Is LSD all people drum it up to be?

[wan234]

Hi, SWIM has taken acid around 8 times, usually doses of two strong tabs. I would first like to clarify that this is not an assault of people who enjoy the use of psychedelics. I'm trying to provoke a bit of conversation to help answer some questions and doubts that I have had about acid and to be honest I think that it is worth exploring the unhealthy sides to taking acid for the sake of other less experienced users as well.
I often see people make comments about the meaningful experiences that they have had on acid and frankly I am a little cynical.
I find it very difficult to reconcile the amount of thought disorder that taking acid produces and the way it affects your ability to reason with the idea that you can have cosmic revelations or lead to a deeper or more profound understanding of reality. I think that acid can help you understand yourself, it can show you parts of your personality which you might not be comfortable with and, for me it made me confront that part, and made me ask is this really what I want to be like.
I'm playing with the idea that in fact what acid creates is a sense of deep meaning and of the sublime which can be transferred onto relatively meaningless or simple ideas. I can't say that I have had many deep thoughts on acid which have survived the cold light of sober thought (unrelated to myself). When people say that they can't explain the profound experiences that they have on acid to others, couldn't this just be because it doesn't make any sense and its meaning is only artificial, or simply that the don't really remember it properly, only the feeling and thoughts about it?
The internet is littered with vague and frankly moderately nonsensical descriptions of "what acid is like man". The idyllic paradise painted by these accounts rarely include the fevered insanity which accompany LSD trips. There have been times where I look around and see myself and friends putting ourselves into a state where you are so fucked that you can't even follow basic conversation or basic logic and I suspect that if you saw a video recording of yourself on acid it would be more than disturbing. I've recently been thinking that taking acid is kind of like smoking crack, your in a mentally compromised and semi-vegetative state (in the peak) but to you the world is rainbows and ponies, I'm just not sure if ultimately taking acid is a healthy or positive thing to be doing. You can get massive amounts of fun and meaning from acid but maybe its at the cost of displacing yourself from everyday reality permanently.
People say acid changes you, and it definitely does. But maybe it just turns you into a weirdo. Some people describe acid as a peak through the door of sanity into the insane. Its a door that you can find hard to go back through. The way it affects your thought patterns are thought to be similar to people with schizophrenia. Do you really want some of the most cherished memories of your life to have been during a period of such unadulterated mental disorder.
I'd like to hear what everyone thinks of this.

 

[IJesusChrist]

Sounds like your last trip had you bit paranoid

I can say - I relate to your post, very much so. Acid really is just seeing things through another lens - that is all it is. You realize things, and you notice and undestand ideas for the first time. It can be very profound. You sound like you are very introspective, and like me, miss out on a lot of the "we are one" type of mentalities that seem to arise so much in other people.

You can say that yes, acid just "makes you fucked up" but equal in truth you can also say acid "unlocks a mystical wellbeing" or understanding. Both are equivalent, and I don't think you have seen that yet in your rationale. There is two ways of looking at every coin, and to me, it looks like you are stuck on the negative side of things at the moment, which is far easier than seeing the positive, let me tell you

I could go on but I think my meaning would get clouded, and for now I will leave my response to this.

P.S. - my last trip on DMT I realized that DMT applies a feeling of "awe" to anything you see while high. Whether that awe is still there (logically or not) when you come back down is not relevant. If you learned anything at all while you were there, that is what is important.
shit now I'm going to keep going

 

[Sticki]

If you ask me, LSD is just a key to unlock your mind.

The experience is subjective, What works for one does not always work for another.

Also, May I ask who's drum beat you have been listening to?

 

[Cultosaurus]

The taking of anything that affects your body or your mind is all a matter of personal taste. Speed freaks don't usually like hallucinogenics, and people into downers don't usually like speed. Pot smokers will experiment with just about anything, smoking is unrelated to other tastes in drugs. It's all personal. The taking of hallucinogens is the same. Some will see it as mind blowing, perhaps very scary and beyond their capacity to handle, perhaps very introspective, perhaps very philosophical, it all depends on the person, the setting and the entheogen. What people have to say on the internet is very similar. Some have enjoyed it, some were paranoid and scared of what happened and some saw the doors of illusion open up before them and were amazed at what was inside. How they describe their experience and what they experienced is also very dependent on their maturity. Some immature 15 year old will be tripping on the experience of doing something that is illegal and brag about it and speak of it in very different terms than someone else, whereas someone who is more mature and into the shamanistic or spiritual side of exploration will have a better description and 'feel' for what they experienced. You have to read between the lines of what is said in many cases. Opening those doors to the inside of your mind is not for everyone. But for those that like to explore and think more radically or think on very non-linear lines or simply to wish to wander a spiritual path, it is the most amazing trip to take. But you have to be prepared for that journey, someone who is unprepared will be lost and frightened. But someone with a spiritual bent will find it exhilarating, informative, fun, soothing, spiritually comforting ... there are many feelings that will come from a good trip. Like I said, it's all very personal.

