Unless you are trying to treat some other illness it isn’t worth the risk until we better understand the mechanisms behind why psychedelics can trigger mental disorders.
That's what I'm saying, though. There's no way to know how susceptible one is to a particular disorder in general, let alone while on psychedelics.
There is evidence of psychedelic use connecting parts of the brain that aren't normally connected, AFAIK the white matter becomes much more interconnected during a psychedelic trip.
Speak for yourself. Risk tolerance is highly subjective.
It's true that a small percentage of individuals who try psychedelics will develop otherwise unexplained mental illness. It's also true that a small percentage of individuals who try skydiving will break their legs and that a small percentage of individuals who try scuba diving will drown. However, ultimately, it's up to individuals to decide for themselves whether it's worth bearing such risks for the sake of experiencing something new and exciting.
Personally, I'd recommend that healthy people try all three of those activities. Life's short, after all, and you're more likely to get hurt in a car accident on your way there than you are to suffer injury from any of those particular activities in and of themselves. In every endeavor, it's up to you to do your own research and make as rational and informed a decision as you can given the available evidence.
People have taken less than a few doses of NBOMe and died. Meanwhile there are no known deaths by LSD overdose, people have taken thousands of doses of LSD and lived.
For example, most skydiving is done in a guided and controlled way, with participants paying a professional instructor to help them through the process on a flight where everyone involved knows that people will be jumping out of this plane, in areas chosen by said flights for this to be done in. The risk of injury or death would be much higher if you were to, say, bowl over a flight attendant on a commercial plane flying over, say, the Rocky Mountains, steal a backpack from a supply area that you assume is a parachute, shove open the emergency exit, and jump out. However, that risk might be significantly lower if you happened to have prior training as a military paratrooper
Lifetime risk of death in a car accident might come down to frequency. But it could also be affected by such factors as road conditions, weather, your own physical and mental health, the condition of your car, and whether you're being pursued by a military helicopter
Broad statistics tend to be a poor substitute for understanding one's own situation in assessing the risks one is willing to take. They are used in science because science tends to aim to draw broad conclusions over large aggregates. Your own individual risk assessment may take such aggregate measures into account, but it's unlikely that this is adequate to make such assessments wisely, and either way only informs your assessment of risk rather than your tolerance for it
But sure, you're doing something not well researched when you take psychedelics, and various people have very different experiences with them from getting a revelation to having the worst experiences of their lives.
So yeah, there are unknown risks and unknown benefits, thread carefully and take that into account.
Obviously when you start taking high doses and reality kind of breaks down the distinction becomes moot, but at regular doses it does matter.
I'm 53 now and hope that before I die (which I hope isn't anytime soon) there's a safe and legal way for me to try LSD.
That said, I must highly recommend not using in attempt to “fix” one’s aphantasia.
Edit: I recommend to stick to shrooms if you can.
I'd love to tell you, but I don't know how people without aphantasia experience LSD. What I do know is that my inner experience is only (mostly) blind; it has fully developed senses of hearing, touch, smell and taste. I get visual distortions, apparently within normal parameters. Thus far in the few experiences I've had with synesthesia, it's never involved my sense of sight.
Funny, I usually have the opposite experience :) LSD for deep, not-so-much visual, inwards journeys and mushrooms for very visual, laugh-y and social experiences.
When I'm on LSD, one of my favorite things to do is talk to friends over text. It results in me saying stuff that I could never say otherwise. Here is something Emily (a headmate of mine) once said:
> ....there must always be sadness... because all that is good will always end.... and it will never stop being sad that it is this way~
For me, thinking like that just does not happen without LSD, it was a complete accident but it's so pretty!
And the substance (as long as it is a tryptamine) is less important, save for personal preferences. (I have heard a lot about LSD for fun and shrooms for insights - for me, there is no such distinction; if anything, LSD, even in lower doses, produces more profound associations, ones that words cannot capture. At higher doses, well, as you said, the distinction becomes mood.)
At the same time, the soul (overall personality, mind, motivations, desires, approach, will, and goals) is crucial.
I am always fascinated by this conundrum. A lot of people say it's a life-altering experience, yet it generally doesn't seem to make them a worse, better, or even different person (unless they have a mental illness ).
I think there's a vague consensus that one must 'integrate' the experiences you have on psychedelics in order to meaningfully impact your life, if that's your goal. Those profound experiences and feelings you can have on psychedelics are certainly incredible and moving in their own right, but in order to make that have an effect on who you are (increased empathy and better framing of life events are often mentioned), you the taker of those drugs has to put some work in to learn from it. It always bothers me when I'll see statements like 'this drug changed my life', especially when talking about psychedelics. The drug didn't do it alone.
This is also seen in the early work using MDMA by psychiatrists - the drug itself was just one part of the treatment.
Yeah, I never liked that phrasing either. It makes psychedelics seem like some magical mental health panacea.
Often people who seek out these drugs are already taking the first steps to change their life (this can mean many things, even if "only"[1] changing their outlook) before ever taking the drug. They changed their life on their own, the drug was just a means to an end.
[1] I put only in quotes, because anyone who's struggled with any mental health issues knows this can be a gargantuan hurdle
Are you always this precise when causality is being assigned though? Take geopolitical matters for example, when you hear a story about what caused some event on the geopolitical stage being attributed to one variable/entity do your spider senses perk up and realize you're being told a tall tale?
The best insight you will get, without taking the trip yourself is going to come from reading Huxley's "Doors of Perception". A large enough dose will give you all sorts of interesting insights into your own thinking.
The closest your going to come to this, is the first time you watch the film "The Game", assuming you pay close enough attention and are tuned into it as a film and the characters in it. However it pales in comparison to the real thing.
There were a couple kids we didn't know well that went schizophrenic/psychotic break.
My closest friend got too much in his early twenties at an early burning man, went schizophrenic/psychotic and after a year or so in and out of jail, committed suicide by cop. There was nothing that could be done for him as he was an adult and didn't want help.
This was a college educated, elementary school teacher.
I haven't touched the stuff since.
You do you, but don't tell people there aren't risks.
I used to share this attitude, but seeing a close friend have a complete break and lose his life over some recreational partying changed my view.
So I'd talk about it enthusistically (like any acid-head!), but I'd never recommend itto anyone.