Health - mental health prior to taking LSD

[ollywithbeans]

Swim is looking at doing acid this weekend for the first time and has been told that along with setting and company, good mental health is important to the well being of the trip. What sort of factors would contribute to a poor trip, is short term stress like university work or daft arguments with friends that get resolved quickly likely to give a bad trip? Or are more longer term stresses like depression the main factors in the way the trip goes? And by arguments with friends swim means silly little spats that no one gives two thoughts about, not blazing rows. Oh and would half a tab of your average dose be any good?

[chillinwill]

in terms of the dose, its hard to say because we don't know how powerful the acid is and the actual microgram doseage....in terms of set and setting and all of that, little squabbles with a friend or something proably won't contribute to a bad trip; however, depression would contribute to a bad trip as well as any fears or anxiety

also, this topic has been covered many many times so please search before starting a new thread

[sleepingstamper]

A good starting does would be 1 or 2 hits. Swim started with 2 hits, has clinical depression, and a mild schizophrenia. The trip went fine, and swim has gone up in dosage ever since. A few bowls would make the trip a lot more visually satisfying.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Advice could result in serious harm to other forum members.

[Jatelka]

Your monkey is depressed and has a psychotic illness?

I'm glad that they returned from their LSD journey with their psyche intact

Taking psychedelics when set and setting is not perfect is a recipe for disaster, and can NOT be recommnded under any circumstances

[Songcycle67]

Originally Posted by Jatelka

Your monkey is depressed and has a psychotic illness?

I'm glad that they returned from their LSD journey with their psyche intact

Taking psychedelics when set and setting is not perfect is a recipe for disaster, and can NOT be recommnded under any circumstances

We all have little quirks and funny notions about life, but those with clinical mental disorders that have been diagnosed by formal doctors should avoid at all costs any psychedelic or pseudo-psychedelic. If it worked for SWIY, fine. But don't go recommending that others in their position do the same. It is dangerous and irresponsible.

[Panthers007]

Add stupid to the above - and I agree. The CIA used mentally ill patients as guinea-pigs in their experiments with LSD and others. The results were disasterous. Some victims are still institutionalized as a result. Some who were previously diagnosed with minor depression upon admission.

[doggy_hat]

Originally Posted by sleepingstamper

A good starting does would be 1 or 2 hits. Swim started with 2 hits, has clinical depression, and a mild schizophrenia. The trip went fine, and swim has gone up in dosage ever since. A few bowls would make the trip a lot more visually satisfying.

Although it's possible for people diagnosed with mental illness to take psychedelics and return from the trip fine, this is very risky behavior. I know the people above me already stated that but the point can't be stressed enough. And even if one with a mental illness doses and is fine, it may just take one more trip to trigger further mental complications.

However with mild depression, I think that is more dependent upon the individual. True, it could cause a negative trip and just worsen the situation. But if one doses with the intention to explore their psyche, it may help one to resolve their problem with depression.

[Songcycle67]

Also, concerning dose, half of an average tab can contain anywhere between 30 and 200ug of LSD. The bottom line is that if SWIY doesn't know the chemist or doesn't extract the crystals and weigh them (very very tedious) then they're going to be playing roulette. For some reason it seems that, while in some places the doses are still where they were in the mid-90's: ~60ug, in others the average dose can be up to ~500ug.

Tell your friend to try to gather as much information from the dealer as is possible. Usually dealers will bullshit you, but they won't tell SWIY that the dose is less than what's actually there most of the time. Once they've gathered data from the dealer, make an approximation of dose range. Give it a plus or minus 100ug error margin to be safe (i.e. if the dealer says it's 200ug, treat it as if it were somewhere between 100-300ug) and dose accordingly.

In order to ensure their safety, tell SWIY to read up on dosing. Most agree that body weight is immaterial in this equation. A clinical dose for proper psychedelic experience is typically between 200ug and 400ug, but SWIY should only take what they feel they are ready for. Research, research, research. And when they finally think they've got a good idea of how they're gonna do it, how much they're gonna do, etc....do more research. When they feel they're as sure as they're ever gonna be that it's time, take the plunge.

[fiveleggedrat]

Originally Posted by sleepingstamper

A good starting does would be 1 or 2 hits. Swim started with 2 hits, has clinical depression, and a mild schizophrenia.

No, no, no. First off, 2 hits is a BAD idea. All "Hits" are different, sometimes being nasty RC's and not even LSD, as well as the fact that there is no "standard" amount EVERYONE puts on a hit. It could be 25ug or 500ug, you do NOT know.

Swim personally says always take 1/2 to 1 hit, and wait 2 hours on an empty stomach. Then take more as needed


Mental health is extremely important, as is set and setting. Bad trips can happen with Marijuana even due to these issues.

fiveleggedrat added 397 Minutes and 35 Seconds later...

