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Comment by __MatrixMan__ | Hacker News Reader

As one of those enthusiasts, I don't think that's a situation you really have to worry about. It takes a little while to reconstruct oneself to the point where you'd want another deconstruction. For most people, it's not going to be every day or even every month.

Only once have I run across somebody who wanted to trip twice in the same week, and I think he was just following habits ingrained in him by his previous cocaine problem.

Still, there would be outliers. If availability were higher, I would be worried about the few for which this isn't the case. They might cause some significant harm to their sanity.

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As a former enthusiast, I know many people who used it frequently until the "psychic harm" caught up with them. I've had binges where I was doing it every week... sometimes more if I'm at a music festival. Same with mushrooms.

I'm not trying to demonize the drug, just saying that there are definitely people who can and do abuse it, and those people are a not-insignificant portion of users. Just go talk to any OG deadhead if you don't think people used LSD as a party drug.

Oh it definitely happens. I think it would happen less if there was less of a taboo. We vilify drugs similarly, so people who just want to get messed up start to see them as all the same. I've been approached by people at raves who seemed like they would take anything I was willing to sell.

But drugs are so remarkably different from each other. I wish we treated them as such. If there wasn't already the drug <-> party association I don't think a first time LSD user would be very likely to rediscover it.

> They might cause some significant harm to their sanity.

Is that possible?

The drug counselor at my college, when asked by someone in the audience at a presentation he was giving about drug history, which drug would be the least harmful to use if someone wanted to, said immediately, "LSD."

A collective gasp was let out by the crowd, especially considering he'd just said earlier it would take smoking 15 pounds of marijuana in 30 minutes to OD on it. That seemed pretty darn safe.

it's nearly impossible to cause physical harm with lsd, but not difficult to inflict psychological harm, especially in people who would are already vulnerable or predisposed to mental illness

Well shit, we should make dating and work illegal too

Yep. I did it over 100 times including a couple bad trips. A friend of mine was more fragile started abusing it as well and didn't do as well.

Yes it can absolutely affect your sanity. A few friends of mine developed schizophrenia (which they may have anyway later in life without psychs).

I've had a few bad trips. It's a bit like being seasick. At first you worry you're going to die, then you worry you're not going to die.

Psychedelics are amazing and life changing but they can also put you through mental torture in ways you can't imagine until you've experienced it.

You're probably the kind of person who researches LSD, maybe you were on erowid, you knew how long it would last, what rough dosage to take, what to expect etc etc. You'd know you need to be in a good 'setting' to have a good time.

That is not the way 99% of people drug-taking people approach drugs. They get offered it and they go 'yeah ok!'. Bad trips would happen all the time if it was as popular as weed or booze.

How much do you take? 100ug is fairly mild, really doesn't seem to deconstruct you

Set and setting play a huge part. I've gone pretty hard, dosage wise, and still felt like the same ol' me after. I've also had a pretty life-changing ego death experience that lasted a few days after a pretty low dose.

Several fellow psychonauts agreed that a certain friend could reap great benefits from it but after he tried it he was like, "meh". Over the following four years we did it together six times and on the last one he was like "woah, ok, now I respect this chemical". Similar dosage each time.

Different trips take you different places.

Be aware that most (more than 50%) of the 100ug tabs are actually not even 50ug according to recent studies, especially the one found in western countries. Usually, "real" 100ug shakes your world.

I've heard that. The online/market ones seem pretty legit though...

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