And what happened during the experience?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22991744 (See chain of replies too)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993060
Short-term side effects were acute + severe panic attacks, triggered by flashbacks and feeling as though I was physically back in the same situation/it was starting to happen again.
Even though entirely illogical and not being in the same place it happened, in my mind I felt dead certain that the events that had happened were starting to replay themselves and even physically I was reliving the sensations.
This made me dysfunctional for a period of months, slowly over time the severity + frequency of this tapered off. It took about ~2 years for it to become what I'd call "mostly subsided".
Even now though, if I am under a lot of stress or if I don't sleep well and am slightly sleep deprived, I will start to have flashbacks + panic attacks, but I know how to handle them better now and can force logic through a bit better.
My vision is permanently altered, though it's minor. If you're not familiar with psychedelics, when you take a low dose of them, it makes everything have a sort of "oil-painting" type look to it, and textures are crisper.
The bark on a tree is a good example of something that looks much more intense.
The intensity of this has also subsided a fair amount, but even now I choose not to wear glasses most of the time because if I put on my glasses, everything is too "High definition" and visually intense. I prefer things to just be blurry, to be honest.
> and feeling as though I was physically back in the same situation/it was starting to happen again.
> Even though entirely illogical and not being in the same place it happened, in my mind I felt dead certain that the events that had happened were starting to replay themselves and even physically I was reliving the sensations.
I once took some psychedelics and forgot I had taken them (I was also drinking beer), and I had an experience quite similar to this, but at the time had completely forgotten that I was on psychedelics. I always leave myself a note nowadays.
I've used psychedelics since then(although much, much later in life). Nothing ever like it since.
The only thing I've ever taken + know of with even remotely a 24-hour duration is the "DOx" series, like "DOM", and "DOI", etc.
I felt like I had been dragged through hell and back after the time I willingly + knowingly took a single dose of DOI. No idea who thinks 24 hours awake tripping is a good time.
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOx
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOM
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/DOI
NBOMe wasn't discovered until 2003, and not popularized/available until ~2010. I've done my fair share of NBOMe and it lasts only ~5-6 hours.
I also had breathing issues around the tail end of the trip(I think you mentioned something similar). I would start to nod out in my attempt to sleep, but I'd come to after a few minutes, gasping for air.
It was tie-dyed blotter that my friend bought from a Dead show in Sacramento. I've never had anything like it since then.
I also feel instantly better, smarter, happier, etc for weeks after shrooms. Don’t feel that all on LSD.
My impression is that all psychedelics have serious negative effects for the unluckiest users.
Even McKenna had a bad trip on psilocybin that nearly broke him:
"Terence’s pivotal, existential crisis came abruptly, some time in ’88 or ’89. Everything that happened after that event was fallout. I don’t know exactly when it happened, and I don’t know exactly what happened; I am piecing it together from what Kat [his wife at the time] has told me, and she has volunteered few details, and I am reluctant to probe.
It happened when they were living for a time on the big island, and it was a mushroom trip they shared that was absolutely terrifying for Terence. It was terrifying because, for some reason, the mushroom turned on him. The gentle, wise, humorous mushroom spirit that he had come to know and trust as an ally and teacher ripped back the facade to reveal an abyss of utter existential despair. Terence kept saying, so Kat told me, that it was “a lack of all meaning, a lack of all meaning.” And this induced panic in Terence, and probably, I speculate, a feeling he was going mad. He couldn’t deal with it. Kat’s efforts to reassure him were fruitless. After that experience, he never again took mushrooms, and he took other psychedelics, such as DMT and ayahuasca, only on rare occasions and with great reluctance.
Whatever the specific content of the psychedelic experience might have been that triggered the cognitive collapse of Terence’s worldview and precipitated his existential crisis, what was most remarkable was that he did not see it coming. He did not see it coming."
— From Dennis McKenna, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna, now excised
That's the bitch about a brain tumor. Your mind is really good at working around it, until it isn't, and then you can't see straight or some other symptom which appears suddenly.
I don't mean to completely diminish your point. Psychedelics can hit you in unpredictable ways, even when you have experience.
In practice I have seen several people do a lot of LSD and kind of “not come back all the way.” Don’t recall seeing the same with other psychedelics.
I would caution people against acid, and especially against using a lot of it or repeatedly. I think there’s a reason it has that nickname. It seems to be harsh and unforgiving.
There are positive reports from microdosing the stuff. I have no experience here. This wasn’t a thing when I was in college and I have not been near anything like this for a long time.
To each their own.
It’s also possible to go to sleep on mushrooms once you’re at the end of your trip, as the trip is really a lot shorter. I remember lying awake in my bed on LSD with the room melting around me, wondering if it would ever end, just wishing that I could go to sleep.
Edit: As far as being alone with your experience - I had a lot of friends that preferred LSD over mushrooms. It’s really a personal preference as to which one suits you best.
If you're talking about different species of psilocybin containing mushrooms like wood loving ones and what not, what are your experiences with them? I've only had cubensis mushrooms, but I assumed the primary difference between them would be potency considering they have the same active compounds.
other than that, i've had some insanely intense experiences with them, both pleasant and unpleasant. but i have not had much experience with other species.
related to the thread however, my experiences with good L were way more pleasant, manageable, and desirable. but perhaps that's a result a more responsible, less reckless dosing (i had some experience by this time, dosing in clubs and stuff) -- when i was eating mushrooms (spring time, quite a few seasons not really outside of that window) simply eating whatever i am finding on a hike through the woods while having an afternoon coffee, while not really knowing any better, sometimes meant i ingested way more than necessary, shrug. YMMV.
The visuals were very noticeable for me, but they would mostly enhance whatever it was that I was looking at. Peoples heads would morph and bend (the best way I can describe that is the music video “Drugs” by Ratatat), trees would breath and the branches would look like giant mushrooms, I’d see slight colors and geometry on flat surfaces, my phone would feel like liquid. The body high was also amazing. All of this for me was on a 7.5g dosage.
In contrast with LSD, it would completely change everything that I could see. I woke up once after going to sleep on alcohol/LSD, and it looked like I was in a cartoon, and I continued to trip for another 8 hours.
That said, many people have nonlinear responses to these substances. I know folks who hate lower doses of LSD because they just get an anxiety-generating body high, but love the experience above that. Generally, on a per-dose basis, LSD and mushrooms are inexpensive and so experimentation is cheap (even though it's also time consuming because of the ~8hr trip duration). Though, again, if you take lower doses (below the standard I mentioned above) most people will have no trouble doing chores if you must get something done (as long as that chore does *not* involve driving).
Edit: mushrooms are hard to dose consistently, the dose I listed might be high or low but it will probably not melt your face off or do nothing. More info here: https://erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_basics.shtml
LSD wasn’t uncomfortable for me, but I also knew at a deep level that it wasn’t something I needed to explore further. By contrast, there were many times that Ayahuasca had been at times uncomfortable and disturbing for me … but I also knew I needed it.