 

[zezt]

How they describe their experience and what they experienced is also very dependent on their maturity. Some immature 15 year old will be tripping on the experience of doing something that is illegal and brag about it and speak of it in very different terms than someone else, whereas someone who is more mature and into the shamanistic or spiritual side of exploration will have a better description and 'feel' for what they experienced.

My very first time when LSD found ME--I didn't have to go looking for it, which I wasn't--and I WAS 15. So my life experience involves me as a 15 year old kid have LSD experiences in 1971 when the LSD in London at that time--in pill form--was as close to the original stuff as can be and VERY powerful, much more so that what gets passed for acid now usually on blotters.

The people--older than me (Heads) didn't even tell me what the half of a very tiny tab was. My first experience at a party was seeing peoples body language---others at a party who weren't tripping--VERY powerfully and I nearly laughed myself to death because I felt I was seeing the real them behind their social masks they were showing to others.
The other trips I had, the most powerful for me, and life changing was the walks around nature on the 'come down'. What this did for me was to bring back the sense of the aliveness and magic and interconnection with nature I had lost since being a little kid. In theose years before taking LSD, nature had become a bore. I would not notice it much and would throw litter at it. I was obsessed with an image of the big concrete neon city with crowds, ugly buildings, traffic, all of that crap. So LSD blew all that delusion away. So LSD is my FIRST love, if you will. it took away all that blockage.

Having got online in last few years and dommunicating with people at psychedelic forums who claim to have had psychedelic experience, I have been shocked at some of the worldviews. Ie., shunning spirituality, supporting war, and claiming people are not oppressed in this wolrd, and very arrogant attitudes towards people from 'devloping' countries and indigenous peoples. It has left me wondering WHY? One thing occured to me was, I wonder if its because they may have started tripping later than me--in their 20s or later, and that the mechanicstic worldview that they have been 'educated' in is so strong that when they 'come down' it destroys any worthwhile insightrs they may have had on the trip, and they submerge themselves in scientific materialism once again, and even question the experience--calling it a 'mere chmical ride' 'fucking with your perception' 'delerium' and things the OP suggests 'it' is. But I think all this really just exposes the critiquer more than it does LSD. It ALL depends on YOU. Think of you and the chosen psychedelic you take as a friend you MEET. A coming togther. Ingestion of any substance is quite intimate isn't it? So surely if you choose to show the DEEPEST respect for this conjoining, as well as for the set and setting you choose, then I believe this respect will prove very fruitful, but if your set is that it is just about getting fucked up, etc--then what follows will be confined within such expectations.

 

[sidefx]

Yeah not everybody gets the same effect in fact no one would take from it the same as another, a beautiful un-hinged trip is always the goal of a Psychonaut, 'The EGO loss' but our brains are hard wired to make sense so this can be very bad when one cannot let go of something, *Insecurity -alittle paranoia can go a long way. And you have to take the good with some of the bad, Even an experienced user will have a bad trip.
and drugs are not for every-one, though it seems more and more that problems occur predominately where there already was some problem like degrees of mental health.
drugs get a very bad rep. from people who maybe should not have taken them in the first place.

Please tell your experiences, but tell them as your own,
soo much good has come from expansion of the mind dont add to the hate

 

[Cultosaurus]

all my experiences were many years ago. so little but a positive attitude remain.

The bad rep, the paranoia, the perceived problems with drugs and hallucinogens comes from a fear of the unknown. People have been lied to and brainwashed by the government, police and school systems that all drugs are bad. This is a lie, as we all know. But people will believe anything when they are not allowed to see the truth for themselves.

It's like some religious person who has been told all their lives to be very afraid of the devil . ... that the devil is around every corner and is always there trying to tempt them into some sin. Personally, I don't believe in such a being, but people are told there is one and they build a great fear in their mind of one. The same holds true for entheogens. They fear that which they know nothing of and have been lied to about.

It also comes from a modern concept of superiority over indigenous cultures and their concept of spirituality. The bullshit arrogance leads people to perceive native culture's use of mushrooms, ayahuasca, peyote or any other hallucinogen as being antiquated and no longer of any use to a modern person. The arrogance needed to perceive yourself in that way amazes me. I have no respect for the opinions of someone who dismisses the use of natural substances out of hand without any knowledge of what the entheogens do, how they help or their cultural significance.

As far as taking any hallucinogen, if a person is open to it, then they should do it. No one is forcing someone to do so. But not permitting someone access to it is the real crime. All drug laws around the world are a violation of civil and human rights. Anyone who believes that natural substances should remain illegal is violating the personal freedom of others and therefor their opinions become meaningless.

 

[Sticki]

This is not News, merely opinion.

 

[tammuz]

yes sticki, please do.


cultosaurus- that was a really good overview, well done.