I think psychedelics have untapped potential for ADHD. A significant DMT experience I had greatly helped lessen my ADHD symptoms. I've also found that threshold doses of LSD increase my ability to focus as well as provide several other micro-benefits. I also suffered from anablephobia (fear of looking up into the sky), and after a particularly intense 100mcg LSD experience, that pretty much faded away and now I can look up in the sky with impunity.
It is an interesting observation. As a person with ADHD, I also saw that it makes my thoughts calmer (relaxed, dreamy, not rushed) and "flowing" rather than "jumping".
Or in other words, the transitions were smoother and continuous rather than discrete.
Glad it worked for you, but that’s far from typical. Psychedelics resulted in a great time and newfound perspectives, but I’d be reaching to claim it had any kind of lasting effect with my ADHD symptoms.
I've always wanted to try LSD, everything I can find though is either a 'research chemical' that is LSD-like or is of dubious origin.
I've thought about mushrooms/psylobicin instead but I really would like my first 'journey' to be proper old school 60's LSD not your modern china-made 'one molecule off' RC.
A wise old head once told me the drug would find me once I am ready.
Your statement contains the idea that LSD is the pure, platonic psychedelic. In fact, LSD is just as synthetic as the other chemicals you are discounting. It is actually named LSD-25, as Hoffmann took the base molecule from the ergot fungus and methodically tweaked bonding cites around the rings, and LSD-25 just happened to the 25th variant he made. Another one he synthesized is commonly known as ALD-52; it too is available in online markets.
For sure there are dangerous chemicals that are available too, but there are cheap testing kits to let you know if you are dealing with a true lysergamide or one of these more dangerous RCs. If I was to buy LSD, I'd feel far more confident buying it from a reputable online vendor than some dude in the parking lot of a Phish concert.
As for mushrooms, the amount of psilocybin in a gram of mushroom can vary by a factor of 4, so even though it is a natural source, it is still a crap shoot.
> If I was to buy LSD, I'd feel far more confident buying it from a reputable online vendor than some dude in the parking lot of a Phish concert.
How does one find a reputable online vendor? I think a lot of people are scared of the dark web because of how hard it is to avoid being tracked online these days. And even then, how much do you trust the guy who's clearly operating illegally?
Darknet markets have feedback systems like clearnet shops. Depending on where you live you can get your blotters tested in a lab. My takeaway on reading on this subject is that lsd is rather safe to send unnoticed via mail.
The vendors are trustworthy in that they're working hard running a business in a competitive area that depends on the ratings and feedback of customers. I imagine the day to day work is much less shady and much more mundane, akin to running an online shop.
https://dark.fail/ for market and forum links. Dread and Avengers are the forums.
Browse around or ask questions on the forums. Reputation is everything on darknet markets, a reputable seller from your own country is highly unlikely to do you wrong.
Tracking isn't a problem if you're just making one single purchase on the dark web (Tor browser etc ...). Find a vendor with high ratings, order a small amount.
Your only worry is LE but since acid is a tiny piece of paper the chance of that getting caught in the mail is negligible. Use a test kit to verify it's actual lsd.
Don't worry too much about the 60's. What you really want is an aesthetic which overlaps a lot (but isn't identically equal to) the 60's.
Try and find a tree swaying in the wind, or something which moves at similar speeds with difficult to track shapes. Fireworks are also nice.
Your sense of time is wrong. Set yourself a deadman switch. Use your phone to set a 20 min timer, and when it goes off acknowledge it and then reset it.
Stare at a bright spot or a lightbulb for a few seconds then close your eyes. The after image will look like it got chopped up in frequency space.
Do it with a friend.
Give yourself 8 hours. This is a whole day affair.
Ignore the old head and get on the darknet or find an in person broker.
This is good advice. The swaying trees are etched into my memory from events well more than a decade back. Also be watchful not to straddle the line between explorative and habit-forming.
FYI: I know of no person who's formed a habit around LSD (MDMA is another story). I know at least four people who either did or do LSD weekly, and at least two of those weren't microdosing. Anecdotally, LSD is habit forming the way watching sunsets is habit forming.
Fireworks are nice if you are watching an organised display. Fireworks are not nice when your flatmate, tripping on mushrooms, is setting them off anywhere near you.
The Five S's:
Source: Know about where you're getting it so you know you're getting what you think you're getting.
Self: How do you respond to this chemical? What brings you comfort, what brings you stress? What might you want and not want around?
