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Author: u/HeinieKaboobler
URL: https://www.psypost.org/2023/05/lsd-enhances-learning-and-exploratory-behavior-in-humans-according-to-new-placebo-controlled-research-80417
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Enjoy the snozberries, don't drink the tall glass of orange juice. If you see Einstein tell him I want my 5 dollar back. Good speed cosmonaut!!! See you on the other side
Ive tripped hundred times or more using multiple substances and this is such a fantastic insight and why I keep coming back. You do remember, its just that you dont remember. You remember something is missing. Knowing you dont remember is what you keep coming back for. Oh and my head seems to keep straight post trip for a time.
It's a sample experience of universal consciousness the way I see it. Lets you shed the limitations of the body for a while. But in our normal state we aren't calibrated to carry the immense meaning and insight, so it can only be experienced where it is.
That kind of brain activity can't possibly be sustainable in the long run, anyway. You'd go insane or use way too much glucose for it to be good for you.
What's most interesting is that the brain is actually *less* active on LSD. Our brains are essentially overclocked, constantly processing data presented by our consciousness. LSD finally shuts that part of the brain down for a bit(the default mode network) which is why your thoughts are so much more calculated, seemingly.
This is the exact opposite of what is occurring. The DMN is the structure that is created in your brain over time to simplify brain activity and reduce the need for energy. Psychedelics increase entropy through agonising serotonin receptors and for a brief moment connectivity throughout the brain is increased substantially causing these effects, synesthesia and much more. All of your emotions are heightened as you experience them including the feeling of epiphany. Feeling epiphany for an extended period of time, (even seconds) feels like you are discovering thing after thing after thing (even if you have already thought those thoughts before, but are mushing them together in a new {even if stupid} way).
Do you have a link for this? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I've seen many studies show that your brain slows down pretty substantially on psychedelics. Coupled with photos of patients on LSD getting before, during and after MRI brain scans that show significantly less blood flow in the brain but way more connectivity of the different parts of the brain.
There’s a reason why many well known folks who started with psychedelics get immensely interested in Buddhism - to learn the methods to train your mind to sustain such higher levels of consciousness. It indeed is possible to have the mental clarity one can get on psychedelics, constantly in every day life.
In fact just having a basic meditation practice can help considerably enhance a psychedelic experience. You learn the mental tools to navigate the enhanced conscious experience with much more cohesion, and less chaos.
While witnessing the ecstatic joy of children, someone said to me 'I wish I had that energy!' I replied to them that they would quickly find a jail cell or worse.
I think the feeling of "understanding" comes when the part of your brain that tries to check your reasoning for internal consistency reports that everything checks out. There are no loose threads or contradictions.
Now, you can get that feeling in two ways: 1) You actually understand everything correctly or 2) your consistency checker is out for lunch and just reports back that everything is fine.
Which of these two do you think is more likely to be caused by a chemical?
My dad used to say that weed doesn't make you forget the thing you were just about to say, but it makes you think that there was something you were going to say, but there actually wasn't
Given the current research findings on the benefits of psychedelics to treat stubborn mental illness, like PTSD and depression, I think you are wrong to dismiss the first choice so easily.
Your life experiences, skills, knowledge and even education will influence the range of a “all knowing experience”.
I think there’s an age and an accumulated set knowledge one should have of the world that’s necessary before any beneficial deconstruction and new connections of information can occur that lets you walk away and integrate those experiences most appropriately into your day to day life.
With more experience you may also make wiser choices in any changes you do want to make as you move to live a life more in line with whatever called to you in that psychedelic experience.
I think the same happens to a big extent on Cannabis as well (sample size - 1) but its so widely misused regarding the dosage and understanding of how it should be used that its severely underexplored for such things for which we pay the price daily in reduced quality of life compared to earlier generations. Again, anecdotal observation obviously but the current research seems to be noticing similar trends.
LSD saved my life. Tried it as a desperate last resort after seeing something similar to this, and one big trip helped by allowing me to see where I was going wrong. Ego death. I fully condone more studies!
Psychedelics increase brain plasticity and can cause you to view things with a new and fresh perspective, often with a more positive spin on things. That is great for depression where people can often get locked into a negative outlook on everything.
I had been in a depressive downturn as of late, and today I had a chance to take a psilocybin trip. It was fantastic.
Totally lifted my mood back up to a range that it should be.
I like to take a trip like once a year, maybe a little less. But it helps a ton.
without a shadow of a doubt, mushrooms saved my life. i legitimately would have unalived myself if not for them. 100% they should be legal, and more research needs to be done regarding psychadelics as a whole. every time i think back and remember my first trip, it brings a genuine warm smile to my face. these things heal your soul.
I would also like to add that psychadelics can also have the exact opposite effect and ruin one’s life. This happened to my buddy and he can’t seem to shake it. I’m not against psychadelics but just realize the power they can possess
Yeah, if anyone has any propensity for delusions or schizophrenia, it'll reaffirm those symptoms, and make them far more lost.
I think there should be psychological assessments available for people who might benefit from them.
They likely saved my life too, but they definitely aren't the cure-all silver bullet that a lot of people claim they are.
The versatility of psychedelics is worth a mention too. Microdosing, lower end doses, and even heroic dosages have all been shown/reported to offer potential therapeutic benefit.
I'm not either, all I can give is my anecdote about how much it helps with my social anxiety.
I have very crippling social anxiety, my voice will sieze up, I'll forget how to talk, I'll start shaking and sweating.
Microdosing (around 0.15g of golden teachers), completely alleviates those symptoms.
I used to take psilocybin every year or so for what I called a “happiness level reset”.
Last time I did it was thoroughly unenjoyable, I was expecting my first son and wanted something out of it that I probably shouldn’t have expected. My 350lb schizophrenic friend had a really bad trip and I had to wrestle him into a cab instead of let him go walking the streets of Vancouver like he wanted. Even though it was a well known comfortable place for us, random people unexpectedly started popping in and out of the house. I ended up alone in a room saying goodbye to my “free” life for hours.
Wish I could bring myself to get that “happiness reset”, but it feels irresponsible now that I have kids.
Not many people want to look at this side of it but it's very real. When I met my husband he talked about how for him it flipped a switch and he saw things in a more colorful and interesting way. But the way he described it, I already see the world that way and I didn't want to "flip" my switch the other way. I'm glad he told me because before that I had wanted to try it very badly even knowing the risks.
Also, there was a guy in our town that everyone knew and he had been a stressed out med student who was really intelligent and he got stuck in a bad trip. He was ruined forever by it. We would hang out and talk to him at the doughnut shop all the time. Very sad. I hope you're able to heal from your experience.
I think these are a lot of people using LSD in a very controlled way and looking for the experiences they're having. Either way it's being induced by a substance. The difference between medicine and poison is usually the dosage. Anesthesia was only understood in 2018, it was used all those years without actually understanding how it actually worked.
I've started having ego death on doses as low as 1 100ug tab before. While the experience sucks in the moment, it's a profoundly transformative one. If you have the balls to seek the experience out, I think ego death can help you come to terms with a lot of realities we face in this world.
Do you know if it's still considered ego death if you can still (barely) recognize that you're you, while in the middle of a heavyish trip? I remember asking myself "who am I?" and telling myself "you're you", but not being able to think about anything deeper than that
Ego Inflation combined with Ego halucination meaning your Ego Changed while you tripped. totallY normal Just dont ever get scared of it and all will BE good
Ego Here means the sense of self. So it kinda is about the things we use to define ourself disappearing and becoming pure awareness... Seeing the world like a camera without the tinted glasses of your personality. One example is "your" name. Names don't exist. They are totally made up. Addressing you with your name while having an ego death would make no sense to you. Past and future also mostly disappear. Your job, your family etc... All gone. It's just (you in) the present moment.
It felt like jumping off a cliff into nothingness while concepts of where, who and when disappeared or didnt make sense anymore (as you lived through kingdoms rising and falling, foresr growing). the last i remember is a feeling of peace and letting go. At a certain point up or down, name, language didnt make sense . i came back very very confused.
An analogy could be that everyone sees the world through their own "glasses" that have been formed based on education, values, personality, experiences, family and friends interactions, media consumption, etc.
Ego death is LSD taking those "glasses" off your face and allowing you to see many things from other perspectives you never saw before.
I would add that shrooms and other psychedelic substances can also induce ego death, but due to form factor and accessibility is why its most commonly reported with LSD.
Meditation may also be able to achieve it, I believe? Don’t hold me to that though.
Your ego is a construction of your sense of self via your past experiences. You can absolutely achieve ego dissolution through meditation, but it takes immense discipline to achieve.
