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Comment by loves_mangoes | Hacker News Reader

He didn't exactly make a small dosing mistake, though. I can understand accidentally taking 50ug by accident if you're not careful. But he was peaking on much more than a light dose, here!

    Zhu looked at the screen and saw numbers and images swelling and shrinking, making them impossible to discern. 
    His body felt as if it were melting away, he says

That is far from a microdose. This is showing up extremely drunk to the office. As an occasional LSD user, and I can only speak for myself, but I don't ever get enough visuals that I can't read a screen without taking way too much, or without other drugs being involved that have a synergy with LSD.

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If a founder as successful Zsu came in extremely drunk one time, yeah, I think extend him some grace. He fucked up - once. That's ok!

Did he kill someone? No. Did he lose a major customer account? No. Did he fire a top employee in a drunken rage? No.

He's under a lot of pressure and fucked up in an embarrassing way once. That doesn't mean he has a substance problem. It means he had a bad day.

If it happens a second time? Yeah, ok, now it's starting to be a track record. Third? Nuke him.

It's ok for people to fuck up sometimes

Getting visuals while looking at a computer screen can definitely happen at small doses. You might not see any visuals looking at the space around you, but black text on a bright white screen will bring it out.

And mixing up the dosage is insanely easy with LSD, especially if you are using tabs since the LSD isn't evenly distributed throughout the paper. Also, you never really know how much LSD is on your sheet or in your vial, you just have to trust your source.

It should not prevent you from being able to read the screen

Yeah, not saying it would. Even at higher doses you can usually read a screen, but the many other psychological effects will make it hard to process what you are reading. Especially, if you aren't experienced with it.

My point was that seeing visuals on a screen doesn't necessarily mean it's a large dose, especially for a first time user. Definitely not a microdose, but getting the dosage right is an art.

So if it is this risky, perhaps he shouldn't have done it for the first time immediately before an important investor meeting.

I know quite precisely how much alcohol is in commercial beer that I buy. I wouldn't have even a single beer immediately before an important investor meeting.

you're doing it wrong. first you drink all the booze. then you hack all the things. if your investors aren't down with that, they're in the wrong line of work. maybe they should consider haberdashery.

Not defending his actions, quite the contrary actually, it's really easy to get it mixed up so I wouldn't recommend it unless you've done it a bunch of times and know yourself. Even then, that really seems like the worst time to do it.

I can't even imagine how he thought this was a good idea. Maybe microdosing in your private office during a 3 hour block of solo time when you just want to think by yourself... but microdosing (for the first time) before a board meeting where you're expected to give a presentation?! Horrible idea.

Would the anxiety of realising you're tripping way more than you intended not potentially result in the effects feeling a lot stronger than it otherwise would feel?

Mentally, probably. I think would have trouble speaking coherently long before the visuals became a problem, but then again everyone is different. It's not my experience that visuals get much more intense with anxiety.

With how long trips and the comeup take, I just have trouble understanding what kind of confidence it must take to walk in the meeting anyways and try to wing it. I would have found any excuse to sober up and get things in order before drunkely stumbling through a big pitch.

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