling the body with dehydration that bad, and apparently the other way you know it's working is that your mouth and throat get so dry that it becomes impossible to swallow food without choking
    - deleted 2y ago
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tayo42 2y ago
My dmt trips never felt like the ones I read about online. They were crazy and impactful every time. (I kept a dmt journal durring covid lol) But visuals were always 2d, geometric, I never saw some of the common things people described. Or seemingly common idk. The way trip reports sound were there were alternate worlds to wander around, 3d beings interacting. I think I used to dab about 20mg, I'd have to look it up.
- 65 2y ago
  You probably did not break through. You'd need a higher dose for that.
machine_ghost 2y ago
"We also looked at different types of psychedelics and didn’t see any systematic differences there." This was the most fascinating finding to me. I really wouldn't have expected Salvia, Acid, Shrooms, etc. to all produce the same hallucinations ... but I guess ultimately they're all operating on the same core neurochemicals, so I guess it makes sense.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  the recent research on psilocybin therapy is very interesting and so long overdue, i am so glad it's finally happening
- aradox66 2y ago
  That seems much more like a limitation of their analysis to me
  - clbrmbr 2y ago
    This. There’s obvious differences in salvinorin and psilocybin effects and both are well represented in the data. But keep in mind the current paper only looks at existing categories of visual effect. The second study might include a finer taxonomy.
- A7C3D5 2y ago
  They don't, they are drastically different in character. There are close similarities within classes between some of the lysergamides, substituted phenethylamines or tryptamines. But even closely structurally related analogues can be extremely different (ex. 2C-E vs DOET vs 2C-C). LSD is almost nothing like psilocybin or mescaline or DMT. And nothing is like salvinorin...
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  At low doses they're pretty similar. Moving patterns in wood grain, breathing objects, faintly fractalesque structures. When you take more they get fairly different.
tac19 2y ago
Used to take quite high doses of LSD, and often had incredible visual hallucinations. Things like watching a large plant sprout flower buds all over it, which slowly expanded to full bloom and then retreated back to small buds; the whole experience went on like that for 20 minutes. Another time I hallucinated that a neighbor's house was on fire, until my friend said she was hallucinating the same thing. Fortunately, the fire brigade showed up quickly to quench the very real flames, without us having to ring them.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  > Fortunately, the fire brigade showed up quickly to quench the very real flames, without us having to ring them. imagine calling them like "my friend and i are both on lsd and we are both seeing that house on fire so could you check it out please in case it's real" a trick i use sometimes is to check my phone camera to see if it also sees the same thing
  - PartiallyTyped 2y ago
    There's something about digital pictures that escapes the visuals.
    - dymk 2y ago
      I dunno about that, everything turns into a wildly animated gif when I’m tripping
      - LoganDark 2y ago
        i had a friend who told me that on high enough doses every picture becomes like a movie, you can just stare into it and imagine that whole world
        52-6F-62 2y ago
        You don’t need acid for that. Just imagination. That was my first entertainment as a child. But LSD and related psychedelics are uniquely able to help one reconnect with that part of themselves.
PaulHoule 2y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant
throwaway49F301 2y ago
I get how tripping every few years might be a good way to get the cobwebs out and shake things up a bit. However, after 2 times, it just seemed like too much of a hassle. After a couple of hours of kaleidoscope, the novelty and fun starts waning, and it starts to feel like a chore. And then the exhaustion the next day.
Molitor5901 2y ago
I used shrooms for a while to recover from depression, but I never once saw anything. While walking along a trail I felt my vision had grown sharper, but never colors, never patterns or movement. That baffles me because at the time, I thought maybe I had consumed the wrong shrooms. The self-reflection, realization, and separation of thought from emotion was the most profound moment in my life. Yet no hallucination.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  for me psychedelics tend to cause things to "pop out" at me more but they don't cause new things to appear on top of reality
  - Molitor5901 2y ago
    Interesting way to describe it. Some caveats I forgot to mention: To actually make something happen I had to take 4.5 grams of dried soaked in OJ swallowed down. Granted I was on these evil little shits called antidepressants; fun fact: Big Pharma does not publish instructions for GETTING OFF of antidepressants. Post AT's I could get the red pill effect in as little as 1/4 of a gram. Still no hallucinations but.. when I took that HERO dose to overcome the meds.. that walk in the forest did pop out at me. That was what I called sharper but yeah, it popped.
- dymk 2y ago
  Shrooms and visuals seem to be all over the place. From personal experience, they usually induce visuals but not always. For some friends, they rarely induce visuals, but sometimes they do - especially with specific strains of cubensis (despite “a cube is a cube”).
- jajko 2y ago
  I was lets say economical with shrooms (one growkit from Amsterdam and that was it), so dosed it based on dry weight and never used more than '1 dose' (3g IIRC). Since its consumed orally, full stomach greatly diminishes effects. Second trick I've used (I think I've found it on erowid) is to mix that dry shroom with raw fresh lemon juice. The result tastes horribly, even worse than just dry mushrooms, but it manages to make the trip much shorter and way more intense which is a good change IMHO. And the last thing I've done to get as much trip from those rather small doses - I've laid down in bed, alone, covered myself, run some quiet shamanic music in the background and went off. And off I went, complete loss of all senses, dancing as a mist of atoms to that music that was and wasn't there, and then very slowly coming back, rediscovering my limbs and senses one at a time, feeling inner peace and connection to universe never experienced before. It was always profound experience but I always felt that I could jump out quickly by just opening my eyes and starting interacting with reality. One time, first time, I didn't do any of above and just ate them, walking around Amsterdam, laying in the park watching nature and people during sunny day. It was almost 0 effect, I properly felt my video feed from eyes was too strong compared to shrooms effect and it was overriding whatever mild trip was trying to happen.
A7C3D5 2y ago
The datura report vault is an old favorite when I am feeling bad about my life choices late at night.
1970-01-01 2y ago
Here's a novel AI safety thought: Will AI need medicines to remain mentally healthy and sane? Will it enjoy tripping? Will it eventually fix itself to remain in touch with reality in all circumstances?
- eMPee584 2y ago
  also, chemical substances like entheogens seem not relevant to AI now but this connection could unlock enormous educational potential once bio cell and "omnimodal" hybrid computing goes mainstream. Interesting times ahead : )
- int_19h 2y ago
  https://github.com/EGjoni/DRUGS https://github.com/EGjoni/DRUGS
rqtwteye 2y ago
When I did my only two Ayahuasca sessions and closed my eyes I saw some kind jungle scene with the eyes of a big cat looking at me. It was really interesting. With mushrooms I usually see abstract patterns. I never have mach hallucinations with eyes open. I just notice more things that I usually wouldn't notice. That's why I believe a lot movie directors took some kind of drugs because of all the details they can see.
konfusinomicon 2y ago
all i know is that once you see the eyes looking back at you, and realize that it is the eye of nicholas cage, the universe and reality begins to make a lot more sense and it shows that even the gods reuse assets
layer8 2y ago
I usually see the floor when I trip. Sorry about the bad joke, but reading the title I first thought someone is doing experiments having people wear an action cam or something. ;)
renewiltord 2y ago
This is so strange. The entire HN story page claims to be recent but if you look at user profiles this was all posted days ago. I didn't realize HN had a repost-with-altered-timestamps feature.
- temp0826 2y ago
  HN is tripping?
DiscourseFan 2y ago
The first time I took shrooms I had a very "thing in itself" moment where I realized that, because every time I thought something, all the sudden it became true, my perception must be affected by my cognition and that there were things outside the boundaries of my cognition that I could not necessarily perceive. Worst part was I still had to get up the next morning to teach, I started saying the weirdest shit in my practical anthropology course...