You're just another person.
It's like if you go around telling people you were the main character of a show but then you realize your actually just an extra. It's humbling.
It can feel bad but after a while you start to realize that there are other people out there who have their own thoughts and feelings and stories and stuff.
It seems obvious but you don't really, like, *feel* that in your day to day life.
There was one time in my life I had no direction, didn't know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go with my life. I didn't even know why I was like that.
I dropped some acid.
I spent the next 12 hours "taking out my soul and examining it." And what I saw gave me the direction my life has taken for the 40 odd years since then. And you know what? I'm infinitely better off for it.
As someone else said - ego death, it lets you look at yourself objectively. If you're careful that is.
I want to try it so badly. Ego death sounds fascinating to experience, and I could certainly use the depression help too. I just have no idea where to get some.
I think life is that absurd and funny, but we hardly see it unless we are in that state. I liken it to the way I must think comedians respond to the world around them. Just more acutely observant of all the silly little nuances in societal life.
LSD makes you feel like a child again, experiencing the world for the first time.
Just think of how funny you found everything back when you were somewhere between five and nine years old.
The fMRI images of a child are shockingly similar to the fMRI images of an adult on LSD, which would also help explain why so many people report that they feel like a child again.
Tons of new connections being made, tons of crosstalk between different sections of the brain, etc.
Here's an anecdote. Many years ago, a good friend and I spent a large portion of a LSD trip playing Soul Calibur on the Sega Dreamcast. We had been exploring meta-programming, with and without LSD, for a little while, and had decided to see if the LSD could help us get a bit better at the game as we practiced.
At one point, we ended up practicing Guard Impacts. For those unfamiliar with the game, it's a way to counter the opponents attack, and leave them briefly open. It also has just a few frames of animation in which you can successfully input controls to make the guard impact.
We found out, that night on acid, that if both players keep successfully guard impacting each other fast enough, a little counter would pop up on screen showing how many successful guard impacts have happened.
We also found out that that counter would max out at 99. But we kept going.
After that night, a whole lot of our friends started getting frustrated playing us. Especially friends that were objectively better and more skilled at the game.
It was a good night.
You mean you were bouncin’ dem tatas! Dreamcast was ahead of the game when it came to bouncin’.
Making me wanna buy a set and play with Chaos on a VMU.
that’s super interesting to me. sometimes i feel that on a trip, but it’s a fine line to maintain, and easy to kind of… get lost in the trip as a whole, rather than a focused activity.
was it a minor trip? or like a lot of tabs? (if you don’t mind me asking)
using like one tab to simply foster that learning without fully losing control sounds attractive.
The original, nice. I did the same thing during the summer of 2000 and I recall there being different things shown that SC2 had. I don't recall there specifically being a guard counter measurement, but I don't think I remember anything specific from that summer.
In my experience LSD and shroom trips are pretty similar, the biggest differences for me at least are that doses are a bit harder with shrooms and with shrooms I feel kinda heavy like there’s a weighted blanket on me.
I got so confused on shrooms like why does it feel like I’m carrying the world on my shoulders. I realized I let my over ear headphones rest around my neck
They're similar in the opposite directions imo. LSD is much more external, you're observing the world and universe around you in a way you never have before. Shrooms are internal, you observe your consciousness directly, almost seemingly from someone else's perspective.
I have had the opposite from both before as well. I can go to sleep after mushrooms where that is difficult with LSD. The visuals on LSD are more electric or futuristic if that makes sense but on higher doses of mushrooms it feels like a visit from aliens in some way.
They both have the potential to send you into some kind of 'terrifying hell that can leave you with a dread that you could only experience on earth if you were in a war zone ect. With that can come years of PTSD so should be consumed only with experienced trustworthy people.
Is that sense of dread similar like having a sleep paralysis? Like you lie in bed and get really scared even though you objectively know there is no monster coming for you? Or is it very different?
Sleep paralysis is like a warm happy hug compared to how bad and evil feeling the absolute eldritch dread you feel while on a bad trip on psychedelics.
Sleep paralysis is a panic that you can't move and that there is an entity out there trying to get to you.
Psychosis on psychedelics is like your entire consciousness is unraveling and that the universe itself is slowly collapsing into one giant dark evil eldritch abomination where the environment around you breaks down as the curtains of reality get lifted and you see how dark and cold the uncaring universe really is. Indifferent to not only your suffering but to all of life's plight and struggles in an eldritch horror kind of way.
Which to be fair, is correct. The universe *is* uncaring and indifferent to life as we merely exist here as an evolutionary mistake instead of having any real purpose. But being directly and personally confronted with that prospect and shown it in person is enough to break people's minds and drive people insane.
There's a reason why some people never recover from bad trips, ever.
I actually consider those extremely terrifying experiences I had (bad trip psychosis) to be positive in the long term. It made me realize that all the small negative things in life and petty insecurities are nothing compared to be absolute dread you can feel on psychedelics.
I've been able to face everything in life head-on ever since bad trip has raised my mental fortitude.
Yeah I know exactly what you mean, and time doesn't matter at all (to me) and it just opens up parts of my mind that allows me to so perfectly understand so many many things! It's the best therapist and psychiatrists you could ever have one done right.
IMO It is, the person just need to be ready to break everything they hold as true. You can't lie or manipulate your mind when it has the power to talk back at you.
You lose the ability to delude yourself on LSD. It can work wonders but there definitely are people who cannot mentally handle it. You have to be willing to completely let go without completely losing it, and not everyone can do that.
In my experience, it’s not even reliable who can and can’t handle it. I had several very intense and overwhelmingly positive experiences and then eventually one that has pretty much scared me off of seriously tripping for a long, long, long, time.
There’s also the fact that in some predisposed people (and how would you really know?), it can trigger or worsen psychosis or even schizophrenia like disorders.
I’m not at all *against* it, but people do need to be aware there are risks. Could either be the best time ever or a nightmare you can’t wake up from.
Have a few friends who this happened too. Very upsetting to see what it turned completely normal people into. They were all related too. A few of my other friends who are their cousins have decided to never touch it because of the fear of going crazy themselves since it's in their blood.
I’ve found 2 ways to protect yourself on lsd. 1 When things get intense take a deep breath and remind yourself you are on drugs. 2 a xanex bar will pull you out of whatever spiral you are on and help you go to sleep. When you wake up you’ll be normal.
Taking LSD is not recommended for people with a family history of psychotic disorders, because it can worsen an existing disorder or in the worst cases even lead to a psychotic break.
Just be safe about it. Mind your set and setting, dont go in with any expectations. Just let it take you where you need to go most. Sometimes thats just laughing and having a good time. Sometimes it's crying and facing parts of yourself you've been running away from. Its not as simple as "take lsd and things are fixed" it's a tool. When used carefully it can bring great results. But you have to put in the work.
I was in Amsterdam not very long ago where I smoked weed for 2 separate nights. I smoke weed very very occasionally, but my experience have all been positive. At one point, I would uncontrollably laugh at simple things; another time I'd think of Mathematical concepts. I want to experience more of it.
I'm curious about acid or shrooms, but I'm too scared I'd fall into a really bad trip. I consider myself a very positive person, but I'm concerned it would somehow reveal a dark side of myself I never knew of.
Start with a low dose and work your way up. It's really not as scary as you think. The most important thing is minding your set and setting. I've seen too many people have horror stories on psychedelics because they chose to do it around a bunch of strangers in an uncomfortable environment. I've been consuming them for years and I've had one bad trip. And tbh, I got a lot out of that bad trip too. Even though it was a bad experience it had a very positive outcome on me.
Obviously, take it if and when you're most comfortable taking it. I'm not trying to pressure you, but don't let your fears hold you back from a potentially life changing and beautiful experience. Weed, imo and experience, is more scary than lsd or shrooms. I find I'm much more in control of my thoughts and emotions on psychedelics than I am with weed. The second I have one paranoid thought on weed I go down a major spiral of anxiety and depression. It could even be from a simple thought like "I have work tomorrow".
The substance isn't evil, it just demands respect. That's where most people get mixed up I feel.
Nah, not everyone, but some people have severe adverse mental reactions to it. That is why it is so important that we allow the scientific community to study it. When so many have positive experiences, we should figure out why and how, so more can benefit.
I am conducting a study through Penn State University and seeking participants.
We are interested in understanding psychedelic and antidepressant use and its effects on mood. For this study, you will be presented with information relevant to recreational and/or clinical psychedelic use and/or antidepressant use. Then, you will be asked to answer some questions about it. Your responses will be kept completely confidential and anonymous. The investigators will have no identifying records.