Setting: Where are you? Who is around you?
Set: What is your mindset and intention for this experience?
For "Source"; I recommend something I call the "Wine Test". You don't need to know anything about wine to know if someone else does; get them talking and see if they have lots of details. If your prospective source is paying attention, they'll know what people's experiences have been on what they're supplying. They'll care about it being at least a good thing, if not exactly the right thing. If they're apathetic, or only care about your cash, walk away.
For "Set", I recommend a little intentionality ceremony. Hold the dose in your head, contemplate what you're looking for out of the experience, and say it aloud as one part prayer and one part benediction. A good fallback is "We who are about to do this accept all foreseen and unforeseen consequences."
To avoid / handle bad trips, just start changing things. Change at least one thing, then change at least one other thing, repeat until better. Music has a huge effect, so generally, start by changing that.
Finally, repeat after me:
Cars are hard.
Fire is hot.
If you think you can fly,
start from the ground.
A hippy in motion stays in motion; a hippy at rest stays at rest. Roughly speaking, if you start a trip laying down, you'll keep laying down. If you start it active, you'll stay active. I recommend trying a good stretching routine while it comes up.
Some analogues of LSD have the same effects with slight differences.
1cP-LSD, 1B-LSD, ETH-LAD, to name a few. A Reddit user who has tried these (and other analogues) describes his experience and the differences here: https://www.reddit.com/r/researchchemicals/comments/cjmicx/e...
A low dose of shrooms is a good introduction to the psychedelic experience. Just be careful, because I’ve found that shrooms can give incredibly intense trips if you take just a little too much, with intense time dilation/repeating and can really mess up my perception of reality, while LSD feels consistent and more grounded regardless of dose.
a few years ago I crossed paths with James Fadiman, a researcher who collects volunteer-reported LSD data. He can’t tell people how to obtain LSD for the experiments, but he says that _everyone_ he’s ever worked with had been able to find it - if you know any college kids, or dance music enthusiasts, or libertarian computer geek types, just ask them and they’ll know who to talk to.
Eh, I think it's pretty good that it's only really taken by enthusiasts. It's not really a party drug, IME it's for drug nerds who want to 'expand their mind' etc. If everyone and their dog was taking it on a friday night to have fun, the world would be a much worse place IMO.
As one of those enthusiasts, I don't think that's a situation you really have to worry about. It takes a little while to reconstruct oneself to the point where you'd want another deconstruction. For most people, it's not going to be every day or even every month.
Only once have I run across somebody who wanted to trip twice in the same week, and I think he was just following habits ingrained in him by his previous cocaine problem.
Still, there would be outliers. If availability were higher, I would be worried about the few for which this isn't the case. They might cause some significant harm to their sanity.
As a former enthusiast, I know many people who used it frequently until the "psychic harm" caught up with them. I've had binges where I was doing it every week... sometimes more if I'm at a music festival. Same with mushrooms.
I'm not trying to demonize the drug, just saying that there are definitely people who can and do abuse it, and those people are a not-insignificant portion of users. Just go talk to any OG deadhead if you don't think people used LSD as a party drug.
Oh it definitely happens. I think it would happen less if there was less of a taboo. We vilify drugs similarly, so people who just want to get messed up start to see them as all the same. I've been approached by people at raves who seemed like they would take anything I was willing to sell.
But drugs are so remarkably different from each other. I wish we treated them as such. If there wasn't already the drug <-> party association I don't think a first time LSD user would be very likely to rediscover it.
> They might cause some significant harm to their sanity.
Is that possible?
The drug counselor at my college, when asked by someone in the audience at a presentation he was giving about drug history, which drug would be the least harmful to use if someone wanted to, said immediately, "LSD."
A collective gasp was let out by the crowd, especially considering he'd just said earlier it would take smoking 15 pounds of marijuana in 30 minutes to OD on it. That seemed pretty darn safe.
it's nearly impossible to cause physical harm with lsd, but not difficult to inflict psychological harm, especially in people who would are already vulnerable or predisposed to mental illness
You're probably the kind of person who researches LSD, maybe you were on erowid, you knew how long it would last, what rough dosage to take, what to expect etc etc. You'd know you need to be in a good 'setting' to have a good time.
That is not the way 99% of people drug-taking people approach drugs. They get offered it and they go 'yeah ok!'. Bad trips would happen all the time if it was as popular as weed or booze.
