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LSD: Not Even Once

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Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#141
post #6

Seems like it got the hug of death. Just based on the headline, I disagree. If you have a genetic propensity for schizophrenia or things like that then yes, avoid it. But for the vast majority of LSD users it’s a transformative experience. Drinking alcohol is socially accepted but tens of millions of Americans have some sort of diagnosed use disorder with it and almost 100k people died last year to drinking. Do we sa…

I feel like this kind of whataboutism misses the mark. To be clear - I'm in no way advocating for alcohol, or against its damages to society. But one like the article is about doing something safely, once, in your own place. Dangers of alcohol are generally overdose, long term abuse, and accidents. How many people drink one beer in the safety of their home with trusted people, and have their life turned upside down?

I get where you’re coming from but I’m comparing two drugs here, LSD and Alcohol. One of those communities is underground, mixed use with harder drugs, associated in large part with people who are “less than” in society. There’s no way to get well tested, accurately dosed LSD without performing those tests yourself.

The other community has companies controlling everything, ads playing to all ages permanently, they have full control over their branding and marketing, etc. They also lobby the federal government to keep doing what they do.

If LSD was as legal as alcohol, and as successfully marketed, I think at that point we could draw conclusions as to which drug is more of a detriment to society and peoples’ health.

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#142
post #31

I've done psychedelics upwards of 50 times over the last 5 years and while I think they are dangerous, and that their real purpose and origin may be different than what we are taught, I still think they are valuable drugs. Invaluable even. I just can't conceive of a place in our culture where we could do them like for instance we do adderall or prozac. I know they do studies but to me it seems like an experience that…

What do you mean by, "that their real purpose and origin may be different than what we are taught"

Origins of Datura metel in Asia are mysterious for example

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotes are fine for story telling but have no place in debates.

Why not? I think it was Jeff Bezos who said “When data and anecdotes disagree, it’s usually the anecdote that’s right. Something is wrong with the way you’re measuring your data.” If there’s a debate at all then the data are probably ambiguous or inconclusive, so let’s talk real human experience. Data says LSD is the best thing ever, and here’s one guy who has a terrible experience - is he wrong?

Jeff Bezos in that quote is talking about customer complaints and how they relate to SLOs.

When a customer is complaining about e.g. "your site being broken", there's usually some real problem they're complaining about (though whether it's your problem to solve, or their ISP, or their computer, or their lack of knowledge of how web browsers work, etc. is another question entirely.) But the point being, if your data says the customer can't possibly be experiencing an issue — i.e. if your data disagrees with the customer's own lived experience of having a problem at all, with the data saying that e.g. the customer made a successful purchase, when the customer says they couldn't even load the site — then that should suggest that your tools for measuring your data are broken, or that there's something else equally-fishy going on (like a Man-in-the-Middle.)

None of this applies to medicine/psychology, because medicine never has the sort of data that could even theoretically be used to make a claim like "this is 100% working, and anyone who says they have a problem is lying" — the sort of claim where even a single counterexample would be enough to refute that statement, and therefore where a single counterexample would be valuable.

Rather, the sort of claims made in medicine are Bayesian confidence claims. The sort of (evidenced) claim that gets a treatment approved by the FDA, goes something like: "treatment X tends to be well-tolerated in population Y, while producing a positive outcome of power Z with benefits outweighing the measured side-effects."

No single anecdote (= clinical data) refutes that kind of statement. Instead, you need to compile and quantify a bunch of them (= clinical data meta-analysis) to actually make an argument for or against that claim.

Knowing this, any attempt someone might make to wield a single anecdotal claim to influence the credence you give a statistically-derived Bayesian-confidence statement of the safety and efficacy of a medical treatment — especially where you don't have an intuitive sense for how much data went into the statistics that led to the original statistical claim — should be regarded as an attempt to manipulate you with rhetoric, rather than honest debate praxis.

