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Comment by marincounty | Hacker News Reader

I knew a girl who was a junior at Darthmouth. She went to a concert with her friends on a holiday break. At said concert she took some acid. She went to bed. She woke up and she didn't recognize the family members around her. She got better over the years, and finally finished her degree 20 years later. I'm not anti drug, but I think about her often. No, I have never tried anything other than pot. Pot is too strong for my constitution. I wish I had the personality to experiment, but I am just not willing to take the chance.

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Your story made me remember something.

I've used pot a few times, but I didn't smoke it. Instead me in my friends made what is called 'marijuana milk'. First you Decarboxylate the marijuana for about 30 minutes. Then you mix it with milk and you boil that for a while.

I remember reading once that the world that you perceive around you is put together by your brain. The world is not actually a as unified and persistent as we 'see' it. That's just the brain doing a good job of filtering and parsing the signals that bombard it. It was during my 'weed-milk' adventure that I first experienced what this meant.

Well on my way in the adventure I was looking at a tv show (bob's burgers) that was running. I saw the images and understood what I was looking at. While watching I heard these strange echoes and harsh noises. They were very strange and disjointed sounds, there's really nothing like it. I investigated the sounds in my head and it was then that the 'echoes' transformed into the voices of the characters on screen. It was like my brain had failed to connect the linguistic center and the audio center together. And I was only hearing 'unparsed' sound waves (as weird as that sounds). After that the echoes would come and go if I didn't concentrate. It's as if thinking about it flipped the 'parse_sounds_as_a_language' switch somewhere.

There's really nothing like it, the best part, imo, is that you're still somewhat rational while all this is happening. You're very conscious of the things that are 'different' and I always felt that I could 'investigate' and communicate to others what exactly was different while stoned/high.

>They were very strange and disjointed sounds, there's really nothing like it. I investigated the sounds in my head and it was then that the 'echoes' transformed into the voices of the characters on screen. It was like my brain had failed to connect the linguistic center and the audio center together. And I was only hearing 'unparsed' sound waves (as weird as that sounds).

sounds like what buddhists do.

Can also happen while tired. Especially for languages that you are not fluent in.

Yes most people don't realize their lives are lived completely in their head, constantly parsing a verbal stream and acting on it.

People believe the brain is the center, but it's really only a peripheral, more of a GPU than a CPU. When shut off, we operate just fine. It's easily to walk, observe, eat, cook, etc. without thinking at all and that's a good thing.

Many people get scared to be compared to vague concepts like "the vast, non-thinking masses," however, non-thinking is a mode to be switched in and out of with "thinking."

Thinking is an activity, like digging. We do it as necessary, but just like we shouldn't dig all day long, we shouldn't think all day long.

Many psychedelics as well as other consciousness-shifting experiences, like facing extreme fears, traveling, staying up all night, etc. will help put these concepts together, but few will do it on their own.

We could all benefit from more and gentle shifts in our consciousness.

I do have to say, I've also tried some other drugs in the past month or so (MDMA being one of them) and the effect I got was pretty horrific - the exact opposite of the effect most people get.

Even despite my bad experience I'm still interested in drug experimentation. I guess it's important to keep in mind that YMMV and if you try something new, make sure it's in a controlled environment (around people you trust, in a safe space, correct dosage of good quality stuff, etc).

Did you test it? Dancesafe.org provides cheap test kits so that you can find out what exactly you're putting in your body.

Excellent point, but it was tried and tested stuff that friends had enjoyed previously.

I looked up the side effects in Erowid [1] afterwards and it mentioned one of the more rare side effects you get is "a profound sense of isolation and loneliness", which was pretty much a spot-on description. I'm assuming I'm just wired differently.

[1]: http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/mdma_effects3.shtml - right after the table

Look, it's good to know yourself. The probability of getting seriously messed by acid is extremely low, but the number one risk factor for a bad trip is being afraid of having a bad trip. Just don't worry about it and if someday you feel curious, just relax and do it. It sounds like you have a pretty good perspective.

