As someone with some experience, and who ran around in counterculture circles where such things were common years ago, I would offer a more tempered view. LSD

As someone with some experience, and who ran around in counterculture circles where such things were common years ago, I would offer a more tempered view. LSD is not chemically addictive and is basically non toxic in that there is no known LD50. On a pure physical level it is very safe. Psychologically the reality is more mixed. If used in moderation with some sense of responsibility, it can be neutral or even beneficial. But "acid casualties" really are a thing. Heavy, irresponsible abuse of LSD and similar drugs can really destroy a person's mind. I've seen people who really abused these things and sort of never came back. While there appears to be no conventional toxicity, it would not surprise me to learn later that there is some potential for harm at the neurological level. If so it might be more a result of trauma or stress due to the effects of abuse than direct toxicity. In any case the abusers I saw did seem mentally impaired, in some cases never recovering. So when someone asks me about these things, I always tell them to do a lot of homework on them and to be very careful. I say the same thing to people who want to play with stimulants or nootropics. In general extreme care and self awareness should be exercised when putting anything into your body, especially if it affects your mind. Most of the people from the psychedelic world who seem to have their heads screwed on seem to advocate their use rarely, under careful setting, with at least one other experienced person that you trust, and a lot of introspection and time in between to integrate the experience. Anecdotally harm seems to occur when recklessness precludes integration, as if not processing the experience leads to some kind of overload and trauma. It may be a form of burnout leading to something like PTSD, which can actually manifest physical brain damage. Look up some of the stuff on child abuse and PTSD victims and neurological effects. On the upside, I have seen dramatic evidence that these things can lead to deep positive breakthroughs. They might also be able to act as "steroids for creativity," allowing extreme feats of lateral integration that are hard to even imagine in ordinary consciousness. These compounds are fascinating and powerful tools that should be studied with care. They should neither be marketed recklessly as enlightenment in a pill or ignorantly banned by fear-mongering reactionaries.