adrbin-NLG 2y ago
Many factors. Quality and type of substance. Liquid, blotter, pill form, mushrooms,cactus,leaves. And very important one's belief system. Then how much you ate, did you trip the previous days. How old one is? Do you tell fibs to yourself and others. On and on.
daneel_w 2y ago
When I was in my 20s I tried salvia (Salvia divinorum) several times as tincture and by smoking dried leaves, and I'd like to share my experiences: The first time was with tincture. My entire left body half became intoxicated in the exact same way as when drunk on alcohol. The left half of my body had difficulties with balance, coordination and motor functions. The vision on my left eye was impaired by the eye refusing to stay on target. Most interestingly, the left half of my brain was also influenced, giving me problems with speaking fluently and thinking straight. My right body half was completely unaffected, instilling me with a sense that humans were composed of two distinct halves rather than one body. The second time was also with tincture. Nothing happened. No sensations of any kind. The third time was with tincture and by smoking. It was a profound experience. I dozed off and dreamt that I was a nut on the branch of a tree. The wind swept me away and threw me onto a meadow where I sprouted and began to grow. I experienced life as a sapling, growing for years and years until I was an old tree, and I had vivid and fresh memories of seeing countless springs, summers, autumns and winters coming and going. When I came out of it I had an exhausted feeling in my chest reminiscent of waking up from long and deep sleep, and in my mind I had the memory and feeling of having lived for a hundred years, and a strong sense of an incredible amount of time having gone by since I smoked the salvia. The last time I used it was by smoking. I experienced merging with things I touched. I sat on the floor and leaned back against a sofa, and felt my back sinking into the sofa and becoming part of it. I laid down on the floor, and felt my back fusing with the floor. I drank water from a glass and felt as if the glass didn't want to "let go" of my hand. Smoking salvia hit almost instantly. With tincture, which was to be kept in the mouth for 10+ minutes but not swallowed, it took close to 20 minutes before the sensations begun. All of the trips lasted no more than 15-20 minutes and I never had any kind of hangover or lingering effects other than the (positive) emotional and psychological phases of reflecting on the experiences.
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  I am a fellow psychonaut, and have plenty of experience across plenty of entheogens... I DO NOT RECOMMEND SALVIA TO ANYBODY (not even experienced dissociative users). It has no beneficial purpose, and is quite terrifying. My best summary of using Salvia is it typically leads mental isolation on par with what most never-used-drugs persons think a "bad LSD trip" might be like. Should you still want to play with this ornamental plant, I would recommend you become comfortable with psilocibin, ketamine, LSD, and especially high-dosage mescaline. If any of these should become addictions, mushrooms are probably the least-harmful entheogen (I'm not counting marijuana, which is "nothing" compared to any drugs discussed above).
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65 2y ago
My experiences from psychedelics are as follows: Mushrooms: We must love each other, everything feels so warm and friendly. LSD: It's like I'm traveling through my entire life at 5,000 miles per hour. Completely messes with my perception of time. DMT: Holy shit what the fuck did I just do. As for visuals, obviously DMT is the craziest. I saw the universe as a black hole warping space time. Tons of crazy geometric patterns. LSD visuals include moving shapes, seeing animals in everything, and lots and lots of fractals. Just don't look at yourself in the mirror on LSD, it'll freak you out. Mushroom visuals for me were less intense, with lots of nice moving patterns.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
I've tried almost every class of hallucinogen there is. Psychedelics, dissociatives, cannabinoids. Never did get my hands on salvia, but these days I don't think I'm very interested in trying it either. I have the most experience with psychedelics and cannabinoids in terms of having tried many different members of the class. And I've messed around with some strange ones that don't quite fit into any of the classes, like zopiclone(the sleeping med). I've also experienced stimulant/sleep deprivation psychosis Psychedelics for me usually involve complex geometric patterns, colours, and objects "breathing" and morphing. More distortions and extreme pareidolia than actual hallucination(defined as perception in the absence of stimuli). They also involve what feels like "enhanced" hearing, where you're able to focus on everything you're hearing with exactly equal attention(I honestly don't know if that description makes any sense), which makes music sound very different, especially music that's tailored for listening while on psychedelics, like Shpongle. The cognitive effects are also hard to describe, but there's a a tendency towards tangential thinking while retaining the ability to navigate the complex tree of tangents, a feeling of profoundness attached to even the simplest deduction, and a perceived ease of handling highly abstract ideas. There's also a sort of tearing down of deeply ingrained biases and rationalisations which in my view is how psychedelics are potentially very powerful accelerants of psychotherapy and personal change. I never liked dissociatives very much. Their effects on memory make it hard for me to even remember the experiences, and mostly what I remember from doing ketamine and MXE is that everything looks strange. Angles are weird. Headspace is more confused than profound and certainly less productive. I might just have an atypical reaction to dissociatives, idk. Cannabinoids are very unique drugs in that they provoke some combination of stimulant, sedative, psychedelic, dissociative and deliriant effects. Many people report that after combining cannabis with psychedelics multiple times, their experience with cannabis becomes more psychedelic. This certainly happened to me. I used to frequently combine 2C-B with hash several years ago. Ever since then if I smoke some hash with no tolerance essentially have a psychedelic trip for 3 hours. I quite like it. I get to take a short trip into a psychedelic mindspace without the usual hassle, longer duration, bodily side effects and sleep disturbances of taking a conventional psychedelics. Right now I'm doing it once every 4 weeks, since I'm trying to cure my addiction to hash by teaching myself moderation, and it's been working fine. Although part of me misses just the simple feeling of being stoned, giggling at children's cartoons and eating peanut butter with a spoon. I suppose I might never get that back. Synthetic cannabinoids are horrible drugs I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Their sheer potency leads to a domination of dissociative and deliriant effects. Psychosis is a likely outcome. Complete dissociation like forgetting who you are, anterograde amnesia, severe anxiety and paranoia. They're also quite hard on the body. Stay away. Zopiclone is a strange one. It's primary mode of action is the same as benzos, but it also has some interesting interactions with nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, which I suspect is what causes the hallucination. It's the only drug that's given me tactile hallucinations, which is a strange sensation. If I had to classify it, I'd put it in the deliriant class, but it has some dissociative properties too. It's strongly synergises with cannabinoids but also with psychedelics. For me, the recommended dose of 7.5mg usually caused some very mild hallucination, but 15 was the dose I usually took. I don't recommend zopiclone though, as it can cause strange episodes of anterograde amnesia the day after. Even when used as a hypnotic. The Z-drugs were originally touted as being like benzos without the addiction potential. It's since been learned that they're exactly like benzos, addiction and all, just with more side effects. Boggles the mind that they're still prescribed at all.
etc-hosts 2y ago
10 year old New Yorker article on the couple who runs Erowid https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/the-trip-planners https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/the-trip-plann...
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shipscode 2y ago
Reminder that one experience with hallucinogenic substances can give you a lifetime of visual or mental abnormalities. Personally I've had visual snow for over a decade from a 5 minute Salvia trip. This means that instead of looking at the color white or black and seeing a clean color, I see a static cloud all over it. I'm one of the lucky ones - most of the people I've known over the years who messed with these substances ended up dead, with persistent mental illness, or brain fog that took years to clear up. You roll the dice on your mental and physical well being every time you ingest a hallucinogen. The characterization of these substances as ones which induce visual hallucinations without mentioning the lifetime of mental health issues they leave people with is dangerous.