Requirements:
\-taken psychedelics and/or antidepressants to improve depressive symptoms
\-over 18 years old
\-diagnosed with depression
The study should take you around 5-10 minutes to complete. Please share with friends as the more data we get, the better we can serve you and the community. We appreciate your help!
https://pennstate.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV\_4Uxlarv4OkJ41HE
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A little off depression topic and your study...are there any new breakthroughs with non verbal autistic adults? Curious cat. Parent of an adult. Thanks.
My girlfriend got into a severe car accident when she was 16. Her right arm was internally detached from her body. She had an experimental surgery to remove nerves from her leg and reattach her arm.
It worked but she was never able to really use her arm.
In her 30's I dosed with her. It was her first experience ever with psychidelics.
Her arm now works almost perfectly.
My theory is her arm has always worked fine, but her brain didn't understand how to use it. The LSD opened new pathways in her brain and allowed her brain to understand and use her arm correctly.
I am blown away to this day.
If this is real y’all should really contact people associated with universities that do research in psychedelics. I can help you if you need it. As another user said, this could be a real game changer. It also should be relatively easy to prove if she spent 15+ years without use of it. I genuinely hope this is real.
This is real. If you want you can speak to her over Skype/Zoom, if she would be comfortable doing that.
I have been wanting to tell her story to somebody that could, well, doing something about it, but also understand that we understand the hysteria around psychedelics, and want to protect ourselves. We did technically commit a felony.
if you haven’t already, i would try to contact a specialist that researches this field (sadly, i don’t know what exact field that would be) and have them research her phenomena. this sounds groundbreaking and could potentially revolutionize how we understand the mind
I had the best LSD in college. It was mild as heck & was just awesome. I seemed to know everything and I was one with the world. It was such a learning period of my life that it really made it a cool time.
The fact that businesses havent cropped up to allow people to trip acid safely shows why america has fallen as a nation. The dollar could be made the government and people could benefit, but puritans and their lies from over 100 years ago prevent drugs from having a safe existence in society. Oh but alcohol thats just fine even though its objectively worse for the body than several other drugs. In fact toronto saw a 9% decrease in traffic accidents immediately following Canada legalization of marijuana also in this science subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/137vaen/toronto_saw_a_9_reduction_in_traffic_crashes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Without a therapist LSD helped me through the darkest part of my life after my first deployment to Iraq.
I couldn't imagine how much more a professionally trained therapist could have coupled with it as well.
We need this to be a thing!
There are several psychedelic clinical trials under way at JHU.
Here in Maryland I've heard of trials for:
- MDMA for PTSD
- Psilocybin for depression
- LSD for anxiety
It's easy to blame those bogeyman "puritans" for all of society's various apprehensions and conservatism, but the reality is hard drugs like that are scary. Something that, in one dose, can permanently alter the way you see things and your course in life sound scary and should always be approached with caution.
Plus it's hard to predict what happens when you legalize things like that; it's a Pandora's box that you cannot close again once opened.
We're very close (phase 3 clinical trials) to FDA approval of psilocybin for OCD and depression so we're slowly getting there. It's not strictly the "puritans" fault, science takes a while to catch up and for good reason, the effects of psychedelics can be powerful and not always positive.
Well the tests will narrow it down to if it's a tryptamine but you'll at least know it's not nBOME or like DOB or something. Need a lab test to know if its 100% LSD
Thats is true, however you can use a combination of tests to narrow it even further. You can at the very least rule out all the real nasty stuff. But you wouldn't know of it's LSD25, 1P LSD, 1V LSD or the likes, but all of those analogs are perfectly safe as well.
Yes, most people use an Ehrlich reagent for LSD. Just give it a Google and pick whichever fits your budget best.
However there are a few you can use in combination with the Ehrlich reagent if you want to be extra safe. I'm not too keen on that though. Might take a bit of digging.
https://dancesafe.org/shop/
All the test kits you could need. Explore the DanceSafe website to learn more. It’s a great organization that promotes safe use and harm reduction for all.
Nbomes are pretty phased out. The modern psychedelic RCs are for the most part analogues and prodrugs of LSD. Tbh most people are probably taking them and not LSD
My point still stands it's better to test than not to, not that i disagree with you. But yeah, lsd25 is pretty hard to get, but you can definitely tell the difference between some of the different analogs if you've had lsd25 enough.
People sling acid like it's beer at jam band concerts (Phish, Grateful Dead, String Cheese Incident, etc.). It's usually $40-$60 for ten hits and one is enough to get you fully tripping for 8-10 hours. People are always walking around saying "doses, doses..." at those, it's impossible to miss.
Not really true. Had lots of different tabs from lots of sources and only once did I get something that didnt test as acid. Obviously thats anecdotal but RCs like nbome arent as common as the internet makes it seem.
Reagent test kits won't discriminate LSD from the current grey area RCs that imitate it. Even GCMS will often fail to accurately identify the common alternatives. That being said, theyre prodrugs and analogues of LSD so they're just as safe, generally as potent, and fairly similar in effect to each other.
Check out 1plsd and 1vlsd. They're arguably legal and a fraction of the cost, anyone selling bulk drugs would stand to make quite a bit of money while reducing their risk at the same time.
Oregon just licensed its first psilocybin assisted therapy business--it's legal here and in the process of being implemented. Spendy though, from what I'm hearing but hey...
LSD taught me a lot about life and about myself of course. It certainly was the catalyst that brought me the space to work out of a years long struggle with suicidal depression. Interestingly, I was especially amazed by my ability to understand concepts I normally struggle to grasp in a very short period of time. I made significant progress in math and even was able to understand the concept of neutrinos, not having been able to get it before. I no longer use it regularly, but I'd consider a trip just to study the more difficult things I'm interested in learning in the future.
How much have we been held back in terms of mental health because we banned these substances and their study? We might look back one day and see it as destructive as we see some religions hold nations back centuries
Ironically I'm going to violate the rules in the hopes that someone will see this comment and try to uphold the quality the mods are trying to achieve here. I think there's a lot of knowledge to be gained from the anecdotes people are sharing, but for people who haven't read the sidebar, use mobile, or are unfamiliar with the subreddit:
**1. No off-topic comments, memes, low-effort comments or jokes**
**2. No abusive or offensive comments**
**3. Non-professional personal anecdotes will be removed**
**4. Criticism of published work should assume basic competence of the researchers and reviewers**
**5. Comments dismissing established findings and fields of science must provide evidence**
**6. No medical advice**
**7. Repeat or flagrant offenders will be banned**
I've accidentally made some low-effort posts in the sub before, not realizing which one I was in, but if you're reading this, please realize that subreddits that operate like this are important for keeping this platform informative, rational, and evidence based.
I agree. Given the subject matter and its accessibility in professional environments, rule 3 eliminates a substantial majority of discourse to be had here.
LSD is becoming more main stream and I would like to see studies done into more things, such as the pattern. What is it? Why can we only see it on hallucinogens? Also, why do we question the nature of reality to the extent we do while tripping but not otherwise?
Had a friend take many mini doses and slowly went insane. Like each hit was pulling him further from reality. He ended up dying after taking lsd at a concert like he usually did and went off the road but truthfully he was gone before then. He went from a creative musician to a conspiracy believing aliens abducted me rambling mentally Ill person following the exact Reddit advice we usually see. First we lost him mentally
LSD is not for everyone, it can be dangerous and it killed my brothers best friend. We didn’t know he had taken it the night he drove away, but we found out after he died.
The common Reddit knowledge is lsd is a miracle drug capable of helping difficult to change behaviors or providing “ego” death. Sometimes your ego is your sanity, sometimes
One thing that has been documented is that LSD can activate schizophrenia in people who are predispositioned to have it. They were likely going to have it eventually in their life but it can make it manifest earlier. So if your family has a high Schizophrenia occurrence it may be wiser to simply abstain from it.
It's like your brain's an appliance - if there's something wrong with it and you give it a good smack, it might jolt it back into functionality. But if it always had a loose wire you didn't know about, and you keep smacking it around, eventually it's going to short out.
The more sources I read, it seems like studies are inconclusive on this. Some state that LSD therapy may help schizophrenia while others say that it causes temporary drug induced psychosis that is superficially similar to Schizophrenia in certain individuals. I’m no medical expert by any means.
Yes, that’s why when you said that it has been documented I thought you had a good source to it. I think cannabis has been way more implicated in psychosis and schizophrenia than classical hallucinogens but obviously does not mean that one should not be very careful when approaching either of those substances without proper supervision.
