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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

This is weird. I can hardly imagine how can LSD be used to control somebody rather than to free him. Every single time I've taken LSD (or other psychedelics) it felt great. The first time I have taken it I've also experienced sense of beauty and love so deep and extatic I could not previously imagine, another sense I've experienced deeply was how absurd violence, as well as pride and hatred are. It also helped me to realize non-duality and mindfulness so now I fear neither death nor imprisionment, let alone ridiculous verbal manipulations. Nevertheless I haven't became a hippie, I still maintain my hygiene and do my job.

It is also a well-known fact LSD doesn't work the next day you take it and you have to rest for about a weak before you can repeat the trip (but, to be honest, I am to mention I haven't checked this myself).

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>Every single time I've taken LSD (or other psychedelics) it felt great.

I'm glad you've had a good experiences with LSD every time you've taken it. But even a simple look into the history and culture of LSD and you would know that very "bad" trips are possible. I'm shocked that you haven't done more research into LSD as a whole.

>It is also a well-known fact LSD doesn't work the next day you take it and you have to rest for about a weak before you can repeat the trip (but, to be honest, I am to mention I haven't checked this myself).

Your assertion of "a well-known fact" is in fact false. I'm glad you put the last part in parentheses.

It sounds like you are prime for some reading on the history of LSD & psychedelics, understanding the effects long & short term, understanding how the drug(s) works, and how there were attempts to weaponize it (of course there were).

Apologies if the tone of this comment is a bit down on you, it's not meant to be, I just _really_ hope you educate yourself before speaking again on this subject.

> I'm glad you've had a good experiences with LSD every time you've taken it. But even a simple look into the history and culture of LSD and you would know that very "bad" trips are possible. I'm shocked that you haven't done more research into LSD as a whole.

So you are essentially shocked with your own assumption. I've never mentioned I don't know about the "bad trips" theory (although I can only speculate about how does it feel and why can it happen as long as we are talking about LSD, I have only met one person who had a bad trip experience and it was with n,n-DMT).

I also know enough about how does it work on the brain chemistry level.

As for the military usage and related history - I'm not interested enough to invest more time than it takes to write a comment expressing my surprise and my experience so others could share the essential parts in response if they feel like they want to.

>So you are essentially shocked with your own assumption.

What assumption? The assumption that you haven't done more research into psychedelics? LOL. Yep. Cool story bro.

>As for the military usage and related history - I'm not interested enough to invest more time

Yeah... so you just don't do research. Idk why you didn't just admin that in the first place.

Tbh I love your comment, I really do. The amount of ignorance you spew is a good show. Grabs popcorn

One of the horrific apeshit things done in CIA mind control research involved dosing sensory deprived people with LSD, thorazine/sedatives, curare and electroconvulsive therapy for ... weeks, and subsuming them in brainwashing "suggestions"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_experiments

But hey, it happened in Canada, so no harm no foul right? There really should be Nuremberg trials for the sins of the spooks. There won't be though; they run the show. The last time a spook employee got in trouble it was for whistleblowing.

> But hey, it happened in Canada, so no harm no foul right? There really should be Nuremberg trials for the sins of the spooks. There won't be though; they run the show. The last time a spook employee got in trouble it was for whistleblowing.

This seems to be true and that's frightening.

With a high enough dose of LSD, your current models of the world break down. Maybe the CIA was trying to imprint new reality tunnels for people during this vulnerable point in the trip.

Memories are fleeting depending on a host of chemical balances, life changes, and other external factors. You can impress new thoughts on certain people without much effort. Gaslighting is a great example of imprinting new realities. On a greater scale, Your mind differentiates reality from non-reality with dreams. When your trip becomes indistinguishable from dreams, your mind is left pulling apart the pieces and making sense of everything. Traumatic events and major life changes can also leave your mind in a similar state.

I’ve been doing experiments with my wife to “inject” a different time in her head when I come to bed. My results are mixed during the moment, but she claims to everyone I come to bed at the time I’ve injected. I’m sure in a more controlled environment with patients one could “inject” anything that seems plausible to the naked eye

Doesn't the eye loose the habit of beinh naked and considering whatever it encounters plausible given some experience with psychedelics and meditation? A major point of spiritual training is to stop taking perception and thoughts serious.

>> I’ve been doing experiments with my wife to “inject” a different time in her head when I come to bed.

