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Comment by quickthrowman | Hacker News Reader

> To be frank, I have taken a decent amount of LSD in teenage years and suffer permanent effects from it (all mental stuff like anxiety and paranoia).

What proof do you have that your anxiety and paranoia are caused by your teenage LSD intake? There are plenty of people who have issues with anxiety and paranoia that have never taken drugs.

Consider that 70-90% of schizophrenics are tobacco users, and most started young. This is an astounding rate of smoking for a population subgroup. Did tobacco use cause the schizophrenia or did schizophrenics seek out tobacco?

Plenty of cults operate without drugging their members with LSD, if it was effective I assume it would be more widespread considering mental, sexual, and physical abuse are illegal and used as tools by cult leaders to maintain the cult and its membership. See NXIVM for a recent example. Giving people LSD is far more benign than beating or raping them.

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I had a bad trip and afterward I had anxiety. No anxiety before then.

I don’t have “Anxiety” requiring meds and such—the effects taper off over the years.

Believe me, I know the effects I felt and what it did to me—statistics and external “scientific proof” are not required.

Also, true there are many ways to manipulate people. It’s what you can make them do while they are on LSD that is scary. If you try LSD you will know what I mean—you could walk into a train without hesitation or fear. At least if the other methods are used to manipulate people their underlying emotions, hesitations, and consciousness is intact.

Again, I agree certain drugs should be legalized. And perhaps LSD can be therapeutic in a good way. But, it is also very dangerous stuff—more so than other drugs.

That is my opinion and not based on rigorous research. But I have done a lot of drugs in my day—and I can say if I went back in time I still would have done the natural stuff (mushrooms, cannabis) but never would touch the man-made chemicals.

So, you don’t have proof, you just happened to develop anxiety around the time you started taking LSD, which was as a teenager, a time of notable change.

> If you try LSD you will know what I mean—you could walk into a train without hesitation or fear.

I’ve done LSD a number of times, the most recent was 8 days ago. I’ve never lost the interest in self-preservation while tripping on LSD. You cannot control someone’s mind when they’re on LSD.

Please provide me with a drug that LSD is more dangerous than, keeping in mind that mind control with LSD isn’t possible. I’ve been a heroin addict and severe alcoholic, and I’ve also taken LSD a number of times. Being an addict/alcoholic is so much more dangerous and detrimental than any use of LSD than I find it hard to take you seriously when you make such claims.

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