YouTube engineer in critical condition after rampage during bad LSD trip
buzzfeednews.com
buzzfeednews.com
LSD can certainly cause confusion and terror, but it does not generally cause the kind of delirium and rage described by police here.
Also, the reporting in this particular article is pathetic:
> The National Institute on Drug Abuse describes LSD as "one of the most powerful mind-altering chemicals." Some people who use the drug can experience psychosis or paranoia.
NIDA is basically completely discredited at this point on the effects of this class of drugs, having spent the past four decades denying their medical benefits.
Furthermore, the unsourced assertion "Some people who use the drug can experience psychosis or paranoia", obviously relying on the Osmond-era "psychotomimetic" designation, appears to have been a side-effect of LSD being administered in the sterile conditions of a mental institution in the 1950s and early 1960s and not typical of the effects outside that setting.
It is much more likely that this person unwittingly ingested a different compound - and again, that's assuming that these details are even accurate in the first place and not a CYA story by a person trying to justify discharging a firearm at another person.
How is it not indicative? Someone with a graduate degree from Stanford who works at YouTube as an engineer should have above average intelligence? If we believe the prestige of Stanford and Google then world class intelligence. Yet this person couldn’t responsibly take LSD or correctly test it. He lost his mind and went on a violent rampage that hurt a lot of innocent people.
>LSD (along with all other drugs) needs to be made legal and regular so that it becomes easy to obtain a quality-controlled dose.
That’s fine, as long as people pay the price of doing something irresponsibly and innocent people aren’t harmed by it. Do it in a controlled environment with a guide.
This is standard practice for "the news." You're probably keying into it this time because of goodwill towards Google and/or a "one of us" connection to the subject of unflattering news.
Reminds me of all the "LSD" and "MDMA" in Austin TX was likely just shit like 25I and MDPV when I lived there and had a bunch of tripsafe test kits. There was a time where I would go to a rave and wonder if there was a single person actually rolling.
...what? This seems like a very strange assertion to me.
LSD is obviously difficult to test for and is not typically part of a routine test at all.
But even if it is in this case, unless things have rapidly progressed in the past few years, I don't think it's possible to differentiate between different tryptamines (or even different indoles) in the blood, and even detecting them at all is difficult or impossible after 12 hours or so.
Are you saying that it's now possible, from a blood test, to make this differentiation? Do you have a source for this claim?
Unless another dose of the material is provided, I doubt that we'll know what this person ingested.
I guess I thought it was "obvious" in the sense that many people routinely face employment-related drug screenings which don't test for these compounds.
But yeah, reading my comment again, I think you're right that "obviously" is probably overstating things.
I do think that it's probably sadly optimistic to say "I’m pretty sure that we’ll know exactly what he took", unless things have changed since I last studied this material.
I hope that there is a conclusion on which psychoactive compound(s) this person ingested; I apologize for my tone.
It actually surprises me that you can be high as a kite in a hospital and that doctor might not be able to detect what drugs you’re on with blood/puke sample. I don’t actually have anything near medical training!!
Funny - I have the opposite notion: it amazes me that it is possible, with blood alone, to determine what someone has ingested. I tend to think of digestion and metabolism as a sort of one-way hash function, but apparently it's a fairly weak function, and rainbow tables abound.
There are other increasingly common substances like NBOMe which are substitutable for LSD in potency and are also very dangerous. These have been reported sold as LSD on blotting paper and also show up in 'ecstacy' pills.
Going back to the original topic, it does seem unlikely the drug in question was LSD. It is more common for people to experience violent psychosis on drugs like PCP or potentially some ampthetamines. I hope the guy recovers.
First of all, the rule is, when you get a new batch. 1 person tries a small dose to judge the potency and effects. You never give your friends drugs you have not sampled them first. You can poison yourself, but you may not poison others. Now, assuming this was not LSD they would have caught it early. But assuming that it is...
With inexperienced people you need a trip sitter. Someone who is sober (or is much more experienced) and lays out a plan for the trip. Things that you will watch, music to listen to, when it is time to snack. etc. A good trip sitter can change a bad trip to a good trip very easily. And the preparation for this starts even before taking the drug, by telling you some of the bad things you might experience (thought loops, very strong deja-vu, thinking you are trapped in that moment for eternity) and how to deal with the illusion of each one.
Also since LSD lasts to max 12 hours, it is good to amp the dosage slowly and not all at once. Secondly you need to feel comfortable. If you are in an unfamiliar house, and there is let's say a basement that creeps you out while sober. Oh boy... you 're going to have such a bad time thinking about that basement and all the spooky stuff in it when tripping! You must be comfortable and relaxed. Noone told him that? Noone was there to see he was acting strange? They were cool with him downing 4 doses?
Bad trips can turn good very easily. And feel-good moments quickly take a short dark turn when something unexpected happens (like a random ring of the doorbell - no one was expecting). Yes something that small can cause terror. You need somebody to guide you and take your mind of the bad stuff. I think the best explanation I can give is... remember when you were a kid and you were eating your favorite candy. Do you remember how much better it tasted back then than it does today? Also, imagine that as a kid you watched something that really scared you, but today you 'd laugh at non-scary it actually is. That's pretty much how your perception changes + color hallucinations.
If he survives, he's going to end up with at least 20 years in the California prison system.
Every hour he spent studying at Stanford, every tough coding interview he endured at Microsoft and YouTube, and every other sacrifice he made, are now likely irreparably flushed down the toilet.
Yet "we" (ie the HN and related crowd who engage in hero worship) love to wax poetic about Steve Jobs's LSD quote.
That middle zone you describe where you are stuck between the two worlds are probably the worst.
Also please note this we are talking about a world renowned expert in LSD psychotherapy, who has 5 decades of experience in the matter. How many trips did you guide?
Submit a post about how someone goes on a violent rampage after dosing LSD irresponsibly and it gets flagged then downvoted.
Considering his employer and education (a lot of people are arguing it’s relevance) he could have easily been a HN community member. It’s like readers only focus on the positives of psychedelics and never want to discuss both sides.
The trial will be interesting here. I think his best defense is that he had no clue what a safe dose was and had 0 control over his own actions while he did what he did.
More info here: https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_LSD.shtml