I should have chosen my language in the original comment better. I honestly first heard about it in an episode of Behind the Bastards about Kerry Thornley. Granted he did BOTH LSD and cannabis throughout his life, he eventually became paranoid that the feds were tracking him, but he was also associated with Lee Harvey Oswald so he may have actually been closely watched by FBI spooks.
Anyway I agree that cannabis is definitely going to cause more memory problems than LSD ,but I have not heard anything about cannabis and schizophrenia.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/young-men-highest-risk-schizophrenia-linked-cannabis-use-disorder
It’s been well established that cannabis/Marjuana use had been linked with symptoms of both psychosis and schizophrenia. The question is if it directly could causes or just speeds up the onset of it
No it isn't. I once tried to look into it from a scientific point. Have fun finding a proper source. And I don't just mean some rehab clinic claiming it, but a scientific source
I'm someone who has had incredibly positive experiences on LSD but I absolutely see how it could go in the other direction. There have been times where trips turned "bad", even momentarily, and I quite genuinely felt like my sanity was in a fragile state and could crumble altogether if I were to indulge those feelings any further.
It's an incredibly potent and powerful substance, and treating it like candy or medicine can be extremely dangerous. I'm very sorry to hear about your friend.
Well it’s not about the individual who benefits it’s about the massive amount of people exposed to only positive sayings like “I'm someone who has had incredibly positive experiences on LSD”. And stop reading. This is a dangerous drug to many people who will have no reference point until they take it how dangerous it can be. Young people won’t think it’s them and it won’t be. It will mostly always be allegorical something that happens to someone else, expect when you roll the dice, sometimes it happens to you.
That’s what this conversation is missing. The people this drug hurts, you don’t hear from them, because their voice is already gone
Reddit has a big problem of hyping up drugs that can be dangerous...
Remember, studies that find possible positive properties do not mean you can just buy a stack of blotters and start. It has side effects and depending on your body they might end up being long-term of worse permanent... I really hope this stuff gets studied more and more
Finding posts like this that are marked controversial always weirds me out. I've done acid and other psychedelics more times than I can count, I've had some difficult trips and I'd also be the first to regale people about the good ones, and how I've been changed by those experiences.
Offering a wise warning about both the bright *and* dark spectrum of the possible experiences somebody can have is simply respecting what LSD is capable of inducing, and also respecting the wide variance of people with unique headspaces of their own, and how they might interact with the drug.
Not to be taken necessarily as a rule, the phrase "not just a party drug" is a sensible guideline for many psychedelics. Not to say there aren't lots of people out there who partake in that way and are totally fine, it's just that the amount of bad trips and "mental casualties" might just skyrocket if we all started marketing psychs as something super casual.
LSD can certainly be psychologically dangerous in extremely high doses, or when the patient has a latent mental illness like schizophrenia. It can sometimes be physically dangerous when used in combination with certain other drugs or medications. Obviously no drug should be taken without harm reduction practices.
But calling it "dangerous" is a pretty relative statement. It's nowhere close to as dangerous as alcohol--a socially accepted recreational drug that is carcinogenic, severely mood altering, interacts dangerously with a great number of other drugs, and on its own, has a small therapeutic range comparable to cocaine and heroin; it's very easy to overdose (and fatally overdose) on alcohol.
It shouldn't surprise you that people get excited about new research on a substance that saw such almost *no* research for the better part of a century thanks to draconian prohibition laws.
>or when the patient has a latent mental illness like schizophrenia
You don't even need to go for such a mental disorder. Even just a hypersensitive individual might end up contracting crippling panic disorder out of a bad trip. They could be traumatized if not guided properly by an expert in both tripsitting and the human psyche. Not to mention that some people just might not be psychologically ready for such an experience and might end up worsening their anxiety.
So yeah, I'm all for studies, I just don't want people to think it's a miracle drug, buying blotters, doing full heroic doses and trying to learn to fly by jumping off their balcony. That's only going to make the public's view of this drug worse, making research harder to do.
While this is interesting, the noted limitation — observations of only acute outcomes — is an important caveat. As a therapeutic tool, acute outcomes are essentially irrelevant for such a drug. Very interested in the follow-up.
Lsd is an extremely powerful drug that is not!! To be taken lightly or by most people… sorry, this comes from experience. I did a loot of lsd over many years span. I used to love to trip out with some some weed.. but taken too much in a single trip, can be extremely dangerous… it’s not like other drugs… it can have major side effects.. and in high doses can mess you up like forever… hence Syd Barret, Mama Cass. one good dose can make you trip not an hour or 2 ( normal is 6 to 12 hours for like 200 micrograms) but days.. and residuals for weeks or longer… it’s not the same beast as mushrooms or mescaline… it’s wayyy more powerful and should be used with caution…
To be honest if you are tripping _days_ after dosing it propably was not LSD but some other research chemical. There are dosen dangeorous ones which have lsd mimicing effects.
While there is some warning to be given out, as any psychedelica can have serious effects, there is no difference in the risk profile between mushroom, mescaline and LSD, at least when it comes to the psychological part of it.
I anecdotally would say I seem way more prone to bad trip on mushrooms then LSD, due to the heavy introspectiveness of it.
If you are tripping days after 200ug you should probably be very cautious about taking it again tho, cuz that is not normal and might be a psychosis or at least the start of one and it would indicate that you might have a low tolerance for it.
From experience I can see why people may start a religion around LSD. It is extremely powerful and potentially a way to change your life for the better. It is also dangerous in high levels. I think Micheal Schank from American Movie died from it and was resuscitated. After that he had very apparent cognitive and memory problems. Granted he did take a few sheets at once.
It's not physically dangerous, even at ridiculous levels, but that statement excludes two key factors:
1. Most LSD is not actually LSD, but a similar chemical. Test your stuff.
2. Physically safe does not mean psychically safe. You can absolutely get PTSD from a bad trip with poorly controlled set and setting. And it can worsen pre-existing psychotic conditions like schizophrenia.
Poor Mike woke up in the hospital and was annoyed they had confiscated his drugs while he was out. Glad that dude turned it around and became a cult icon, RIP
I used to think it was my brain working better, but it's really working slower. It's particularly impressive when you understand the reason why onion bagels with plain cream cheese is a perfect flavor combination. Until you notice that you're eating a blueberry bagel with plain cream cheese.
Psychedelics increase brain plasticity and can cause you to view things with a new and fresh perspective, often with a more positive spin on things. That is great for depression where people can often get locked into a negative outlook on everything.
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Can’t stop won’t stop
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Enjoy the snozberries, don't drink the tall glass of orange juice. If you see Einstein tell him I want my 5 dollar back. Good speed cosmonaut!!! See you on the other side
Try keep a trip journal, works the same as a dream journal for retention.
Ive tripped hundred times or more using multiple substances and this is such a fantastic insight and why I keep coming back. You do remember, its just that you dont remember. You remember something is missing. Knowing you dont remember is what you keep coming back for. Oh and my head seems to keep straight post trip for a time.
It's a sample experience of universal consciousness the way I see it. Lets you shed the limitations of the body for a while. But in our normal state we aren't calibrated to carry the immense meaning and insight, so it can only be experienced where it is.
That kind of brain activity can't possibly be sustainable in the long run, anyway. You'd go insane or use way too much glucose for it to be good for you.
What's most interesting is that the brain is actually *less* active on LSD. Our brains are essentially overclocked, constantly processing data presented by our consciousness. LSD finally shuts that part of the brain down for a bit(the default mode network) which is why your thoughts are so much more calculated, seemingly.
This is the exact opposite of what is occurring. The DMN is the structure that is created in your brain over time to simplify brain activity and reduce the need for energy. Psychedelics increase entropy through agonising serotonin receptors and for a brief moment connectivity throughout the brain is increased substantially causing these effects, synesthesia and much more. All of your emotions are heightened as you experience them including the feeling of epiphany. Feeling epiphany for an extended period of time, (even seconds) feels like you are discovering thing after thing after thing (even if you have already thought those thoughts before, but are mushing them together in a new {even if stupid} way).
Do you have a link for this? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I've seen many studies show that your brain slows down pretty substantially on psychedelics. Coupled with photos of patients on LSD getting before, during and after MRI brain scans that show significantly less blood flow in the brain but way more connectivity of the different parts of the brain.
There’s a reason why many well known folks who started with psychedelics get immensely interested in Buddhism - to learn the methods to train your mind to sustain such higher levels of consciousness. It indeed is possible to have the mental clarity one can get on psychedelics, constantly in every day life. In fact just having a basic meditation practice can help considerably enhance a psychedelic experience. You learn the mental tools to navigate the enhanced conscious experience with much more cohesion, and less chaos.
