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LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

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Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#261

Post by SergeyHack »

ghotli wrote: post #86
yid wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also be interested in seeing scans. LSD has been a wonderful experience for me, undertaken roughly once a year, but with beneficial and creative effects that last much longer. I think the OP missed the point-- LSD isn't Aderall, it isn't something that makes you push out more. Rather, it can unlock doors that were perhaps holding you back.

Or perhaps it can open doors that will end up holding you back. There are people who are legitimate acid casualties. I know a guy who now has social anxiety so bad that he rarely leaves his house. This was most certainly not the case before he indulged in copious amounts of LSD and Psilocybin.

Good psychotherapy can heal him. I suggest "Changing Personal History" or more powerful (but harder to learn) "Core Transformation" from NLP.

P.S. There is a huge amount of inefficient and even dangerous psychotherapy schools, and there is quite a lot of inefficient stuff in "NLP", that's why I recommend exactly the above techniques.

Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#262

Post by jackowayed »

d2 wrote: post #222
moultano wrote: post #172

If you have any predisposition towards psychosis, in family history or personally, please avoid LSD. For those firmly rooted, it might be pleasurable or productive to become a little less so. If you're already sometimes on the edge, LSD can push you over. This happened to one of my best friends. Growing up he was crazy, creative, always saw things a little differently, prone to manic behavior. After a year of regular…

Thanks for posting this. I've had two friends profoundly affected by the drug. One is now schizophrenic after taking a large dose and will have a lifelong struggle. Thankfully he is supported by his family and his mom is a psychiatrist. The second took a large dose about a decade ago and after being a very conservative straight guy. Mormon. Straight A's. Didn't take drugs or drink. He immediately dropped out of schoo…

I honestly can't tell if you're presenting the 2nd story as a good thing or a bad thing. I doubt that LSD made your friend transgendered (especially since it's been 10 years).

Given that your friend is transgendered, it's probably a lot better that she figured it out while in school instead of when she was 40 and had a wife and kids, even though dropping out of school and getting one's sex reassignment surgery in Thailand are pretty bad ideas.

Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#263

Post by danenania »

billybob wrote: post #230
danenania wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, all our experiences are subjective and we can't be sure that any of them are authentic. Perception is reality. LSD really makes this fact stand out.

Perception isn't reality. Incorrectly perceiving an oncoming car will prove this. There are perceptions and there are facts. This is true whether the facts are easily knowable or not, and extends as much to the existence of God and other such questions as it does to the sum of two numbers.

"There are perceptions and there are facts."

Do you dispute that facts are also perceptions?

Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#264

Post by blankslate »

Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #171
michaelochurch wrote: post #145

I don't see LSD as a "geek's wonder drug", and I'm skeptical of many of its purported benefits. Are those benefits real? Sure, but so are the risks. Could most of those, for most people, be better achieved (given enough time) through other means, such as yoga and meditation? Probably. To use geek terms, recreational drug use scales very poorly. I know a fair number of people who've used LSD once or a few times and co…

A lot of the benefits that would be hard to achieve through time may be due to the shocking aspect or intensity of some of these drugs. Think of a rite of passage, it stresses people out of their normal thought/reaction/logic structure in order to help form a new one. Usually promises are made or responsibilities given that are then psychologically attached to the event. Given that, how the event is structured and to…

The term "rite of passage" is very fitting.

I've been thinking about this stuff all day, and trying to figure out how to reconcile the potential rewards with the dire risks involved; should I recommend dabbling with this crazy mojo, or should I tell people to leave it the hell alone and not to risk it?

I suspect some of the appeal for those of us who've been down this path, especially when young, was the risk itself; because "we are a generation of men raised by women," and we wanted to test ourselves against every boundary we could find - even the borders of reality itself, if we could find them - and to be tested ourselves.

I suppose the socially accepted alternative is to get as drunk as you can and pick a fight.

Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#265

Post by [deleted] »

d2 wrote: post #222
moultano wrote: post #172

If you have any predisposition towards psychosis, in family history or personally, please avoid LSD. For those firmly rooted, it might be pleasurable or productive to become a little less so. If you're already sometimes on the edge, LSD can push you over. This happened to one of my best friends. Growing up he was crazy, creative, always saw things a little differently, prone to manic behavior. After a year of regular…

Thanks for posting this. I've had two friends profoundly affected by the drug. One is now schizophrenic after taking a large dose and will have a lifelong struggle. Thankfully he is supported by his family and his mom is a psychiatrist. The second took a large dose about a decade ago and after being a very conservative straight guy. Mormon. Straight A's. Didn't take drugs or drink. He immediately dropped out of schoo…

[deleted]

Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#267

Post by [deleted] »

d2 wrote: post #222
moultano wrote: post #172

If you have any predisposition towards psychosis, in family history or personally, please avoid LSD. For those firmly rooted, it might be pleasurable or productive to become a little less so. If you're already sometimes on the edge, LSD can push you over. This happened to one of my best friends. Growing up he was crazy, creative, always saw things a little differently, prone to manic behavior. After a year of regular…

Thanks for posting this. I've had two friends profoundly affected by the drug. One is now schizophrenic after taking a large dose and will have a lifelong struggle. Thankfully he is supported by his family and his mom is a psychiatrist. The second took a large dose about a decade ago and after being a very conservative straight guy. Mormon. Straight A's. Didn't take drugs or drink. He immediately dropped out of schoo…

[deleted]

Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#268

Post by Zanon »

moultano wrote: post #172

If you have any predisposition towards psychosis, in family history or personally, please avoid LSD. For those firmly rooted, it might be pleasurable or productive to become a little less so. If you're already sometimes on the edge, LSD can push you over. This happened to one of my best friends. Growing up he was crazy, creative, always saw things a little differently, prone to manic behavior. After a year of regular…

Yeah, you're not kidding. I took shrooms, A (LSD), E, smoked some marijuana (not much), tried cat a few times and generally partied it up for maybe a decade. At some point I found out that my mother had suffered from schizophrenia, which would explain why I got my money's worth out of marijuana, shrooms and A. I had a pretty hard time working out what was real.

Bad trips were something else. We're talking about seeing everything bad about myself and humanity, which considering the basically selfish nature of a human is quite something. Very black-and-white, good-and-evil thinking, alternating between extremes. Synthesizing sounds, colors, physical things around me. When I read about people going nuts or harming themselves, I'm not surprised. Very black-and-white thinking can lead to some alarming thoughts.

I'd find that if I spent a few hours spiralling on that I could lose the ego totally and emerge with a very objective sense of the world. A world in balance, things as they should be, personal and friends' faults accepted, insights into myself and others. I definitely made some amazing self-discoveries, but at significant risk.

Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#269

Post by mistermann »

andywood wrote: post #188
parfe wrote: post #3

In college I lived with artists. A few of their artist friends come over with big sketch pads, pencils and whatever else artists use. They all drop acid while telling me they can't wait to see their amazing creations once their minds are opened. I went out for a few hours and came back to find them all sitting around the living room. One sketch pad had a long black squiggle on it, the same design you'd make if you fe…

And then, there is Alex Grey. http://www.entheology.org/edoto/anmviewer.asp?a=295&z=4 http://www.google.com/search?q=alex%20grey&tbm=isch

Thanks for that link....I had come across Alex many years ago but the name and link got lost, I was attracted to his work as soon as I saw it.

Re: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

#270

Post by djcapelis »

jackowayed wrote: post #262
d2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this. I've had two friends profoundly affected by the drug. One is now schizophrenic after taking a large dose and will have a lifelong struggle. Thankfully he is supported by his family and his mom is a psychiatrist. The second took a large dose about a decade ago and after being a very conservative straight guy. Mormon. Straight A's. Didn't take drugs or drink. He immediately dropped out of schoo…

I honestly can't tell if you're presenting the 2nd story as a good thing or a bad thing. I doubt that LSD made your friend transgendered (especially since it's been 10 years). Given that your friend is transgendered, it's probably a lot better that she figured it out while in school instead of when she was 40 and had a wife and kids, even though dropping out of school and getting one's sex reassignment surgery in Tha…

One small point of confusion with your otherwise good post: Some of the Thai surgeons are the best in the world for that particular procedure... going there is not typically considered a bad decision.
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