Also, I will bet you that it wasn't (just) acid that fucked that girl up. Concerts are a great place to be exposed to all kinds of interesting substances.

>but the number one risk factor for a bad trip is being afraid of having a bad trip.

Wise advice. I've always been angry with people who pressure people into psychedelics. You must be comfortable and with people you can trust when doing these things for the first time. Not doing so can make for a damaging experience.

I don't know. The first time I tried acid on my own I was quite afraid of having a bad trip. It turned out to be wonderful and transformative. My second solo trip I told myself something along the lines of "just don't worry" and it turned out pretty grim. A statement like "just relax" doesn't really compute cleanly and depends a lot on the subject's state of mind.

For me the number one factor was my external environment.

This sounds like the "I know a guy who did a bunch of LSD and now he thinks he's a glass of orange juice" urban myth.

There's not a chance in hell that this is true. I'll be shocked if you can produce any evidence whatsoever that any version of this story happened.

Some people are susceptible for psychosis. LSD might give them the final push, turning them from the normal looking guy that sometimes say weird things to full-blown crazy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Psy...

I also know about a similar case in my social circle. An offbeat guy starts seeing demons after his first trip. Recovering in a mental institution ever since.

Yet I don't think LSD is to blame, it is just a trigger for a pre-existing underlying issue.

It doesn't matter either way - for all practical purposes, LSD causes psychosis to a small part of the population. Some of these people will develop psychosis without LSD, of course, but some will not.

Similarly, peanuts may kill some small part of the populations, fava beans a different part. They may die anyway independent of peanuts or fava beans. That's not a reason to ban them outright - rather, it's a reason to do the proper research to try to figure out who is susceptible and warn them.

An anecdote like that is extremely terrifying. It connects with us emotionally.

It blows our perception of risk out of proportion. I recommend you read the Wikipedia entry. LSD is incredibly safe, particularly when compared to caffeine and alcohol.

I am very sorry for the person you knew because LSD clearly interacted with something.

>There have been no documented human deaths from an LSD overdose. It is physiologically well tolerated and there is no evidence for long-lasting physiological effects on the brain or other parts of the human organism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide?oldf...

It may be "incredibly safe" physically, but it is known to trigger mental disorders in people who may have had a predisposition or not.

I don't think something that has that powerful of an effect on someone's mind should be taken lightly, or casually paraded around as being safer than caffeine or alcohol. We are not talking about an LD50 or death. We are talking about mental health.

There are severe significant and potentially long term consequences if you don't do your research or don't know your family's mental health history. The same applies for alcohol and other addictive drugs for similar reasons.

I say this as a person who had a familial predisposition to mental health issues that were triggered by psychedelic and other drug use.

You're right. We should all be cautious with what we put in our body.

I find it interesting that you would choose to respond to a post warning about the risks of anecdotal evidence with your own personal anecdote. The impact to you was real, and incredibly rare. I am very sorry for what happened to you. Lots of people die in plane crashes; that doesn't make planes unsafe.

>Estimates of the prevalence of LSD-induced prolonged psychosis lasting over 48 hours have been made by surveying researchers and therapists who had administered LSD: Cohen (1960) estimated 0.8 per 1,000 volunteers (the single case among approximately 1250 study volunteers was the identical twin of a person with schizophrenia, and he recovered within 5 days) and 1.8 per 1,000 psychiatric patients

It is riskier for people with pre-existing conditions. There is some value in finding those conditions. There's some fledgling research that LSD can help with some conditions.

These tests by necessity had no placebo. A flu shot is enough to generate a likely psychogenic illness. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/desiree-jennings-fake-muscle-diso....

OTOH, there is a (rarely accounted for) opportunity cost to not taking hallucinogens. Many folks are plagued by unfortunate mental health, which could possibly be remedied by psychedelic experiences.

It's a tricky situation, but important to acknowledge both the good and the bad possible outcomes in a rational, scientific manner.

Just as you say we should not parade powerful drugs around as safe, we should also not casually dismiss the therapeutic and spiritual effects because of negative anecdotes or (seemingly) rare negative outcomes.

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