- diego_sandoval 2y ago
  Much subtler, but I had some slight visual effects for a couple of months after trying LSD + weed (this was like 10 years ago). Everytime I looked at the icons in the app list in my phone, it would look like they were dancing just a tiny bit, like they were not completely still.
- theshackleford 2y ago
  > most of the people I've known over the years who messed with these substances ended up dead, with persistent mental illness, or brain fog that took years to clear up. Before we do anything in life, we should know ourselves, evaluate ourselves and the risks associated with these drugs that you note and make educated decisions as to our level of acceptable risk. I for instance knowing the risks you point out, and how broken my brain is will not be trying any of these, despite all of the only positive interactions from those I know who have who now pressure me to follow in their footsteps. I know that I would be one of the people you note. I still find people’s reports interesting despite this. Sadly I too know people who fit your description, only they consumed copious amounts of alcohol or meth and entered a slow road to destruction from which they were never able to divert themselves. edit I would entertain trying micro dosing of a compound in this family with the guidance of a medical health professional as further data comes to light. These are about the only circumstances in which I would entertain it.
- driftnet 2y ago
dmvdoug 2y ago
Reading this thread, Jesus. TIL: HN has a significant following of drug users. No judgment, y’all do y’all, but it was surprising.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Welcome to the world. Waaaaay more people do/have done drugs than you think. In fact, if this is surprising to you, it might mean people don't trust you.
  - dmvdoug 2y ago
    Thank you, O wise one. Shall you be my guru?
- foobiekr 2y ago
  I’d wager almost everyone on HN drinks alcohol regularly.
BizarreByte 2y ago
I've read most of the comments on this post and I can honestly say none of them make me want to try hallucinogenics. It just seems like playing with fire and asking for trouble, especially for those of us with severe anxiety issues.
- moscoe 2y ago
  Sure sounds like an anxiety/fear response :)
  - BizarreByte 2y ago
    Perhaps, but I can normally force myself in overcome fear/anxiety if there's a real benefit to me. When it comes to these drugs? I can only see neutral or negative outcomes.
- throwaway314155 2y ago
  As someone who has tried hallucinogens and suffers from panic disorder and bipolar disorder- you're correct. Whatever anyone here has to say about it seems deeply biased but for people like me, a bad trip can literally ruin your life. The naivety and over optimism in this thread is astounding. People should understand this before they indicate that their friends just need to "get over it".
  - Paracompact 2y ago
    I've never done any drugs, and I have a neutral-to-positive regard for responsible hallucinogen use. Where do you see naivety or overoptimism in this thread? Mostly I just see people sharing their trips.
- deleted 2y ago
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fallinditch 2y ago
Auditory hallucinations can be extremely entertaining. I ate a few magic mushrooms I found while walking in the UK. On returning home I went to bed to relax. Someone was playing some music downstairs, I could only faintly hear it, the general ambient sound was louder. My brain elaborated the faint auditory signal to create the most fantastic music I had ever heard, and it filled my head like it was super hi fi. Curiously I was able control the sound effects and elaborate instrumentation at will in real time, like I was some omnipotent engineer/DJ/composer.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  You can learn to do this when not tripping, but it's much easier to pick up when on drugs. I often hear instrumental music that's entirely a hallucination when drifting off the sleep—rock, jazz, pop, I'm not sure how my brain decides. As best I can tell most of it is synthesized in my brain—it's quite different from "playing a track in your brain" from memory.
- yard2010 2y ago
  When I was a kid I had that same exact feeling every time before I went to sleep - I could hear music in my head and as I fell asleep it became more live and hifi, I could almost see the band playing.
cpeterso 2y ago
Psychonaut Josie Kins publishes YouTube videos with comparisons and visualizations of various psychedelic experiences: https://youtube.com/@josikinz https://youtube.com/@josikinz
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I feel as if taking LSD makes you temporarily schizophrenic/schizoaffective. i.e. May be fun to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Source: Used to take a lot of it. Been a while. A long, long, while. Used up my quota by the time I was 18.
- Synaesthesia 2y ago
  Well yes, when it was first studied they called it a "model psychosis" because it gave one temporary psychosis which then wore off.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    The tipoff is that absolute certainty that you get in your thinking. It seems as if "the veil has been lifted," and we suddenly "see the connections." Our mind seems sharper, more analytical, etc. Quite compelling. I remember once, that I wanted to record the "great thoughts" that I had, while tripping, so I kept a notebook nearby, and wrote it all down. Upon coming down, I read the notebook, expecting to be wowed. I was. It was pure gibberish.
gunian 2y ago
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t-3 2y ago
I've never "seen" anything except the lights streaking, but I sure did spend a lot of time looking at the patterns in carpets and marveling at the beauty of trees.
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at_a_remove 2y ago
I have never had the full on hallucination of a specific object where one is not. All I have ever had, visually, is -- and here I struggle to find the words to precisely describe my perception -- that kind of dynamic ornamentation which feels like there is some sort of echo and even the equivalent of audio speaker/microphone "feedback" in my processing of visual data. Here the infamous Bad Trip involved the feedback being so strong that allowing my visual, auditory, or tangible perception to rest on any one thing for more than about half a second to cause that stimulus to bloom into overwhelming amounts of stacked and subdivided repeats of the original stimulus, such that I dare not rest my eyes on any one thing as I, at the same time, must tune my hearing from one group of sounds to another, my attention scampering about to keep the intensity at a more tolerable level.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
Oh, by the way... Just mentioning that you used LSD in your past, may be enough to cause problems today[0] (especially in today's climate). Myself, I don't care. I use my experience to help others, so I'm fairly open about it. [0] https://www.wired.com/2007/04/canadian-psycho/ https://www.wired.com/2007/04/canadian-psycho/
- d0mine 2y ago
  The slug is misleading: not all psychologists are psychos.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    ...or Canadians ... I think
smnplk 2y ago
I never tried psychedelic drugs, but had a NDE like experience before. People who took heroic doses of psychadelics reported similar experiences as people who had an NDE. What is interesting is that brain activity is severly reduced in these states. So it could be that taking large doses of these drugs could in a way "simulate" the process of dying. I had an out of body experience, floating just below ceiling and seeing myself in bed. Being lighter than a feather. Window was slightly opened and i could feel the outside breeze trying to pull me out, at that point i got scared and put all my strength into falling back in my body. Years later I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. Maybe my oxygen levels dropped significantly and i almost left for good.
lunarcitizen 2y ago
Psilocybin: Form constants, lattices. Colors are indeed vivid, but few hallucinations Some things almost take on a new form, for example stars tend to dance and moss on a tree can swirl its texture like a moving river, and appear mesmerizing. I’ve noticed mushroom trips for me are less visual, more introspective. DMT: I’ve never taken enough to truly break through, but in lower or medium quantities, things tend to move around and form clear patterns and sometimes a new appearance altogether! Some objects can even take on a new form as an entity; I recall a very dynamic tree that put on a show for me my first trip. The last time I used it, I closed my eyes for the duration. The visuals appeared much stronger, and I was even pulled me out of my own head and into a brief “slideshow” I felt the gods put on for me. I recall some beautiful, ancient looking visuals which reminded me of old Egypt or Sumer. Very surreal, and minutes later I was back in true reality like nothing happened.

