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Comment by ogogmad | Hacker News Reader

Tangential, but people interested in trying psychedelics should read about HPPD: Hallucinogen-(Induced) Persisting Perception Disorder. It is a potentially debilitating and long-lasting side effect of using hallucinogenic drugs which can cause changes to your vision, or depersonalisation/derealisation disorder at the extreme end. It may increase your side effects from using psychiatric medications in the future.

It is often caused by using LSD for the first time. Drug mixing makes it more likely to happen.

Personally, I'm avoiding psychedelics so that I don't get it. [Edit] The downvoters are shameless and reckless, and potentially responsible for ruining lives. Stop acting like a cult.

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I took LSD with a group of close friends, one of the guys didn't come "down" from the trip. It was a very off putting experience, watching someone you knew 24 hours ago never be the same again. (there was a history of other drugs, but this particular trip was day and night difference)

He was in and out of mental asylums for about 10 years, and recently has just went missing.

I still take drugs when I want to, and don't advocate against them.

My rough advice is to just wait until you are at least 25, follow the safe, sound, setting tips, and always premeditate on what you about to do before you do it.

I had a bad trip, and wasn't the same for three years afterward (in a very specific way that didn't significantly alter the trajectory of my life, thankfully.). Still have echos of it about a decade later. LSD is not a toy and should be respected. I am of the opinion that it would be legal but only when be dispensed by a licensed professional, and it would be required to have a trip sitter. Not that I think that could realistically work, or be practical with where we're at currently.

Maybe but then I took LSD at burning man and had a lovely time wandering around and looking at big dusty art, and I believe such an experience should not be illegal.

To be clear, I don't think such an experience should be illegal.

At Burning Man, there is a place called Sanctuary, which operates essentially a psychedelic ER for people on bad trips. It is run by MAPS, in conjunction with the Rangers, and is located next to Rampart/traditional medical services. The problem with it is that a) it's not well known, and b) if you're having a bad trip, and can't get there/their help, they can't help. So my fantasy solution is that to have trip sitters assigned to people/groups going on an LSD trip to more fully mitigate the problem. Both on and off playa. I do realize this is infeasible since there is no such pool of experienced trip sitters to pull from, plus LSD is still a controlled substance, unfortunately.

It’s called Zendo, and they operate in places besides Burning Man as well. They’re great!

*should be legal

If you don't mind me asking, did you ever take LSD again?

I cannot be convinced that's a common thing.

Here's my pro-hallucinogen argument: if you have persistent, treatment resistant anxiety, there is nothing even close to a heroic dose of your favorite hallucinogen to kill your ego and let you see through the bullshit in your life. You'll have a pretty bad time during the trip, but the clarity it provides is life changing.

Anxiety disorders are highly correlated with serious HPPD. I'm afraid to say that I'm not sure this is responsible advice, given the possible risk.

It would nice to get more data about HPPD to understand its prevalence and risk factors.

[edit] I would agree that hallucinogens might be a good mind medicine, but they should be likened to medications or surgeries when it comes to risk.

> You'll have a pretty bad time during the trip, but the clarity it provides is life changing.

Or it may traumatize you for life. And that "clarity" may just be an illusion, which doesn't mean it can't have a positive effect, but you can't really count on it.

That's the problem with psychedelics, they are unpredictable. The can definitely do miracles, but they can also do great harm, though usually not by the way of toxicity or addiction.

There is a reason we don't use LSD for psychiatric treatment. This is no conspiracy theory, they tried, and failed. I mean, LSD is a product of big pharma, and as you may have guessed, Sandoz really wanted to make a real treatment out of their patented drug, for money.

Maybe with modern science and better experience with psychedelics, we could success where the others have failed, but we are not there yet. That's why I really don't recommend that type of self-medication.

Now, if you want to enjoy a good trip, go for it, there are some risks, but rather low if you do it properly, and many good things in life carry risks.

But suggesting a heroic dose to someone anxious with the implication that it may lead to a bad trip is going against every advice regarding psychedelics, and essentially replicating the very experiments that failed and caused LSD to end up as a schedule 1 drug rather than a recognized treatment. It may work, but that's a huge gamble.

There has been a research gap on LSD (and many other 'drugs') of nearly 50 years. Only in the last decade or so are we actively researching 'uses' again.

I think this is most interesting and potentially promising: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082376/

Disclaimer: While I have big problems with current legal regimes and discourses on 'drugs' (virtually always excluding ethanol and nicotine), I do NOT promote or advocate the use of psychedelics. Most of them (see above) are massively under-researched and many available substances are not at all pure, so there is always a non-trivial danger associated.