Which is not to say that the anecdote is false! You can totally believe that the person's lived experience is real, and empathize with them, and try to come up with solutions for their problem; while also taking as hokum any attempt by them to convince you that their anecdote generalizes.

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#144
post #26

I've never tried LSD, but a single dose of magic mushrooms screwed my mind up for years. It took me a very long time to get over the anxiety attacks. I wish I'd never tried it, the experience was terrifying.

Are you sure it didnt have LSD in it? I've done mushrooms many times (in the 90s) and in retrospect, based on differences between trips, I think sometimes I may have had some with acid in them. I don't know how common this practice is / was amongst dealers.

Psychedelic trips with mushrooms and with LSD are very similar, often you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

When there are visuals I find them to be more "organic" on mushrooms and more "sharp/electric" on LSD, but that’s very subjective/suggestible.

But there are "social" trips where there are no visuals, usually when in a group and experiencing the substance together, there I wouldn’t be able to tell LSD and Psylocybin apart.

The feeling of shared being part of a shared consciousness, the cosmic laughter and the fractal thoughts can be the same with both substances.

I'd say there is a psychedelic state of consciousness and many different substances (Psychedelics) will get you there, the experience will differ in nuances, but the general idea is the same. Keep in mind that in this state you are highly suggestible, so the environment will often do a lot more to shape the experience than the exact substance.

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#145

Had a similar experience, but with the much more tame marijuana. It was a 6-hour long panic attack for me. Similar to the author of this, I read for years of how "the only way it could ever harm you is if you were crushed by 100 lbs of it" on sites like Reddit. It wasn't until after getting high that I heard about marijuana amplifying stress tendencies in a minority of people. I've always been high strung, and maybe…

When folks say that marijuana's a safe drug, it's purely in reference to the fact that it wont kill you. 100 shots of tequila in an hour will cause death; 100 tokes of marijuana will not. The problem this results in is an interesting one: marijuana growers are constantly increasing the per gram density of THC/cannabinoids in their plants. The consequence of this is that today's marijuana, compared to that of the '70s…

Also Nocebo effect!

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#146
post #26

I've never tried LSD, but a single dose of magic mushrooms screwed my mind up for years. It took me a very long time to get over the anxiety attacks. I wish I'd never tried it, the experience was terrifying.

Are you sure it didnt have LSD in it? I've done mushrooms many times (in the 90s) and in retrospect, based on differences between trips, I think sometimes I may have had some with acid in them. I don't know how common this practice is / was amongst dealers.

No idea, I got them from a mushrooms shop in Amsterdam, this was about 15 years ago when they could still legally sell the actual shrooms.

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#147

I had the same experience with tinnitus and visual snow, and unfortunately, they are still present. While I had one bad trip, I was okay after that one. However, after waking up from another trip, I simply wasn't the same. The depersonalization was the worst part - it left me in an awful state of mind. It's been so long now that I'm not even sure if it's still there or if it's become the new normal. In fact, I couldn…

LSD is not used in therapy for patients who have a family history (or individual history) of schizophrenia, bipolar, or schizoaffective disorders.

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#148
post #65

Had a somewhat similar experience. Irritating how harmless and positive psychedelics and cannabis are made out to be in popular culture in spite of the issues like these that can cause.

It's a way for people that want to be addicts to rationalize their addictions, and should be mercilessly shamed out of being so popular.

I'm not sure you know much about the subject of which you speak.

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of kratom being dissociative. It feels like hydrocodone to me

I had a very bad experience where I lost myself and came to riding my bike down the road at 2 am in my underwear. It was the Red Maeng Da variety which is more potent. https://www.newsdirect.com/kratom/red-maeng-da-kratom

Wow. Yeah i never had anything like that happen. I used to make a chai tea with green vein that was pretty chill

Re: LSD: Not Even Once

#150
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a genetic propensity for schizophrenia How would you know until something triggers it? Getting permanently mindfucked from LSD is an awful way to discover this.

I feel like people generally know if they have a family history of these things, or maybe that’s just me?

It's certainly not a given that someone would know.
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