LSD: Not Even Once

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People who have a history of mental illness in their family or suspect they may have latent mental illness should be wary of some drugs. Nitrous oxide is dissociative as is kratom. This person's first bad experience with psilocybin should have warned them off LSD, as there are many anecdotal stories of people losing their minds because they were mentally ill to begin with (Syd Barret of Pink Floyd). Millions of people have taken LSD over the last 50 years without serious side effects, Steve Jobs who this person cites, being a good example. I've had good trips and bad, but I'm actually fine. I had a very bad experience with kratom so I don't use it.

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 say “not even once” to alcohol?

It’s all about drug education, we need to make sure people aware of the risks and allow them to do what they do. Otherwise we’ll just keep repeating this war on drugs nonsense.

This is one of two reasons why I decided to not try anything, ever.

1. What if it’s the most amazing thing ever, like ADHD medication, what if you get insanely productive, and you then have to go back to being mediocre?

2. What if it triggers something bad. If I get 10% worse at focusing on a solving a problem?

Nope

Anecdotally, HPPD goes away for most people after some time (months).

The more you focus on it, the less likely it is to go away, as you're training yourself to pay attention to it.