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Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

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Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#41

Post by tempsy »

dvt wrote: post #4

I have always steered clear of psychedelics. I know some people are super into legalization, but I wager it's a bit irresponsible considering we barely understand their long (and short, for that matter) -term effects. There's some evidence where psychedelics (particularly LSD) may have triggered schizophrenia in some patients[1]. Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case. [1] https:…

Whose fault is it that we "barely understand the long term effects"? Clearly, the war on drugs is the very reason why scientists have been unable to study the benefits (or side effects) of these drugs for so long. There are signs that is finally changing (with the JH research center), but we've lost decades to something we could've understood so much better by now.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#42

Post by systematical »

dvt wrote: post #4

I have always steered clear of psychedelics. I know some people are super into legalization, but I wager it's a bit irresponsible considering we barely understand their long (and short, for that matter) -term effects. There's some evidence where psychedelics (particularly LSD) may have triggered schizophrenia in some patients[1]. Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case. [1] https:…

Having not steered clear of psychedelics like yourself, I do not want any ol' joe walking around on psychedelics. I fear if more prevalent more articles like this will be out there: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/california-mma-fighte...

With that said, charging people with felonies for possession is ridiculous. Fine the individual and confiscate for relatively small amounts of psychedelics.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#44

Post by tempsy »

es-hn wrote: post #24

I’ve used LSD and psilocybin, though not for many years, and have had minor, infrequent, non-disruptive hallucinations. They usually consist of momentary visual deformations of repeating patterns, e.g., tiles on a BART platform will appear to shift or move. These visual variances are a small taste of a full-on trip, in which everything can shift, move, or dance. It’s nice to see others have shared this experience. Re…

Counterpoint: The YouTube engineer who, over the summer, took LSD and went on a stabbing rampage.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/youtube-engin...

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#45

Post by woah »

dvt wrote: post #4

I have always steered clear of psychedelics. I know some people are super into legalization, but I wager it's a bit irresponsible considering we barely understand their long (and short, for that matter) -term effects. There's some evidence where psychedelics (particularly LSD) may have triggered schizophrenia in some patients[1]. Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case. [1] https:…

The harm done by criminal penalties exceeds the harm done by any possible bad effects of using psychedelics by a huge margin. To claim otherwise is intellectually dishonest.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#46

Post by mdhen »

largespoon wrote: post #26
NetOpWibby wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been interested in taking a guided "tour" into DMT but uhh, maybe not now.

I recommend asking yourself if an idiot would do what you are going to do. Do the opposite. I took lsd by myself, with no one home at 5pm. And only while the effects started to take place did I begin researching the effects. I did not know that you can't sleep when on acid for instance. So maybe don't listen to me. I'm also not so hot mentally, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

You essentially did everything wrong. I'm a bit amazed actually.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#47

Post by anon9001 »

chubot wrote: post #8

So I wonder: psychedelics make you more likely to believe woo, and more likely to have certain classes of visual hallucinations. But some people believe woo without taking psychedelics, and some people have those same visual hallucinations without taking psychedelics. Interesting, I believe it and have always wondered about this. I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to the…

> Although I can also conjure some low-level hallucinations when "looking at the back of my eyelids" when falling asleep. I imagine that's pretty normal/common since low light is sort of like sensory deprivation.

Me too, and it's definitely a result of taking psychedelics. I quite like it. I suspect that I could have always made those CEVs appear, but I didn't "know how" until taking psychedelics.

In other words, I have the distinct impression that it's a new skill I learned by psychedelics, but not a forced change caused by the drugs. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it feels like.

When I'm falling asleep, I know if I'm fully relaxed and ready to drift off to sleep when I can just "accept" the visuals without trying to process them. Somehow "letting go" of psychedelic visuals makes them more prominent, and for some reason, that leads to good sleep.

I also notice floaters way more, and I know those were always there, but now I notice them.

And I need way less weed to get as high as I want to be. I think before taking psychedelics, I felt like I was smoking weed to try to achieve something. After achieving whatever that mental goal was on psychedelics, I just don't need to smoke as much anymore.

