Health - Does LSD affect IQ

[rainsong]

Sorry if this has already been discussed, but I did a pretty thorough search that came up with no results. I was wondering if there was any proof of LSD affecting IQ. I have heard of people being "permafried" and I have also heard from a friend who thinks he was a little bit "brain damaged" after a 1000mcg trip. If no one knows of any studies, it would be appreciated if anyone could tell me anything they think about the possibilities of LSD's effect on intelligence (ie. amount that has to be taken/minimum amount of trips that will result in damage to the brain). I realize that LSD may not lower intelligence at all in some amounts and could possibly increase it what with the "mind-expanding" aspects and all, but I am under the impression that there reaches a point where it can negatively impact the mind.

Anyway I am just trying to get an idea of the risks to intelligence (I am already comfortable with the risks of HPPD, flashbacks, etc.) before I have my first LSD trip.

[fnord]

if anything id say lsd would improve someones iq rather then deplete it but thats just my theory.in swims experience he thinks that lsd builds connections in the brain that enhance creativity.didint the person who broke the human genome come to his discovery thru lsd?google that because im not sure.

[Tranquil Toad]

Psychedelics, LSD included, seem to do the opposite to SWIM, at least for the duration of the trip. Things like math and puzzles seem much easier, as if his brain is running at twice its normal capacity. As for long-term effects, SWIM has noticed some short-term memory problems and dyslexia, but considering all the things he has put in his body, who’s to say what caused it. Its been around since the 50s, and all those hippies who used it for years seem to be doing ok (for the most part).

[KBLSD]

Originally Posted by fnord

if anything id say lsd would improve someones iq rather then deplete it but thats just my theory.in swims experience he thinks that lsd builds connections in the brain that enhance creativity.didint the person who broke the human genome come to his discovery thru lsd?google that because im not sure.

for sure swim trips lsd once a week he just recently took a IQ test and got 130 on it swim doesnt know if LSD had anything to do but it surely never hurt he IQ

[fnord]

Excerpt: Francis Crick, Discoverer of the Genetic Code (July 10, 2006)
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images




Despite Crick’s extraordinary distinction as a scientist, little has been written about his life aside from his brief autobiographical essay, “What Mad Pursuit,” and his leading role in “The Eighth Day of Creation,” Horace Freeland Judson’s outstanding oral history of molecular biology.
The first biography of Crick, who died in 2004 at the age of 88, has now appeared. Called “Francis Crick, Discoverer of the Genetic Code,” it is by Matt Ridley, one of the few journalists Crick was in the habit of talking with. Mr. Ridley has created a vivid portrait that explains Crick’s scientific work with clarity, deftly outlines his career and provides sharp insights into the nature of Crick’s remarkable creativity.
Crick, who set a high value on his privacy, seems not to have left biographers a great deal to work with beyond what is already on the record.
One source of new material developed by Mr. Ridley concerns Crick’s wartime career in the British Admiralty. Trained as a physicist, Crick worked on magnetic and acoustic mines and mine countermeasures. Intelligence agents learned that the German minesweepers known as Sperrbrechers carried an enormous magnet to make British magnetic mines explode harmlessly far ahead of them.
When a Royal Air Force plane photographed a Sperrbrecher with its wake cutting through the wash of a mine explosion, Crick realized he had the physical information to calculate the weight and strength of the magnet. On that basis he designed a mine so insensitive it would detonate only right under a Sperrbrecher.
He had considerable trouble persuading British admirals to invest in a mine that all other ships passed over unscathed. But that obstacle overcome, his devices worked splendidly, sinking more than 100 Sperrbrechers and stripping German waters of their defenses.
Rejecting a promising career in military physics after the war, Crick was influenced by two friends, the Austrian mathematician Georg Kreisel and the physicist Maurice Wilkins, to begin a new career in biological research.
As Mr. Ridley notes, Crick was in middle age when he embarked on his career of scientific discovery, in contrast with the many scientists who make their marks when young.
Crick forged his own path through life. Mr. Ridley dwells only briefly on Crick’s heterodox views and experimental way of life. He seldom read newspapers, because working in intelligence had convinced him that most stories never reached the press. He experimented with marijuana and LSD, Mr. Ridley reports.
Crick and his wife Odile held lively parties and enjoyed the company of their many bohemian friends, like John Gayer-Anderson, who made pornographic pottery.
“Though they did not have an explicitly ‘open marriage,’ Francis was an incorrigible flirt,” Mr. Ridley writes, “and Odile at least affected not to mind.”
Crick refused to meet the queen when she visited Cambridge’s new Laboratory of Molecular Biology because he disapproved of royalty, and he declined a knighthood. He deeply disliked religion, saying once that Christianity was all right between consenting adults but should not be taught to children.
He refused to attend weddings or funerals, though he was always up for the party afterward. He resigned from Churchill College when it decided to build a chapel like any other Cambridge college.
Desire to undercut religious obscurantism was a cogent motive in Crick’s scientific career, shaping his choice first of the gene and later of consciousness as problems that, if cracked, would destroy the last refuges of vitalism.
“Throughout, he stayed true to himself: ebullient, loquacious, charming, skeptical, tenacious,” Mr. Ridley writes in an eloquent coda. “He would have liked to find the seat of consciousness and to see the retreat of religion. He had to settle for explaining life.”
Among the many virtues of this short, beautifully written book are the sharp glimpses it offers into a mind of remarkable creativity

[ima-do-proprio-ser]

intersting to know about Francis Crick