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Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

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Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really little downside? Anecdotally, I've heard from friends in the jamband scene about friends who did LSD who came back "completely changed , and not in a good way."

I imagine there is a lot of confirmation bias going on with stories like that. Drugs are seen almost universally as taboo, so people want to see the bad things that may happen and when people want to see something, exaggerations tend to happen. I'm not saying your friends weren't changed for the worse, but I do know I've never met someone who was proud to be an LSD user. As such I have to conclude that people choose…

>I do know I've never met someone who was proud to be an LSD user

I am proud to be an LSD user. For a few of my friends who struggle with depression, they take LSD once every few months. They report that it acts as an emotional 'reset.'

Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#22

When I see videos like this, or read other experiences of LSD, I wonder if I'm not missing out on something. LSD, uniquely amongst mainstream recreational drugs, seems to have the promise of an outright transcendental upside, with supposedly little downside. It saddens me that there is no safe and legal way for me to try it.

Is there really little downside? Anecdotally, I've heard from friends in the jamband scene about friends who did LSD who came back "completely changed , and not in a good way."

LSD itself is harmless, nevertheless, try not to jump from a balcon while high on it.

Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#23
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really little downside? Anecdotally, I've heard from friends in the jamband scene about friends who did LSD who came back "completely changed , and not in a good way."

I imagine there is a lot of confirmation bias going on with stories like that. Drugs are seen almost universally as taboo, so people want to see the bad things that may happen and when people want to see something, exaggerations tend to happen. I'm not saying your friends weren't changed for the worse, but I do know I've never met someone who was proud to be an LSD user. As such I have to conclude that people choose…

well I for one am proud to have been an LSD user. It was amazing, but after about half a dozen trips I started to see "the dark side" and stopped doing it. I have no regrets, it's friggin awesome.

Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#24
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really little downside? Anecdotally, I've heard from friends in the jamband scene about friends who did LSD who came back "completely changed , and not in a good way."

LSD itself is harmless, nevertheless, try not to jump from a balcon while high on it.

Sure, which is why erowid recommends having a "trip sitter"

https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_death.shtml

Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#25
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine there is a lot of confirmation bias going on with stories like that. Drugs are seen almost universally as taboo, so people want to see the bad things that may happen and when people want to see something, exaggerations tend to happen. I'm not saying your friends weren't changed for the worse, but I do know I've never met someone who was proud to be an LSD user. As such I have to conclude that people choose…

well I for one am proud to have been an LSD user. It was amazing, but after about half a dozen trips I started to see "the dark side" and stopped doing it. I have no regrets, it's friggin awesome.

May i ask what the "dark side" was like? No agenda, just genuinely curious.

Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#26
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really little downside? Anecdotally, I've heard from friends in the jamband scene about friends who did LSD who came back "completely changed , and not in a good way."

LSD itself is harmless, nevertheless, try not to jump from a balcon while high on it.

LSD isn't heroin but it's certainly not "harmless".

Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#27
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really little downside? Anecdotally, I've heard from friends in the jamband scene about friends who did LSD who came back "completely changed , and not in a good way."

I imagine there is a lot of confirmation bias going on with stories like that. Drugs are seen almost universally as taboo, so people want to see the bad things that may happen and when people want to see something, exaggerations tend to happen. I'm not saying your friends weren't changed for the worse, but I do know I've never met someone who was proud to be an LSD user. As such I have to conclude that people choose…

Depends where you are. If you're in the San Francisco area, you'll see a lot of people display Grateful Dead logos - eg bumper stickers on cars, t-shirts, or even cufflinks (I've met quite a few senior executives who were 'deadheads' at one point, same way you'll run into all sorts of people at a Burning Man event). You can safely assume anyone showing off their Grateful Dead affiliation has tried LSD at least once.

One reason people don't talk about it much is that if someone is arrested and has LSD, the amount in their possession for evidence purposes is based on the weight of the delivery medium, usually blotter paper. So what you might think, that's only a few milligrams per square. Unfortunately the standard dose, which is soaked into the paper, is about 50-100 micrograms. Thanks to the 1986 anti-drug legislation and the 1991 Chapman decision, the weight of the blotter paper was included as part of the 'mixture containing LSD' without regard to the very low dose:carrier weight ratio, so even a modest amount owner for personal use could easily pass the threshold for a presumtive attempt to distribute, attracting a long sentence.

This has been fixed to some extent in the most recent edition of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, but that was only last year, after 20+ years of really jacked-up sentences. Now the sentencing commission assumes a carrier weight of 0.4 milligrams (vs. a base dose of 0.05ug for the chemical itself: https://books.google.com/books?id=TbJlhRCG4NYC&pg=PA164&lpg=...

Here's the current drug quantity table, which sorts people into different groups depending on the amount they possess: http://www.fd.org/docs/select-topics/sentencing-resources/cl...

This still seems an order of magnitude too low to me; a quantity suitable for personal use could put someone away for a couple of years. So it's not the sort of thing that people flaunt openly the way many marijuana devotees do.

Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#28
post #2

Subject (2:50): "I can see everything in color." I knew it! Everything really was black and white back then. Except when you took LSD.

I think if we attempt to look past her poor explanation, she appears to be experiencing something that she has no obvious rational concept to communicate, and so when asked to relate the experience in rational concepts she does know, she has unhelpfully hit on "color". To be fair to her, she does say several times that she cannot explain it. It reminds me of this passage from Lord of Light: http://people.nas.nasa.gov…

Can confirm!

Re: Veteran's Hospital LSD Testing (1956) [video]

#29
post #8

She is pretty terrible at describing whats happening to her.

I actually think she's doing a pretty tremendous job. If you've ever taken LSD, and tried to explain what it's like to someone who hasn't, then you know how difficult it is to describe. Even trying to speak coherently when you're tripping balls is pretty challenging.

Whenever I've tripped (over 50 times in the past 8 years, though not for a while as I moved away from that scene) there was a 3-4 hour period where I would just not talk. At all.
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