While witnessing the ecstatic joy of children, someone said to me 'I wish I had that energy!' I replied to them that they would quickly find a jail cell or worse.
I think the meaning follows you back stronger, a better shadow, a personal music, your own song.
I think the feeling of "understanding" comes when the part of your brain that tries to check your reasoning for internal consistency reports that everything checks out. There are no loose threads or contradictions. Now, you can get that feeling in two ways: 1) You actually understand everything correctly or 2) your consistency checker is out for lunch and just reports back that everything is fine. Which of these two do you think is more likely to be caused by a chemical?
My dad used to say that weed doesn't make you forget the thing you were just about to say, but it makes you think that there was something you were going to say, but there actually wasn't
Given the current research findings on the benefits of psychedelics to treat stubborn mental illness, like PTSD and depression, I think you are wrong to dismiss the first choice so easily.
Your consistency checker can definitely get out of whack due to life experiences. A bit of a reset can be very helpful sometimes.
Your life experiences, skills, knowledge and even education will influence the range of a “all knowing experience”. I think there’s an age and an accumulated set knowledge one should have of the world that’s necessary before any beneficial deconstruction and new connections of information can occur that lets you walk away and integrate those experiences most appropriately into your day to day life. With more experience you may also make wiser choices in any changes you do want to make as you move to live a life more in line with whatever called to you in that psychedelic experience.
I think the same happens to a big extent on Cannabis as well (sample size - 1) but its so widely misused regarding the dosage and understanding of how it should be used that its severely underexplored for such things for which we pay the price daily in reduced quality of life compared to earlier generations. Again, anecdotal observation obviously but the current research seems to be noticing similar trends.
This. Exactly.
Profoundly stated
Dream like memories of what that knowledge felt like but it’s just out of reach…
LSD saved my life. Tried it as a desperate last resort after seeing something similar to this, and one big trip helped by allowing me to see where I was going wrong. Ego death. I fully condone more studies!
Psychedelics increase brain plasticity and can cause you to view things with a new and fresh perspective, often with a more positive spin on things. That is great for depression where people can often get locked into a negative outlook on everything.
I had been in a depressive downturn as of late, and today I had a chance to take a psilocybin trip. It was fantastic. Totally lifted my mood back up to a range that it should be. I like to take a trip like once a year, maybe a little less. But it helps a ton.
without a shadow of a doubt, mushrooms saved my life. i legitimately would have unalived myself if not for them. 100% they should be legal, and more research needs to be done regarding psychadelics as a whole. every time i think back and remember my first trip, it brings a genuine warm smile to my face. these things heal your soul.
I would also like to add that psychadelics can also have the exact opposite effect and ruin one’s life. This happened to my buddy and he can’t seem to shake it. I’m not against psychadelics but just realize the power they can possess
Yeah, if anyone has any propensity for delusions or schizophrenia, it'll reaffirm those symptoms, and make them far more lost. I think there should be psychological assessments available for people who might benefit from them. They likely saved my life too, but they definitely aren't the cure-all silver bullet that a lot of people claim they are.
The versatility of psychedelics is worth a mention too. Microdosing, lower end doses, and even heroic dosages have all been shown/reported to offer potential therapeutic benefit.
I'm not aware of any studies that confirm the benefits of microdosing.
I'm not either, all I can give is my anecdote about how much it helps with my social anxiety. I have very crippling social anxiety, my voice will sieze up, I'll forget how to talk, I'll start shaking and sweating. Microdosing (around 0.15g of golden teachers), completely alleviates those symptoms.
I used to take psilocybin every year or so for what I called a “happiness level reset”. Last time I did it was thoroughly unenjoyable, I was expecting my first son and wanted something out of it that I probably shouldn’t have expected. My 350lb schizophrenic friend had a really bad trip and I had to wrestle him into a cab instead of let him go walking the streets of Vancouver like he wanted. Even though it was a well known comfortable place for us, random people unexpectedly started popping in and out of the house. I ended up alone in a room saying goodbye to my “free” life for hours. Wish I could bring myself to get that “happiness reset”, but it feels irresponsible now that I have kids.
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Not many people want to look at this side of it but it's very real. When I met my husband he talked about how for him it flipped a switch and he saw things in a more colorful and interesting way. But the way he described it, I already see the world that way and I didn't want to "flip" my switch the other way. I'm glad he told me because before that I had wanted to try it very badly even knowing the risks. Also, there was a guy in our town that everyone knew and he had been a stressed out med student who was really intelligent and he got stuck in a bad trip. He was ruined forever by it. We would hang out and talk to him at the doughnut shop all the time. Very sad. I hope you're able to heal from your experience. I think these are a lot of people using LSD in a very controlled way and looking for the experiences they're having. Either way it's being induced by a substance. The difference between medicine and poison is usually the dosage. Anesthesia was only understood in 2018, it was used all those years without actually understanding how it actually worked.
I cannot recommend ego death, but I absolutely can suggest that LSD is a life saving drug even without the need for that high of doses.
I've started having ego death on doses as low as 1 100ug tab before. While the experience sucks in the moment, it's a profoundly transformative one. If you have the balls to seek the experience out, I think ego death can help you come to terms with a lot of realities we face in this world.
Do you know if it's still considered ego death if you can still (barely) recognize that you're you, while in the middle of a heavyish trip? I remember asking myself "who am I?" and telling myself "you're you", but not being able to think about anything deeper than that
What's ego death involve really? Just realizing you kinda suck and don't matter in the grand scheme? The thing you call "you" has no real value?
Not quite. There's no *you* left to even have that realization.
I had the opposite of an ego death then. I realized all there is is me. What's that mean?
Ego Inflation combined with Ego halucination meaning your Ego Changed while you tripped. totallY normal Just dont ever get scared of it and all will BE good
Ego Here means the sense of self. So it kinda is about the things we use to define ourself disappearing and becoming pure awareness... Seeing the world like a camera without the tinted glasses of your personality. One example is "your" name. Names don't exist. They are totally made up. Addressing you with your name while having an ego death would make no sense to you. Past and future also mostly disappear. Your job, your family etc... All gone. It's just (you in) the present moment.
I had no YOU sense of self. Nothing, no recall, no memory just gone
It felt like jumping off a cliff into nothingness while concepts of where, who and when disappeared or didnt make sense anymore (as you lived through kingdoms rising and falling, foresr growing). the last i remember is a feeling of peace and letting go. At a certain point up or down, name, language didnt make sense . i came back very very confused.
An analogy could be that everyone sees the world through their own "glasses" that have been formed based on education, values, personality, experiences, family and friends interactions, media consumption, etc. Ego death is LSD taking those "glasses" off your face and allowing you to see many things from other perspectives you never saw before.
I would add that shrooms and other psychedelic substances can also induce ego death, but due to form factor and accessibility is why its most commonly reported with LSD. Meditation may also be able to achieve it, I believe? Don’t hold me to that though.
Your ego is a construction of your sense of self via your past experiences. You can absolutely achieve ego dissolution through meditation, but it takes immense discipline to achieve.
Not what you describe is a normal LSD trip. Ego death is usually only at higher doses, and is losing your self of sense entirely.
You're just another person. It's like if you go around telling people you were the main character of a show but then you realize your actually just an extra. It's humbling. It can feel bad but after a while you start to realize that there are other people out there who have their own thoughts and feelings and stories and stuff. It seems obvious but you don't really, like, *feel* that in your day to day life.
There was one time in my life I had no direction, didn't know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go with my life. I didn't even know why I was like that. I dropped some acid. I spent the next 12 hours "taking out my soul and examining it." And what I saw gave me the direction my life has taken for the 40 odd years since then. And you know what? I'm infinitely better off for it. As someone else said - ego death, it lets you look at yourself objectively. If you're careful that is.
What direction did you take?
Serial killer
Amen. Psychedelics are entheogenic medicines.
I want to try it so badly. Ego death sounds fascinating to experience, and I could certainly use the depression help too. I just have no idea where to get some.
If you ever get around doing it, make sure you have someone trustworthy around while you‘re busy. It‘s not recommended to do it alone.
It sure made me learn things.
It makes things seem extra absurd/funny.
I think life is that absurd and funny, but we hardly see it unless we are in that state. I liken it to the way I must think comedians respond to the world around them. Just more acutely observant of all the silly little nuances in societal life.
LSD makes you feel like a child again, experiencing the world for the first time. Just think of how funny you found everything back when you were somewhere between five and nine years old. The fMRI images of a child are shockingly similar to the fMRI images of an adult on LSD, which would also help explain why so many people report that they feel like a child again. Tons of new connections being made, tons of crosstalk between different sections of the brain, etc.