Set and setting play a huge part. I've gone pretty hard, dosage wise, and still felt like the same ol' me after. I've also had a pretty life-changing ego death experience that lasted a few days after a pretty low dose.
Several fellow psychonauts agreed
that a certain friend could reap great benefits from it but after he tried it he was like, "meh". Over the following four years we did it together six times and on the last one he was like "woah, ok, now I respect this chemical". Similar dosage each time.
Be aware that most (more than 50%) of the 100ug tabs are actually not even 50ug according to recent studies, especially the one found in western countries. Usually, "real" 100ug shakes your world.
Funnily enough myself and friends find LSD a great party drug when in low doses. 1/8th of a tab - you stay up longer, feel more energetic, slight barely noticeable buzz. 1/4th - fairly noticeable buzz, slight vividness of vision, excitement, silly laughing, no need for alcohol. Half tab - quite strong change in vividness of vision, many other changes, but still very controllable. But we rarely do that, while full tab or more is left for safe environments instead of partying.
Alcohol hangovers are not getting better with age and I don't enjoy weed at all. LSD in small doses is safe, controllable and, for myself, replaces alcohol. Get 10 tabs - test+try in advance and it will last for a long time when used like this.
Worth keeping in mind that Shulgin, the guy who popularised MDMA, strongly believed it should only be used for therapeutic purposes. In his view, MDMA wasn't a party drug. I can't remember the quote in PiHKAL but he had a mini-rant about hippies "ruining" the drug by taking it recreationally. To be fair, he was right that it led to MDMA being criminalised, but I remember thinking his view was incredibly close-minded.
What is or is not a party drug is really down to the individual (and the party...)
In Aldous Huxley's "Island", he uses guided psychedelic journeys as a rite of passage into adulthood (among many other sensible lifestyle adjustments). That would make the world a much better place if done correctly.
I didn't specify context because it wasn't necessary.
Why don't you warn the readers of the chance of dying on it because you think you can fly? Or acid-flashbacks? They're scary! Giant insects are everywhere. Whhooooooo!
I said "powerful", because it is. The means that it should be approached in a thoughtful and respectful manner, just like other powerful things.
> Why don't you warn the readers of the chance of dying on it because you think you can fly? Or acid-flashbacks?
I'm not disagreeing with your larger point, but I wanted to point out that neither of the "risks" you're talking about are real.
1. The "LSD makes you think you can fly" story originates with the story of Diane Linkletter[1], who jumped to her death from her kitchen window. Her father, Art Linkletter, was a famous radio/TV personality, and he spread the story that she had died due to LSD. But she had a history of depression and there's no evidence she was on LSD when she jumped, let alone evidence she thought she could fly. So it's more likely her death was an ordinary suicide.
2. Acid flashbacks--where LSD is stored somewhere in the body and released unexpectedly at a later date--don't even make sense. LSD is an unstable molecule which decomposes easily, and cannot survive in the human body long-term. HPPD[2] is a real risk of LSD, but doesn't exhibit the symptoms people usually attribute to an LSD flashback. Additionally, flashbacks are a diagnostic criteria for PTSD, acute stress disorder, or OCD[3].
The flashbacks/flying/spider stuff was sarcasm. I was responding to this gem of a comment:
> Eh, I think it's pretty good that it's only really taken by enthusiasts. It's not really a party drug, IME it's for drug nerds who want to 'expand their mind' etc. If everyone and their dog was taking it on a friday night to have fun, the world would be a much worse place IMO.
It completely misrepresented my initial comment:
> It's a pity that such a powerful drug has been demonized.
What is untrue about that statement?
1. LSD is a powerful drug
2. The public has been taught to be afraid of it without understanding it.
3. For those who have experienced moments of "enlightenment" on it, could lead a reasonable person to think that there is value in the drug, they might reasonably concur that it is a pity that a powerful drug that could possibly change millions of lives for the better.
My comment was very simple. The fact that it's demonized mean less uninformed people take LSD.
I don't know why you started ranting about people thinking they can fly etc. If you know anything about the drug you know that a bad experience can involve no physical harm.
My argument is that it's naive to think that the average punter should start casually taking LSD. It's powerful, as you yourself thought out.
I didn't specify context because it wasn't necessary.
Getting flashbacks to that SP episode where the San Fran people smell their own farts with that sentence.
The means that it should be approached in a thoughtful and respectful manner, just like other powerful things.