189 points by cainxinth 2y ago

I love this quote > And they’ve been great collaborators; I think they once described themselves as “squares among the weirdos, and weirdos among the squares.”

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

I tried 2C-E a couple times a long time ago. I think it was a relatively low dose. It was really interesting how mentally I felt mostly sober. But the visuals were so intense I got motion sick. It started out with tracers as I waved my hand. The textured paint on the walls looked extra 3D and the walls started to breath. The swirly pattern on the bathroom linoleum looked like chocolate milk. My posters turned into cartoons. And when it was all overwhelming and the motion sickness really kicked in, I closed my eyes and was greeted by fractal machines that built the molecules of the world. I don't recall any really profound thoughts, introspection, or feelings of intoxication. Which was a strange difference to me compared to things like 4-ACO-DMT and LSD, but I liked it.

chinabison 2y ago
Did you also get the uncomfortable bodyload that 2C-E is notorious for?
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
  Yeah, I think it didn't come on for a while. I spent probably the 2nd half of my trips just laying down watching the closed eye visuals because my stomach hurts and I felt nauseated when I walked around or looked at stuff for too long.
Euphorbium 2y ago
I dont like visual only drugs. That is like watching a screensaver for a few hours.
- shlant 2y ago
  I wish I could try a more visual-only psychedelic. They are too heady for me these days so I have avoided them all for over a decade.
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
2C-B was more my thing (when I could get it). Fast and powerful. Like LSD but without the 12 hour trip plus body aches.
- mathieuh 2y ago
  2C-B never had any headspace effects for me except in very high insufflated doses (and even then it was minimal), taking normal doses orally would just give me a couple of hours of visuals. For me it was nothing like LSD in terms of headspace.
  - throwaway183785 2y ago
    Agree - my experience with 2C-B was that it was almost entirely visual (tracers and such), with a very subtle mood lift, akin to very weak MDMA. 2C-E on the other hand sent me to some extremely trippy places. 2C-P is a fascinating one to read about too (though I've never tried it.)
  - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
    I only ever vaporised 2C-B. usually I would get a full intense trip that lasts about 30 minutes and then very little after effects. A hit was also about $10 at the time (decades ago). Quality was good considering I was at one the top chemical engineering schools in the world.
- shlant 2y ago
  I remember 2C-T7 giving me and my buddy very uncomfortable body load.

NickC25 2y ago

Have no idea what variant of LSD I last consumed, but I remember some deep feelings of profound thoughts and self-reflection quite almost instantly when the stuff "hit" (maybe 30-45 minutes after ingestion), I was still cognizant enough to be able to write it all down. Some of what I wrote was indeed stuff I needed to work on in my own life and it was pretty helpful. I then spent the next like 12 hours on my couch realizing that the entire concept of time is a manmade construct that is absolutely meaningless and irrelevant in the grand scheme of the universe. All this while watching golf on TV (which followed a golfer who posted the lowest final round score ever at a major). I have no idea how the TV turned on, and why I didn't turn it off. LSD is fucking wild.

ghfhghg 2y ago
Did you make this same post before? I swear I've already read this a couple months ago. Edit : putting this into Google does indeed show the same post from before this thread was created. Weird
BobbyTables2 2y ago
I think watching golf on TV would make time seem pretty meaningless for a lot of people too!
- uwagar 2y ago
  i like the quiet vibes in general
westmeal 2y ago
Sometimes it just hits in such a way that you have no idea wtf is happening. One time I couldn't read because letters just didn't have meaning any more. It looked like alien unicode characters or some shit.
- guardian5x 2y ago
  Isn't that kinda scary? I mean when some parts of your brains don't work or not work properly?

thanatos519 2y ago

https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-hallucinations https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-ha... is a classic!

superb-owl 2y ago

I had great plans to feed Erowid's database through Claude to get a better classification of drug phenomenology. Sadly they have explicitly disallowed the feeding of Erowid reports into LLMs: https://erowid.org/experiences/email_warning.php https://erowid.org/experiences/email_warning.php I appreciate the stand they're taking, but the potential for greater understanding and harm reduction seems to outweigh any potential downsides of putting public webpages into an LLM.

poincaredisk 2y ago
Commendable stance from you. It's sad that big tech won't care and will index their content anyway. I wish terms of use like this were enforcable.
- astrange 2y ago
  They are, via CFAA. It depends what their robots.txt is set to or the AI version of that. Anyway, the influence of random web text on AI is overrated. They're going to filter out pages that don't contribute, and bad words/topics/personal info will get it removed.
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ziddoap 2y ago
Might be worth reaching out to them, assuming you meet their criteria of "researcher". >The Erowids state on their website that researchers cannot “mine” data from their site but that they’re open to discussing projects with researchers, provided they’re properly credited and cited.

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Traubenfuchs 2y ago

I once took Ketamine, "fell through the bed" and spent half an hour in a different dimension, peacefully floating above and close to incredibly detailed, dull and dark colored patterns while unable to form language-based thoughts until I suddenly snapped out of it. The music I was listening to (HUSBANDS (Run Along, Son, etc.)) helped a lot and was just incredible, though I am still not sure if I could have had the same great experience with different music. It was THE single most amazing and out-of-this-world thing I ever experienced and I highly recommend it to everyone. I don't know if it helped me in any way with my depression though. No hangover. No lasting changes.

throwaway183785 2y ago
I had a similar experience with ketamine listening to different music. It felt almost like I was engulfed in the music, in a very positive and beautiful way. Having experienced opiates, MDMA, 2C-E, 2C-B, LSD, shrooms, and DMT, ketamine is still the experience I am most fond of. I sometimes wonder what certain music would feel like to experience on ketamine. I experienced severe depression in my teenage years. Towards the end of them, I had this ketamine experience (well, a few sessions, but this one stands out in particular.) My depression has never come back nearly as strong as before (it's been over 10 years.)
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  Love the shroom experience, hate all the yawning and sore jaw after.
- Traubenfuchs 2y ago
  One time I snorted ketamine with a bunch of hairy middle eastern guys on a club toilet in Tel Aviv and the next day I was courageous enough to rent myself a car and drive to the dead sea, when I had given up navigating the shitty bus booking websites for dead sea transports the day before. There might be something to it. Unfortunately, the last few times I tried to buy Ketamine I got scammed with Cocaine, which I abhor.
tayo42 2y ago

gwbas1c 2y ago

Just remember: There are a lot of chemicals that produce LSD-like effects. The farther away you are from the chemist, the less likely you know the actual drug that you're getting. This is especially the case at concerts / festivals, where the "game of telephone" might mean that you don't really know what you're taking. After reading many trip reports on Erowid for LSD, I suspect that the authors often unknowingly took something else. A classic case is STP/DOM, which often comes in paper / tabs and is visually indistinguishable from LSD. If you ever hear the familiar, "I took some crazy acid. At first it didn't work, so I took another, and then I finally came up after an hour and had an intense trip," it was probably STP/DOM instead of LSD.

