Health - Safety/Toxicity of LSD?

[HellsEmbrace]

As far as I can tell from Erowid and what-not, LSD is the safest drug out there. Cannabis can mess you up, MDMA's can mess you up, opiates can really mess you up, but as far as I can see, there is no medical problems related to LSD. Short of thinking you can fly and jumping off a building, I don't really see how this drug is harmful.


Is it?


And if it isn't, why is it illegal?

[Alfa]

I can see no direct physical downsides to LSD use. The dose you need for a psychedelic experience is so low(only 100 micrograms), that toxicity is very unlikely. I have read posts of people who experienced backaches from extended use. Use the search engines.


But LSD certainly has risks: a user needs to be mentally balanced, emotionally flexible, to handle the intense psychedelic experience. A period of frequent use chalenges the stability of ones character to some extent. This depends on the character of the person, the nature and intensity of the experience.

[searcher]

LSD always kept me awake for longer periods of time than "normal". If I took some early in the morning, I'd still have trouble sleeping that night and would be all "spaced out" the next day until I "crashed" the next night".

[Bojangles]

I have always said that acid has the least amount of side effects compared to any other drug. I truely feel it should be legal for theraputic reasons, as a matter of fact I wish I had a connect, or new someone with a chemistry degree who could make it for me. I am definitly down for having therapy sessions involving LSD.


I never feel like shit after I trip...I do get tired, and I'm always able to fall right asleep. Sometimes my back will hurt, but whatever...


I just wish now people would make the f**king drugs right and clean. I'm sick of these cheap ass people dilluting shit andadding other unneccesary ingredinent. We all need to stick together with our LSD, f**k all you people who are out to ruin it for everyone....and by the way, why the f**k do people dillute it, or sell one hit for up to $20...acid is not the drug to be trying to make money off of...sell coke or k, then you can make money, not acid!

[wizard warior]

mind expansion can be Very dangerous in the wrong hands i am sure, so that has got to be one of the main reasons its banned in most places

[sands of time]

Did you ever see someone who has burned out they're brain because of LSD? I would say that LSD has some of the worst after effects out of most drugs. I agree that an LSD experience can have some very positive life changing effects but overdoing it will mess you up.

[Panth_Cocaine]

Syd Barrett, the original lead singer, lead guitarist and primary songwriter as well as band leader of Pink Floyd dropped acid almost constantly from 1966, and in late 1967 he left the band, because he something went blackout during shows. During 1968-1969 he lived on acid in a flat in London, close to total collapse, before recording two schizoid solo albums in 1970. Then he slipped into schizophrenia-like madness and left the music scene behind for a complete exile, unable to control his feelings, communication or talent (he would have so many ideas he couldn't even get out of bed). Where he is now, nobody knows.


And, probably except for the occasional hash (he was a hippie), all he did was acid. A bloody lot of acid.


As for the black-outs and can't get outta bed -symptoms, Jimi Hendrix, a frequent acid user, experienced some of the same before his death. Fortunaly/Unfortunaly acid wouldn't turn him schizophrenic cos' the heroin took him first.

[Herbal Remedy]

Dont get me wrong, i looooovvvvveeee lsd, i cant thank it enough for some of the things its shown me, but to say that its the safest, let alone to call it safe alone is probably the wrong thinking. i trust that most of you out there know what ur doing so pay no mind if u do but ive seen the worst happen off of as little as 2 or 3 tabs, so dont think that frying your brain or going crazy mid-trip is something only for those who take a strip at a time need to worry about. Between the power ofthe drug itselfand the boundless power of ones own emotions, the combination can bringabout thebest of experiences as well as the worst. im sorry if im sounding too cautious or anything ive just seen too many brains seriously fryd and too many lives given up over "enlightenment" or whatever u want to call it. remember, have fun but keep it safe, no drug isworth losing your life over and lsd is a drug for a reason, peace...

[Skeptikon]

LSD is like any drug–it can and will be abused by those who are
hell-bent on doing so. Physically it's quite safe; all those government
reports that it breaks your DNA and causes you to look at the sun are
total crap. Emotionally it can be damaging, usually when taken by
someone who does not know what he is getting into or who is in a bad
mental state in the first place. However, for the person that knows
what he is doing and why, LSD is pretty safe. Know your body, know your
mind, know your substance, know your source. -peace

[Hick]

Hi,


I'm about 980 years old and I would like to experiment with LSD, I experimented with Cannabis, shrooms, XTC, Speed, Coke, Special K, GHB. So I already have some experience with beeing high and tripping.