Weird drugs for sure, but I don't regret taking them.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#48

Post by harry8 »

chubot wrote: post #8

So I wonder: psychedelics make you more likely to believe woo, and more likely to have certain classes of visual hallucinations. But some people believe woo without taking psychedelics, and some people have those same visual hallucinations without taking psychedelics. Interesting, I believe it and have always wondered about this. I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to the…

Aside:

I bet you "a signed dollar" that Le Bron James is not the first verifiably recorded case of an adult posessing a photographic (eidetic) memory. [1]

Without singling out Mr James it is reasonable to very, very skeptical about any strong claims of ability of any famous person outside the field for which they are famous. Hype is a thing pushed by entourages if not the famous person themselves. Mr James' proficiency is basketball is super-human and impressive enough by itself. It is very unlikely that he is also super-human in other dimensions.

But hey, he can submit to testing and put it on a video sharing site. Walk into a room with a table with N (N=80?) objects on it, under a sheet. Remove the sheet for 3 seconds. Put it back. See how many he can list from memory alone. That's actually not definitive for Eidetic (I believe - I'm not the expert) but it is pretty impressive nonetheless. If he can do that ask him for a book and edition that he has read then pick a geniunely random page (eg roll dice) and ask him to read it to you from memory alone. If he did it on the modern Johnny Carson show (where Uri Geller failed abysmally all those years ago, for example) it would be super-impressive, as it would if literally any human did it.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

[2] James Randii at 91 may not be available to advise the fraud busting setup as he did for Mr Carson but at a pinch I bet Penn Jilette, Teller, Derryn Brown or someone of similar advanced deception skills could do the job. How exciting would it be if someone convincingly displayed it?

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#49

Post by hppdthrowaway »

Alright, I'll bite.

I developed HPPD in 2017, and I've been seeing unusual things for a bit over 2 years. The HPPD was triggered by dropping on the order of 1000-1400 micrograms of LSD - and for context a reasonable dose was 50 micrograms. This was way too much, and I fried for a few days. I'm not sure when I came down because HPPD decided to show up and it took me a while to realize that the HPPD was, well, persistent.

The effect is pretty minimal - I see faint geometric shapes in the sky, blank walls, monochromatic screens, such like that. When I look at things like pine trees or complex shapes the patterns vanish. The patterns are actually quite pretty, though it gets irritating at times. It's hardly crippling, but maybe I've gotten lucky.

A few months before I developed HPPD, I also developed tinnitus due to a combination of incredibly severe stress, severe life-long depression, and a doctor prescribed high dosage of Zoloft. I got my ears tested and I have perfect hearing in my left and near perfect in my right, so this isn't auditory damage. In contrast to HPPD, tinnitus can be crippling. Tinnitus is a neurological condition so there's no limit on how bad it can get - and when it gets so loud that you can't hear people over the tin, you get pretty desperate.

With both HPPD and tinnitus, the only real treatment is to learn to not let it get to you. As you become more stressed and anxious the symptoms worsen, so if you fixate on it then you'll quite literally drive yourself mad.

HPPD is vaguely frustrating, but I know that it was my actions that caused this. However I'm livid about the tinnitus because it was most likely a legally prescribed drug with known side effects, and doctors hand out scripts for that stuff like it's candy. It's easy to say "oh no, the psychedelics are going to break our brains!" - but doctors regularly prescribe ototoxic drugs, SSRIs that are _incredibly_ habit forming and aren't effective in the long run.

If you don't want HPPD, maybe take it easy on the drugs, but in the grand scheme of thing there are numerous medical practices that are dramatically more damaging than seeing some mildly weird shit.

Happy to answer questions if that would help anyone here.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#50

Post by 0x8BADF00D »

> A Reddit user helpfully illustrated what his (particularly severe) HPPD looked like (note especially the subtle square grid in left picture):

I have always seen artifacts around light, even before psychedelic use. Ordinary things would have an aura. This is probably due to how visual information is processed by your optic nerve.

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