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Comment by superdisk | Hacker News Reader

> I want to do this badly.

My advice is to stay far far away from psychedelics. I took LSD a few months ago after hearing about what great insights it can enable, or the euphoria it lets you feel.

I ended up having a bad, panic-inducing trip which caused something in my brain to flip and start having panic attacks and dissociation. The dissociation/depersonalization faded after a couple weeks (although those weeks were hell) but the anxiety and general feeling of weirdness still affect me.

I don't really feel like I've ever gotten back to how I've been before I took the drug. As some other commenter on HN said, "it's like throwing a wrench in your neurological cogwheels." The rewards definitely don't outweigh the risks.

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From my experience LSD basically amplifies what's already inside you plus the setting which is around you. So you need to be prepared. It basically real life "the zone" from stalker:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)

So if you have some worries, even deep inside, and not acknowledging them, LSD will bring that up for you even if the setting is super relaxing and safe. Also the opposite, if setting is threatening, you will have bad trip.

This so much. Broken people shouldn't do psychedelics, or they might end up more broken. You really can't hide your flaws and issues from it. How to define who is broken and who is not is not for this post, or this site, more for good experienced psychologists. I've been disassembled down into atoms of my personality, 'saw' them dance and swirl on gentle shamanic music I played in the background and when coming down from the trip, assembled back again, piece by piece, sense by sense. Only then I realized that my mental state was perfectly OK and no hidden cracks looming beneath the surface. I would never recommend such a leap of faith to random people I don't know deeply.

Doing this with anybody else wouldn't achieve any of this insight, I presume a lot fo energy would be spent managing communication with other person or attempt to stay more grounded rather than let it go.

For rest of us, it is often a life changing experience and defining moment of our lives. It was for me (mushrooms grown from spores from Netherland, never did acid but should be +-similar). One trick with shrooms - raw lemon juice makes it way more intense and shorter experience, which is combination I prefer for introspection.

Really sorry to hear that. Did you ever experience anything related (like mushrooms)?

Remember that his experience is just an anecdote. You should not base your reasoning upon someone else's experience. You should research and keep in mind that yes, bad trips exist and also that we're talking about banned compounds and as such their purity varies. God knows what he took. The only way to know for sure is to order from a (legal) EU lab, which makes a similar compound or something. With that said, my personal opinion is that it doesn't make sense to take something under researched, artificially isolated. As such, imo, you're better off growing your spores, again, ordered from and consumed in a legal place, such as, Holland. There was a thread about them both those things here on HN, with some great comments. You might wanna use HN search and sift thru the comments. But as far as spores, I think it's pretty accurate to say that what you'll experience is a dissociation from your ego, which, is a totally abstract concept, and quite unimaginable. Mhh, I'd say what happens is you see everything from the outside, you realize everything is a mental construction and feel like everything is connected. I recommend reading a piece on Santa Claus and the spores. Gives much more context than anything for what their use should be, and was, imo. Don't expect to turn an apple into a Macintosh.

I've done far-too-high doses of weed before accidentally, which I can describe as being similar and psychedelic. After the incident I cut out any psychoactive drugs, including caffeine and alcohol.

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