But some frends of mine say LSD is a verry dangerous drugs, now all drugs can be dangerous I guess, but what are the* risks when you take LSD??grtz
Edited by: OneDiaDem

[geordie]

There are no real physical dangers with taking LSD, just psychological ones, but these are rare. i advise you to try and find out how much LSD is on the tabs (if you can) when you get them, and dont take any more then 200 mics (micrograms). Because of the poor quality of acid these days you will probably have to take 2 hits (depending on the strength). If you follow the basic guidelines of being with people you know, like and trust in a chilled out space with music you like on, then you shouldn't have a problem. I dont think that LSD is dangerous, just a bit intense at times

[dr ACE]

another point is that if you have any history of mental illness in your family its probaly not a good idea to experiment with acid,it can trrigger mental episodes.the same would be said for most other trips like shrooms and cactus,obivous point just thought id mention it

[serotonin]

there are no physical dangers with lsd, seriously. NOTHING. for some reason acid has been hyped up so much. people think it is so much more dangerous than it really is.


what you want to do is make sure that if you are addicted to something (not coke or anything, im talking caffiene, nicotine, chocolate, fruit, whatever) you may want to keep plenty of that around. make sure you have nothing to worry about. don't do it if you are feeling down, make sure you are in a positive mood. the "hangover" is really nothing, you may just feel a little tired but that is it really. it's really just a great drug, eye opening.

[Mr Innocent]

Talk of LSD bein the safest drug out there scares me. In the wrong hands/minds it is the most powerful drug in the world. Let me give an example. I met a lad named X throughthe localnetwork of party-heads just when everyone wasat the age (16-18 say?)where we were gettinginto E's in a big way and taking 6,7 orjust as many pills and uppers as we could fit in. All of a sudden acid came to town and people started to add this to the menu of a Friday/Saturday night, butTRIPS ARE NOT SWEETS!! as is the nickname E's have been given. In the middle of a buzz though when did i take that last acid? All too easy to forget or to just maybe try a double dunt like you've tried with pills??Now to me taking pills and trips is one BIG blow to the brain and coming up on both at once left me struggling to hold mymind from flying apart a couple of times- very, very intense buzz. One Saturday night our little session got interrupted by X's mates asking if we could trip across town to see and speak to X because he was acting strangely after some pills and acid. (My mate had seen a bad trip and has a lot of respect for LSD as do I so we were the help that got called). He didn't look too bad at all to us but his mates were adamant so we drove him and one of his own mates to our own small gathering and just sat and got the crack,I can't remember the rest of the night but from that point on X was never the same. He could be with his mates without suddenly getting up and leaving, got extremely paranoid and sometimes could not go into his own house, preferring to sleep outside in the countryside. His mates tried their best- it was hard for them to take but he wasn't ever going to be anything like the boy he was and was severely damaged that night.


Drugs-take too much and you could lose your life.


Acid-take too much and you could lose your mind and your life, what's worse??


I still use acid, I love tripping,I plan a trip and will take it only if it feels right and when I do I have the time of my life- sore cheeks/ribs from laughing and the best sights you can hope to see but please respect it and treat it like the extremely powerful drug that it is.

I agree with the people who don't think acid is the "safest" drug.



In the world of psychedelics, LSD stands alone in many ways. One of
them is how physically mild it is with few or no physical side effects.
Another is how unbelievably strongly it pries your head open. Acid is a
physically safe drug that is very dangerous mentally. I speak from
personal experience, having spent a lot of last year overusing it and
winding up with a broken marriage and a legal case because of it.
Chronic use over time makes you think things that aren't true, even
when you're supposedly sober.



Use it moderately and intelligently and acid is one of the best things there is, though.

my brother tells me that i shouldnt buy acid, because of all of the
chemicals, and if something goes wrong it could kiill me he says. i am
wondering if that info is true.

[fishinabottle]

The whole world is made from chemicals.

You will find on this board people who have enjoyed LSD very often and are still healthy and working in jobs requiring a clear mind a over the average intelligence, for example science, IT etc.

Millions of people have used LSD without being harmed.

But after my opinion you should NOT try acid NOW. I would recommend you to wait some years - then you maybe more sure about this and in special about yourself, the latter the most important for making LSD an enjoyable and enlighting experience.

/fish

[drugs-bunny]

hi all ya psychonauts out there, i'm drugs bunny. i wuz wondering how
dangerous LSD really is. i've read a lot of things about LSD, some
websites state that you can't get stuck in your trip, others state that
there is a high risk. what is the truth? and how dangerous is it if you
are underage? i know you will all be thinking "that stupid kid, he
doesn't know anything about drugs, blablabla...", but please skip that
part and just tell me. The most useful thing would be to have a few
experienced drug users' MSN-accounts.

[Stingray_313]

Its not really based on what other drugs you have taken, its more of a
"How emotionally stong are you?" sort of situation. If you have
anxiety, any depression, mind problem, a weak mind, or anything of that
sort, acid is probably not for you.



I have seen people who have NEVER used a drug in their life who were
fine after taking acid for the first time. But then again, i have seen
people who are into coke, meth, weed, and other stuff FREAK out on an
LSD trip. If you want to know if you are really suitable for acid, i
suggest you try to go an entire day without getting scared, angry, or
depressed. If you can, you probably have a strong mind. If you get
really scared or something, you probably are a little too weak minded
for this intense drug.