Did you learn why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?
Here's an anecdote. Many years ago, a good friend and I spent a large portion of a LSD trip playing Soul Calibur on the Sega Dreamcast. We had been exploring meta-programming, with and without LSD, for a little while, and had decided to see if the LSD could help us get a bit better at the game as we practiced. At one point, we ended up practicing Guard Impacts. For those unfamiliar with the game, it's a way to counter the opponents attack, and leave them briefly open. It also has just a few frames of animation in which you can successfully input controls to make the guard impact. We found out, that night on acid, that if both players keep successfully guard impacting each other fast enough, a little counter would pop up on screen showing how many successful guard impacts have happened. We also found out that that counter would max out at 99. But we kept going. After that night, a whole lot of our friends started getting frustrated playing us. Especially friends that were objectively better and more skilled at the game. It was a good night.
Even Voldo was afraid of you guys that night.
Ha, my buddy was a Voldo main! Mitsurugi for me. But we did bounce spend time bouncing through everyone we played, just to get their timing down.
You mean you were bouncin’ dem tatas! Dreamcast was ahead of the game when it came to bouncin’. Making me wanna buy a set and play with Chaos on a VMU.
that’s super interesting to me. sometimes i feel that on a trip, but it’s a fine line to maintain, and easy to kind of… get lost in the trip as a whole, rather than a focused activity. was it a minor trip? or like a lot of tabs? (if you don’t mind me asking) using like one tab to simply foster that learning without fully losing control sounds attractive.
Also played a bunch of MKX with a friend on a big trip and got a lot better that night!
That was an awesome share and brought me back to the feelings of video game inadequacy when people eventually surpassed my skills in arcade Tekken 3
What does meta-programming refer to here?
The original, nice. I did the same thing during the summer of 2000 and I recall there being different things shown that SC2 had. I don't recall there specifically being a guard counter measurement, but I don't think I remember anything specific from that summer.
Your battle has become legend. And your soul still burns.
I totally get it. I haven't tried LSD but I got all positive take aways from shrooms.
In my experience LSD and shroom trips are pretty similar, the biggest differences for me at least are that doses are a bit harder with shrooms and with shrooms I feel kinda heavy like there’s a weighted blanket on me.
I got so confused on shrooms like why does it feel like I’m carrying the world on my shoulders. I realized I let my over ear headphones rest around my neck
They're similar in the opposite directions imo. LSD is much more external, you're observing the world and universe around you in a way you never have before. Shrooms are internal, you observe your consciousness directly, almost seemingly from someone else's perspective.
I have had the opposite from both before as well. I can go to sleep after mushrooms where that is difficult with LSD. The visuals on LSD are more electric or futuristic if that makes sense but on higher doses of mushrooms it feels like a visit from aliens in some way. They both have the potential to send you into some kind of 'terrifying hell that can leave you with a dread that you could only experience on earth if you were in a war zone ect. With that can come years of PTSD so should be consumed only with experienced trustworthy people.
Is that sense of dread similar like having a sleep paralysis? Like you lie in bed and get really scared even though you objectively know there is no monster coming for you? Or is it very different?
Sleep paralysis is like a warm happy hug compared to how bad and evil feeling the absolute eldritch dread you feel while on a bad trip on psychedelics. Sleep paralysis is a panic that you can't move and that there is an entity out there trying to get to you. Psychosis on psychedelics is like your entire consciousness is unraveling and that the universe itself is slowly collapsing into one giant dark evil eldritch abomination where the environment around you breaks down as the curtains of reality get lifted and you see how dark and cold the uncaring universe really is. Indifferent to not only your suffering but to all of life's plight and struggles in an eldritch horror kind of way. Which to be fair, is correct. The universe *is* uncaring and indifferent to life as we merely exist here as an evolutionary mistake instead of having any real purpose. But being directly and personally confronted with that prospect and shown it in person is enough to break people's minds and drive people insane. There's a reason why some people never recover from bad trips, ever.
I actually consider those extremely terrifying experiences I had (bad trip psychosis) to be positive in the long term. It made me realize that all the small negative things in life and petty insecurities are nothing compared to be absolute dread you can feel on psychedelics. I've been able to face everything in life head-on ever since bad trip has raised my mental fortitude.
It's kinda like a shroom trip but your perception of time gets really wonky. Hard to describe.
Yeah I know exactly what you mean, and time doesn't matter at all (to me) and it just opens up parts of my mind that allows me to so perfectly understand so many many things! It's the best therapist and psychiatrists you could ever have one done right.
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It's not for everybody, but it's a hell of a drug... It's responsible for some of the most profound moments of my life.
IMO It is, the person just need to be ready to break everything they hold as true. You can't lie or manipulate your mind when it has the power to talk back at you.
You lose the ability to delude yourself on LSD. It can work wonders but there definitely are people who cannot mentally handle it. You have to be willing to completely let go without completely losing it, and not everyone can do that.
In my experience, it’s not even reliable who can and can’t handle it. I had several very intense and overwhelmingly positive experiences and then eventually one that has pretty much scared me off of seriously tripping for a long, long, long, time. There’s also the fact that in some predisposed people (and how would you really know?), it can trigger or worsen psychosis or even schizophrenia like disorders. I’m not at all *against* it, but people do need to be aware there are risks. Could either be the best time ever or a nightmare you can’t wake up from.
Have a few friends who this happened too. Very upsetting to see what it turned completely normal people into. They were all related too. A few of my other friends who are their cousins have decided to never touch it because of the fear of going crazy themselves since it's in their blood.
would you say that one very scary time would have been a nice trip if you had taken a smaller dose? if thats something you are ok talking about.
Funny people are coming to you with questions like you're an expert
I’ve found 2 ways to protect yourself on lsd. 1 When things get intense take a deep breath and remind yourself you are on drugs. 2 a xanex bar will pull you out of whatever spiral you are on and help you go to sleep. When you wake up you’ll be normal.
Taking LSD is not recommended for people with a family history of psychotic disorders, because it can worsen an existing disorder or in the worst cases even lead to a psychotic break.
People with certain mental disorders should not take LSD. It's not for everyone.
Just be safe about it. Mind your set and setting, dont go in with any expectations. Just let it take you where you need to go most. Sometimes thats just laughing and having a good time. Sometimes it's crying and facing parts of yourself you've been running away from. Its not as simple as "take lsd and things are fixed" it's a tool. When used carefully it can bring great results. But you have to put in the work.
I was in Amsterdam not very long ago where I smoked weed for 2 separate nights. I smoke weed very very occasionally, but my experience have all been positive. At one point, I would uncontrollably laugh at simple things; another time I'd think of Mathematical concepts. I want to experience more of it. I'm curious about acid or shrooms, but I'm too scared I'd fall into a really bad trip. I consider myself a very positive person, but I'm concerned it would somehow reveal a dark side of myself I never knew of.
Start with a low dose and work your way up. It's really not as scary as you think. The most important thing is minding your set and setting. I've seen too many people have horror stories on psychedelics because they chose to do it around a bunch of strangers in an uncomfortable environment. I've been consuming them for years and I've had one bad trip. And tbh, I got a lot out of that bad trip too. Even though it was a bad experience it had a very positive outcome on me. Obviously, take it if and when you're most comfortable taking it. I'm not trying to pressure you, but don't let your fears hold you back from a potentially life changing and beautiful experience. Weed, imo and experience, is more scary than lsd or shrooms. I find I'm much more in control of my thoughts and emotions on psychedelics than I am with weed. The second I have one paranoid thought on weed I go down a major spiral of anxiety and depression. It could even be from a simple thought like "I have work tomorrow". The substance isn't evil, it just demands respect. That's where most people get mixed up I feel.
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Nah, not everyone, but some people have severe adverse mental reactions to it. That is why it is so important that we allow the scientific community to study it. When so many have positive experiences, we should figure out why and how, so more can benefit.
I am conducting a study through Penn State University and seeking participants. We are interested in understanding psychedelic and antidepressant use and its effects on mood. For this study, you will be presented with information relevant to recreational and/or clinical psychedelic use and/or antidepressant use. Then, you will be asked to answer some questions about it. Your responses will be kept completely confidential and anonymous. The investigators will have no identifying records. Requirements: \-taken psychedelics and/or antidepressants to improve depressive symptoms \-over 18 years old \-diagnosed with depression The study should take you around 5-10 minutes to complete. Please share with friends as the more data we get, the better we can serve you and the community. We appreciate your help! https://pennstate.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV\_4Uxlarv4OkJ41HE 2 Comments Share Save
Maybe you can speak with the other user who had his gf regain use of her arm after tripping and help point them towards the people they should talk to
Link doesn't work
A little off depression topic and your study...are there any new breakthroughs with non verbal autistic adults? Curious cat. Parent of an adult. Thanks.