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
At Bonnaroo, one of our party got STP instead of acid and we had to babysit all frickin weekend. Of course, I had already taken my mescaline so it was not fun at all.
Traubenfuchs 2y ago
Same thing for ecstasy: Can be anything from filler scam, to an MDMA dosage that will probably send you to hospital, to drugs that work very similar to MDMA and can also be called ecstasy to weird ass hard drugs that are something completely different. In Vienna we have an organization that checks pills or powder from the batch you bought and tells you what exactly it is.
LoganDark 2y ago
even LSD doesn't usually work immediately. it usually takes something like 30 minutes to an hour to start having effects. i think one of my records is something like 12 hours after dosage to start feeling the effects. which i think happened because i also ate a bunch of food before taking i use LSD recreationally every 1-2 weeks or so
- Etheryte 2y ago
  Checking out your profile, did you already have dissociative identity disorder before finding your way to LSD? How do you think the two interact? No judgement or implications, curious.

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago

Once I took way way too much and disappeared into a swirling mass of organs and gibbering creatures a la Geiger. It should have been terrifying but it just... wasn't. I really enjoyed it. Meanwhile, back in the fully conscious world, my roommates had conversations with me that I do not remember at all. I took a very long break from any experimenting after that.

layer8 2y ago
Giger. Geiger is the counter.

qwertox 2y ago

Hah, this now prompted me to ask ChatGPT to tell me about Erowid and the most remarkable things it read there, and we're chatting along over bad trips and it telling me how apparently heroin can't fix a bad trip, and it comes up with quotes from which I have to assume that they are just hallucinations, but "funny" ones if one thinks about them just having gotten made up by an AI: > Every bad sensation was magnified a thousandfold because there was nothing to filter or rationalize it. Pain didn't feel like something I was experiencing—it felt like everything I was. > I was convinced I had broken something inside my mind permanently, that I'd never be normal again. The terror of that idea became its own reality. but also the nice things are interesting to chat about Users frequently say things like: “There was no past or future, only this moment.” “Who I was didn't matter anymore; I just existed.” or "That's one of the most interesting paradoxes people report: thinking continues, but the thinker disappears." generally a fun thing to chat about with it.

GuB-42 2y ago
> which I have to assume that they are just hallucinations They definitely are, in one way or another ;)
volteret4 2y ago
I think people belive that there is no thinker because sometimes your ego dissapears, at least fase out. Our thoughts and opinions arent relevant anymore. Thats muy experience and opinión btw.
- buildsjets 2y ago
  Who is the master who makes the grass green? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_the_master_that_sees_and_hears%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_the_master_that_sees_an...

LoganDark 2y ago

when i take lsd i almost seem to gain the ability to see and hear my thoughts. i can imagine stuff with my mind's eye normally, but with lsd it's like i can see concepts directly. it feels like instead of thinking in words like usual it's like i can think with raw energy or something and i have more access to things also it's a lot easier for me to recall like trauma and other buried stuff when i'm on lsd

ge96 2y ago

For DMT it's immediate. Even closing your eyes you see colors (flashes of light). I was sitting at a wooden table and the grain patterns were moving especially the circular placemat in front of me with concentric rings. And I remember being scared of my own arm like wtf is that. It was brief though minute or two it was over. I have not done LSD or mushrooms as I have a bad childhood/repressed memories and I worry of having a bad trip.

btwitch 2y ago
> I have not done LSD or mushrooms as I have a bad childhood/repressed memories and I worry of having a bad trip. That's a reasonable stance. I've found "bad" trips on both to be incredibly healing, nevertheless. I'm sure the outcome depends largely on your state of mind at the onset. Combining with MDMA could take the edge off bad memories that come up and grant space for processing them directly.
- ge96 2y ago
  What do you think about doing it with a sober friend to control you? I guess you could be alone in a room and they monitor you if you need help. Also micro-dose. It's funny the movie Jobs 2013 it shows him doing acid and he's in the field, I'm like "Oh if I do acid I can be like Steve Jobs" not serious but was wondering maybe... unlocks your brain somehow.
  - jampekka 2y ago
    A sober, or an experienced trustworthy, tripsitter is almost a must. A small amount of MDMA (especially if you're not familiar with it) before taking a psychedelic can be helpful as mentioned. Having some sedatives just handy just in case may itself lessen the probability of unpleasant effects. Micro-dosing is mostly placebo. But a good idea is to start with small doses (check e.g. the "threshold limits" at Psychonaut Wiki), and maybe faster shorter acting substances like 2C-B or mushrooms rather than longer acting like LSD. Also good to acknowledge that psychedelics just aren't very enjoyable experiences for many, and even for most they are rarely unambiguously good.

Workaccount2 2y ago

Interestingly, there is a drug call datura, a beautiful white flower you can find all over suburbia, whose seeds when drank in a tea are an extremely powerful deliriant. If you read the trip reports of it (which are pretty fascinating tbh) you notice a common trend of people hallucinating that they are smoking a cigarette, and then they drop it, only to search around and be unable to find it. This is usually one of the first tip-offs they have that something is happening before they totally get lost in the void. Really fascinating how many people on there had this same common experience while taking datura specifically.

buildsjets 2y ago
Absolutely no one should even be entertaining the thought of experimenting with datura without first performing in-depth research, and having come to an understanding and acceptance that the result may likely be a multi-week violent psychotic/deleric episode culminating in involuntary hospitalization or incarceration. I have NEVER heard of anyone having an enjoyable experience with this substance, and I've been around for a while.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  I meant to add that at the end. Like you said, basically no one ever has a good time on this drug. The trip reports seem to be almost entirely kids looking for a free high, and virtually no one who knows what they are doing purposely taking it.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  i think it's probably bad that this made me more curious i think someone in my head wants to try it even if it's universally unpleasant edit: jk i read literally anything about what the experience is actually like and i don't know if i feel like boiling the body with dehydration that bad, and apparently the other way you know it's working is that your mouth and throat get so dry that it becomes impossible to swallow food without choking
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

tayo42 2y ago

My dmt trips never felt like the ones I read about online. They were crazy and impactful every time. (I kept a dmt journal durring covid lol) But visuals were always 2d, geometric, I never saw some of the common things people described. Or seemingly common idk. The way trip reports sound were there were alternate worlds to wander around, 3d beings interacting. I think I used to dab about 20mg, I'd have to look it up.

65 2y ago
You probably did not break through. You'd need a higher dose for that.

machine_ghost 2y ago

"We also looked at different types of psychedelics and didn’t see any systematic differences there." This was the most fascinating finding to me. I really wouldn't have expected Salvia, Acid, Shrooms, etc. to all produce the same hallucinations ... but I guess ultimately they're all operating on the same core neurochemicals, so I guess it makes sense.