Cars are incredibly powerful too, and used by the masses. The result is endless suburbia and drivers killing people because they are distracted or reckless or impaired.
Best to keep it to the enthusiasts. It's good that acid has avoided success at all costs.
> Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social — feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the new realities of the expanded consciousness, to serve as road maps for new interior territories which modern science has made accessible.
— Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead
If you want to explore your inner world in a responsible way, a few LSD trips with deliberate set and setting might be educational, but it's much safer and easier to just use hypnosis and/or meditation.
Anybody have some legitimate technical or scientific insights while on LSD? I'm talking along the lines of something like discovering General Relativity or figuring out a solution to a technical problem because you tripped on LSD.
I don't think he was on acid at the moment of the conceptualization of PCR, though- the origin story most people tell involves him driving a car at night to a conference (I guess that doesn't preclude being on LSD).
When I met him in person, I couldn't get him to give a straight answer to any question I asked (I think he was suffering from dementia).
TBH I'd be really surprised if academics were taking LSD in '52-53, although there was definitely a long period where basically anybody could order it in quantity from Sandoz. Of course, from MK-Ultra we know the CIA was giving it to people around that time (including dosing agents), and by the early 60s, universities like Stanford were giving it to research study participants (Ken Kesey, Robert Hunter, etc).
I don't remember where but I heard a story from someone in Crick and Watson's lab who said Crick would casually take LSD like people smoked cigarettes or drank coffee. It's not out of the question that someone in the medicine/chemistry field would have early access to the latest and greatest drugs.
What a shame that a great original thinker like Mullis ends up with dementia. It's crazy that solving aging isn't a #1 international priority.
Not sure if you'd consider it a technical or scientific insight, but I mentioned this on another HN post a while ago:
I was able to visualize four dimensional structures on LSD. I can't see it "instinctually" anymore, but I had a vision of our universe as the 3D surface of a 4D hypersphere, and from that perspective it's subjective whether you consider the entirety of the universe inside of you or outside of you.
After coming down I thought it was probably some nonsense that my brain dreamt up, but I analogized it as a 2D surface of a 3D sphere and it makes complete sense. Drawing a circle on a sphere and calling one side of the line you draw the "inside" is completely subjective—we just tend to call the smaller side inside. If you grow the circle to the greatest meridian of the sphere, which side is now "inside"? Is my brain on the inside and the universe on the outside, or is the universe on the inside and my brain on the outside?
I also kept seeing (when I say "see", it isn't the type of hallucination that appears like a real object in front of you, these all form in my mind's eye but are more vivid than what I can usually visualize) these grid-like, branching "corridors". I'm not sure what the best term for it would be and it may have not been 4 dimensional per se, but I don't think the way it's laid out would work in 3 dimensions. It was like I was floating in an intersection with rows (x), columns (y), and aisles (z) passing through me. A lot of this is hard to visualize when not tripping.
They appeared by themselves but I could manipulate them. Most visualizations are usually part of some train of thought though, they don't appear out of completely nowhere.
This idea overlaps with the idea of shamanic flight which is one of the first 'cognitive technologies' we used. Since the beginning of time there has been people who report to have elevated experiences and have come back from these heights with new information. Vervaeke's lectures on cog sci discusses it in his early episodes.
Honest question: Is there anybody here who regrets taking LSD? Is it really safe or are we dealing with a self-selection problem of the people who would regret taking LSD not being sane enough to bother being on internet forums?
I'm no puritan but it just seems to me like a taking acid is a huge risk to take with one's mental health.
I have tried LSD a few times and had nothing but positive experiences. My wife, however, tried it once and had a bad trip. She was convinced I was going to murder her (obviously everything I did further proved that point) and everything was scary for her. She was afraid of large trees in a kind of "raises my anxiety baseline" kind of way for about a year after the trip. But, the experience wore off, and she's fine now. She believes that it's possible that the experience contributed to her being a more anxious person now, but that's conflated with all kinds of things like marrying me and changing careers and having greater responsibility for those around her.
I don't think it's as big a risk as you seem to think. The people who I have met who have had bad trips did not see lasting side effects, though they did take a while to wear off.
I'm sure someone else will post it, but if this is something you genuinely want to know more about, read "How to Change Your Mind".
I think when taking mind altering drugs you have to be self-confident, otherwise you should avoid them since that/anxiety is what normally leads to a bad trip. Having a benzo, ex. xanax, around as a backup plan can help _sort of_ stop a trip.
