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.
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.
To each their own.
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.
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.
> 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.