Or maybe, she's just your wife so she doesn't want to argue with you on such an irrelevant matter.

If you're lying to your wife as an experiment then you should probably go to couples counseling.

This sounds a lot like gas lighting and isn’t healthy.

Meh you could inquire some more or just assume I’m an evil person who does nothing but lie

Also don’t take sleeping pills

Gaslighting is a great example of imprinting new realities

I’ve been doing experiments with my wife to “inject” a different time in her head when I come to bed.

You realize you are gaslighting your wife, and that isn't ok, right?

Maybe but saying I came to bed at 4am instead of 1am is hardly a lie. It’s on the same plane as saying you don’t look fat.

> LSD be used to control somebody rather than to free him.

I think this is accurate. Except freeing someone also removes / alters the person's usual defense mechanisms and their internal understanding of what's acceptable to do and say.

What LSD definitely does is makes the person vulnerable to external influence in ways they typically wouldn't be without the drug. For example, you could very plausibly convince someone to run naked down the street in a big city on LSD (the person taking LSD loses the voice in their head saying "NO! DON'T DO THAT!"), while it would be near impossible to convince someone of doing that while not on LSD. From that perspective, it can be thought of a "mind control" mechanism just not in the literal sense.

When I took LSD for the first time I was surprised how sober my consciousness became (despite how intense my perception was rendered), how easy it was to maintain adequateness. I still believe I actually could communicate without letting people notice I'm high (perhaps they could think I' slightly drunk or something). And this sobriety has never left me since then. Now I am much more adequate than I used to be even when I get heavily drunk.

I had no desire to do weird things under LSD. I in fact realized there is absolutely nothing wrong in being naked and I have no actual shyness since then yet I never forgot the simple fact running around naked (which I didn't even wanted) is going to make normal people uncomfortable (which I certainly don't want) and possibly cause other kinds of undesired consequences like being put in a jail, getting pneumonia or destroying my career (which would make my family suffer).

If you ask some people, bad trips can go horribly wrong.

Also, being in that state, and seeing the world in such a distorted way, without even knowing you're in an altered must be horrifying.

One wouldn't have any reason to believe it isn't "real" or that it will ever end.

> One wouldn't have any reason to believe it isn't "real" or that it will ever end.

Why? Isn't it natural to question your perception when you see something unusual in such a degree?

The higher the dose the more you lose the ability to convince yourself “This isn’t real” or even care.

It would. Unless your very thought patterns are completely disrupted by a highly potent psychedelic you've been unknowingly dosed with.

Even then, what seems more reasonable? "I'm trapped, asleep, in a seemingly never ending nightmare" or "I, a random layman with nothing remarkable whatsoever, have been unknowingly dosed with some unknown substance by the CIA" ?

Afaik the MKULTRA experiments included a sizeable amount of what we would call heroic doses and most of the time the subjects were not in an ideal trip setting.

Note we only have their reports that MKULTRA ended.

I can verify that LSD does in fact work the next day, and the next, and the next. after 4 days, not so sure.

There is some cross tolerance between all tryptamines and phenethylamines, but I have still managed to take them near daily for months on end without having to increase the dose by an absurd amount.

As I recall, LSD is neither strictly a tryptamine nor a phenethylamine, but rather an ergotamine with a structure resembling both tryptamines and phenethylamines.

"I've experienced deeply was how absurd violence, as well as pride and hatred are" - something super useful for the CIA if it can be reliably reproduced

> It is also a well-known fact LSD doesn't work the next day

At the same dose. If you double the dose each day it works just fine

> I can hardly imagine how can LSD be used to control somebody rather than to free him.

A lot of the early CIA experiments on LSD were about trying to come up with a truth serum for use on captured agents, so they went down some weird rabbit holes to that intent.

> I can hardly imagine how can LSD be used to control somebody rather than to free him

But you're a rank amateur. The CIA used University and Medical Schools, plus some believe (and I am one of those "some') they also used Nazi research. Shit an argument can be made that they "know" exactly the psychological profile of people that are prone to mind control, and contrary to popular belief people can be hypnotized into doing things they normally would not.

The US Army [1] researched BZ (which makes LSD look like licorice you give to kids) for TWENTY Years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-Quinuclidinyl_benzilate

Yet they claim to have failed.

People who have been tortured by (still-unindicted) US personnel have not reported being drugged.

Scopolamine is more effective.

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