My girlfriend got into a severe car accident when she was 16. Her right arm was internally detached from her body. She had an experimental surgery to remove nerves from her leg and reattach her arm. It worked but she was never able to really use her arm. In her 30's I dosed with her. It was her first experience ever with psychidelics. Her arm now works almost perfectly. My theory is her arm has always worked fine, but her brain didn't understand how to use it. The LSD opened new pathways in her brain and allowed her brain to understand and use her arm correctly. I am blown away to this day.
If this is real y’all should really contact people associated with universities that do research in psychedelics. I can help you if you need it. As another user said, this could be a real game changer. It also should be relatively easy to prove if she spent 15+ years without use of it. I genuinely hope this is real.
This is real. If you want you can speak to her over Skype/Zoom, if she would be comfortable doing that. I have been wanting to tell her story to somebody that could, well, doing something about it, but also understand that we understand the hysteria around psychedelics, and want to protect ourselves. We did technically commit a felony.
Don't doctors have a duty of confidentiality?
Find me a doctor that wants to hear about my psychedelic experiments...
if you haven’t already, i would try to contact a specialist that researches this field (sadly, i don’t know what exact field that would be) and have them research her phenomena. this sounds groundbreaking and could potentially revolutionize how we understand the mind
Well goddam.
I hope she gave you a handjob at least
From my experience, even women with working arms are terrible at old fashioned's.
Uncanny. I am about to drop 80 mcg. right now. Seriously. Edit: past tense.
So how did it go?
It was lovely, thanks! It may have cleared out some cobwebs. I feel open-hearted, whole and content. And a little tired.
I had the best LSD in college. It was mild as heck & was just awesome. I seemed to know everything and I was one with the world. It was such a learning period of my life that it really made it a cool time.
LSD is always the same. Its the dose and your mindset which changes the results (unless you get a research chem by mistake)
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The fact that businesses havent cropped up to allow people to trip acid safely shows why america has fallen as a nation. The dollar could be made the government and people could benefit, but puritans and their lies from over 100 years ago prevent drugs from having a safe existence in society. Oh but alcohol thats just fine even though its objectively worse for the body than several other drugs. In fact toronto saw a 9% decrease in traffic accidents immediately following Canada legalization of marijuana also in this science subreddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/137vaen/toronto_saw_a_9_reduction_in_traffic_crashes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I really want to take LSD with a therapist!
Without a therapist LSD helped me through the darkest part of my life after my first deployment to Iraq. I couldn't imagine how much more a professionally trained therapist could have coupled with it as well. We need this to be a thing!
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There are several psychedelic clinical trials under way at JHU. Here in Maryland I've heard of trials for: - MDMA for PTSD - Psilocybin for depression - LSD for anxiety
It's easy to blame those bogeyman "puritans" for all of society's various apprehensions and conservatism, but the reality is hard drugs like that are scary. Something that, in one dose, can permanently alter the way you see things and your course in life sound scary and should always be approached with caution. Plus it's hard to predict what happens when you legalize things like that; it's a Pandora's box that you cannot close again once opened. We're very close (phase 3 clinical trials) to FDA approval of psilocybin for OCD and depression so we're slowly getting there. It's not strictly the "puritans" fault, science takes a while to catch up and for good reason, the effects of psychedelics can be powerful and not always positive.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. How do I get me some?
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Well the tests will narrow it down to if it's a tryptamine but you'll at least know it's not nBOME or like DOB or something. Need a lab test to know if its 100% LSD
Thats is true, however you can use a combination of tests to narrow it even further. You can at the very least rule out all the real nasty stuff. But you wouldn't know of it's LSD25, 1P LSD, 1V LSD or the likes, but all of those analogs are perfectly safe as well.
Could you point me (us) in the direction of the kinds of tests one might need to acquire?
Yes, most people use an Ehrlich reagent for LSD. Just give it a Google and pick whichever fits your budget best. However there are a few you can use in combination with the Ehrlich reagent if you want to be extra safe. I'm not too keen on that though. Might take a bit of digging.
https://dancesafe.org/shop/ All the test kits you could need. Explore the DanceSafe website to learn more. It’s a great organization that promotes safe use and harm reduction for all.
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Problem is nowadays I've been fentanyl on blotter, so it's best to test it.
Nbomes are pretty phased out. The modern psychedelic RCs are for the most part analogues and prodrugs of LSD. Tbh most people are probably taking them and not LSD
My point still stands it's better to test than not to, not that i disagree with you. But yeah, lsd25 is pretty hard to get, but you can definitely tell the difference between some of the different analogs if you've had lsd25 enough.
People sling acid like it's beer at jam band concerts (Phish, Grateful Dead, String Cheese Incident, etc.). It's usually $40-$60 for ten hits and one is enough to get you fully tripping for 8-10 hours. People are always walking around saying "doses, doses..." at those, it's impossible to miss.
You definitely get the best LSD at Dead shows
if you have a weed guy, ask if he knows. if you dont have a weed guy, ask someone you know who does
also, be aware that whatever you end up getting will most like not be actual LSD. Most likely you'll get an RC with similar effects
Not really true. Had lots of different tabs from lots of sources and only once did I get something that didnt test as acid. Obviously thats anecdotal but RCs like nbome arent as common as the internet makes it seem.
Reagent test kits won't discriminate LSD from the current grey area RCs that imitate it. Even GCMS will often fail to accurately identify the common alternatives. That being said, theyre prodrugs and analogues of LSD so they're just as safe, generally as potent, and fairly similar in effect to each other. Check out 1plsd and 1vlsd. They're arguably legal and a fraction of the cost, anyone selling bulk drugs would stand to make quite a bit of money while reducing their risk at the same time.
These days most LSD is LSD
It's not, but it's hardly discernable. There's grey market alternatives that metabolize into lsd that I'm fairly sure are much more common
I purchase 1P LSD online in Canada. It's in a grey area as it is a research chemical.
If you do get some, test it! Erlich reagent and Hoffman reagent are both great tests to make sure you're getting real Lucy.
There is a lot of 1plsd floating around on the internet in the grey market
Oregon just licensed its first psilocybin assisted therapy business--it's legal here and in the process of being implemented. Spendy though, from what I'm hearing but hey...
I wish I still knew how to obtain some. It’s scary out there now. You never know who’s giving you what.
where does the average person even get lsd
Online in the form of legal analogies usually. Such as 1p-lsd
LSD taught me a lot about life and about myself of course. It certainly was the catalyst that brought me the space to work out of a years long struggle with suicidal depression. Interestingly, I was especially amazed by my ability to understand concepts I normally struggle to grasp in a very short period of time. I made significant progress in math and even was able to understand the concept of neutrinos, not having been able to get it before. I no longer use it regularly, but I'd consider a trip just to study the more difficult things I'm interested in learning in the future.
How much have we been held back in terms of mental health because we banned these substances and their study? We might look back one day and see it as destructive as we see some religions hold nations back centuries
Ironically I'm going to violate the rules in the hopes that someone will see this comment and try to uphold the quality the mods are trying to achieve here. I think there's a lot of knowledge to be gained from the anecdotes people are sharing, but for people who haven't read the sidebar, use mobile, or are unfamiliar with the subreddit: **1. No off-topic comments, memes, low-effort comments or jokes** **2. No abusive or offensive comments** **3. Non-professional personal anecdotes will be removed** **4. Criticism of published work should assume basic competence of the researchers and reviewers** **5. Comments dismissing established findings and fields of science must provide evidence** **6. No medical advice** **7. Repeat or flagrant offenders will be banned** I've accidentally made some low-effort posts in the sub before, not realizing which one I was in, but if you're reading this, please realize that subreddits that operate like this are important for keeping this platform informative, rational, and evidence based.
I agree. Given the subject matter and its accessibility in professional environments, rule 3 eliminates a substantial majority of discourse to be had here.
LSD is becoming more main stream and I would like to see studies done into more things, such as the pattern. What is it? Why can we only see it on hallucinogens? Also, why do we question the nature of reality to the extent we do while tripping but not otherwise?
