LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug

Let me chime in here with some personal experience. I am pretty much addicted to marijuana in terms of working and enjoying it.

That is, I don't really enjoy programming nearly as much compared to when I am a bit baked. Mind you, I can work.. but it feels like such a chore (not always but I'm talking typically). There are a lot of us like this.

As for LSD.. I have had many revelations while tripping, some I've had to later reject (which is a difficult process) and probably some that I should but have not yet. However, have learned a tremendous amount from whatever it is that is happening while tripping.

I really think most people should trip their face off at least once. What it feels like is that you are tapping into something truer and deeper (when you are tripping, the hallucinating reality is the 'real' reality, that is how you experience it). I don't know what is actually happening, but it can be just absolutely amazing, or absolutely devestating.

Take for instance, having an intellectual idea of the universe; like what it actually is. Some people are fascinated by thinking about these things anyway, others can't be bothered.

Now imagine, instead of having some mathematical and intuitive understanding of the 'building blocks' of the universe.. you were thrown into hyperspace and pulled of your body and shown what the universe is, and what your place in it is. And it's a truly beautiful, elegant thing. And many many people have seen the same thing (it's the universal 'mystical experience').

It's like you were pulled out of the matrix, if just for a bit, and you can actually talk to other people about it, because it happens to lots of people who trip.

Whether it is actually giving insight or not (it could definitely be some idiosyncratic interaction that lsd is having with your brain to make you see things in a certain way); it's at the very least fun, and can have a drastic effect on the way you oritent yourself toward reality.

It can also affect your mental processes--LSD has the effect (at least in me) of continually changing the level of abstraction I am thinking in. You see a situation, then you see the bigger picture of that situation, and on and on until your mind can't even fathom any thing anymore.

You set out to write a bash script to move some files, you suddenly realize an amazingly better way to do bash scripting, which makes you realize some basic change in the OS that would make UI 1000% friendlier, then you realize we shouldn't be using computers at all, then you realize you are here on earth for a purpose and you are wasting your life then your buddy is like--YO you're spacing off and the chain of thinking starts over.

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.

I remember hearing a story, maybe from Ken Kesey, of someone who was given LSD during a medical trial and left with a pen and pad and told to write down how they felt about their mother. The researcher would be back later to get their notes and ask questions.

Research returns and is disappointed to find the pad empty and the subject unwilling to talk about his mother. The reason? He's just seen God and is busy drawing God on the wall.

So he utterly failed at his assigned task, but he had (arguably) achieved something far more important.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Except for me, weed keeps pushing up the levels of abstraction (good for architecting software), but LSD makes things hypperreal. IMO, LSD should only be taken on a desolate beach at night, with people who are dear to you.

> You set out to write a bash script to move some files, you suddenly realize an amazingly better way to do bash scripting, which makes you realize some basic change in the OS that would make UI 1000% friendlier, then you realize we shouldn't be using computers at all, then you realize you are here on earth for a purpose and you are wasting your life then your buddy is like--YO you're spacing off and the chain of thinking starts over.

But let's be honest here: If your goal was to write the script, that sounds horribly unproductive.