>There is a reason we don't use LSD for psychiatric treatment. This is no conspiracy theory, they tried, and failed.

This is wrong. There's a lot of misinformation around the history of psychedelics. The early "clinical trials" were extremely bad science. The short version is the scientist leading the team who first synthesized it was also the person who first attempted to popularize its use, and is pretty much a poster-child for "sex- and drug-crazed hippy". The US had already adopted a heavy anti-drug rhetoric and later LSD was rolled into the war on drugs effort. There was bad-faith-actors on both sides of the fence for a long time.

>Or it may traumatize you for life. [...] But suggesting a heroic dose to someone anxious with the implication that it may lead to a bad trip is going against every advice regarding psychedelics

Completely agreed. The potential for long-term trauma cannot be understated. They shouldn't be played with unsupervised, and the supervisor should be well versed in what happens with a good AND a bad reaction. (I don't like the term 'bad trip'.)

> The short version is the scientist leading the team who first synthesized it was also the person who first attempted to popularize its use, and is pretty much a poster-child for "sex- and drug-crazed hippy".

You seem to have missed some history.

LSD was first synthesized in 1938 by Albert Hoffman and first accidentally ingested in 1943 by the same. He was not a 'sex- and drug-crazed hippy'. You are certainly thinking of Timothy Leary, a clinical psychologist, had a mushroom experience in 1960 and spun that into a bunch of research into uses of psychedelics in psychology. He was eventually fired by Harvard in 1963. He then kinda goes off the rails, eventually he went to and escaped from prison along with many other exploits.

You are correct. That was badly edited on my part: I wrote half a sentence about the first synthesis but forgot to remove it when talking about the popularization.

Nobody has claimed that HPPD is a common thing. It is a rare but debilitating condition.

I did some psychedelics, and my friends did even more. They were always telling me about their truly groundbreaking personal epiphanies, but they never really changed their lives.

Clarity or “the truth” is not always some elevating panacea. Sometimes an essential delusion is what keeps a lot of us moving forward and happy.

Under rated comment. I've seen discussion of this in the past and it's been speculated that there might be a sizable portion of users of these drugs having HPPD to some extent. I can attest personally to effects of HPPD on myself when I was younger:

- It completely destroyed my night vision to the point that I couldn't see at all in low light. No eyes would never 'adapt' because the amount of visual snow (like a TV set to an untuned channel) would overwhelm what I could see

- Massive halos around lights. Night time became dreamy.

- After-image impressions of reading text. So it became a little harder to read.

- It's very easy for me now to experience closed eyed visuals when I'm completely sober. It usually happens when I'm tired.

These effects can happen with all hallucinogens and weed is psychoactive, too. People don't mention these nuances that visual changes may linger after the trip. You can imagine that some people might feel like they've just screwed themselves up forever. I felt that way for about a month before I got used to it. The effects above have mostly gone away now though.

I really do think that these kind of drugs permanently change how you visually perceive the world. So I think your concerns are completely valid. I have heard stories about this exact topic online from people freaking out.

what do you mean by:

> After-image impressions of reading text. So it became a little harder to read.

but imagine the potentially debilitating side effect of living life without expanding your perception.... /s

well, kinda /s.

These are drugs we're talking about. The use of drugs comes with risk. Being able to assess risk versus reward is apart of being an adult and making adult decisions, but I'm glad you've included more information (HPPD) for perusal. I've done my share of psychs but didn't know about this. Fascinating!

I can believe it. There are always the weak minded that'll accidentally rewire their brain in a bad way.

I'd suggest shrooms, which are totally different.

Anyone in my life with HPPD got it as the result of using psychedelics a lot.

There was a poll on the HPPD subreddit* which showed that more than half of people there got it from less than 5 uses of a psychedelic. But people there also seem to mix drugs, like cannabis with LSD.

* Admittedly, the people there have it the worst.

Oh a poll on a subreddit. Please forget my previous question - if you’re using pills on subreddits as a source there’s really no hope of having a serious conversation. You’re going on and on because of some personal bias.

You can get it from one trip. Hell, you can even get it from smoking a joint. I know this sounds like something you might see in a DARE campaign but it is real. It's a very under appreciated risk of psychedelics. If you define HPPD as some level of negative visual changes that interfere with functioning I actually think a lot of people who have used psychedelics would quality to some extent. The question is: how significant are the changes? Are we talking almost imperceptible extra visual white noise or maybe like what I experienced that even made it harder to read and see at night. HPPD does seem to fade but it can take a long time.

My neighbour got it from the very first shroom use.

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