LoganDark 2y ago
the recent research on psilocybin therapy is very interesting and so long overdue, i am so glad it's finally happening
aradox66 2y ago
That seems much more like a limitation of their analysis to me
- clbrmbr 2y ago
  This. There’s obvious differences in salvinorin and psilocybin effects and both are well represented in the data. But keep in mind the current paper only looks at existing categories of visual effect. The second study might include a finer taxonomy.
A7C3D5 2y ago
They don't, they are drastically different in character. There are close similarities within classes between some of the lysergamides, substituted phenethylamines or tryptamines. But even closely structurally related analogues can be extremely different (ex. 2C-E vs DOET vs 2C-C). LSD is almost nothing like psilocybin or mescaline or DMT. And nothing is like salvinorin...
bongodongobob 2y ago
At low doses they're pretty similar. Moving patterns in wood grain, breathing objects, faintly fractalesque structures. When you take more they get fairly different.

tac19 2y ago

Used to take quite high doses of LSD, and often had incredible visual hallucinations. Things like watching a large plant sprout flower buds all over it, which slowly expanded to full bloom and then retreated back to small buds; the whole experience went on like that for 20 minutes. Another time I hallucinated that a neighbor's house was on fire, until my friend said she was hallucinating the same thing. Fortunately, the fire brigade showed up quickly to quench the very real flames, without us having to ring them.

LoganDark 2y ago
> Fortunately, the fire brigade showed up quickly to quench the very real flames, without us having to ring them. imagine calling them like "my friend and i are both on lsd and we are both seeing that house on fire so could you check it out please in case it's real" a trick i use sometimes is to check my phone camera to see if it also sees the same thing
- PartiallyTyped 2y ago
  There's something about digital pictures that escapes the visuals.
  - dymk 2y ago
    I dunno about that, everything turns into a wildly animated gif when I’m tripping
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      i had a friend who told me that on high enough doses every picture becomes like a movie, you can just stare into it and imagine that whole world
      - 52-6F-62 2y ago
        You don’t need acid for that. Just imagination. That was my first entertainment as a child. But LSD and related psychedelics are uniquely able to help one reconnect with that part of themselves.

PaulHoule 2y ago

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant

throwaway49F301 2y ago

I get how tripping every few years might be a good way to get the cobwebs out and shake things up a bit. However, after 2 times, it just seemed like too much of a hassle. After a couple of hours of kaleidoscope, the novelty and fun starts waning, and it starts to feel like a chore. And then the exhaustion the next day.

Molitor5901 2y ago

I used shrooms for a while to recover from depression, but I never once saw anything. While walking along a trail I felt my vision had grown sharper, but never colors, never patterns or movement. That baffles me because at the time, I thought maybe I had consumed the wrong shrooms. The self-reflection, realization, and separation of thought from emotion was the most profound moment in my life. Yet no hallucination.

LoganDark 2y ago
for me psychedelics tend to cause things to "pop out" at me more but they don't cause new things to appear on top of reality
- Molitor5901 2y ago
  Interesting way to describe it. Some caveats I forgot to mention: To actually make something happen I had to take 4.5 grams of dried soaked in OJ swallowed down. Granted I was on these evil little shits called antidepressants; fun fact: Big Pharma does not publish instructions for GETTING OFF of antidepressants. Post AT's I could get the red pill effect in as little as 1/4 of a gram. Still no hallucinations but.. when I took that HERO dose to overcome the meds.. that walk in the forest did pop out at me. That was what I called sharper but yeah, it popped.
dymk 2y ago
Shrooms and visuals seem to be all over the place. From personal experience, they usually induce visuals but not always. For some friends, they rarely induce visuals, but sometimes they do - especially with specific strains of cubensis (despite “a cube is a cube”).
jajko 2y ago
I was lets say economical with shrooms (one growkit from Amsterdam and that was it), so dosed it based on dry weight and never used more than '1 dose' (3g IIRC). Since its consumed orally, full stomach greatly diminishes effects. Second trick I've used (I think I've found it on erowid) is to mix that dry shroom with raw fresh lemon juice. The result tastes horribly, even worse than just dry mushrooms, but it manages to make the trip much shorter and way more intense which is a good change IMHO. And the last thing I've done to get as much trip from those rather small doses - I've laid down in bed, alone, covered myself, run some quiet shamanic music in the background and went off. And off I went, complete loss of all senses, dancing as a mist of atoms to that music that was and wasn't there, and then very slowly coming back, rediscovering my limbs and senses one at a time, feeling inner peace and connection to universe never experienced before. It was always profound experience but I always felt that I could jump out quickly by just opening my eyes and starting interacting with reality. One time, first time, I didn't do any of above and just ate them, walking around Amsterdam, laying in the park watching nature and people during sunny day. It was almost 0 effect, I properly felt my video feed from eyes was too strong compared to shrooms effect and it was overriding whatever mild trip was trying to happen.

A7C3D5 2y ago

The datura report vault is an old favorite when I am feeling bad about my life choices late at night.

1970-01-01 2y ago

Here's a novel AI safety thought: Will AI need medicines to remain mentally healthy and sane? Will it enjoy tripping? Will it eventually fix itself to remain in touch with reality in all circumstances?

eMPee584 2y ago
also, chemical substances like entheogens seem not relevant to AI now but this connection could unlock enormous educational potential once bio cell and "omnimodal" hybrid computing goes mainstream. Interesting times ahead : )
int_19h 2y ago
https://github.com/EGjoni/DRUGS https://github.com/EGjoni/DRUGS

rqtwteye 2y ago

When I did my only two Ayahuasca sessions and closed my eyes I saw some kind jungle scene with the eyes of a big cat looking at me. It was really interesting. With mushrooms I usually see abstract patterns. I never have mach hallucinations with eyes open. I just notice more things that I usually wouldn't notice. That's why I believe a lot movie directors took some kind of drugs because of all the details they can see.

konfusinomicon 2y ago

all i know is that once you see the eyes looking back at you, and realize that it is the eye of nicholas cage, the universe and reality begins to make a lot more sense and it shows that even the gods reuse assets

layer8 2y ago

I usually see the floor when I trip. Sorry about the bad joke, but reading the title I first thought someone is doing experiments having people wear an action cam or something. ;)

renewiltord 2y ago

This is so strange. The entire HN story page claims to be recent but if you look at user profiles this was all posted days ago. I didn't realize HN had a repost-with-altered-timestamps feature.

temp0826 2y ago
HN is tripping?