Safe is a relative term.. Only one who can make that decision is you, or the cia. Used responsibly in moderation most people will find it a pretty f'n positive aspect of life.
But ya freakouts do happens and acid casualties are most definitely a thing.
From watching others at raves: strongly avoid LSD (or psychedelics) if you have any tendencies towards anxiety/fear/worry. When you meet real demons or your body reconfigures itself, do you go "awesome" or "quivering panic". Do your friends help you, or go awol.
Also generally drug quality is highly variable unless you are very well connected and informed: I've seen young kids take whatever is available and then things go ugly pear shaped (surprise, surprise). Very very bad for health and brain to take what you can get: bad effects can permanently scar your mind and body. At least only take something you have seen someone else take more than 24 hours ago, and take from the exact same batch, as that will filter the very worst stuff out.
You also know the upsides, so there is a risk vs reward calculation.
I have anxiety and it’s not been a major issue for me when using LSD.. But I’m experienced in practicing mindfulness which helps tremendously. The anxiety tends to happen at the beginning of the trip so I remind myself that it’s just the acid and things will be awesome once I ride out the anxiety. For higher doses I usually meditate while the trip comes up.
Not that I haven’t had a bad trip, but when I did it was a result of a clear failure to respect set and setting. Changing the setting put things back on track so I’d characterize it as a “meh” trip rather than a bad one.
Often I experience a massive reduction in anxiety for several weeks following a trip so overall I’d say it’s been very beneficial for me.
That said, many people are indeed absolute idiots about drug use at raves. Save the drugs for when you’re older, they will still be there when your brain is fully developed and your friends are more reliable.
> strongly avoid LSD (or psychedelics) if you have any tendencies towards anxiety/fear/worry
Not true at all in my experience. Psychedelics are currently studied to alleviate phobias and anxieties and seem to be quite successful at it. My experience matches that. Set and setting is the most important thing in this regard.
I am not recommending anything. There is however no reason to "strongly avoid LSD (or psychedelics) if you have any tendencies towards anxiety/fear/worry". It's simply not true.
i have lots of experience with psychedelics. put simply, there are people who can take psychedelics and there are those who cannot. the molecule itself (LSD) is quite safe and non-toxic. I had a fascination from an early age and never had a 'bad trip'. I have had some unpleasant experiences while tripping, but that's because my life at the time was a mess, and the self reflection involved in tripping helped me learn and come to terms with my mistakes. Psychedelic experiences IMO aren't supposed to be all fun and games, but a serious exploration of your inner self. LSD changed me for the better and I consider myself lucky to have been able to experience it. However, I've seen first hand some people that just lose it, even on smallish doses. I did a lot of research before I ever tried it, I was confident, and even in the midst of ego-death I kept my wits about me. If you're curious about whether or not you're 'compatible' with psychedelics, I would recommend experimenting with shrooms first, because the dosage can be easily controlled with little more than a cheap laboratory balance.
In looking at rat studies a couple weeks ago, my napkin math said that it would take a human between 1 and 10 KILOgrams of LSD to cause death. Tartaric salt may be more toxic that the LSD bound to it. Most people would struggle consuming this much before entering a catatonic psychedelic state, and few have access to these quantities: street value would be ~$10,000,000.
There are certainly risks of engaging in dangerous behaviors while intoxicated, and possibly risks of precipitating latent psychotic predispositions, but its really amazing how non-toxic it is in the physical sense.
I took it quite a lot when I was younger, amoung a bunch of other things. I had a lot of fun and never a bad experience but as I've gotten older my anxiety has grown and I wonder if I could handle it now. I've seen a few people have a bad trip and it looks unpleasant, you just don't really know until you try. A less risky idea could be to take a very small dose.
I've taken LSD. I didn't experience anything profound, and i'm not one of those people that thinks everyone has to try it. But I didn't have a negative experience, either. It was fun, and worth trying if it's something that interests you.
At lower doses, you don't have a whole lot to fear, as long as you don't do anything stupid like try to drive.
I’ve certainly had a handful of times where I’ve regretted taking it, but been fortune enough to have benzodiazepines at hand which have always turned the trip completely off for me.
I love this kind of information-packed article, especially on topics that usually yield fluff/opinion/anecdote pieces. The author seems to have written a lot of visionary-related texts and I'm curious to look at these.
