Low Doses of LSD Acutely Increase BDNF Blood Plasma Levels in Healthy Volunteers

It takes about an hour to kick in, and for me, lasts about 6-8 hours.

It feels like it silences any inner critic in me, so I am a lot more free thinking. I have used it several times to overcome getting stuck on a programming problem, but I have to write the solution down because I usually get too distracted while using it to be able to focus enough to implement. The problems it's good at are ones that require abstract thought - for example I was trying to come up with a data structure to accurately represent atomic 3D structures, and then also algorithms to query them and model how they interact, this is where it was most useful for me. I came out with 10ish pages of notes and drawings that were enough to allow "sober" me to code it out and test it.

Physically it makes me sweat a lot, but it's a very strange sweat - not like an exercise sweat - but the sweat feels very clean and pure and is odourless. I often shallow breathe and it suppresses my appetite, so I have to set reminders on my phone to eat, exercise and drink while I'm taking it.

Everything feels like it's clean and my visual resolution goes up a lot more, it's interesting for me to see how much of what we see is perceptual and not limited by the physics of our eye - I can see a lot more clearly and everything feels "cleaner"

I sometimes get visual effects, which I can only describe as absolutely beautiful and mind blowing. It's very hard to describe because I can control them to a certain extent and as a neurotic person I thought that the "loss of control" would freak me out, but it's not like that at all. Last time I used I saw the most beautiful honey-like flowing pattern in the wood grain of the door, which was continuously moving and just utterly beautiful. I also witnessed the curtains rotating (imagine a sine wave going up and down, the curtains looked like they were doing that) and also the pillows on the couch looked like they were breathing.

The bad side is that it stops me from sleeping, so the next day I'm usually a zombie until I can get a good night sleep the following night.

It's an amazing tool, and I love how creative it makes me as a senior programmer, but there's no way I'd do it every day or anything.

The first time you do it, you should definitly do it with someone experienced and in a safe place, where you have no other obligations for that day. If the feeling is getting too intense I find that a citrus drink seems to decrease the intensity (I have no idea if thats a placebo or not)

If anyone has any questions ask away