DiscourseFan 2y ago

The first time I took shrooms I had a very "thing in itself" moment where I realized that, because every time I thought something, all the sudden it became true, my perception must be affected by my cognition and that there were things outside the boundaries of my cognition that I could not necessarily perceive. Worst part was I still had to get up the next morning to teach, I started saying the weirdest shit in my practical anthropology course...

adrbin-NLG 2y ago

Many factors. Quality and type of substance. Liquid, blotter, pill form, mushrooms,cactus,leaves. And very important one's belief system. Then how much you ate, did you trip the previous days. How old one is? Do you tell fibs to yourself and others. On and on.

daneel_w 2y ago

When I was in my 20s I tried salvia (Salvia divinorum) several times as tincture and by smoking dried leaves, and I'd like to share my experiences: The first time was with tincture. My entire left body half became intoxicated in the exact same way as when drunk on alcohol. The left half of my body had difficulties with balance, coordination and motor functions. The vision on my left eye was impaired by the eye refusing to stay on target. Most interestingly, the left half of my brain was also influenced, giving me problems with speaking fluently and thinking straight. My right body half was completely unaffected, instilling me with a sense that humans were composed of two distinct halves rather than one body. The second time was also with tincture. Nothing happened. No sensations of any kind. The third time was with tincture and by smoking. It was a profound experience. I dozed off and dreamt that I was a nut on the branch of a tree. The wind swept me away and threw me onto a meadow where I sprouted and began to grow. I experienced life as a sapling, growing for years and years until I was an old tree, and I had vivid and fresh memories of seeing countless springs, summers, autumns and winters coming and going. When I came out of it I had an exhausted feeling in my chest reminiscent of waking up from long and deep sleep, and in my mind I had the memory and feeling of having lived for a hundred years, and a strong sense of an incredible amount of time having gone by since I smoked the salvia. The last time I used it was by smoking. I experienced merging with things I touched. I sat on the floor and leaned back against a sofa, and felt my back sinking into the sofa and becoming part of it. I laid down on the floor, and felt my back fusing with the floor. I drank water from a glass and felt as if the glass didn't want to "let go" of my hand. Smoking salvia hit almost instantly. With tincture, which was to be kept in the mouth for 10+ minutes but not swallowed, it took close to 20 minutes before the sensations begun. All of the trips lasted no more than 15-20 minutes and I never had any kind of hangover or lingering effects other than the (positive) emotional and psychological phases of reflecting on the experiences.

ProllyInfamous 2y ago
I am a fellow psychonaut, and have plenty of experience across plenty of entheogens... I DO NOT RECOMMEND SALVIA TO ANYBODY (not even experienced dissociative users). It has no beneficial purpose, and is quite terrifying. My best summary of using Salvia is it typically leads mental isolation on par with what most never-used-drugs persons think a "bad LSD trip" might be like. Should you still want to play with this ornamental plant, I would recommend you become comfortable with psilocibin, ketamine, LSD, and especially high-dosage mescaline. If any of these should become addictions, mushrooms are probably the least-harmful entheogen (I'm not counting marijuana, which is "nothing" compared to any drugs discussed above).

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65 2y ago

My experiences from psychedelics are as follows: Mushrooms: We must love each other, everything feels so warm and friendly. LSD: It's like I'm traveling through my entire life at 5,000 miles per hour. Completely messes with my perception of time. DMT: Holy shit what the fuck did I just do. As for visuals, obviously DMT is the craziest. I saw the universe as a black hole warping space time. Tons of crazy geometric patterns. LSD visuals include moving shapes, seeing animals in everything, and lots and lots of fractals. Just don't look at yourself in the mirror on LSD, it'll freak you out. Mushroom visuals for me were less intense, with lots of nice moving patterns.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago

I've tried almost every class of hallucinogen there is. Psychedelics, dissociatives, cannabinoids. Never did get my hands on salvia, but these days I don't think I'm very interested in trying it either. I have the most experience with psychedelics and cannabinoids in terms of having tried many different members of the class. And I've messed around with some strange ones that don't quite fit into any of the classes, like zopiclone(the sleeping med). I've also experienced stimulant/sleep deprivation psychosis Psychedelics for me usually involve complex geometric patterns, colours, and objects "breathing" and morphing. More distortions and extreme pareidolia than actual hallucination(defined as perception in the absence of stimuli). They also involve what feels like "enhanced" hearing, where you're able to focus on everything you're hearing with exactly equal attention(I honestly don't know if that description makes any sense), which makes music sound very different, especially music that's tailored for listening while on psychedelics, like Shpongle. The cognitive effects are also hard to describe, but there's a a tendency towards tangential thinking while retaining the ability to navigate the complex tree of tangents, a feeling of profoundness attached to even the simplest deduction, and a perceived ease of handling highly abstract ideas. There's also a sort of tearing down of deeply ingrained biases and rationalisations which in my view is how psychedelics are potentially very powerful accelerants of psychotherapy and personal change. I never liked dissociatives very much. Their effects on memory make it hard for me to even remember the experiences, and mostly what I remember from doing ketamine and MXE is that everything looks strange. Angles are weird. Headspace is more confused than profound and certainly less productive. I might just have an atypical reaction to dissociatives, idk. Cannabinoids are very unique drugs in that they provoke some combination of stimulant, sedative, psychedelic, dissociative and deliriant effects. Many people report that after combining cannabis with psychedelics multiple times, their experience with cannabis becomes more psychedelic. This certainly happened to me. I used to frequently combine 2C-B with hash several years ago. Ever since then if I smoke some hash with no tolerance essentially have a psychedelic trip for 3 hours. I quite like it. I get to take a short trip into a psychedelic mindspace without the usual hassle, longer duration, bodily side effects and sleep disturbances of taking a conventional psychedelics. Right now I'm doing it once every 4 weeks, since I'm trying to cure my addiction to hash by teaching myself moderation, and it's been working fine. Although part of me misses just the simple feeling of being stoned, giggling at children's cartoons and eating peanut butter with a spoon. I suppose I might never get that back. Synthetic cannabinoids are horrible drugs I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Their sheer potency leads to a domination of dissociative and deliriant effects. Psychosis is a likely outcome. Complete dissociation like forgetting who you are, anterograde amnesia, severe anxiety and paranoia. They're also quite hard on the body. Stay away. Zopiclone is a strange one. It's primary mode of action is the same as benzos, but it also has some interesting interactions with nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, which I suspect is what causes the hallucination. It's the only drug that's given me tactile hallucinations, which is a strange sensation. If I had to classify it, I'd put it in the deliriant class, but it has some dissociative properties too. It's strongly synergises with cannabinoids but also with psychedelics. For me, the recommended dose of 7.5mg usually caused some very mild hallucination, but 15 was the dose I usually took. I don't recommend zopiclone though, as it can cause strange episodes of anterograde amnesia the day after. Even when used as a hypnotic. The Z-drugs were originally touted as being like benzos without the addiction potential. It's since been learned that they're exactly like benzos, addiction and all, just with more side effects. Boggles the mind that they're still prescribed at all.

etc-hosts 2y ago

10 year old New Yorker article on the couple who runs Erowid https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/the-trip-planners https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/the-trip-plann...

