I've never dropped acid.
Net-net, what's best in your (whosoever is reading this) opinion?
1. To never drop acid.
2. To try it out a couple times and never do it again?
3. To add it as part of one's regimen as and when one needs it?
Net-net, what's best in your (whosoever is reading this) opinion?
1. To never drop acid.
2. To try it out a couple times and never do it again?
3. To add it as part of one's regimen as and when one needs it?
Taking LSD is a skill. If you're paying attention and have a modicum of self-awareness you'll get better at it. What does it mean to get better at taking LSD? It's the ability to have your entire being torn inside out but still able to remind yourself that it will end and that you'll be fine. It's analogous to be being caught under water by a big wave: thrash and let fear take over and you're in trouble. If you can relax and let the wave pass you'll be fine.
Other than those with PTSD I don't think anyone needs it. I do it to help with my sobriety and to keep a fresh outlook on the world and myself, but psychedelics are just some of the tools in my toolkit.
It can be fun, it can be terrifying, it can be enlightening, it can be disappointing.
If you try it, good luck! If you don't try it, good luck!
LSD is a pretty safe choice of psychedelic, since very few things are dangerous at the dosages that you take LSD at, so the most likely "I didn't get what I paid for" scenario is you getting some formerly damp paper. If you have a family history of schizophrenia, it might adjust your risk calculus, but otherwise safety isn't a big concern.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as the first mind-altering chemical someone uses, since the 6+ hour trip time can be brutal if midway through you freak out, which is typically caused by being uncomfortable with the idea that your brain can be under the influence. But if you've drank and smoked cannabis, you're probably relatively comfortable with the idea that your mind can be temporarily altered by chemicals.
But on the whole, I think the fundamental novelty of the experience, in that there is absolutely nothing else like it, makes it worthwhile to try out. If you enjoy it, then it can find its spot in a broad collection of recreational activities, and if you don't, then at least you've experienced it, and it'll be done and dusted in a day or so.
I've done acid about 15 times. Was fun, I guess.
Acid makes you think outside the box and really zoom out on life. It feels like you're able to think 100x more in the time you're tripping than sober. I would definitely try it. It can open your mind a bit.
But I think magic mushrooms are overall better as an emotional aid.
I like the metaphor of the mountain ski slope, where our minds have our regular thought patterns/trails that we are used to using and LSD is like a fresh load of snow that let's your mind explore and create new pathways in the slopes! This doesn't mean you will come out in 10 hours as a different person, but you will have had a new perspective and that's always enlightening in some way, however simple it may be.
Taking one tab of 100ug for me is never a full 'tripping' experience where I feel out of control and I think most people can try this and enjoy it without much to worry about. There's minimal mental and visual effects and at the peak for 1-2 hours or so you'll get a taste of what LSD is about. If you have a pleasurable experience then up the dose by 25ug every 4 months until 150 or so to get a better trip where things aren't out of control at the peaks but you have a good time. Then when you're comfortable you can do a yearly trip/meditation session out in nature, the shore, or a nice view. The mental state is really unlike anything else for me and being nonaddictive is so nice as I can just go a whole year without using it with no mental effort. Unlike where with weed where my brain equates it with a dopamine response and I'll get thoughts to go smoke even though I'm no regular user.
That's my 6 cents, hope it was useful to someone.
when something feels really good or really bad, that memory stands out in your brain, and it’s hard to shake, for better or worse, it colours future experiences, shapes the way you interpret and react to them.. One huge negative experience can cast a long shadow - and so can one huge positive experience. A negative and a position don’t cancel one another out, but they each reduce the sum impact of the other - and if your goal is to use one intense emotional experience to change the weight of another, then psychedelics are absolutely a route to making that change.
If you’re trying to cope with trauma, a powerful positive experience on psychedelics can help attenuate your memory of that pain - and if you’re trying to break a habit e.g. a psychological addiction, a negative experience on psychedelics can offset the effects of past positive reinforcement from indulging that addiction. Very similar to forcing yourself to drink until you’re sick, to make you averse to drinking.
Carefully and purposefully seeking out experiences that shape your mind is an important part of being sentient, imo. You don’t have to use drugs to do it, but you’re really missing out if you don’t pursue the practice at all.
Most of what people consider to be “profound” during tripping is just the drug making you think things are profound - in the same way alcohol makes you think it’s reasonable to get angry about an argument about a TV show or cocaine makes you think Uber for cats is the next trillion dollar company. It unquestionably does put you in a state where you may have ideas or thought patterns you won’t have otherwise so there’s a chance that those ideas are actually profound, just like your cocaine-fueled startup idea actually may be a good one. But people ascribe too much meaning and magic to this IMO, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Some people, like myself, have had panic attacks (“bad trips”) on psychedelics. Without going into detail these can be very disconcerting and leave lingering effects like PTSD/anxiety. If you are prone to anxiety I would not partake, and personally I think the benefits don’t outweigh the risk of this at all for most people. At the very least I caution against mixing LSD with cannabis, recommend you have someone with you that isn’t tripping, and ideally have something on hand to treat a panic attack (even if just strong beer/wine/liquor).
A lot of people will say that 1. This only happens if you get something else passed off as acid, or have a bad set and setting 2. You can avoid that if you are smart about where you get it. I think that’s BS because it’s a well documented phenomenon and testing can only easily rule out certain particular things anyway (you can only ever be certain about it if you made it yourself or got it from a regulated research source). Similarly, LSD has the potential to induce psychosis and schizophrenia, which many say is only possible if you were going to develop those conditions anyway (it was already latent) - which is nondisprovable and has no way of being identified. Personally I think these arguments are made from a place of wishful thinking that it can’t happen to them.
On the other hand single trips have been shown/known to help pull people out of depressive states in a moderately durable manner. You may not only process feelings or concepts you haven’t before, but the drug itself may induce a good mood lasting a few days called an “afterglow” which could bring you out of some kind of local optimum. If depression has been negatively impacting your quality of life for a long time I would consider the potential benefits to outweigh the risks enough to try it once.
Also, cluster headaches I believe are uniquely treatable by psychedelics. Those are the only thing that I think justifies adding it to a “regimen” because IIUC those headaches are so uniquely extreme and debilitating.
Only real negative for me was it lasts quite a while.
Some background/trip-reporting-ish: For the last 6 months or so I've been dosing around 25-50 micrograms at a frequency of ~1 per 2 weeks as my "going out" drug, rather than consuming alcohol. Results have been mixed, definitely enjoyed some nights very much but others the effects were similar to pot paranoia. Lately I've decided that this is probably an imprudent frequency and am dropping down to maybe once per quarter, but will likely consume closer to 100ug per a session. The things I like about it are:
* the rush of energy that persists for the first few hours
* the duration of the trip (4-6 hours of effects, which from a bang/buck perspective is a plus in my book)
* the general silly vibe it creates in me.
Things I don't like about it are:
* the high body load (it creates a lot of muscle tension in my body, and I often feel physically worn out the next day like I was working out)
* the occasional paranoia/in-my-headness
* the higher level of emotional vulnerability I feel while at peak trip (good for some social situations, but in the wrong environment kind of sucks).
tl;dr: on the best trips I turn into a silly fae with a lot of curiosity and humor, on the worst trips I turn into an analytical gargoyle perched at the fringes of the function. In all cases I'm kind of run down the next day.