Originally Posted by songcycle67

Tell your friend to try to gather as much information from the dealer as is possible. Usually dealers will bullshit you, but they won't tell SWIY that the dose is less than what's actually there most of the time. Once they've gathered data from the dealer, make an approximation of dose range. Give it a plus or minus 100ug error margin to be safe (i.e. if the dealer says it's 200ug, treat it as if it were somewhere between 100-300ug) and dose accordingly.

Just wanted to add here about dealers. Swim knows many, many dealers and knows most of the drug market rather well. 99% of the dealers Swim knew that had Acid/LSD, Mescaline, E pills, etc etc, NEVER knew what in the world was in any of these. They would make things up along as they went, and tell people what they want to hear. I'm not talking your friendly hippy dealers here, but the average dealer. For example, Swim got E in caps from someone. He got like 400 bucks worth. He did the same next month. The caps went from being 00's and HUGE to the size of those tiny diphenhydramine, with less than 1/3 material inside. Quote "They are the same thing". Swim buys, and finds out it's not. Quote "Oh yeah, I sold you doubles at first by accident, so I sold you singles the second time on purpose." Even though Swim paid "double prices" BOTH times, this bitch took it upon himself to punish me with weaker doses for his mistake. Take this kind of scenario and apply it to strong psychedelics: "I gave you double hits of Acid the first time, so I gave you some other type of Acid that is cheaper the other day"

Reputation Comments on this post:

Excellent points regarding both potency and marijuana.

[Songcycle67]

I would ammend the above comments with the same sentiments. The first few times SWIM tried to buy LSD he could tell that the dealer didn't even know what the fuck a microgram was, but still they'd bullshit to try to act as if they were selling you the finest shit. "Uh, I dunno exactly man but this shit is on fire!" SWIM says it takes a while to get connected well, but once one does find people who know their shit they may exaggerate the dose, but it will be somewhere in that neighborhood (as I said a 100ug error margin is good to establish if one has a fairly knowledgable dealer).

Unfortunately in SWIM's experience, as LSD has grown in popularity throughout the past few years, there have been less and less knowledgable people dealing it and they'll try to fuck somebody just as if they were selling them crack or H. I hate to say it, but that's something that increased popularity does to a drug and the people left out there "dealing LSD for the good of humanity" are few and far far between.


Outlandish figures such as 400ug should be taken with a very large, bitter grain of salt.

[doggy_hat]

As for purchasing LSD from dealers. Generally the more of a hippy a dealer is, the more reliable he is. SWIM knows plenty of people that have been ripped off with blank papers by standard dealers that wouldn't even know what a micro gram is. But SWIM used to know a a guy that was unemployed,and just painted psychedelic pictures and sold acid all day long. SWIM reports that the drug's quality was quite good.

[Songcycle67]

SWIM's first dealer who knew his shit spent all of the late 80's and early 90's following the grateful dead. After Jerry died, he spent all of his time following around various other jam bands 24-7 and making tremendous amounts of connections. SWIM won't elaborate as to how close his dude got into the inner circle, but let's just say that he knew the exact dosage of every tab he sold and most of you know what that requires. SWIM met this guy through his best friend, it was his best friend's uncle so SWIM always got absolutely amazing deals.

Everything was ultra gravy until SWIM's dealer started using hardcore opiates. Turns out his life following these bands around and turning people on for cheap had done quite a number on his financial situation and he turned to heroin and other potent opiates for relief from his money stresses. He was surrounded by people who were encouraging that he use opiates. For a while he was the same guy: the nice dirty ol' hippie who was always coming into town with a bag full of surprises. Unfortunately after a while he started to realize that people in SWIM's area were hard up for LSD and wanted it just as badly as he wanted his heroin. So the prices start to go up, he starts selling liquid so he can dillute it and sell it for $10 a hit. Since he had already established himself as a trustworthy guy, no one was the wiser for a while. Of course SWIM and his best friend were in on it, they both still get good deals from the guy whenever he's not in jail or hiding out from various authority figures, but he rips off everybody else.

It's really a shame, for the longest time he was the most aces guy, but he got greedy and fucked up all the good karma he had spread. Luckily SWIM's best friend was introduced to a lot of his uncle's sources before he turned rotten so now they only buy from his uncle when they feel like he's in a tight spot and needs the money.

It's really a shame that it has come to that, but he's still out there somewhere in a "Tim Leary for President" shirt on slinging dilluted hits for 10$ a pop. Don't let the hippie image fool you, a lot of them are only in it for the money. Still, SWIM says they're one's best bet for being both knowledgable and trustworthy--unfortunately that can change quickly and they can use their knowledge against the buyer.

[Panthers007]

I knew a bigoted, racist "hippie" who was selling bad acid in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Found him one day beating up a gay kid with a club. I took away his beat stick and ran him out of the city - down the streets with me chasing him. The cops threw him out for good.

Nope: You can't judge someone by their appearance. Nope, nope, nope.