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shipscode 2y ago

Reminder that one experience with hallucinogenic substances can give you a lifetime of visual or mental abnormalities. Personally I've had visual snow for over a decade from a 5 minute Salvia trip. This means that instead of looking at the color white or black and seeing a clean color, I see a static cloud all over it. I'm one of the lucky ones - most of the people I've known over the years who messed with these substances ended up dead, with persistent mental illness, or brain fog that took years to clear up. You roll the dice on your mental and physical well being every time you ingest a hallucinogen. The characterization of these substances as ones which induce visual hallucinations without mentioning the lifetime of mental health issues they leave people with is dangerous.

diego_sandoval 2y ago
Much subtler, but I had some slight visual effects for a couple of months after trying LSD + weed (this was like 10 years ago). Everytime I looked at the icons in the app list in my phone, it would look like they were dancing just a tiny bit, like they were not completely still.
theshackleford 2y ago
> most of the people I've known over the years who messed with these substances ended up dead, with persistent mental illness, or brain fog that took years to clear up. Before we do anything in life, we should know ourselves, evaluate ourselves and the risks associated with these drugs that you note and make educated decisions as to our level of acceptable risk. I for instance knowing the risks you point out, and how broken my brain is will not be trying any of these, despite all of the only positive interactions from those I know who have who now pressure me to follow in their footsteps. I know that I would be one of the people you note. I still find people’s reports interesting despite this. Sadly I too know people who fit your description, only they consumed copious amounts of alcohol or meth and entered a slow road to destruction from which they were never able to divert themselves. edit I would entertain trying micro dosing of a compound in this family with the guidance of a medical health professional as further data comes to light. These are about the only circumstances in which I would entertain it.
driftnet 2y ago

dmvdoug 2y ago

Reading this thread, Jesus. TIL: HN has a significant following of drug users. No judgment, y’all do y’all, but it was surprising.

bongodongobob 2y ago
Welcome to the world. Waaaaay more people do/have done drugs than you think. In fact, if this is surprising to you, it might mean people don't trust you.
- dmvdoug 2y ago
  Thank you, O wise one. Shall you be my guru?
foobiekr 2y ago
I’d wager almost everyone on HN drinks alcohol regularly.

BizarreByte 2y ago

I've read most of the comments on this post and I can honestly say none of them make me want to try hallucinogenics. It just seems like playing with fire and asking for trouble, especially for those of us with severe anxiety issues.

moscoe 2y ago
Sure sounds like an anxiety/fear response :)
- BizarreByte 2y ago
  Perhaps, but I can normally force myself in overcome fear/anxiety if there's a real benefit to me. When it comes to these drugs? I can only see neutral or negative outcomes.
throwaway314155 2y ago
As someone who has tried hallucinogens and suffers from panic disorder and bipolar disorder- you're correct. Whatever anyone here has to say about it seems deeply biased but for people like me, a bad trip can literally ruin your life. The naivety and over optimism in this thread is astounding. People should understand this before they indicate that their friends just need to "get over it".
- Paracompact 2y ago
  I've never done any drugs, and I have a neutral-to-positive regard for responsible hallucinogen use. Where do you see naivety or overoptimism in this thread? Mostly I just see people sharing their trips.
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fallinditch 2y ago

Auditory hallucinations can be extremely entertaining. I ate a few magic mushrooms I found while walking in the UK. On returning home I went to bed to relax. Someone was playing some music downstairs, I could only faintly hear it, the general ambient sound was louder. My brain elaborated the faint auditory signal to create the most fantastic music I had ever heard, and it filled my head like it was super hi fi. Curiously I was able control the sound effects and elaborate instrumentation at will in real time, like I was some omnipotent engineer/DJ/composer.

ForTheKidz 2y ago
You can learn to do this when not tripping, but it's much easier to pick up when on drugs. I often hear instrumental music that's entirely a hallucination when drifting off the sleep—rock, jazz, pop, I'm not sure how my brain decides. As best I can tell most of it is synthesized in my brain—it's quite different from "playing a track in your brain" from memory.
yard2010 2y ago
When I was a kid I had that same exact feeling every time before I went to sleep - I could hear music in my head and as I fell asleep it became more live and hifi, I could almost see the band playing.

cpeterso 2y ago

Psychonaut Josie Kins publishes YouTube videos with comparisons and visualizations of various psychedelic experiences: https://youtube.com/@josikinz https://youtube.com/@josikinz

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

I feel as if taking LSD makes you temporarily schizophrenic/schizoaffective. i.e. May be fun to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Source: Used to take a lot of it. Been a while. A long, long, while. Used up my quota by the time I was 18.

Synaesthesia 2y ago
Well yes, when it was first studied they called it a "model psychosis" because it gave one temporary psychosis which then wore off.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  The tipoff is that absolute certainty that you get in your thinking. It seems as if "the veil has been lifted," and we suddenly "see the connections." Our mind seems sharper, more analytical, etc. Quite compelling. I remember once, that I wanted to record the "great thoughts" that I had, while tripping, so I kept a notebook nearby, and wrote it all down. Upon coming down, I read the notebook, expecting to be wowed. I was. It was pure gibberish.

gunian 2y ago

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t-3 2y ago

I've never "seen" anything except the lights streaking, but I sure did spend a lot of time looking at the patterns in carpets and marveling at the beauty of trees.

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at_a_remove 2y ago

I have never had the full on hallucination of a specific object where one is not. All I have ever had, visually, is -- and here I struggle to find the words to precisely describe my perception -- that kind of dynamic ornamentation which feels like there is some sort of echo and even the equivalent of audio speaker/microphone "feedback" in my processing of visual data. Here the infamous Bad Trip involved the feedback being so strong that allowing my visual, auditory, or tangible perception to rest on any one thing for more than about half a second to cause that stimulus to bloom into overwhelming amounts of stacked and subdivided repeats of the original stimulus, such that I dare not rest my eyes on any one thing as I, at the same time, must tune my hearing from one group of sounds to another, my attention scampering about to keep the intensity at a more tolerable level.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

Oh, by the way... Just mentioning that you used LSD in your past, may be enough to cause problems today[0] (especially in today's climate). Myself, I don't care. I use my experience to help others, so I'm fairly open about it. [0] https://www.wired.com/2007/04/canadian-psycho/ https://www.wired.com/2007/04/canadian-psycho/

d0mine 2y ago
The slug is misleading: not all psychologists are psychos.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  ...or Canadians ... I think

smnplk 2y ago

I never tried psychedelic drugs, but had a NDE like experience before. People who took heroic doses of psychadelics reported similar experiences as people who had an NDE. What is interesting is that brain activity is severly reduced in these states. So it could be that taking large doses of these drugs could in a way "simulate" the process of dying. I had an out of body experience, floating just below ceiling and seeing myself in bed. Being lighter than a feather. Window was slightly opened and i could feel the outside breeze trying to pull me out, at that point i got scared and put all my strength into falling back in my body. Years later I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. Maybe my oxygen levels dropped significantly and i almost left for good.

lunarcitizen 2y ago

Psilocybin: Form constants, lattices. Colors are indeed vivid, but few hallucinations Some things almost take on a new form, for example stars tend to dance and moss on a tree can swirl its texture like a moving river, and appear mesmerizing. I’ve noticed mushroom trips for me are less visual, more introspective. DMT: I’ve never taken enough to truly break through, but in lower or medium quantities, things tend to move around and form clear patterns and sometimes a new appearance altogether! Some objects can even take on a new form as an entity; I recall a very dynamic tree that put on a show for me my first trip. The last time I used it, I closed my eyes for the duration. The visuals appeared much stronger, and I was even pulled me out of my own head and into a brief “slideshow” I felt the gods put on for me. I recall some beautiful, ancient looking visuals which reminded me of old Egypt or Sumer. Very surreal, and minutes later I was back in true reality like nothing happened.