What i said might </span>be a little
bit out of proportion, but this isnt just a drug to be like "Yeah, lets
go drop some cid". It is an experience thats not to be taken lightly.
If you want to, just go for it and take it... im just calculating out
the possibility that you will have a HORRIBLE time or a GLORIOUS time.



Hope that makes SOME sense....



Peace



[Edit: Minor spelling errors]


Edited by: Stingray_313

[Hyperreal]

The dangers of LSD are entirely psychological. There are no physical dangers. There is some debate over whether LSD can cause a lasting psychosis. I tend to believe that it can. If you've got enough experience with mushrooms and can handle high doses of them, then you're probably OK for acid. Start with half a hit; people only have bad trips on high doses.

[genaro]

With 100% pure lsd, side effects/toxicity shouldn't bother you....but LSD is not made by ex-Sandoz professional chemists anymore and many kitchen chemist seem to yield quite an impure product, including trace amounts of badly toxic precursors...poisonous & vasoconstrictive ergot alkaloids which show toxicity in microgram doses meaning that even trace amounts (in a blotter) can cause unpleasant side effects.

So here are the possible side effects swim and his friends noticed out of a few different "brands" of blotter lsd:

blueish lips (rarely fingers)

numbness and/or tingling sensations in the extremities

tensions and cramps (especially in the back and legs)

jaw tensions

electric shiverings/tingling sensations in the body

mild pain in the kidneys on the day after (this one is to my opinion the most worrying symptom of badly synthetised lsd toxicity)...I even know of one guy who had a kidney failure from ingesting a few potent blotters without drinking any water during the all (cold) night: he went creazy on the acid and was found in a coma the next morning, with kidney failure (and covered with blood as it seems he went into a fight during his insanity night), he was taken to the hospital and is now ok, the doctor just said that if he would want to be sure that his kidney would recover from it he would need to drink 3L water a day for 1 or two month...so it's clearly very important to drink water regularly when you take lsd (and this is also true for many other chemical drugs, especially if the weather is either very cold or very hot)

I would attribute most of these side effects to trace amounts of precursors in the final product due to badly carried out synthesis rather than to the lsd itlsef (please don't fucking tell me it's due to the "strychine effect" which is a stupid myth as there's no stychine on blotters)

I wanted to post about this as lsd risks & side effects arn't much discussed, just as if there weren't any (I know you people love lsd, so does swim, but hey let's be honest about it , it's not that much of an innocent substance, no drugs are) ...and people often do not realize that nowdays the lsd isn't the same quality that the one which was around in the sixtees (which was very low toxicity), so it's now more prone to cause unpleasant side effects than it used to.

Also note that well known side effects/risks include

1) flashbacks (a few friends had some from regular use, but this doesn't happen much often to them and most flashbacks are minor ones)

2) even with low doses, there's still some minor risk of "psychotic break" which sometime might end up "beeing stuck on a trip", luckily enough beeing stuck in a trip is really uncommon, but not that much "not possible" as I used to think it was (I know of two people who stayed stuck into a trip for 2 months while they never ever had any troubles with regular lsd use prior to this experience)

3)Also note that bad quality lsd is more prone to induce anxiety, bad trips and bad come downs.

To conclude I would say that's the way swim knows whether or not the lsd he might get is good: to swim good lsd doesn't mean that it's very visual, no, to swim good lsd means it has little side effects and is very visual (swim knows of some people who had very very visual lsd which they think was really good because it's plenty hallucinogenic but the side effects are too pronounced for me to call this "good lsd")

[CrookedEye]

Not to sound like an asshole, but that sure does sound like propaganda to me... How sure are you, that the drug giving trouble, is LSD... Swim has literally eaten many thousands of LSD hits, without a single symptom you have described.. Even on the more impure crystal, the worst he felt was mild nausea or tension.. Swim has taken extremely high doses on more than one occasion... Swim's most recent high dose experience can be found in he LSD Experiences thread... How sure are you the LSD, you describe is not LSA on blotter? That would make perfect sense for the whole list of first symptoms you described.. As for the kidney failure, it's the first case swim has ever heard of kindey failure from LSD, and he'd bet you'd bee hard pressed to find another case and/or proof that LSD was the actual cause of any damage to the internal organs, especially in the microgram range that LSD is active in... If these things were the case, it would sure seem the government would have much more ammo to fire at drug users than the old lame flashback scenario... Flashback what?? You mean free trip?!?! SIGN Swim up!!

[Nature Boy]

SWIM has experienced painful kidneys and abnormally dry lips on acid in all honesty.

[raven3davis]

tensions and cramps (especially in the back and legs)

jaw tensions

electric shiverings/tingling sensations in the body

SWIM has expedrienced all those symptoms along with nausea but never anything like a flash back.

[Pinkavvy]

Crooked Eye - He wasn't saying these are symptoms of the LSD, but rather of un-reacted precursers not washed out properly. Ergot alkaloids and LSA alkaloids can cause all of the effects listed.