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Comment by shipscode | Hacker News Reader

Reminder that one experience with hallucinogenic substances can give you a lifetime of visual or mental abnormalities.

Personally I've had visual snow for over a decade from a 5 minute Salvia trip. This means that instead of looking at the color white or black and seeing a clean color, I see a static cloud all over it. I'm one of the lucky ones - most of the people I've known over the years who messed with these substances ended up dead, with persistent mental illness, or brain fog that took years to clear up.

You roll the dice on your mental and physical well being every time you ingest a hallucinogen. The characterization of these substances as ones which induce visual hallucinations without mentioning the lifetime of mental health issues they leave people with is dangerous.

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> most of the people I've known over the years who messed with these substances ended up dead, with persistent mental illness, or brain fog that took years to clear up.

Before we do anything in life, we should know ourselves, evaluate ourselves and the risks associated with these drugs that you note and make educated decisions as to our level of acceptable risk.

I for instance knowing the risks you point out, and how broken my brain is will not be trying any of these, despite all of the only positive interactions from those I know who have who now pressure me to follow in their footsteps. I know that I would be one of the people you note. I still find people’s reports interesting despite this.

Sadly I too know people who fit your description, only they consumed copious amounts of alcohol or meth and entered a slow road to destruction from which they were never able to divert themselves.

edit

I would entertain trying micro dosing of a compound in this family with the guidance of a medical health professional as further data comes to light. These are about the only circumstances in which I would entertain it.

LSD showed good efficacy in anxiety with no signals of "lifetime of mental health issues" or other safety concerns, so isn't it possible that the problems you describe are really caused by contamination or adulteration of substances purchased on the black market rather than the drug itself?

Perhaps, rather than casting aspersions based on anecdotes on an entire category of potentially useful drugs, we should credit actual data generated in the clinic. Or maybe your warning should be about the fact that extra-legally obtained substances might contain almost anything regardless of what they're sold as.

Much subtler, but I had some slight visual effects for a couple of months after trying LSD + weed (this was like 10 years ago).

Everytime I looked at the icons in the app list in my phone, it would look like they were dancing just a tiny bit, like they were not completely still.

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