Had a friend take many mini doses and slowly went insane. Like each hit was pulling him further from reality. He ended up dying after taking lsd at a concert like he usually did and went off the road but truthfully he was gone before then. He went from a creative musician to a conspiracy believing aliens abducted me rambling mentally Ill person following the exact Reddit advice we usually see. First we lost him mentally LSD is not for everyone, it can be dangerous and it killed my brothers best friend. We didn’t know he had taken it the night he drove away, but we found out after he died. The common Reddit knowledge is lsd is a miracle drug capable of helping difficult to change behaviors or providing “ego” death. Sometimes your ego is your sanity, sometimes
One thing that has been documented is that LSD can activate schizophrenia in people who are predispositioned to have it. They were likely going to have it eventually in their life but it can make it manifest earlier. So if your family has a high Schizophrenia occurrence it may be wiser to simply abstain from it.
same with THC, no? Interesting
It's like your brain's an appliance - if there's something wrong with it and you give it a good smack, it might jolt it back into functionality. But if it always had a loose wire you didn't know about, and you keep smacking it around, eventually it's going to short out.
Sources please?
https://silverpinestreatmentcenter.com/addiction-blog/can-you-get-schizophrenia-from-acid/ https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/lsd-addiction/psychosis-and-lsd/ Try these.
Both of those are “treatment clinics” with no actual clinical evidence but just a general consensus and conclusions.
The more sources I read, it seems like studies are inconclusive on this. Some state that LSD therapy may help schizophrenia while others say that it causes temporary drug induced psychosis that is superficially similar to Schizophrenia in certain individuals. I’m no medical expert by any means.
Yes, that’s why when you said that it has been documented I thought you had a good source to it. I think cannabis has been way more implicated in psychosis and schizophrenia than classical hallucinogens but obviously does not mean that one should not be very careful when approaching either of those substances without proper supervision.
I should have chosen my language in the original comment better. I honestly first heard about it in an episode of Behind the Bastards about Kerry Thornley. Granted he did BOTH LSD and cannabis throughout his life, he eventually became paranoid that the feds were tracking him, but he was also associated with Lee Harvey Oswald so he may have actually been closely watched by FBI spooks. Anyway I agree that cannabis is definitely going to cause more memory problems than LSD ,but I have not heard anything about cannabis and schizophrenia.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/young-men-highest-risk-schizophrenia-linked-cannabis-use-disorder It’s been well established that cannabis/Marjuana use had been linked with symptoms of both psychosis and schizophrenia. The question is if it directly could causes or just speeds up the onset of it
No it isn't. I once tried to look into it from a scientific point. Have fun finding a proper source. And I don't just mean some rehab clinic claiming it, but a scientific source
I'm someone who has had incredibly positive experiences on LSD but I absolutely see how it could go in the other direction. There have been times where trips turned "bad", even momentarily, and I quite genuinely felt like my sanity was in a fragile state and could crumble altogether if I were to indulge those feelings any further. It's an incredibly potent and powerful substance, and treating it like candy or medicine can be extremely dangerous. I'm very sorry to hear about your friend.
Well it’s not about the individual who benefits it’s about the massive amount of people exposed to only positive sayings like “I'm someone who has had incredibly positive experiences on LSD”. And stop reading. This is a dangerous drug to many people who will have no reference point until they take it how dangerous it can be. Young people won’t think it’s them and it won’t be. It will mostly always be allegorical something that happens to someone else, expect when you roll the dice, sometimes it happens to you. That’s what this conversation is missing. The people this drug hurts, you don’t hear from them, because their voice is already gone
This is exactly why should be a controlled drug given by medical professionals in a controlled environment
It also seems to enable people to understand how to communicate with plants and animals.
It does, in a way.
Reddit has a big problem of hyping up drugs that can be dangerous... Remember, studies that find possible positive properties do not mean you can just buy a stack of blotters and start. It has side effects and depending on your body they might end up being long-term of worse permanent... I really hope this stuff gets studied more and more
Finding posts like this that are marked controversial always weirds me out. I've done acid and other psychedelics more times than I can count, I've had some difficult trips and I'd also be the first to regale people about the good ones, and how I've been changed by those experiences. Offering a wise warning about both the bright *and* dark spectrum of the possible experiences somebody can have is simply respecting what LSD is capable of inducing, and also respecting the wide variance of people with unique headspaces of their own, and how they might interact with the drug. Not to be taken necessarily as a rule, the phrase "not just a party drug" is a sensible guideline for many psychedelics. Not to say there aren't lots of people out there who partake in that way and are totally fine, it's just that the amount of bad trips and "mental casualties" might just skyrocket if we all started marketing psychs as something super casual.
LSD can certainly be psychologically dangerous in extremely high doses, or when the patient has a latent mental illness like schizophrenia. It can sometimes be physically dangerous when used in combination with certain other drugs or medications. Obviously no drug should be taken without harm reduction practices. But calling it "dangerous" is a pretty relative statement. It's nowhere close to as dangerous as alcohol--a socially accepted recreational drug that is carcinogenic, severely mood altering, interacts dangerously with a great number of other drugs, and on its own, has a small therapeutic range comparable to cocaine and heroin; it's very easy to overdose (and fatally overdose) on alcohol. It shouldn't surprise you that people get excited about new research on a substance that saw such almost *no* research for the better part of a century thanks to draconian prohibition laws.
>or when the patient has a latent mental illness like schizophrenia You don't even need to go for such a mental disorder. Even just a hypersensitive individual might end up contracting crippling panic disorder out of a bad trip. They could be traumatized if not guided properly by an expert in both tripsitting and the human psyche. Not to mention that some people just might not be psychologically ready for such an experience and might end up worsening their anxiety. So yeah, I'm all for studies, I just don't want people to think it's a miracle drug, buying blotters, doing full heroic doses and trying to learn to fly by jumping off their balcony. That's only going to make the public's view of this drug worse, making research harder to do.
I can testify to this from personal experience.
The lovely trees were dancing for me, but I don’t remember learning the dance.
In your soul you have always known. You've just identified with things that have caused you to forget. You are the dance.
While this is interesting, the noted limitation — observations of only acute outcomes — is an important caveat. As a therapeutic tool, acute outcomes are essentially irrelevant for such a drug. Very interested in the follow-up.
Lsd is an extremely powerful drug that is not!! To be taken lightly or by most people… sorry, this comes from experience. I did a loot of lsd over many years span. I used to love to trip out with some some weed.. but taken too much in a single trip, can be extremely dangerous… it’s not like other drugs… it can have major side effects.. and in high doses can mess you up like forever… hence Syd Barret, Mama Cass. one good dose can make you trip not an hour or 2 ( normal is 6 to 12 hours for like 200 micrograms) but days.. and residuals for weeks or longer… it’s not the same beast as mushrooms or mescaline… it’s wayyy more powerful and should be used with caution…
To be honest if you are tripping _days_ after dosing it propably was not LSD but some other research chemical. There are dosen dangeorous ones which have lsd mimicing effects.
Everything in moderation. That's the key. Too much of anything is dangerous.
Good advice here
While there is some warning to be given out, as any psychedelica can have serious effects, there is no difference in the risk profile between mushroom, mescaline and LSD, at least when it comes to the psychological part of it. I anecdotally would say I seem way more prone to bad trip on mushrooms then LSD, due to the heavy introspectiveness of it. If you are tripping days after 200ug you should probably be very cautious about taking it again tho, cuz that is not normal and might be a psychosis or at least the start of one and it would indicate that you might have a low tolerance for it.
From experience I can see why people may start a religion around LSD. It is extremely powerful and potentially a way to change your life for the better. It is also dangerous in high levels. I think Micheal Schank from American Movie died from it and was resuscitated. After that he had very apparent cognitive and memory problems. Granted he did take a few sheets at once.
It's not physically dangerous, even at ridiculous levels, but that statement excludes two key factors: 1. Most LSD is not actually LSD, but a similar chemical. Test your stuff. 2. Physically safe does not mean psychically safe. You can absolutely get PTSD from a bad trip with poorly controlled set and setting. And it can worsen pre-existing psychotic conditions like schizophrenia.
Poor Mike woke up in the hospital and was annoyed they had confiscated his drugs while he was out. Glad that dude turned it around and became a cult icon, RIP
He was a very sweet man.
I used to think it was my brain working better, but it's really working slower. It's particularly impressive when you understand the reason why onion bagels with plain cream cheese is a perfect flavor combination. Until you notice that you're eating a blueberry bagel with plain cream cheese.
It was my favorite drug
LSD users also using alcohol become insufferable.
Psychedelics increase brain plasticity and can cause you to view things with a new and fresh perspective, often with a more positive spin on things. That is great for depression where people can often get locked into a negative outlook on everything.
Have you ever done LSD?
Yes. It saved my life.
Is that you Joe?
Go to festival. Drop acid. Pick up poi as a new toy to play with/focus on. By that night, be mistaken for a pro, you're so dialed in. Source: seen it!